The Face of

Old Testament
Studies
David W. Baker is Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages
at Ashland Theological Seminary. With many works to his credit, he is
the editor of the ETS Studies series and the coauthor of More Light on
the Path: Daily Scripture Readings from Hebrew and Greek. His Ph.D. de-
gree is from the University of London.

Bill T. Arnold is Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at

Asbury Theological Seminary. He is the author of Encountering the
Book of Genesis and numerous journal articles and the coauthor (with
Bryan Beyer) of Encountering the Old Testament: A Christian Survey.
His Ph.D. degree is from Hebrew Union College.
 The Face of
Old Testament
Studies
A Survey of
Contemporary Approaches

Edited by
David W. Baker
and Bill T. Arnold

i APOLLOS
DE»
ml Baker Books
k Co
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49516
© 1999 by David W. Baker and Bill T. Arnold

Published by Baker Books

a division of Baker Book House Company
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

and

Apollos (an imprint of Inter-Varsity Press)

38 De Montfort Street, Leicester, LE1 7GP, England

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy,
recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is
brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The face of Old Testament studies : a survey of contemporary approaches / edited

by David W. Baker and Bill T. Arnold.
je Sai.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0-8010-2215-0 (cloth)
1. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History—20th century.
2. Bible. O.T.—Study and teaching. I. Baker, David W. (David Weston), 1950-.
IL. Arnold, Bill T.
BS1193.F33 1999
221.6'09'045—de21 99-37516

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-85111-774-0

For information about academic books, resources for Christian leaders, and all new re-
leases available from Baker Book House, visit our web site:
http://www.bakerbooks.com
Contents

List of Contributors 7
Preface 9
List of Abbreviations /3

1. The Text of the Old Testament /9

Al Wolters
2. Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 38
Mark W. Chavalas and Edwin C. Hostetter
3. Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 59
Mark W. Chavalas and Murray R. Adamthwaite
4. Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 97
Tremper Longman III
5. Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search fora New Paradigm 1/16
Gordon J. Wenham
6. Historiography of the Old Testament 1/45
V. Philips Long
7. Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 176
K. Lawson Younger Jr.
8. The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and
Detours 207
Gary N. Knoppers
9. Exile and After: Historical Study 236
H. G. M. Williamson
10. Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 266
David W. Baker
11. Wisdom Literature 295
Bruce K. Waltke and David Diewert
12. Recent Trends in Psalms Study 329
David M. Howard Jr.
13. Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 369
John N. Oswalt
14. Religion in Ancient Israel 39/
Bill T. Arnold
 Contents

15; Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds: Applying the Social

Sciences to Hebrew Scripture 42/
Charles E. Carter
16. Theology of the Old Testament 452
R. W. L. Moberly

Subject Index 479

Author Index 490
Scripture Index 507
Contributors

Murray R. Adamthwaite holds a Ph.D. from the University of Mel-

bourne and is Lecturer at the Centre for Ancient and Classical Lan-
guages at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
Bill T. Arnold holds a Ph.D. from Hebrew Union College and is Profes-
sor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Asbury Theological
Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.
David W. Baker holds a Ph.D. from the University of London and is
Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Ashland Theo-
logical Seminary, Ashland, Ohio.
Charles E. Carter holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and is Associate
Professor of Religious Studies at Seton Hall University, South
Orange, New Jersey.
Mark W. Chavalas holds a Ph.D. from the University of California—Los
Angeles and is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin,
La Crosse, Wisconsin.
David Diewert holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is
Associate Professor of Biblical Languages at Regent College, Vancou-
ver, British Columbia.
Edwin C. Hostetter holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and
is Professor of Biblical Studies at the Ecumenical Institute of Theol-
ogy, Baltimore, Maryland.
David M. Howard Jr. holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan
and is Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at New Orleans Bap-
tist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Gary N. Knoppers holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and is Pro-
fessor and Head of the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediter-
ranean Studies at Pennsylvania State University, University Park,
Pennsylvania.
V. Philips Long holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is
Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary, St.
Louis, Missouri.
Tremper Longman III holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and is Rob-
ert H. Gundry Chair of Religious Studies at Westmont College, Santa
Barbara, California.
8 Contributors

Walter Moberly holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is

Lecturer in Theology at the University of Durham, Durham,
England.
John N. Oswalt holds a Ph.D. from Brandeis University and is
Research Professor of Old Testament at Wesley Biblical Seminary,
Jackson, Mississippi.
Bruce K. Waltke holds a Th.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary and
a Ph.D. from Harvard University and is Professor Emeritus of Bibli-
cal Studies at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Pro-
fessor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando,
Florida.
Gordon J. Wenham holds a Ph.D. from King’s College, University of
London, and is Professor of Old Testament at the Cheltenham and
Gloucester College of Higher Education, Cheltenham, England.
H. G. M. Williamson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge
and is Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford,
Oxford, England.
Al Wolters holds a Ph.D. from the Free University of Amsterdam and
is Professor of Religion and Theology and Classical Studies at
Redeemer College, Ancaster, Ontario.
K. Lawson Younger Jr. holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield
and is Professor of Old Testament, Semitic Languages, and Ancient
Near Eastern History at Trinity International University, Deerfield,
Illinois.
Preface

In the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, the track coach Sam Mussabini
watches the runner Harold Abrahams practice and then approaches
him to offer assistance. He tells him, “I can’t make you win, but I think
I can get you a couple of more yards.” This same idea lies behind aca-
demic study of any discipline, not least that of the Old Testament.
Scholars analyze the text using many and varied techniques, some an-
cient and some postmodern, some borrowed from other discipliies and
others developed from within. All of these are designed not to reach
complete understanding, but rather to move that understanding a small
step forward. This volume seeks to chart some of these steps toward un-
derstanding within the multifaceted field of Old Testament studies.
Over seventy years ago, the Society for Old Testament Study started a
series of volumes that set out “to give a general account of the present po-
sition in the various branches of Old Testament study.”! More recently,
the series “Sources for Biblical and Theological Studies” has sought to do
the same through reprinting seminal articles and extracts that have
moved forward various elements of the discipline of Old Testament stud-
ies, as well as tracing the history of the development of each element.

1. G. W. Anderson, “Preface,” in Tradition and Interpretation: Essays by Members ofthe

Society for Old Testament Study, ed. G. W. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), v. Previ-
ous volumes were The People and the Book: Essays on the Old Testament, ed. A. S. Peake
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1925); Record and Revelation: Essays on the Old Testament by Mem-
bers of the Society for Old Testament Study, ed. H. W. Robinson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1938);
and The Old Testament and Modern Study: A Generation of Discovery and Research: Essays
by Members of the Society, ed. H. H. Rowley (Oxford: Clarendon, 1951).
2. The series, edited by D. W. Baker and published in Winona Lake, Indiana, by Eisen-
brauns, has produced volumes on OT theology (The Flowering of Old Testament Theology:
A Reader in Twentieth-Century Old Testament Theology, 1930-1990, ed. B. C. Ollenburger,
E. A. Martens, and G. F. Hasel [1992]), literary criticism (Beyond Form Criticism: Essays
in Old Testament Literary Criticism, ed. P. R. House [1992]), Deuteronomy (A Song of
Power and the Power of Song: Essays on the Book of Deuteronomy, ed. D. L. Christensen
[1993]), Genesis 1-11 (“I Studied Inscriptions from before the Flood”: Ancient Near East-
ern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis I-11, ed. R. S. Hess and D. T. Tsumura
[1994]), prophecy (“The Place Is Too Small for Us”: The Israelite Prophets in Recent Schol-
arship, ed. R. P. Gordon [1995]), and social scientific approaches to OT study (Commu-
nity, Identity, and Ideology: Social Scientific Approaches to the Hebrew Bible, ed. C. E.
Carter and C. L. Meyers [1996]).
10 Preface

Other individual volumes have also discussed elements of the history of

Old Testament study.
One aspect of the development of the discipline that becomes clear
when surveying developments during the twentieth century is the rise,
and fall, of various methodologies. Some arise from comparative an-
thropological study (e.g., the concept of the amphictyony), but, when
presumed parallels are found to be lacking, drop out of favor. This is
not a condemnation of the broader area of socio-anthropological study,
however, which continues to burgeon and provide cross-disciplinary
insight, as reflected in its discussion here not only in its own chapter
but also in the discussions of archaeology and prophecy. Others arise
from literary analysis, where new means of interpretation are con-
stantly applied from other literatures to that of the Bible. Some of these
also are short-lived, since they prove unproductive or inappropriate to
the biblical literature, though literary analysis itself is not thereby viti-
ated by these unproductive forays.
Some approaches arising over the last decades do appear, however,
to be presuppositionally wrongheaded. In particular are some that ap-
proach nihilism, deriving from a postmodern abhorrence of absolutes,
not only in ethics, which is beyond the purview of this volume, but also
in interpretation. Some literary schools see the individual reader as sole
and final arbiter of meaning, but an approach that allows equal validity
to all interpretations ends up denying any value to any interpretation.
Historical approaches that deny any usefulness to the only existing evi-
dence, as the Old Testament often is to some of the events that it
records, are implying that history can be written without evidence, an
interesting espousal of “ahistorical history.”
The present volume follows the model of the one-volume summaries
of the discipline of Old Testament studies, particularly as it has devel-
oped during the closing decades of the twentieth century. One of its dis-
tinctives is that it notes contributions of conservative scholars whose
significance has been recognized beyond their own camp. While some
contributors have highlighted these in various ways, others have simply
included them within the general discussion. This latter approach has
special value since contributions should be judged by their acumen and
insight, their ability to add distance in the race toward understanding,

3. See, e.g., H.-J. Kraus, Geschichte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung des Alten
Testaments, 2d ed. (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969), for the most exhaus-
tive treatment; D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker, eds., The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern In-
terpreters (Philadelphia: Fortress; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985); and J. L. Mays,
D. L. Petersen, and K. H. Richards, eds., Old Testament Interpretation: Past, Present, and
Future: Essays in Honor ofGene M. Tucker (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), for more recent
collections.
Preface Ll

rather than by the colors under which their authors race. The branding
as “liberal” or “conservative” has too often been mistaken for engage-
ment with the arguments put forward, and has hobbled those from
across the theological spectrum who take such an exclusionary posi-
tion. We hope that readers will value and evaluate the integrity and
functionality of the arguments and positions based on merit rather
than presupposition.
Although these chapters focus on developments from 1970 to the
present, previous research is sometimes presented to provide needed
context. Most of the articles in this volume were completed by 1997,
with minor updates allowed through April 1999. Hence, even the termi-
nal point for each essay is rather fluid, reflecting the dynamism and
constant changes in the state of Old Testament research generally. Our
attempt to sketch the contours of our ever-changing discipline must be
supplemented by the reader’s own willingness to follow the trajectories
set by these essays.
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Abbreviations

Annales archéologiques arabes, syriennes

Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research
Anchor Bible
Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman et al., 6 vols. (New
York: Doubleday, 1992)
Australian Biblical Review
Anchor Bible Reference Library
Archiv ftir Orientforschung
Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchris-
tentums
American Journal of Archaeology
Australian Journal ofBiblical Archaeology
American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature
Annual of Leeds University Oriental Society
Analecta biblica
Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament, ed. J. B.
Pritchard, 2d ed. with supplement (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1969)
ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. J. B.
Pritchard, 3d ed. with supplement (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1969)
ANETS Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies
AnOr Analecta orientalia
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament
AOS American Oriental Series
ARAB D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, 2 vols.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926-27)
ARM Archives royales de Mari
ASORDS American Schools of Oriental Research Dissertation Series
ASTI Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute
ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch
NOES Ashland Theological Journal
ATLA American Theological Library Association
AUSS Andrews University Seminary Studies
BA Biblical Archaeologist
BaM Baghdader Mitteilungen
BAR Biblical Archaeology Review
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

13
14 Abbreviations

BBB Bonner biblische Beitrage

BBR Bulletin for Biblical Research
BBVO Berliner Beitrage zum Vorderen Orient
BEATAJ Beitrage zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Ju-
dentums
BEE Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium
BEG Beyond Form Criticism: Essays in Old Testament Literary Criticism,
ed. P. R. House, SBTS 2 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992)
BHT Beitrage zur historischen Theologie
Bib Biblica
BibInt Biblical Interpretation
BibOr Biblica et orientalia
BibRev Bible Review
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BKAT Biblischer Kommentar: Altes Testament
BLS Bible and Literature Series
BN Biblische Notizen
BSac Bibliotheca Sacra
Ibi Bible Translator
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
BWANT Beitrage zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament
BZ Biblische Zeitschrift
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CAH Cambridge Ancient History
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CBOMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly—Monograph Series
CHJ Cambridge History of Judaism
ConBOT Coniectanea biblica, Old Testament
CRAIBL Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres
CR:BS Currents in Research: Biblical Studies
CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad novum testamentum
CThM Calwer theologische Monographien
(CU) Calvin Theological Journal
CTM Concordia Theological Monthly
DBSup Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément
DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert
DSB—OT Daily Study Bible—Old Testament
DSD Dead Sea Discoveries
EA E] Amarna Tablets
EBC Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. F. E. Gabelein, 12 vols. (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1979-88)
EBib Etudes bibliques
EI Eretz Israel
JAIME Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses
EvQ Evangelical Quarterly
EvT Evangelische Theologie
Abbreviations 1S)

ExpTim Expository Times

FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament
FB Forschung zur Bibel
FOTE Forms of the Old Testament Literature
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Tes-
taments
HAR Hebrew Annual Review
HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament
HBT Horizons in Biblical Theology
HeyJ Heythrop Journal
HS Hebrew Studies
HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs
HSS Harvard Semitic Studies
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
ICC International Critical Commentary
IDBSup Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, supplementary volume, ed. K.
Crim (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976)
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
ILBS Indiana Literary Biblical Series
Imm Immanuel
INJ Israel Numismatic Journal
Int Interpretation
IRT Issues in Religion and Theology
ISBE International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. G. W. Bromiley, rev.
ed., 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979-88)
jgWf@ International Theological Commentary
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JANES Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JARCE Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JBS Jerusalem Biblical Studies
JCBRF Journal of the Christian Brethren Research Fellowship
ICS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JEA Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
JHNES Johns Hopkins Near Eastern Studies
VTEC Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center
JIS Journal of Jewish Studies
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages
JOR Jewish Quarterly Review
JORSup Jewish Quarterly Review Supplement
JSem Journal for Semitics
JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and
Roman Period
 Abbreviations

Journal for the Study ofthe Old Testament

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament—Supplement Series
Journal of Semitic Studies
Journal for Theology and the Church
Journal of Theological Studies
Journal of Translation and Textlinguistics
Kanaandische und aramdische Inschriften, ed. H. Donner and W.
Rollig, 2d ed., 3 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz, 1966-69)
Kommentar zum Alten Testament
Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum Alten Testament
Die Keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit, ed. M. Dietrich, O. Loretz,
and J. Sanmartin, AOAT 24 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Ver-
lag, 1976)
Linguistica Biblica
Loeb Classical Library
Lunds universitets arsskrift
Septuagint
Mari, Annales de Recherches Interdisciplinaires
Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft
Mitteilungen des Septuaginta-Unternehmens, Abhandlungen der
Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Philologisch-
historische Klasse
MT Masoretic Text
NABU Nouvelles assyriologiques bréves et utilitaires
NAC New American Commentary
NBD New Bible Dictionary, ed. D. R. W. Wood, 3d ed. (Leicester and
Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996)
NCB New Century Bible
NEAEHL New Encyclopedia ofArchaeological Excavations in the Holy Land,
ed. E. Stern, 4 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society; New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)
NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament
NIDBA New International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology, ed. E. M.
Blaiklock and R. K. Harrison (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983)
NIDOTTE New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exege-
sis, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren, 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1997)
NT New Testament
NTCS Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies
NVBS New Voices in Biblical Studies
OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis
OBT Overtures to Biblical Theology
OG Old Greek
OIP Oriental Institute Publications
OLA Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta
OLP Orientalia lovaniensia periodica
Or Orientalia (Rome)
Abbreviations 17

OrAnt Oriens antiquus

OT Old Testament
OTE Old Testament Essays
OTL Old Testament Library
OTS Oudtestamentische Studién
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly
PIBA Proceedings ofthe Irish Biblical Association
PTMS Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series
RAI Rencontre assyriologique internationale
RB Revue biblique
RelSRev _ Religious Studies Review
ResQ Restoration Quarterly
RevB Revista biblica
RevExp Review and Expositor
RevQ Revue de Qumran
RSO Rivista degli studi orientali
RTL Revue théologique de Louvain
RTR Reformed Theological Review
SAIW J. L. Crenshaw, Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom: Selected, with a
Prolegomenon, Library of Biblical Studies (New York: Ktav, 1976)
SANT Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament
SAOC Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization
SBFLA Studii biblici franciscani liber annuus
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SBLMS Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series
SBLSBS _ Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study
SBLSCS _ Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Studies
SBLSP Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers
SBLWAW Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the
Ancient World
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology
SBTS Sources for Biblical and Theological Study
ScrHier — Scripta hierosolymitana
SEA Svensk exegetisk drsbok
SemSup Semeia Supplements
SHANE Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East
SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
SOTS Society for Old Testament Study
SR Studies in Religion
SSN Studia semitica neerlandica
‘oN Studia Theologica
STD) Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah
StPohl Studia Pohl
SWBAS _ Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series
SWJIT Southwestern Journal of Theology
TBT The Bible Today
18 Abbreviations

TBU Theologische Biticherei

TDOT Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. J. Botterweck, H.
Ringgren, and H.-J. Fabry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974-)
ThStud Theologische Studién
Tea Trinity Journal
TELA, Theologische Literaturzeitung
TOTC Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries
Trans Transeuphraténe
TRu Theologische Rundschau
TS Theological Studies
TUMSR Trinity University Monograph Series in Religion
TynBul Tyndale Bulletin
Ze Theologische Zeitschrift
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
USQR Union Seminary Quarterly Review
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTSup Vetus Testamentum, Supplements
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WIAI Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J.A. Emerton, ed. J.
Day, R. P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1995)
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament
WTI Westminster Theological Journal
ZA Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie
ZAH Zeitschrift fiir Althebrdistik
ZAW Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZDPV, Zeitschrift des deutschen Paldstina-Vereins
LPEB Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia ofthe Bible, ed. M. C. Tenney, 5
vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975)
JAMS Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche
The Text of the Old Testament

Al Wolters

The field of Old Testament textual criticism deals with the history of the
transmission of the text of the Hebrew Bible and the recovery of an au-
thoritative starting point for its translation and interpretation. It does
so largely on the basis of the surviving Hebrew manuscripts and the ex-
tant ancient versions, notably the Septuagint (Greek), Targums (Ara-
maic), Peshitta (Syriac), and Vulgate (Latin). In the period covered by
the present volume (roughly 1970 to 1996) there has been intense schol-
arly activity in this subdiscipline of biblical studies, including the pub-
lication of many new Hebrew texts, the gradual completion of new crit-
ical editions of the ancient versions, and the development of major new
theories about the history of the Old Testament text and the goals of its
textual criticism. Alongside these major developments, there have been
innumerable detailed investigations bearing on subordinate points of
textual transmission and reconstruction. The following survey seeks to
highlight the major trends and pays almost no attention to specific ex-
amples of more detailed work that has been done in the period under
consideration. !

1. Among the many significant encyclopedia articles, chapters, and monographs sur-
veying the field of Old Testament textual criticism since 1970, the following are especially
noteworthy: S. Talmon, “The Old Testament Text,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible,
vol. 1, From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), 159-99; reprinted in Qumran and the History of the
Biblical Text, ed. F. M. Cross Jr. and S. Talmon (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1975), 1-41; R. W. Klein, Textual Criticism of the Old Testament: From the Septua-
gint to Qumran (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974); D. Barthélemy, “Text, Hebrew, History of,”
IDBSup, 874-84; E. Wirthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Bib-
lia Hebraica, trans. E. F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979); B. K. Waltke, “The

i
20 The Text ofthe Old Testament

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Without question the discovery and gradual publication of the biblical
manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls has had by far the greatest im-
pact on the study of the Old Testament text in the twentieth century. It
is not too much to say that the entire discipline has been revolutionized
by these finds, since they have given scholars access to scores of manu-
scripts (or the fragmentary remains thereof) that are more than a thou-
sand years older than any that had been available before. Unfortu-
nately, although a number of the biblical scrolls were published soon
after their discovery, many others were not. The delay in publication
became the occasion of a great deal of controversy in the 1980s and
early 1990s, but by the mid-1990s virtually all the biblical material had
been published in one form or another, most of it in the series Discov-
eries in the Judaean Desert.?
The overall effect of these discoveries has been the recognition of
considerable textual diversity in the three centuries preceding the de-

Textual Criticism of the Old Testament,” EBC, 1:211-28; P. K. McCarter Jr., Textual Criti-
cism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); A. R. Millard,
“The Text of the Old Testament,” in International Bible Commentary, ed. F. F. Bruce (Lon-
don: Marshall Pickering; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 11-13; F. E. Deist, Witnesses
to the Old Testament (Pretoria: NG Kerkboekhandel, 1988); M. J. Mulder, “The Transmis-
sion of the Biblical Text,” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading, and Interpretation of the He-
brew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. M. J. Mulder and H. Sysling,
CRINT 2/1 (Assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 87-135; E. Tov, “Textual
Criticism, Old Testament,” ABD, 6:393-412; idem, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
(Minneapolis: Fortress; Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1992); B. K. Waltke, “Old Testa-
ment Textual Criticism,” in Foundations for Biblical Interpretation, ed. D. S. Dockery et
al. (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 156-86; E. R. Brotzman, Old Testament Tex-
tual Criticism: A Practical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994); J. E. Sanderson,
“Ancient Texts and Versions of the Old Testament,” in New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1994), 1:292-304. The volume by Tov is now the standard scholarly treatment;
the best brief discussion for nonspecialists is the article by Sanderson. Waltke is the best
representative of a conservative theological perspective (see also Millard and Brotzman).
2. For a comprehensive listing of all the relevant manuscripts and bibliographic de-
tails on their publication up to 1992, see H. Scanlin, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern
Translations of the Bible: How the Dead Sea Scroll Discoveries Have Influenced Modern En-
glish Translations (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1993), esp. pp. 41-103. Since 1992, the following
volumes in the DJD series containing biblical texts have appeared: Qumran Cave 4, IV:
Palaeo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical Manuscripts, ed. P. W. Skehan, E. Ulrich, and J. E.
Sanderson, DJD 9 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Qumran Cave 4, VII: Genesis to Numbers,
ed. E. Ulrich et al., DJD 12 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); Qumran Cave 4, IX: Deuteronomy,
Joshua, Judges, Kings, ed. E. Ulrich et al., DID 14 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995); Qumran
Cave 4, X: The Prophets, ed. E. Ulrich et al., DJD 15 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). See also E.
Ulrich, “An Index of Passages in the Biblical Manuscripts from the Judaean Desert (Gen-
esis-Kings),” DSD 1 (1994): 113-29; and idem, “An Index of Passages in the Biblical
Manuscripts from the Judaean Desert (Part 2: Isaiah-Chronicles),” DSD 2 (1995): 86-107.
The Text ofthe Old Testament on

struction of the second temple in a.p. 70. Specifically, it has now been
confirmed by actual Hebrew manuscripts that not only the Masoretic
Text (MT) but also the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Vorlage
or parent text of the Septuagint (LXX) had predecessors well before the
turn of the era. It was not until about the end of the first century a.p.
that the proto-Masoretic text-type (the consonantal framework of what
was later elaborated by the medieval Masoretes into the MT) emerged
as the sole witness to the text of the Hebrew Bible within Judaism. Con-
sequently, it is now clear that in late second temple times, including the
time of Jesus and the apostles, the text of the Old Testament was con-
siderably more diverse than previously suspected.
A few examples can serve to illustrate this diversity. It has long been
known that the Samaritan Pentateuch differed from the MT in a num-
ber of significant ways, some having to do with specifically Samaritan
theology, and some having to do with harmonizing expansions. A text-
type that includes these harmonizing expansions, but does not yet have
the specifically Samaritan theological modifications, is represented by
eight of the biblical scrolls among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The inference
seems clear that the Samaritan Pentateuch represents a later stage of
this same text-type, with the addition of the sectarian modifications.
A similar situation obtains with respect to the parent text of the LXX.
One of the most dramatic differences between the LXX and the MT is
found in the Book of Jeremiah: the LXX is roughly one-seventh shorter
than the MT. It is therefore of exceptional interest that two fragmentary
Hebrew manuscripts that reflect the shorter text of the LXX have
turned up among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QJer> 4). Less dramatic but
still significant are the other Qumran biblical manuscripts that in many
textual details seem to represent the same text-type as that on which the
LXX is based.
It is also true, however, that the majority of biblical manuscripts dis-
covered in the Judean desert are of the proto-Masoretic text-type. The
large Isaiah scroll, for example (1QIsa*), offers a text of Isaiah that is
clearly a forerunner of the MT, even though it occasionally allows us to
correct the latter.

Theories to Account for the Textual Diversity

Given this textual evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, how does one ac-
count for the variety of textual forms in which the Bible was undeniably
extant in the late second temple period? Scholars have developed a
number of theories to account for this diversity. The first of these is the
so-called local texts theory, first proposed by William F. Albright, and
subsequently elaborated by his student Frank M. Cross Jr. In Cross’s
Vip The Text of the Old Testament

view, the textual diversity found in the manuscripts can be correlated

with the three major text-types that underlie the LXX, the Samaritan
Pentateuch, and the MT. Furthermore, these three textual traditions
can also be roughly correlated with three geographical areas, Egypt,
Palestine, and Babylon, respectively.?
A different theory has been advocated by Shemaryahu Talmon, who
looks upon Cross’s three main text-types not as traditions that devel-
oped in different geographical locales but as the remnants of a much
greater textual diversity that is now lost to view. Talmon stresses the
fact that text-types are created and preserved by religiously cohesive so-
ciological groups: it was the Christian church that preserved the textual
tradition represented by the LXX, the Samaritan sect that preserved the
Samaritan text-type, and rabbinic Judaism that preserved the MT. It is
probable that other textual traditions were preserved by other religious
groups within Judaism, but these traditions have perished along with
their historical bearers. The three that have survived are the leftovers of
a textual diversity that was likely as varied as the religious landscape of
Judaism and its offshoots. Another feature of Talmon’s view is his con-
cern not to isolate textual criticism from the broader questions of tra-
ditional historical criticism.*
Emanuel Tov challenges a key assumption in the theories of both
Cross and Talmon: the view that the textual diversity of the Qumran
finds can be reduced to basically three text-types. On the basis of a care-
ful analysis of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, he concludes that they can
be more profitably classified into five categories, not three. Alongside
the three recognized by Cross and Talmon, he discerns one written in
the distinctive “Qumran orthography,” and another that is “unaligned,”
that is, not clearly associated with any of the other four. In Tov’s analy-
sis, the statistical distribution of these five kinds of texts is as follows:
“proto-Masoretic” manuscripts: 60 percent; those written in the “Qum-
ran practice”: 20 percent; “pre-Samaritan” manuscripts and those ap-
proximating the LXX: together 5 percent; leaving about 15 percent for
the unaligned biblical texts.°

3. F.M. Cross Jr, “The Evolution of a Theory of Local Texts,” in Qumran and the His-
tory of the Biblical Text, ed. F. M. Cross and S. Talmon (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1975), 306-20. The original version of the local texts theory, as proposed by
Albright in 1955, is also reprinted in this volume (“New Light on Early Recensions of the
Hebrew Bible,” 140-46). It is of interest to note that a similar view was already put for-
ward well before the Qumran discoveries by the evangelical scholar H. M. Wiener, “The
Pentateuchal Text—A Reply to Dr. Skinner,” BSac 71 (1914): 218-68, esp. 221; see Tov,
Textual Criticism, 185 n. 44.
4. S. Talmon, “The Textual Study of the Bible—A New Outlook,” in Qumran and the
History ofthe Biblical Text, 321-400.
5. Tov, Textual Criticism, 114-17.
The Text of the Old Testament 23

Finally, we may consider the views of Eugene Ulrich, a student of

Cross, who has recently put forward his own theory of the textual diver-
sity exemplified by the Qumran biblical manuscripts. Against Tov, he
argues that neither the “Qumran practice” nor the “unaligned” status of
certain manuscripts can be said to define distinctively textual groupings.
In a manner reminiscent of Talmon (but without the latter’s emphasis
on religious groups), he stresses that a simple threefold or fivefold
scheme cannot do justice to the great diversity of the biblical text in late
second temple times. Instead, he sees a succession of “literary editions”
of individual books (or parts of books) as temporary stages of the overall
evolution of the biblical text toward its canonical form. Each literary
edition was produced by a creative editor who was responding to a new
religious situation, and each such edition could be called the “base text”
with respect to subsequent scribal modifications. Again like Talmon, Ul-
rich seeks to integrate the concerns of “lower” and “higher” criticism
into a single view of the long-term development of the biblical text.®

The Ancient Versions and the Samaritan Pentateuch

Although a substantial majority of the biblical texts discovered in the
Judean desert can be classified as proto-Masoretic, it is nevertheless
true that the Qumran finds have served to draw the attention of scholars
to the variety of text forms current around the turn of the era. Paradox-
ically, the opposite is true of recent scholarship on the ancient versions.
Whereas the versions had previously provided the chief evidence for
readings that diverge from the MT, it is now becoming increasingly clear
that the proto-Masoretic textual tradition underlies a good deal of the
ancient versions, at least in certain phases of their textual transmission.

Septuagint
Recent Septuagint studies are a case in point. Since 1970 a number of
volumes have appeared in the Gottingen edition of the LXX, accompa-
nied by an impressive series of auxiliary studies.’ As this hitherto most

6. E. Ulrich, “Pluriformity in the Biblical Text, Text Groups, and Questions of Canon,”
in The Madrid Qumran Conference: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead
Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 18-21 March 1991, ed. J. T. Barrera and L. V. Montaner (Leiden: Brill,
1992), 37-40; idem, “Multiple Literary Editions: Reflections toward a Theory of the His-
tory of the Biblical Text,” in Current Research and Technological Developments on the Dead
Sea Scrolls: Conference on the Texts from the Judaean Desert, Jerusalem, 30 April 1995, ed.
D. W. Parry and S. D. Ricks, STDJ 20 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 78-105.
7. Septuaginta, Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Societatis Litterarum Gottin-
gensis Editum (Géttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1931—). Of the twenty volumes that
have been published to date, the following have appeared since 1970: Esdrae liber I (ed.
24 The Text of the Old Testament

comprehensive and reliable edition of the LXX nears completion,

scholars have begun to realize that its textual base shows much greater
affinity to the MT than was previously assumed. For one thing, the
study of the translation technique employed in many books of the LXX
has made clear that Greek renderings that used to be taken as evidence
of anon-Masoretic Vorlage can in many cases be explained as reflecting
a Hebrew text that is identical with the MT. This is one of the most sig-
nificant conclusions of the work, for example, of J. W. Wevers on the
LXX text of the Pentateuch.® In other words, although it is clear that the
parent text of the LXX does often represent a text-type that differs from
the proto-Masoretic textual tradition, the degree of difference is often
much smaller than previously thought. We find a particularly striking
instance of this in Exodus 25-31 (God’s instructions for building the
tabernacle) and Exodus 35-40 (the carrying out of these instructions),
where the LXX rendering of these two parallel passages differs quite
significantly, both in vocabulary and sequence. Although this differ-
ence was previously taken as evidence for a Vorlage of Exodus 35-40
that was significantly different from the MT, Wevers argues that such
an assumption is unnecessary. The Greek translation can be under-
stood as the free rendering, by another translator, of a Hebrew text that
is substantially the same as the MT.’
A second result of recent studies of the LXX is that it is now clear that
the original Greek text (the so-called Old Greek) has undergone a series
of revisions or recensions that have brought it into greater conformity
with the proto-Masoretic text-type. The first of these is the so-called
Kaige recension (or “proto-Theodotion”), which had come to light, al-
ready before the period under review, through the work of D. Bar-
thélemy.'° This recension, which can be dated to the mid-first century
B.c., is reflected in certain passages of LXX Samuel-Kings and in the
fifth Greek version (Quinta) of Origen’s Hexapla,'! but most notably in

R. Hanhart, 1974); Deuteronomium (ed. J. W. Wevers, 1977); Judith (ed. R. Hanhart,

1979); Job (ed. J. Ziegler, 1982); Numeri (ed. J. W. Wevers, 1982); Tobit (ed. R. Hanhart,
1983); Leviticus (ed. J. W. Wevers, 1986); Exodus (ed. J. W. Wevers, 1991). For auxiliary
studies see the series Mitteilungen des Septuaginta-Unternehmens (MSU), Abhandlun-
gen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse
(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht).
8. See R. Hanhart, “Zum gegenwartigen Stand der Septuagintforschung,” in De Sep-
tuaginta: Studies in Honour of John William Wevers on His Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. A. Pie-
tersma and C. Cox (Mississauga, Ont.: Benben, 1984), 3-18, esp. 8-9.
9. J. W. Wevers, “The Building of the Tabernacle,” JNSL 19 (1993): 123-31. This article
is a popular summary of the detailed study found in idem, Textual History of the Greek
Exodus, MSU 21 (Géttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991).
10. D. Barthélemy, Les devanciers d’Aquila, VTSup 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1963).
11. Tov, Textual Criticism, 145.
The Text of the Old Testament IES

the Greek scroll of the Minor Prophets, discovered among the Dead Sea
Scrolls. This scroll was published in 1990 by Tov.!? From a textual point
of view, it clearly represents a revision of the Old Greek toward the tex-
tual tradition of the MT. Similarly, a recent study by P. J. Gentry dem-
onstrates that the asterisked materials in LXX Job represent a revision,
to be dated to the early first century a.p., toward a proto-Masoretic He-
brew text.'* Another revision of the Old Greek toward the proto-
Masoretic text is the fifth column of Origen’s Hexapla (third century
A.D.), Which would prove to be a particularly influential form of the LXX
textual tradition.'* The minor Greek versions (see below) can also be re-
garded as revisions of the LXX in the direction of the MT.!°
A final point needs to be made in connection with the LXX. Although
on the one hand the manuscript discoveries in the Judean desert pro-
vide concrete manuscript evidence of a distinct text-type like that un-
derlying the LXX, on the other hand they serve to relativize distinctive
Hebrew readings inferred from the Greek. Before the Qumran discov-
eries, it was easy to assume that the Hebrew Vorlage of the LXX, where
it clearly differed from the MT, represented an older and therefore
more original text. Such an assumption is no longer warranted, since
we now know that the proto-Masoretic textual tradition can be traced
as far back as the LXX and may in fact have been much more widely
represented than the text-type underlying the latter. A distinctive LXX
reading no longer has an automatic claim to greater antiquity.!°

Minor Greek Versions

Traditionally, this designation refers to the Greek translations of The-
odotion, Aquila, and Symmachus, which are often referred to as “the
Three” in ancient sources. Since it has now become clear that the trans-
lation ascribed to Theodotion (who lived in second century a.p.) is ac-
tually the kaige recension of the first century B.c., this leaves only Aquila
and Symmachus to be discussed in the present context. Aquila pre-
pared his very literal translation about a.p. 125, while Symmachus pro-
duced his rather free and idiomatic rendering around A.D. 200. Both ver-

12. E. Tov, The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever, DJD 8 (Oxford: Claren-
don, 1990).
13. P.J. Gentry, The Asterisked Materials in the Greek Job, SBLSCS 38 (Atlanta: Schol-
ars Press, 1995), 494-98. In Origen’s edition of the LXX (the fifth column of his Hexapla)
he marked with an asterisk material that was extant in his Hebrew text but not in the Old
Greek.
14. See Deist, Witnesses to the Old Testament, 143-46; Tov, Textual Criticism, 25; San-
derson, “Ancient Texts and Versions,” 301.
15. So Tov, Textual Criticism, 145-47.
16. See Wiirthwein, Text of the Old Testament, 64.
26 The Text of the Old Testament

sions appear to be based on the kaige recension and continue its

orientation to the proto-Masoretic textual tradition.'’ A number of re-
cent studies have dealt with Aquila and Symmachus.!®

Targums
Although the Targums are often not so much translations as para-
phrases, there are stretches of text where they are sufficiently literal to
allow a judgment as to the text-type of their Hebrew parent text. With
the exception of the Job Targum from Qumran, the Hebrew text re-
flected in all the Targums is very close to the proto-Masoretic tradi-
tion.!? The 1970s saw the completion of two major critical editions of
the Targums: A. Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic Based on Old Manu-
scripts and Printed Texts,?° and A. Diez Macho, Neophyti I.*! The latter
is a sumptuous edition of the copy of a Palestinian Targum discovered
in the Vatican Library in 1956, which is variously dated to the first/sec-
ond or fourth/fifth centuries a.p.27 Mention should also be made of the
English translation, with scholarly annotation, of the major Targums
that Martin McNamara has undertaken.”+

Peshitta
A new multivolume critical edition of the Peshitta of the Old Testament
has been in the course of publication since 1966: The Old Testament in
Syriac according to the Peshitta Version: Edited on Behalf of the Interna-
tional Organization for the Study of the Old Testament by the Peshitta In-
stitute, Leiden.** It is being prepared by an international team of schol-
ars and is now nearing completion. This monumental undertaking has

17. Tov, Textual Criticism, 146-47.

18. On Aquila, see K. Hyvarinen, Die Ubersetzung von Aquila, ConBOT 10 (Lund:
Liber Laromedel-Gleerup, 1977); and L. L. Grabbe, “Aquila’s Translation and Rabbinic
Exegesis,” JJS 33 (1982): 527-36. On Symmachus, see J. G. Luis, La versién de Simaco a
los Profetas Mayores (Madrid, 1981); and A. Salvesen, Symmachus in the Pentateuch, JSS
Monograph 15 (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1991).
19. Tov, Textual Criticism, 149; Sanderson, “Ancient Texts and Versions,” 303.
20. 4 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1959-73).
21. 5 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1968-78).
22. Tov, Textual Criticism, 150.
23. M. McNamara et al., eds., The Aramaic Bible: The Targums (Wilmington, Del.: Gla-
zier, 1987—). Nineteen volumes have appeared to date.
24. Leiden: Brill. After the sample edition of Song of Songs, Tobit, and 4 Ezra pub-
lished in 1966, the following volumes have appeared: Canticles or Odes, Prayer of Ma-
nasseh, Apocryphal Psalms, Psalms of Solomon, Tobit, 1 (3) Esdras (1972); Apocalypse of
Baruch, 4 Esdras (1973); Kings (1976); Genesis, Exodus (1977); Judges, Samuel (1978);
Proverbs, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (1979); Dodekapropheton,
Daniel-Bel-Draco (1980); Psalms (1980); Job (1982); Ezekiel (1985); Isaiah (1987); Leviti-
cus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua (1991); Chronicles (1998).
The Text of the Old Testament peal

spawned a considerable number of monographs and articles on the

transmission of the text of the Syriac Bible and is gradually replacing
the badly outdated editions of the Peshitta published in the nineteenth
century.*>
The new studies associated with the Leiden Peshitta have led to a
considerable clarification of the transmission history of the Syriac bib-
lical text. It has become clear that this history can be divided into three
stages: a first stage that ended with the sixth century a.p., a second cor-
responding roughly to the seventh and eighth centuries, and a third be-
ginning in the ninth century. Most printed editions of the Peshitta re-
flect the third stage, which is farthest removed from the MT, while the
printed text of the Leiden Peshitta generally reflects manuscripts of the
second stage. But a small number of manuscripts preserve the text of
the first stage (recorded in the second apparatus of the Leiden edition),
which appears to have been quite a literal translation of a Hebrew text
that was very close to the MT. It appears that the text of the Peshitta,
through a process of inner-Syriac modifications, gradually moved away
from a close approximation to an early stage of the MT. Consequently
the divergences from the standard Hebrew text that are found in the
third-stage textus receptus of the Peshitta are generally to be attributed
not to a different Hebrew Vorlage but to developments within the Syriac
tradition itself. In its earliest form the Peshitta attests to a Hebrew par-
ent text that is already substantially that of the MT.*°

Vulgate
Unlike any of the other ancient versions, the Latin Vulgate of the Old
Testament has been available for some time in a complete and reliable
critical edition. If we except the Apocrypha and the Book of Psalms,
which are based on Greek originals, it is clear that the text of the Vul-
gate too is based on a Hebrew Vorlage that conforms closely to the
MT.??

Samaritan Pentateuch
Although the Samaritan Pentateuch is not a translation, it may be con-
veniently treated together with the ancient versions.”* A good deal of
scholarly work continues to be done on this sectarian text-type, espe-

25. See P. B. Dirksen, “The Old Testament Peshitta,” in Mikra, 255-97.

26. See M. D. Koster, “Peshitta Revisited: A Reassessment of Its Value as a Version,”
JSS 38 (1993): 235-68.
27. Tov, Textual Criticism, 153. See also B. Kedar, “The Latin Translations,” in Mikra,
299-338, esp. 322.
28. So Brotzman, Old Testament Textual Criticism, 64-69.
28 The Text of the Old Testament

cially since the discovery of pre-Samaritan texts at Qumran.”? In the pe-

riod under review, we have a new critical edition of the Samaritan Gen-
esis by L.-F. Girén-Blanc, a three-volume study of the Samaritan Targum
by A. Tal, and a monograph on the Arabic version by H. Shehadeh.*° Es-
pecially noteworthy is the work of Judith Sanderson on one of the Qum-
ran pre-Samaritan texts, 4QpaleoExod™.?' She concludes that the He-
brew textual traditions represented by the LXX, the MT, and the
Samaritan Pentateuch were originally quite close, but that the first went
its own way relatively early and developed an expansionist tendency,
while the second and third stayed close together for some time. A century
or so before the turn of the era, the pre-Samaritan tradition separated
from the proto-Masoretic tradition and underwent some major expan-
sions. Finally, the canonical form of the Samaritan Pentateuch was
reached through a number of specifically sectarian expansions, espe-
cially relating to Mount Gerizim as cultic center rather than Jerusalem.*?
One consequence of this overall picture is that the proto-Masoretic tra-
dition, being less subject to the expansionist tendencies of the other tra-
ditions, preserves an earlier stage of the text.*? As Sanderson puts it in
another context: “it is easy to recognize the relatively few harmonizing
and clarifying expansions in the pre-Samaritan DSS [Dead Sea Scrolls]
and the SP [Samaritan Pentateuch]. When those are discounted, the SP
agrees substantially with the text behind the MT.”*4 Paradoxically, as
Waltke puts it (citing Cross), “the chief textual value of the Sam. Pent. is
its indirect witness that MT is ‘a superb, disciplined text.’”?>

The Privileged Status of the Proto-Masoretic Tradition

Our survey of late-twentieth-century scholarship on the ancient ver-
sions and the Samaritan Pentateuch has revealed a paradoxical situa-
tion with respect to the MT and its antecedents. On the one hand its sta-

29. For a convenient recent summary of the history of scholarship on the Samaritan
Pentateuch, see B. K. Waltke, “Samaritan Pentateuch,” ABD, 5:932-40. See also idem,
“The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Text of the Old Testament,” in New Perspectives on
the Old Testament, ed. J. B. Payne (Waco: Word, 1970), 212-39.
30. L.-F. Girén-Blanc, Pentateuco hebreo-samaritano, Génesis (Madrid: Consejo Supe-
rior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1976); A. Tal, The Samaritan Targum ofthe Pentateuch,
3 vols., Texts and Studies in the Hebrew Language 4 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press,
1980-83); H. Shehadeh, “The Arabic Translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch: Prolego-
mena to a Critical Edition” (Ph.D. diss., Jerusalem, 1977).
31. J. E. Sanderson, An Exodus Scroll from Qumran: 4QpaleoExod™ and the Samari-
tan Tradition, HSS 30 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986).
2 lbideroillke
SSa lbidsesia:
34. Sanderson, “Ancient Texts and Versions,” 299.
35. Waltke, “Samaritan Pentateuch,” ABD, 5:938.
The Text ofthe Old Testament 29

tus is that of only one of a number of textual traditions, and on the other
it seems to have had a privileged position. Not only does it appear to
preserve an older stage of the text than the Samaritan Pentateuch, but
it seems to have been regarded, from the first century B.c. onward, as a
standard against which the LXX should be corrected, and as the appro-
priate point of departure for new translations, notably the Targums, the
Peshitta, and the Vulgate. There is certainly no dispute that after about
A.D. 100 the proto-Masoretic text is regarded in Jewish circles as
uniquely authoritative. It is telling that all the Hebrew biblical manu-
scripts found at Masada, Nahal Hever, and Murabba‘at (dated to the
late first and the second centuries a.p.) belong to the proto-Masoretic
text-type.*° This raises the question: how did the privileged status of the
proto-Masoretic tradition come about, and how far back in the history
of textual transmission can it be discerned?
One answer to this question is that the textual tradition leading up to
the MT was the result of a deliberate process of standardization under-
taken by Jewish rabbis around the turn of the era. Thus, according to the
influential theory of Cross, the proto-Masoretic text was the product of
a deliberate recension, which drew on the various textual families avail-
able at the time.*’ As a result, “the promulgation of the new, standard re-
cension evidently took place sometime near the mid-first century a.p.”?8
This view of the emergence of the proto-Masoretic text was severely
criticized by Bertil Albrektson.*? He pointed out that many of the rea-
sons that had been given to support this view (the analogy of contem-
porary Greek textual critics in Alexandria; the requirements of Rabbi
Agiba’s hermeneutical principles; the rabbinic story of the three scrolls
in the temple; the Murabba‘at scrolls as evidence of the new recension)
could not withstand scrutiny. Furthermore, he argued persuasively that
a text such as that of the Masoretic tradition, with its inconsistencies,
haplographies and dittographies, erroneous word divisions, and other
textual defects, could hardly be the result of a careful comparison of
manuscripts and textual traditions.*? Instead, Albrektson suggested
that the survival of this particular text-type was probably simply a his-

36. E. Tov, “The History and Significance of a Standard Text of the Hebrew Bible,” in
Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 1, ed. M. Saebg (Géttin-
gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 49-66, esp. 63.
37. See F. M. Cross Jr., “The Contribution of the Qumran Discoveries to the Study of
the Biblical Text,” JEJ 16 (1966): 81-95, esp. 94-95; reprinted in Qumran and the History
of the Biblical Text, 278-92, esp. 291-92.
38. Ibid., 95 (reprint, 292).
39. B. Albrektson, “Reflections on the Emergence of a Standard Text of the Hebrew
Bible,” Congress Volume: Gottingen, 1977, VTSup 29 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 49-65.
40. Ibid., 59.
30 The Text of the Old Testament

torical accident; it represented “what Pharisaic scribes happened to

have left after the defeats imposed by the Romans.”*!
Albrektson also suggested, however, that the text-type favored by the
Pharisees may already have enjoyed a special status before the Jewish re-
volts: “It had been handled in circles which devoted much care and atten-
tion to the word of Scripture, and so it is plausible that on the whole it
should have an archaic and authentic character, lacking many of the de-
fects of the so-called vulgar texts.”*7 Others, too, have pointed out that the
textual tradition lying back of the MT may have enjoyed a privileged sta-
tus well before the end of the first century a.p. Not only was it already the
dominant text-type among the Qumran finds (60 percent of all the bibli-
cal manuscripts, according to Tov),¥ and the standard toward which the
kaige recension corrected the Old Greek in the first century B.c., but it
may have been specially preserved by the religious leaders of the Jews.
We find this emphasis especially in Tov’s standard work, Textual
Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. In a section entitled “The Early Origins of
the Consonantal Framework of I [= MT],” he writes of the proto-
Masoretic textual tradition:

It may be surmised that it originated in the spiritual and authoritative

center of Judaism (that of the Pharisees?), possibly even in the temple cir-
cles. It was probably the temple scribes who were entrusted with the
copying and preserving of 2. Though this assumption cannot be proven,
it is supported by the fact that the temple employed correctors (0°7°%3,
magihim) who scrutinized certain scrolls on its behalf.**

Tov also suggests that the scribes who produced the biblical texts
written in the Qumran practice “may have used proto-Masoretic
texts,’*° which again would indicate the antiquity and early authority
of this textual tradition. In general, “the earliest Qumran finds dating
from the third pre-Christian century bear evidence, among other
things, of a tradition of the exact copying of texts belonging to the Mas-
oretic family, that is, the proto-Masoretic texts.”*°

41. Ibid., 63.

42. Ibid.
43. In his 1996 article “Standard Text,” Tov speaks of 40 percent (p. 60), but this ap-
pears to be a misprint. On p. 64 of the same article he again mentions 60 percent, as else-
where.
44. Tov, Textual Criticism, 28 (cf. 190).
45. Ibid., 114. See also L. H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadel-
phia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 172, who regards this possibility as a certainty:
“Examining the Qumran text type [i.e., the biblical manuscripts written in the ‘Qumran
practice’—A. W.] we discover that it is originally based on proto-Masoretic texts.”
46. Tov, “Standard Text,” 57.
The Text ofthe Old Testament 31

Tov’s views on the antiquity and authority of the Masoretic textual

tradition are closely akin to those of A. S. van der Woude, who goes
even further in giving a privileged position to this strand of the textual
history of the Old Testament.*” He argues, for example, that revisions
of the Old Greek toward this text-type can already be detected in the
second century B.c.*8 He suggests a bold new hypothesis, saying

that there was always a relative uniformity of textual tradition in the reli-
gious circles around the Temple of Jerusalem. This means that there was
a basically uniform tradition besides a pluriform tradition in Palestine
Judaism in the last centuries B.c., in the sense that only the proto-
Masoretic textual tradition was passed on in Jerusalem, whereas else-
where also biblical manuscripts circulated which bore close resemblance
to the text of the Septuagint or the Samaritan Pentateuch or differed in
other respects from the proto-Masoretic tradition.”

Tov has recently echoed these sentiments, and Lawrence H. Schiffman

has come to similar conclusions.°° If these scholars are right, the MT
represents a textual tradition that can lay claim to a much higher degree
of legitimacy than the other ancient witnesses to the Hebrew Bible.

Aims of Old Testament Textual Criticism

The heading of this section is also the title of a useful survey article by
Waltke.°! In it he identifies five different approaches to the task of the
textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible that recent scholars have taken.
These can be summarized as follows:

1. Restore the original composition. The goal here is to recover the

author's ipsissima verba, “to establish the text as the author
wished to have it presented to the public.”
2. Restore the final text. Here the task is to recover the ipsissima
verba not of the author but of the final redactor, assuming that

47. A. S. van der Woude, “Pluriformity and Uniformity: Reflections on the Transmis-
sion of the Text of the Old Testament,” in Sacred History and Sacred Texts in Early Juda-
ism: A Symposium in Honour of A. S. van der Woude, ed. J. N. Bremmer and F. Garcia
Martinez (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992), 151-69. A popular version of the same article is
found in A. S. van der Woude, “Tracing the Evolution of the Hebrew Bible,” BibRev 11
(1995): 42-45.
48. Van der Woude, “Pluriformity and Uniformity,” 161.
49. Ibid., 163.
50. Tov, “Standard Text,” 64: “Thus while a textual variety is clearly visible in the
Qumran finds, beyond that variety one discerns the existence of a single textual family
which probably reflected the standard text of the Pharisees”; and Schiffman, Reclaiming
the Dead Sea Scrolls, 171-73.
51. B. K. Waltke, “Aims of OT Textual Criticism,” W7J 51 (1989): 93-108.
32 The Text of the Old Testament

a particular literary unit of the Bible has gone through a process

of evolution. Most modern textual criticism has operated with
this goal.
3. Restore the earliest attested text. The aim here is not the redac-
tor’s final text, but the earliest form of the text for which there
are actual textual witnesses. In this approach, which is that of
the Hebrew University Bible Project and the UBS Hebrew Old
Testament Text Project (see below), the text aimed at is usually
that of the second century B.c., and conjectural emendations
are disallowed, since these by definition have no manuscript
support.
4. Restore accepted texts (plural). In this understanding of the text
critic’s task, the end in view is the text as it was accepted by a
particular religious community, and texts may therefore differ
according to the community in question. This is the tack taken
by canonical critics like James A. Sanders and Brevard Childs,
although the latter focuses on the text as accepted by the Jews,
the MT.
5. To reconstruct final texts (plural). Here the text critic acknowl-
edges that a particular book or pericope may have had two or
more forms within the same canon, both or all of which have
equal validity and need to be equally restored.

Waltke concludes his survey by suggesting that a different goal may

be appropriate for different books of the Bible:

The text critic’s aim will vary according to the nature of the book. If a
book had but one author, then the critic will aim to restore his original
composition; if it be an edited text then he will seek to recover the final,
canonical text. If he turns up more than one final text, he will turn his
data over to the literary and canonical critic to determine whether the text
is in process of developing into a final canonical text or whether it existed
in more than one canonical form.°?

With this rather eclectic approach, as defended by Waltke in 1989,

we may contrast the views of Tov and Ulrich. Tov makes a basic dis-
tinction between the literary development and the textual transmis-
sion of the books of the Bible. In many cases, a given book of the Bible
may have gone through a number of literary stages before reaching
what he calls “the finished literary product,” and this finished product,
as received into the (proto-)Masoretic text, then stands at the begin-

52. Ibid., 107-8.

The Text of the Old Testament 33

ning of the process of textual transmission. The goal of textual criti-

cism is to recover that completed literary composition, which Tov calls
“the original text.”°. By defining “original text” in this way, Tov means
to exclude from the proper task of textual criticism both earlier stages
of literary growth (e.g., the shorter version of Jeremiah found in the
LXX and some Qumran biblical manuscripts) and later midrashic de-
velopments (such as the noncanonical additions to Esther and Daniel).
Crucial to his description of the “original text” is its relationship to M
(= MT):

The view that textual criticism should take into consideration only one
textual entity from which all texts were derived is partly based on argu-
ments that are socio-religious and historical rather than textual. The
canonical concept that has been accepted in Judaism leads solely to the
literary compositions that are reflected in IM, and therefore it is these
alone and not earlier or later stages that have to be considered.*4

To highlight the fact that the text that must be restored is itself the end
product of a literary development, Tov is at pains to emphasize that this
text may be different from the wording of the original author:

Even if the original formulations by the authors of the biblical books

themselves, such as the words of the prophets, had been preserved, these,
paradoxically, would be less important for the textual reconstruction
than the last editions of the books. For example, if the very scroll which
Jeremiah dictated to his scribe, Baruch (see Jeremiah 36), had been
found, it would be less relevant to the issue under investigation than the
final edition of the book containing the rewriting by the deuteronomistic
editor.

In short, it is Tov’s view that “the biblical books in their final and canon-
ical edition ... are the objective of textual criticism.”°° This is a view
with which Waltke now declares himself to agree substantially.>’
Ulrich, on the other hand, does not want to restrict the goals of tex-
tual criticism to the original Masoretic shape of the canonical writ-
ings.°° In his view, the textual critic should aim to restore all the various
“literary editions” of the various writings that can be discerned in the
overall evolution of the Hebrew Bible. This evolution is characterized

53. Tov, Textual Criticism, 171.

54s ibis, 172.
SS bids
56. Ibid., 189.
57. Waltke, “Old Testament Textual Criticism,” 175.
58. Ulrich, “Multiple Literary Editions.”
34 The Text of the Old Testament

by “faithful transmission occasionally punctuated by evolutionary

leaps to a new, revised and expanded edition of biblical books.”°? The
text-types represented by the LXX, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the
MT reflect such divergent literary editions, as do many of the other
Qumran biblical manuscripts. The earliest recoverable edition can be
called the “base text,” although it too was probably based on an earlier
edition that is now lost. This base text then becomes the point of depar-
ture of subsequent editions, usually through expansion.°° Ulrich explic-
itly takes issue with Tov:

Thus the target of “textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible” is not a single
text. The purpose or function of textual criticism is to reconstruct the his-
tory of the texts that eventually become the biblical collection in both its
literary growth and its scribal transmission; it is not just to judge individ-
ual variants in order to determine which were “superior” or “original.”
The “original text” is a distracting concept for the Hebrew Bible.°!

For Ulrich, all stages of the development of the biblical text are equally
authoritative and canonical. He therefore disagrees with Schiffman, for
example, with respect to the status of 11QPs?, which the latter (in agree-
ment with Tov) considers to be a noncanonical compilation. Ulrich
concludes his article by emphasizing the fully canonical status of this
manuscript: “11QPs* and the other manuscripts described above
should be viewed as variant forms of the multiple literary editions of the
biblical books which had full claim to being authoritative scripture.”©?
Although Tov and Ulrich clearly disagree on the aims of Old Testa-
ment textual criticism, they probably do not have significantly differ-
ent views on how the evolution of the biblical text actually took place.
They disagree mainly on the normative status that is to be accorded to
the MT.

Three Large-Scale Text-Critical Projects

It is against the background of the foregoing sketch of scholarly discus-
sions of the Old Testament text that I should briefly mention the three
major collaborative projects that are currently underway in this field of
study.
The first is the Hebrew University Bible Project. This is a critical edi-
tion of the Hebrew Bible based on the Aleppo Codex (tenth century). So

59. Ibid., 90.

60. Ibid., 98.
61. Ibid., 98-99.
62. Ibid., 105.
The Text of the Old Testament 85

far, only Isaiah and Jeremiah have been published.™ This edition dif-
fers in a number of important ways from the standard scholarly edition
of the Hebrew Bible, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.™ It has four ap-
paratuses (for ancient versions, Hebrew texts from the second temple
period, consonantal variants from medieval manuscripts, and differ-
ences in vocalization and accents from medieval manuscripts), it does
not list conjectural emendations, and it does not evaluate the merits of
competing readings. As a result, this edition, when completed, will offer
the most reliable collection of textual variants for independent text-crit-
ical work available in any printed edition. Associated with this project
is the publication, since 1960, of the journal Textus, which is exclusively
devoted to the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.
A second project is the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, with its
Committee for Textual Analysis of the Hebrew Old Testament, which
was sponsored by the United Bible Societies (UBS). Its purpose is to
produce a competent text-critical commentary on the Old Testament
for the many translations sponsored by the UBS. An initial fruit of the
committee’s labors was the Preliminary and Interim Report on the He-
brew Old Testament Text Project.®° But a much more substantial publi-
cation is the final report of the committee, prepared by Dominique Bar-
thélemy, of which three volumes have now appeared.®° These massive
volumes are a monument to careful text-critical scholarship and em-
body a wealth of information about the history of the biblical text and
its interpretation. Although the body of the work is devoted to assessing
the divergences from the MT that have been accepted in the major con-
temporary Bible versions, there are also extensive essays by Barthélemy
on the history of Old Testament textual criticism and on the whole
range of witnesses to the Old Testament text.°? The committee divided
the history of the text into four phases: (1) the prehistory of the text,
which is the domain of literary analysis, (2) the earliest attested form of
the text, (3) the standard text authorized by Jewish rabbis after the de-
struction of the temple, and (4) the MT of the ninth and tenth centuries

63. M. H. Goshen-Gottstein, ed., The Hebrew University Bible: The Book of Isaiah, 2
vols. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975-81); and C. Rabin, S. Talmon, and E. Tov, eds., The He-
brew University Bible: The Book of Jeremiah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997).
64. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1967-77.
65. 5 vols. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1973-80).
66. D. Barthélemy, ed., Critique textuelle de l’'Ancien Testament, vol. 1, Josué, Juges,
Ruth, Samuel, Rois, Chroniques, Esdras, Néhémie, Esther; vol. 2, Isaie, Jérémie, Lamenta-
tions; vol. 3, Ezéchiel, Daniel et les Douze Prophétes, OBO 50 (Fribourg: Editions univer-
sitaires; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982, 1986, 1992).
67. See, respectively, “histoire de la critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament depuis
ses origines jusqu’a J. D. Michaelis,” in Critique textuelle, 1:*1-*65; “Introduction,” in Cri-
tique textuelle, 3:i-ccxlii.
36 The Text of the Old Testament

A.D. The committee took as its goal the recovery of phase 2, essentially
the proto-Masoretic text.
With impressive erudition, Barthélemy discusses hundreds of emen-
dations to the MT that have been proposed and accepted in modern
commentaries and translations and finds most of them wanting. In vol-
ume 2, out of eight hundred emendations that were examined, only sev-
enty-eight are found to be probable, and most of these do not materially
affect the sense.®’ In short, these volumes constitute a massive vindica-
tion of the traditional Hebrew text.
Finally, a third collaborative project has been undertaken by the
United Bible Societies as a spin-off of the work of the Hebrew Old Tes-
tament Text Project. This is a new edition of the Biblia Hebraica, witha
selective listing of variants together with a textual commentary. This is
being prepared by an international team of twenty-three scholars, who
hope to complete their work by the year 2002.°°

Theological Issues
One of the striking features of the scholarship surrounding the Old Tes-
tament text in the late twentieth century is the failure of biblical schol-
ars to discuss the deeper theological issues that are raised by the new
discoveries and theories. There are occasional exceptions, of course.
Brotzman, for example, has a brief discussion of “Textual Criticism and
Inspiration”—a discussion that Waltke calls a “unique contribution”—
but this consists mainly of the argument that textual criticism allows us
to recover the inspired autographs.’° Elsewhere Waltke himself points
out that the idea of “original autographs” may have to be modified to
accommodate the possibility of two equally inspired editions of the
same biblical book or pericope, but he does not elaborate on this
theme.’! Oddly enough, there seems to have been very little work done
in this direction by evangelicals, whose theological identity is so closely
bound up with the notion of inspired autographs.
It may be useful in this connection to take note of some of Bar-
thélemy’s recent work on the history of Old Testament criticism, espe-
cially with reference to the seventeenth-century discussions involving J.
Morin, L. Cappel, and R. Simon.” At issue was the notion of inspired

68. P. Dion, review of Critique textuelle, vol. 2, in JBL 107 (1988): 738.
69. See A. Schenker, “Eine Neuausgabe der Biblia Hebraica,” ZAH 9 (1996): 58-61.
70. Brotzman, Old Testament Textual Criticism, 22-24. See Waltke’s foreword in
Brotzman, Old Testament Textual Criticism, 10.
71. Waltke, “Aims of OT Textual Criticism,” 107.
72. D. Barthélemy, Critique textuelle, 1:10-20; and idem, “Lenchevétrement de I’his-
toire textuelle et de l'histoire littéraire dans les relations entre la Septante et le texte Mas-
sorétique,” in De Septuaginta, 21-40.
The Text of the Old Testament 3

autographs in their relation to the MT and the possibility that inspira-

tion was not restricted to the work of the original author. Although the
rise of modern historical criticism has altered the terms of the debate,
as Barthélemy points out, the basic theological issues at stake have not
changed. I would submit that it is to these issues, alongside the more
precise tracing of the evolution of the biblical text, that the discipline of
Old Testament textual criticism will have to give greater attention in the
twenty-first century.
 2
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

Mark W. Chavalas and Edwin C. Hostetter

Syro-Mesopotamia
The past generation has seen an explosion of epigraphic sources com-
ing from Syria and Iraq (ancient Syro-Mesopotamia) that shed light on
the larger framework of the Old Testament world. Because of their mas-
sive size, I will chronologically survey the most significant epigraphic
finds and reevaluations and those that help to further an understanding
of Old Testament material.

Uruk Period (ca. 4000-3000 B.c.)

The first evidence of writing (in the form of the archaic cuneiform
script) in human history comes during the Uruk period, named after
the southern Mesopotamian city of Uruk (biblical Erech). A new treat-
ment of the texts from Uruk has caused a reevaluation of the origins
and purpose of these early texts.'! Over five thousand discarded ar-
chaic tablets and fragments dated to 3100 B.c. have been found at
Uruk, most in a refuse area in the sacred precinct. These texts have
now been enhanced by those of the Erlenmeyer collection, which have
shed light on early accounting practices.” As a result of the aforemen-

The section on Syro-Mesopotamia was written by Mark W. Chavalas; that on Palestine

and Egypt was written by Edwin C. Hostetter.
1. H. Nissen et al., eds., Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Eco-
nomic Administration in the Ancient Near East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993).
2. There are about eighty texts. They, along with objects, were the subject of a recent
exhibit of early writing (as discussed in Nissen et al., eds., Archaic Bookkeeping, ix-xi).

38
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 39

tioned reappraisal, some have argued that writing originated not as a

means of rendering language but as a system of recording informa-
tion, developing as a consequence of the increasing demands of an ex-
panded state and economy. There has also been a reassessment in the
understanding of the evolution of writing. Many had expected to see
earlier stages of pictographs (likely written on perishable materials)
because of the uniformity in the use and shape of particular signs in
the archaic script. A series of precursors to writing did exist in the
Near East. Many Neolithic sites used counting symbols (normally
called tokens) as early as the ninth millennium B.c.? By the early Uruk
period, the tokens were for the most part discarded and impressed
clay tablets were used, soon replaced with the pictographic texts. A
number of the signs employed in the impressed texts were later graph-
ically represented in the archaic cuneiform texts. Some have there-
fore argued that the archaic script was the solution for an immediate
problem;> thus writing was the next stage in the process of recording
information.°®

Early Bronze (ca. 3000-2 1 00 B.c.)

Writing did not become a means of communication representing a spo-
ken language until the third millennium B.c. in southern Mesopotamia.
Moreover, it was not employed for literary purposes until midway in
this period, as evidenced by discoveries at Abu Salabikh.’ Literary texts
concerning the military victories of Urnanshe of Lagash have been
found at al Hiba,® now known to be the Sumerian city of Lagash, not
Telloh, as had been previously thought.’
Although there is inscriptional evidence for the Akkadian period in
southern Mesopotamia (ca. 2350-2150 B.c.) from Uruk, Ur, and Nip-
pur, few texts have been found outside northern Mesopotamia in this
period. Akkadian texts have been located in the Hamrin basin at Tell

3. See D. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing, 2 vols. (Austin: University of Texas

Press, 1992). For an earlier critique of tokens as precursors of writing, see S. Lieberman,
“Of Clay Pebbles, Hollow Clay Balls, and Writing: A Sumerian View,” AJA 84 (1980):
339-58.
4. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing, 1:141-50.
5. Nissen et al., eds., Archaic Bookkeeping, 116-24.
6. Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000-2000 B.c. (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1988), 214.
7. R. Biggs, Inscriptions from Tell Abu Salabikh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1974); and R. Biggs and J. N. Postgate, “Inscriptions from Abu Salabikh, 1975,” Iraq 40
(1978): 101-17.
8. V. Crawford, “Inscriptions from Lagash, Season Four, 1975-1976,” JCS 29 (1977):
189-222.
9. Crawford, “Lagash,” Iraq 36 (1974): 29-35.
40 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

Sleima, however, some of which indicate that the site’s ancient name
was Awal.!° Forty more have recently been found as far away as Mari
in) Syria!
The most spectacular epigraphic discoveries for this period are
found in Syria, which until recently was thought to lack written sources
(partly because of a dearth of references in antiquity), especially when
compared to Mesopotamia proper. Thousands of cuneiform tablets
have been uncovered predominantly from a major palatial archive at
Tell Mardikh (ancient Ebla), written in a heretofore unknown Semitic
language called Eblaite.!* The major archival remains that have been
discovered at Ebla show a wholesale adoption of the Sumerian cunei-
form script at a very early date. The extent of Syria’s cultural depen-
dence (especially in regard to literature) on Mesopotamia is not a sim-
ple matter. Many of the religious texts at Ebla have their counterparts
in the southeast; however, the incantations written predominantly in
Eblaite have no attested parallel'!? and feature geographic and divine
names pointing to a native Syrian context. Both Ebla and the aforemen-
tioned Mari (well known to Bible students for its archives) appear to
have shared a common writing system, language, and calendar in this
period.'* Most likely the cultural borrowing was from Mari to Ebla and
not the other way around.!°
The first stratified epigraphic remains in the Khabur plains in Syria
have recently been found at Tell Mozan (ca. 2300-2200 B.c.). Excava-
tions have exposed two stratified cuneiform tablets dated to the late
third millennium B.c. They appear to be administrative tablets written
in Akkadian, but with Hurrian, Sumerian, and Akkadian proper
names.'° Moreover, the most recent season at Mozan has had great
epigraphic significance, as the excavators have established that
Mozan was indeed Urkish, a Hurrian capital in the third millennium

10. F. Rashid, “Akkadian Texts from Tell Sleima,” Sumer 40 (1984): 55-56. More Su-
merian literary texts have also been found at Tell Hadad; A. Cavigneaux and F. al-Rawi,
“New Sumerian Literary Texts from Tell Hadad (Ancient Meturan): A First Survey,” Iraq
55 (1993): 91-106.
11. J.-C. Margueron in H. Weiss, “Archaeology in Syria,” AJA 95 (1991): 711.
12. The corpus of Ebla texts is being published in G. Pettinato et al., Materiali epi-
grafici di Ebla (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 1979-); and A. Archi et
al., Archivi reali di Ebla: Testi (Rome: Missione Archeologica Italiana in Siria, 1981-).
13. W. Hallo, “The Syrian Contribution to Cuneiform Literature,” in New Horizons in
the Study of Ancient Syria, ed. M. Chavalas and J. Hayes (Malibu: Undena, 1992), 72.
14. See I. Gelb, “Mari and the Kish Civilization,” in Mari in Retrospect, ed. G. Young
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 197-200.
15. See Gelb, Thoughts about Ibla: A Preliminary Evaluation, Syro-Mesopotamian
Studies 1.1 (Malibu: Undena, 1977), 15.
16. See L. Milano et al., Mozan 2: The Epigraphic Finds of the Sixth Season (Malibu:
Undena, 1991), 1-34.
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 41

B.c.!’ Seal imprints with the name of “Tupkish, king of Urkish,” have
been found, along with the name of his queen and many retainers.
Most of the seal impressions belonged to Queen Uqnitum and her
staff. Some have even suggested that a Hurrian scribal tradition
equivalent to Semitic Ebla may have existed in this region.!®

Middle Bronze (ca. 2 100-1600 B.c.)

A highly sophisticated private scribal tradition existed in southern Mes-
opotamia during the Ur III (2100-2000 B.c.) and Old Babylonian (2000-
1600 B.c.) periods. Thus there was an increase in epigraphic remains
found in domestic units at sites such as Larsa, Isin, and Mashkan-Sha-
pir.!? Those at Isin were in houses in which tablets were prepared and
written and scribes were instructed. Furthermore, over twenty eco-
nomic texts have been found from as far away as Bahrain in the Persian
Gulf.?° A yield of tablets from Tell al-Rimah (ancient Qattara) was dis-
covered dated to the reign of Shamshi-Adad.*! Most interesting is the
archive of Iltani, wife of the ruler of Karana, which sheds light on fem-
inine correspondence.”
Over fifty texts have been uncovered from Haradum (a small Baby-
lonian border town on the Euphrates) from the 26th year of Samsui-
luna (1723 B.c.) to the 18th or 19th year of Ammisaduqa (1627 B.c.).79
They were found in private houses and in the mayoral residence, and
included letters, judicial texts, administrative texts, cultic texts, and dis-

17. G. Buccellati and M. Kelly-Buccellati, “Urkesh: The Firt Hurrian Capital,” BA 60

(1997): 77-96.
18. See G. Wilhelm, The Hurrians (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1989), 77-79, and
Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati, Mozan I: The Soundings of the First Two Seasons (Malibu:
Undena, 1988), 31.
19. J.-L. Huot, Larsa et ‘Oueili: Travau de 1983 (Paris: Editions recherche sur les civi-
lisations, 1987); C. Walker and C. Wilcke, “Preliminary Report on the Inscriptions, Au-
tumn 1975, Spring 1977, Autumn 1978,” in Isin-Isan Bahriyat I, ed. B. Hrouda et al. (Mu-
nich: Verlag der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981), 91-102; E. C. Stone
and P. Zimansky, “Mashkan-shapir and the Anatomy of an Old Babylonian City,” BA 55
(1992): 212-18.
20. B. Andre-Salvini is preparing them for publication.
21. J. Eidem, “Some Remarks on the Iltani Archive from Tell al Rimah,” Jraq 51
(1989): 67-78; J. Durand and D. Charpin, “Le nom antique de Tell al-Rimah,” RA 81
(1987): 115ff.; S. Dalley et al., The Old Babylonian Tablets from Tell al-Rimah (London:
British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1976).
22. See Dalley, Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian Cities (London: Longman,
1984). Karana is now known to be the city of Qattara; see Eidem, “Some Remarks on the
Iltani Archive from Tell al Rimah”; and Durand and Charpin, “Le nom antique de Tell al-
Rimah.”
23. FE Joannés, “Haradum et le pays de Suhum: d’aprés la documentation cunéiform
a l’époque babylonienne ancienne,” Archéologia 205 (1985): 56-59.
42 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

tribution lists. The image that they furnish of Haradum is a small en-
closed village with an administration, elders, and a mayor. The letters
attest to local commerce, riverboat traffic and the sale of wool, agricul-
tural products, and slaves. The onomastic data show a mixed popula-
tion, with a preponderance of West Semitic names. Haradum was de-
stroyed after little more than a century, apparently either by nomads or
by the inundation of the Euphrates.
There was also an increase in scribal activity in Syria, as evidenced
from recent epigraphic remains from Terga and Shubat Enlil. There is
a body of epigraphic documentation at Terga datable to the so-called
dark age between the fall of Mari (ca. 1760 B.c.) and the fall of Babylon
(ca. 1595 B.c.). At this time, Terqa was most likely the capital of the king-
dom of Khana on the Middle Euphrates. Near the original summit of
the mound, a large public building has been uncovered and found to
contain, thus far, over thirty Khana period tablets, forcing a reevalua-
tion of Khana chronology.** Terqa may have remained under Babylo-
nian control during the reigns of Ammisaduqa and Samsuditana.?> The
kingdom appears to have been governed by several previously unknown
kings bearing Hurrian names, showing that it passed under Mitanni
control in the next period (after 1600 B.c.). Tell Leilan has revealed its
name during the Old Babylonian period: Shubat-Enlil.7° Associated cu-
neiform archives have been found within two large temples.’’ Lastly,
over sixty economic texts have been found from the reign of Shamshi-
Adad (1814-1781 B.c.) from Tell BPa. One of the texts mentions the city
of Tuttul, establishing the site’s name.?®

Late Bronze (ca. 1600-1200 B.c.)

Recently discovered archives from Syria in the Late Bronze Age have
shed light on how the Hittites, Mitanni, and Assyrians provided ad-
ministrative rule in this area. These archives are especially impor-
tant, since the primary Syrian centers in the Hittite period (e.g.,
Carchemish, Halab [Aleppo], and Wassukani) have not revealed such
documents. An important Mitanni center along the Middle Euphra-

24. For the Terqa texts, see O. Rouault, Zerga Final Reports 1: L'Archive de Puzurum
(Malibu: Undena, 1984). For Khana (Terqa) chronology, see A. Podany, “A Middle Baby-
lonian Date for the Hana Kingdom,” JCS 43-45 (1991-93): 53-62; and M. Chavalas,
“Terqa and the Kingdom of Khana,” BA 58 (1996): 90-103.
25. See, however, G. Buccellati, “The Kingdom and Period of Khana,” BASOR 270
(1987): 46-49.
26. H. Weiss, “Tell Leilan and Shubat Enlil,” MARI 4 (1984): 269-92.
27. Including a new fragment of the Sumerian King List; see C. Vincent, “Tell Leilan
Recension of the Sumerian King List,” NABU 11 (1990): 8-9.
28. E. Strommenger in H. Weiss, “Archaeology in Syria,” 143-44.
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 43

tes was Tell Hadidi (ancient Azu), where a number of legal docu-
ments from this period were found.*? Another of these influential
Syrian cities was Ugarit, a town already well known for its archives
that have revealed a great deal of comparative material for biblical
studies. Most recently, over three hundred texts have been uncovered
at Ugarit, some of which were found in the house of an official named
Urtenu. The texts are primarily state documents, most written in
Akkadian and a few in Ugaritic. Urtenu’s house has not yet been fully
excavated.*9
Arguably, the most important recent finds coming from Syro-Mes-
opotamia in this period come from the Middle Euphrates sites of
Emar, which have revealed nearly two thousand Late Bronze Age tab-
lets and fragments.*! The variety of cuneiform documentation at
Emar includes Akkadian legal texts, letters, and ritual texts,** as well
as some Hittite and Hurrian medical and divination texts. Over four
hundred ritual texts were discovered in a scribal center in Temple M1
at Emar, nearly half of which describe apparently indigenous Emarite
religious practices not attested in archives in Anatolia or Mesopota-
mia.** The most significant of the Emar ritual texts are the festivals,
which expose local Middle Euphrates religious practice.** The literary
corpus from Emar (omina, incantations, rituals, wisdom literature,
etc.) appears to be as relevant for biblical studies as those of Ugarit.*>
Numerous sites in Syria have recently produced textual information
concerning the reigns of many of the Middle Assyrian kings, especially
ShalmaneserI (1273-1244 B.c.). Sources include findings at Tell Fray,
over 600 texts and fragments from Tell Sheikh Hamad and Tell

29. R. Dornemann, “Tell Hadidi: A Millennium of Bronze Age City Occupation,” in Ar

cheological Reports from the Tabga Dam Project—Euphrates Valley, Syria, ed. D. N. Freed-
man, 44 (Cambridge: ASOR, 1979), 144-49.
30. M. Yon in H. Weiss, “Archaeology in Syria,” 139. P. Bordreuil and D. Pardee are
presently preparing the most recent texts for publication.
31. For a recent study of Emar and its textual remains, see Emar: The History, Reli-
gion, and Culture of a Bronze Age Town, ed. M. Chavalas (Bethesda: CDL Press, 1996).
Over eighty texts have been found at nearby Tell Munbagqa (ancient Ekalte). See W. Mayer,
“Die Tontafelfunde von Tall Munbaqa/Ekalte 1989 and 1990,” MDOG 125 (1993): 103-6,
for the most recent discussion of the texts. See also D. Arnaud, Recherches au pays d'As-
tata: Emar VI.1-4: Les textes sumériens et accadiens (Paris: Editions recherche sur les
civilisations, 1985-87).
32. D. Arnaud, “La bibliothéque d’un devin Syrien 4 Meskéné-Emar (Syrie),” CRAIBL
(1980): 375-87.
33. For Emarite religion, see D. Fleming, The Installation of Baal’s High Priestess at
Emar: A Window on Ancient Syrian Religion, HSS 42 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992).
34. Fleming, “The Rituals from Emar: Evolution of an Indigneous Tradition in Sec-
ond Millennium Syria,” in New Horizons, ed. Chavalas and Hayes, 2-4.
35. Hallo, “Syrian Contribution to Cuneiform Literature,” 82-87.
44 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

Amouda, and forty texts dating to the reign of Tukulti Ninurta I (1244-
1208 s.c.) at Tell Chuera.*® These all exhibit a complex Assyrian ad-
ministrative presence in the area.

Early Iron (ca. |200-600 B.c.)

The Early Iron Age in Syro-Mesopotamia was dominated primarily by
Assyria. At the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, recent excavations have
uncovered inscriptions of Sennacherib’s construction of the north
walls of the city.77 A more spectacular discovery has been found in
royal graves at Nimrud, one of the Assyrian capitals.** An under-
ground brick tomb was found with inscriptions of Ashurnasirpal I
(884-859 B.c.) and Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.c.). There was a rich
assortment ofjewelry, earrings, lapis, ivory, beads, and a ceramic cof-
fin lid. A Late Babylonian period library has been found at Sippar
(Abu Habba) containing mostly literary tablets, with duplicates from
Nippur and elsewhere. Copies include a new historical inscription of
the Akkadian king Manishtushu and an extension of the Weidner
Chronicle.*?
Syria has also recently revealed Early Iron Age textual material, the
most spectacular of which is the discovery of a large life-size basalt
statue at Tell Fakhariyah. It is unique because of a bilingual inscription
on the statue, two-thirds of which is in Akkadian (Assyrian dialect), and
one-third in ancient Aramaic, making it the oldest attested Aramaic in-
scription.?°
Epigraphic material from Syro-Mesopotamia, although not always
having a direct bearing on the Bible, continues to give evidence of a
massive literary tradition in the ancient Near Eastern world to which
the Israelite writers belonged.

36. A. Bounni and P. Matthiae, “Tell Fray, ville frontiére entre hittites et assyriens
au XIlle siécle av. J. C.,” Archéologica 140 (1980): 30-39; H. Kithne, “Tell seh Hamad/
Dur-katlimu: The Assyrian Provincial Capital in the Muhafazat Deir Az-Zor,’ AAAS 34
(1984): 160-79; for the tablets reputed to have come from Tell Amuda, see P. Machinist,
“Provincial Governance in Middle Assyria and Some New Texts from Yale,” Assur 3
(1982): 67-76; for Tell Chuera, see W. Orthmann in H. Weiss, “Archaeology in Syria,”
120-22.
37. D. Stronach and S. Lumsden, “UC Berkeley’s Excavations at Nineveh,” BA 55
(1992): 227-33.
38. A. Fadhil, “Die in Nimrud/Kalhu aufgefundene Grabinschrift der Jaba,” BaM 21
(1990): 461-70; idem, “Die Grabinschrift der Mullissu-Mukannisat-Ninua aus Nimrud/
Kalhu und andere in ihrem Grab gefundene Schrifttager,” BaM 21 (1990): 471-82.
39, J. N. Postgate et al., “Excavations in Iraq,” Iraq 49 (1987): 248-49; and F. al-Rawi
and A. George, “Tablets from the Sippar Library II: Tablet II of the Babylonian Creation
Epic,” Iraq 52 (1990): 14 9ff.
40. A. Abou-Assaf et al., La statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue assyro-
araméene (Paris: Editions recherche sur les civilisations, 1982).
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 45

Palestine and Egypt

This is a sampling of inscriptions that have significance for understand-
ing the Bible and ancient Israel. The first group of epigraphs discussed
was found in Palestine, while the second group was discovered in
Egypt. Although the selection process for inclusion here was subjective,
the results should enhance the reader’s background knowledge of the
Bible.

Palestinian Epigraphy
Arad Ostraca
Between 1962 and 1976 archaeologists at Arad unearthed Hebrew, Ar-
amaic, Arabic, and Greek ostraca.*! The Hebrew texts, preserved better
than those in other languages, originated from the tenth through sixth
centuries B.c., but especially during the later phases of the Judahite mo-
narchical period. A particular group of eighteen Hebrew letters found
together date from around 598 or 597, probably less than a decade be-
fore the comparable Lachish Letters (see below). This archive appears
to have dealt mainly with the disbursement of rations to various people
and places. One ostracon urged the dispatch to Ramath-negeb of troops
rather than supplies in order to ward off a threat by the Edomites. An-
other mentions Yahweh's temple in Jerusalem. The reference is an ex-
tremely rare epigraphic survival from first temple times. Most of the
collection was addressed to an Eliashib, perhaps quartermaster or even
commandant at the Arad fortress.

Beth-shan Stelae
Both Pharaohs Seti I (1306-1290 B.c.) and Rameses II (1290-1224 B.c.)
installed basalt stelae at Beth-shan to commemorate their expeditions

41. J. C. L. Gibson, Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, 3 vols. (Oxford: Claren-

don, 1971-82), 1:49-54; R. Hestrin, Inscriptions Reveal, 2d ed. (Jerusalem: Israel Mu-
seum, 1972), Eng. section, pp. 3-37, 75; R. B. Lawton, “Arad Ostraca,” ABD, 1:336-37; A.
Lemaire, Inscriptions hébraiques, Littératures anciennes du Proche-Orient 9 (Paris: Cerf,
1977-), 1:145-235; J. Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters, SBLWAW 4 (At-
lanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 99-110; P. K. McCarter Jr., Ancient Inscriptions: Voices from
the Biblical World (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1996), 119-20; D. Par-
dee et al., Handbook of Ancient Hebrew Letters: A Study Edition, SBLSBS 15 (Chico, Calif.:
Scholars Press, 1982), 24-67; J. Renz, Handbuch der althebrdischen Epigraphik (Darm-
stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), 1:40-43, 347-53; K. A. D. Smelik, Writ-
ings from Ancient Israel: A Handbook of Historical and Religious Documents, trans. G. I.
Davies (Edinburgh: Clark, 1991), 101-15; and J. A. Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testa-
ment, 3d ed., trans. J. Bowden, OTL (London: SCM; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox,
1989), 558-59.
46 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

thereabouts.4? Shortly after his accession to the throne, Seti received

word that a coalition based in a nearby town called Hammat had at-
tacked Beth-shan. The text of one monument declares that three bri-
gades defeated the alliance and reaffirmed Egyptian control through-
out Canaan within a single day. According to his later stela, apiru
renegades stirred up trouble in Mount Yarmuta—probably the Jarmuth
of Issachar in the high plateau approximately seven miles north of
Beth-shan (Josh. 21:29).
Rameses’ Beth-shan stela describes in conventional terms his victo-
ries over the Asiatics (or people from Canaan). In his fifth regnal year,
revolts against his rule took place from Kadesh on the Orontes in the
north to Ashkelon in the south. His campaigns were able, however, to
repair most of the damage, and he had resecured the region of Palestine
by the time he erected the stela during year nine of his reign.

Daliyeh Papyri
Dates recorded on the papyri range from 375 or 365 B.c. to 335, that is,
within the reigns of Persian emperors Artaxerxes II and III and Darius
III.43 The documents include loans, deeds, contracts, and, most fre-
quently, slave sales, conveyances, or manumissions. According to their
own information, the papyri were drawn up in the city of Samaria. In
the wilderness cave near Wadi ed-Daliyeh, directly associated with
those private papers, were the skeletal remains of some two hundred
men, women, and children, who seem to have all died at the same time.
This suggests that a large group of patrician families from Samaria died
together as refugees soon after Alexander the Great arrived in 332.
Attestation in the papyri of several public officials’ names permits a
correct presentation of the Samarian ruling families, notably the descen-
dants of Nehemiah’s fifth-century nemesis Sanballat (Neh. 2; 4; 6). Judg-
ing from names in the slave transactions, we can conclude that the main
body of the population was Yahwistic. Nonetheless, even Jewish slaves
were sold for life, without stipulations concerning release—a direct vio-
lation of such regulations as Exodus 21:2 and Deuteronomy 15:12.

Deir ‘Alla Texts

An earthquake shattered the eighth-century B.c. sanctuary inscription

42. Y. Aharoni et al., Macmillan Bible Atlas, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 38—
41; and McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 45-46.
43. F. M. Cross, “Daliyeh, Wadi ed-,” ABD, 2:3-4; D. M. Gropp, “Samaria (Papyri),”
ABD, 5:931—32; McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 122-25; Soggin, Introduction, 567; and J.
Zsengellér, “Personal Names in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh Papyri,” ZAH 9 (1996): 182-89.
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 47

found at Deir ‘Alla in Transjordan.*4 From the fragments the excavators

could assemble two large groups or combinations, in addition to
smaller groups and single pieces. The first interlocking combination of
lime-plaster fragments identifies itself as the book of the seer Balaam,
Beor’s son. Gods visited him one night in a dream. The next day, while
fasting and weeping, Balaam related his vision of that divine council
meeting. (Note Ps. 82:1 for the motif of a divine assembly—also viewed
by a seer in 1 Kings 22:19.) The council had decreed a terrible catastro-
phe, apparently involving plunging the planet into darkness and de-
stroying all life on it.
The coming of the gods at night with a message that the prophet then
reported in the morning reminds us of Balaam’s summons in Numbers
22. There too he is presented as a non-Israelite prophet, whom the He-
brews encountered when they encamped merely twenty-five miles
south of Tell Deir ‘Alla. Both the biblical and extrabiblical stories em-
ploy the divine epithet “Shaddai,” which English translations com-
monly render “Almighty” (see, e.g., Num. 24:4, 16). The title “Shaddai,”
possibly meaning “one of the mountain,” applied to the chief decision-
making gods, probably because these ruling gods gathered on a moun-
tain in Canaanite tradition much like the Olympians in Greek mythol-
ogy. The patriarchs knew the Abrahamic deity as Shaddai prior to
learning the name Yahweh (Exod. 6:3).

Horvat Uza Ostraca

Seventeen ostraca—all except one in Hebrew—were recovered in 1983
during the second season of excavation at the Horvat Uza stronghold.*°
A restored letter, whose language and script are Edomite, contains six
lines of text. They seem to concern the distribution of an amount of
foodstuff or else the repayment of a loan of grain. The salutation in-
quired into the addressee’s health and blessed him by Qaus, the chief
god of Edom.
This, the only known Edomite text of connected narrative or dis-
course, dates to the early sixth century B.c. Since Judah controlled Hor-
vat Uza in the seventh century, the ostracon suggests that Edomites
captured the fort shortly ahead of its conquest by Babylonia. Here is im-
portant evidence for the early stages of the Edomite incursion into
Judah, a process that eventually led to the establishment there of a
province called Idumea (an appellation derived from the term Edom).

44, H. J. Franken et al., “Deir ‘Alla, Tell,” ABD, 2:129-30; McCarter, Ancient Inscrip-
tions, 96-98; Smelik, Writings, 80-88; and Soggin, Introduction, 559.
45. I. Beit-Arieh, “‘Uza, Horvat,” ABD, 6:772-74; Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic, 117-
18; and McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 99-100.
48 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

Ketef Hinnom Scrolls

Inside the tomb chambers of a cave on a rocky knoll overlooking Jerus-
alem’s Hinnom Valley to the east, two small scrolls made of silver leaf
were discovered in 1979.*° About twenty lines had been scratched into
the surface of both scrolls. These fine engravings belong to the end of
the seventh century B.c. or to the start of the sixth. The rolled-up foil cyl-
inders had presumably been worn around the neck on cords passed
through the center holes as amulets.
Part of the text on each plaque matches closely an abridged form of
the so-called Aaronid benediction in Numbers 6:24-26. The Bible in-
structed Israel’s priests to bless the people with those words (vv. 22-
23, 27). The plaques seem to be the earliest quotation of a scriptural
passage anywhere in the inscriptional record to date. Conversely, the
epigraph could be regarded as a forerunner of what ultimately
reached its definitive shape in Numbers. Either way, no earlier evi-
dence of the complete divine name “Yahweh” appears at Jerusalem in
any inscription.

Khirbet el-Q6m Inscriptions

At Khirbet el-Q6m is one of the longest Hebrew tomb inscriptions yet
discovered from the Old Testament period.*’ The epitaph dates to the
second half of the eighth century sB.c. The burial chamber’s owner,
Uriah, was pronounced blessed apparently because he had been deliv-
ered from his enemies by Yahweh’s Asherah. Scripture likewise men-
tions this important goddess, although the term Asherah there most
often designates a sacred tree or pole used in worship. Probably the rit-
ual object known as Asherah had something to do with the deity known
as Asherah. A number of goddesses from the region around ancient Is-
rael were personifications of the cultic presence of leading gods, whose
consorts they frequently were. We may surmise that Yahweh’s Asherah
was his availability and accessibility—the visible marker or concrete
form of which was the wooden object—at a worship location. The
Asherah of Yahweh was then personified, apotheosized, and viewed as
his consort.
Unknown to scholars until 1994 was the so-called stonecutter’s in-
scription from el-Q6m: “Blessed be your stonecutter! May he lay old

46. McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 121-22; E. Puech, “Palestinian Funerary Inscrip-

tions,” ABD, 5:127; Renz, Handbuch, 1:447-56; and Smelik, Writings, 160-62.
47. R. Deutsch et al., Forty New Ancient West Semitic Inscriptions (Tel Aviv: Archaeo-
logical Center Publication, 1994), 27-30; J. S. Holladay Jr. et al., “Kom, Khirbet el-,” ABD,
4:98; Hestrin, Inscriptions, Eng. section, 3; McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 110-11; Renz,
Handbuch, 1:199-211; and Smelik, Writings, 152-55.
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 49

people to rest in this!’”*® The apparently traditional expression wished

that the stonecutter, who prepared sepulchers for occupation, could lay
people to rest in their old age—not in their childhood or prime.

Kuntillet “Ajrud Fragments

Archaeological digs in 1975-76 at Kuntillet <Ajrud, presumably a cultic
center, though possibly a caravanserai, yielded a few Hebrew language
inscriptions that originated from the end of the ninth or beginning of
the eighth century B.c.*?
A two-line ink epigraph, which has fallen off a plaster wall, invoked
Yahweh of Teman (or Yahweh of the southland). So did the greeting on
one of two big pithoi—pottery storage vessels—that were found broken.
The jar’s succeeding blessing, “May he bless you and may he keep you,”
exhibits a striking parallel to the priestly benediction in Numbers 6:24.
The other pithos called on Yahweh of Samaria. Evidently the Hebrew
God had various manifestations under which he could be worshiped.
Yahweh of Teman was the form revered locally at Kuntillet <Ajrud,
whereas Yahweh of Samaria was the form revered at Israel’s capital.
That compares with how today we can distinguish between Mary of
Lourdes and Mary of Fatima yet not imply that there is more than the
one Mary. Furthermore, both pithoi refer to Yahweh’s Asherah (see
“Khirbet el-Q6m Inscriptions” above).

Lachish Letters
The language of these inscribed potsherds at Lachish reflected the pop-
ular Hebrew spoken in Judah during the early sixth century B.c.°° They
belong to the final period of the country’s survival, before the destruc-
tion of such cities as Lachish, Jerusalem, and Azekah (cf. Jer. 34:7) by
the Babylonian army in 586. Although scholars long supposed the writ-
ings to date from that year, they more reasonably date from 589. The os-
traca reveal freedom of Judahite travel both within and outside the king-
dom, so that the Babylonians would seem not yet to have invaded. The
wartime correspondence was presumably penned between Zedekiah’s
refusal to pay tribute and Nebuchadnezzar’s arrival to inflict retribution.

48. McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 111-12.

49. Ibid., 106-9; Z. Meshel, “Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” ABD, 4:106-7; Renz, Handbuch, 1:47-64;
and Smelik, Writings, 155-60. See also Arnold's discussion, chap. 14 of the present volume.
50. R. A. Di Vito, “Lachish Letters,’ ABD, 4:126-28; Gibson, Textbook, 1:32-49; Le-
maire, Inscriptions, 1:83-143; Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic, 99-103, 110-16; McCarter,
Ancient Inscriptions, 116-19; Pardee, Handbook, 67-114; W. H. Propp, “Lachish,” The Ox-
ford Companion to the Bible, ed. B. M. Metzger and M. D. Coogan (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1993), 418; Renz, Handbuch, 1:405-38; Smelik, Writings, 116-31; Soggin,
Introduction, 558; and J. Woodhead et al., “Lachish,” NBD, 660-61.
50 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

An inferior (named only once, Hoshaiah) addressed the letters to a

superior (named thrice, Jaush). The latter probably commanded the
Lachish garrison itself, while Hoshaiah was in charge of an outpost
under the jurisdiction of Jaush. Ostracon no. 3 reported on the activi-
ties of an expedition that compelled a contingent of Hoshaiah’s troops
to accompany it to Egypt. Judah is known to have been seeking Egyp-
tian assistance around that time (e.g., Ezek. 17:15).

Moabite Stone
Among the ancient ruins at Dhiban (scriptural Dibon) lay a toppled
black basalt stela bearing a thirty-four line inscription that was written
in the language of Moab around 840 or 830 B.c.°' Moabite King Mesha
commissioned the stone’s erection to extol his achievements: he had
freed his country from the control of neighboring Israel and had under-
taken—in part with Israelite slave labor—various building projects. The
Bible also reports the conflict between Moab and Israel at that time
(2 Kings 3).
In Mesha’s account we find a pair of intriguing parallels with the Old
Testament generally. First, just as Yahweh becomes angry with the peo-
ple of Israel, forsakes them, humbles them by turning them over to their
adversaries, and finally, after a change in the deity’s attitude, saves them,
so too does Chemosh with the people of Moab. Second, on the apparent
instruction of his national god, Mesha implemented the “ban” and ritu-
ally massacred the vanquished from several towns in honor of
Chemosh—much like the Hebrew holy war practice in honor of Yahweh.

Plain of Sharon Bowls

Five bronze bowls have come to light at the site of Eliachin, a modern
settlement just south of Hadera.°* The engravings (in Aramaic except
for one in Phoenician) date to either the sixth or fifth century B.c.,
within the early Persian period. The vessels were offerings dedicated at
the shrine of an interesting group of gods called Ashtars, whose cult ap-
pears to have flourished in the Sharon plain. Two of the bowls were do-
nated in gratitude to the Ashtars for saving or sparing the giver’s life.
King Mesha’s Moabite Stone incorporated an enigmatic reference to
the West Semitic god Ashtar. Half a millennium earlier the deity’s name
had surfaced as Ashtar in the mythological literature of the Syrian

51. J. A. Dearman et al., “Mesha Stele,” ABD, 4:708-9; Gibson, Textbook, 1:71-83: Hes-
trin, /nscriptions, Eng. section, pp. 30-32; McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 90-92; Smelik,
Writings, 29-50; Soggin, Introduction, 553-54; and J. A.Thompson, “Moabite Stone,”
NBD, 777.
52. Deutsch, Forty, 69-89; and McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 100-102.
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament Sl

coastal city of Ugarit. The feminine form corresponding to Ashtar is

Ashtart or Astarte (the scriptural Ashtoreth), a well-known Phoenician/
Canaanite goddess. Her.Mesopotamian equivalent is the goddess Ishtar.

Samaria Ostraca
Several delivery receipts for jars of quality wine and fine oil shipped to
the palace in Samaria have been found.*? Most show dates of the ninth,
tenth, or fifteenth year of the reign of an unspecified Israelite king. The
numbers fit best with the 770s B.c. under Jeroboam I, unless the large
corpus should be split—part belonging to the 790s under Jeroboam’s fa-
ther, Joash, and part to the 770s.
The ostraca noted the place of origin of the merchandise and thus
point to geographical locations for clan districts within the Manassite
tribal area. The places lie in a cluster around the capital city at distances
of less than twelve miles. Personal names formed with a Baal element
occur adjacent to others formed with a Yahweh element. This might or
might not suggest a mixed religious population. Saul’s naming of his
sons Ishbaal and Jonathan illustrates how the Hebrews could incorpo-
rate either Baal or Yahweh components in their names (2 Sam. 4:1, 4).
Moreover, Hosea 2:16 implies possibly that until the middle or late
eighth century a believer could acceptably call Yahweh “Baal.”

Siloam Tunnel Inscription

Six lines of writing were once carved on a wall near the mouth of a tun-
nel that emptied into a Jerusalem reservoir.*4 The language is classical
Hebrew, strongly reminiscent of standard prose in the Old Testament.
The tunnel brought water from ancient Jerusalem’s principal water
source, the Gihon spring in the Kidron Valley, to the Pool of Siloam at
the lower end of the Tyropoeon Valley and inside the walled city. The
inscription describes the dramatic final phases in the tunnel’s construc-
tion and celebrates the success of an engineering feat. Starting at oppo-
site ends, two gangs dug underground toward each other along a
roughly north-south line and met at midpoint.

53. Gibson, Textbook, 1:15-13; Hestrin, Inscriptions, Eng. section, 7; I. T. Kaufman,

“Samaria Ostraca,” ABD, 5:921-26; Lemaire, Inscriptions, 1:21-81; McCarter, Ancient In-
scriptions, 103-4; Renz, Handbuch, 1:79-109; Smelik, Writings, 51-62; and Soggin, Intro-
duction, 554-55.
54. R. B. Coote, “Siloam Inscription,” ABD, 6:23-24; Gibson, Textbook, 1:21-23; J. A.
Hackett et al., “Defusing Pseudo-Scholarship: The Siloam Inscription Ain’t Hasmonean,”
BAR 23.2 (1997): 41-50, 68; Hestrin, Inscriptions, Eng. section, 40-41; McCarter, Ancient
Inscriptions, 113-15; Renz, Handbuch, 1:178-89; J. Rogerson et al., “Was the Siloam Tun-
nel Built by Hezekiah?” BA 59 (1996): 138-49; Smelik, Writings, 64-71; Soggin, Introduc-
tion, 555; and D. J. Wiseman, “Siloam,” NBD, 1101-3.
a2 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

There can be little doubt that the initiating authority for the project
was Judah’s King Hezekiah and that the inscription was written shortly
before 701 B.c. A recent, vigorous challenge against this consensus has
been carefully refuted by a host of scholars. Hezekiah undertook the ex-
cavation effort presumably in order to prepare for an anticipated siege
by Assyria’s King Sennacherib (see 2 Chron. 32:2-4, 30; 2 Kings 20:20).
Centuries afterward, Ecclesiasticus 48:17 recalled the achievement:
“Hezekiah fortified his city, and brought water into its midst; he tun-
neled the rock with iron tools, and built cisterns for the water” (NRSV).

Tel Dan Stela

In 1993 and 1994 were found three pieces of basalt that constitute the
shattered remnants of an inscribed monument.°? We cannot recon-
struct a continuous translation of the Aramaic stela, but enough has
survived to give a general idea of its content. This expert carving from
the mid-ninth century B.c. describes an Israelite incursion into the land
of the protagonist, who at that point became king. He then managed to
repel the invasion with the help of his god Hadad. The text refers to the
Israelite and Judahite monarchs Joram and Ahaziah, respectively—and
most significantly calls the dynasty of Judah the “house of David.”
Some scholars have denied that the three fragments belong together or
even that they mention the house of David. Despite these disputes, evi-
dence in support of both affirmative propositions seems fairly clear.
The Aramean person who left the stela at Dan was in all likelihood the
Damascene ruler Hazael. The monument presumably alludes to the
events recorded in 2 Kings 8:28-29. After Joram had received wounds in
a battle against Hazael’s troops at the Israelite outpost Ramoth-gilead on
the Transjordanian plateau, the king of Israel traveled for convalescence
to the town Jezreel at the foot of Mount Gilboa. Judah’s King Ahaziah,
who had fought alongside him against the Arameans, joined him there.

Tell Siran Bottle

Students dug at a heavily eroded archaeological spot on the campus of
the University of Jordan, six miles northwest of Amman, in 1972.5 The
unearthed Iron Age materials included an inscribed metallic bottle that
had been cast from a mixture of copper, lead, and tin. The container

55. F.H. Cryer, “King Hadad,” SJOT9 (1995): 223-35; McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions,
86-90; W. M. Schniedewind, “Tel Dan Stela: New Light on Aramaic and Jehu’s Revolt,”
BASOR 302 (1996): 75-90; and T. L. Thompson, “Dissonance and Disconnections: Notes
on the bytdwd and hmlk.hdd Fragments from Tel Dan,” SJOT 9 (1995): 236-40.
56. A. Lemaire, “Epigraphy, Transjordanian,” ABD, 2:561-62; McCarter, Ancient In-
scriptions, 98-99; and Smelik, Writings, 90-91.
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 53

held vegetable substances, primarily wheat and barley grains, that had
been sealed inside with a metal cap secured by a pin running the length
of the bottle. On the exterior this little bronze vessel bears a complete
and quite legible inscription dating to approximately 600 B.c. The chief
value of the text lies in the data it gives about the Ammonite language
and history. Yet the historical information is obscure. We do not know
for certain whether one Amminadab out of the pair cited was the ruler
that the Neo-Assyrian emperor Ashurbanipal encountered in the first
half of the seventh century or whether both Amminadabs cited on the
bottle were the aforementioned’s descendants and namesakes in the
second half of the century.

Yavneh-Yam Ostracon
This legal petition was penned nine miles south of Joppa during the
final decades of the seventh century B.c.°’ The fortress where it was
found seems to have furnished an office for a possibly royal governor
who ruled the surrounding area as well as administered justice. A farm-
hand sent an appeal to that district governor for restitution. On the
grounds of failing to meet his daily quota of harvested grain, the plain-
tiffs garment had been confiscated by a supervisor named Hoshaiah.
The reaper claimed he really did meet the quota—something to which
his colaborers could testify. Consequently, he pleaded with the gover-
nor to force a return of the unjustly appropriated cloak. The document
may have alluded to Exodus 22:26-27 (22:25-26 MT) and Deuteronomy
24:12-13, where creditors were obligated to give back before dusk a gar-
ment taken in pledge. Although Hoshaiah’s action did not match such
a situation precisely, he clearly contravened the spirit of God’s law.

Egyptian Epigraphy
Amarna Letters
Tell el-Amarna is the modern name for the ancient site Akhetaten.*®
Amenhotep IV (later called Akhenaten) established Akhetaten as the
capital of Egypt under him and his immediate successors. During the

57. Gibson, Textbook, 1:126-30; Hestrin, Inscriptions, Eng. section, 26; Lemaire, In-
scriptions, 1:259-68; Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic, 96-98; McCarter, Ancient Inscrip-
tions, 116; Pardee, Handbook, 15-24; Renz, Handbuch, 1:315-29; Smelik, Writings, 93-
100; and Soggin, Introduction, 556-58.
58. W. Helck, “Amarna-Briefe,” Lexikon der Agyptologie, ed. W. Helck and E. Otto
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1972), 1:173-74; McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 16; N.
Naaman, “Amarna Letters,” ABD, 1:174-81; W. H. Propp, “Amarna Letters,” Oxford
Companion to the Bible, 22; G. Rachet, Dictionnaire de la civilisation égyptienne, 75, and
M. J. Selman, “Amarna,” NBD, 28.
54 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

second third of the fourteenth century s.c., Akhenaten, along with

Amenhotep III before him and Tutankhamun after him, carried on an
extensive international correspondence. Some of the Amarna Letters
were sent by the rulers of other great powers—Assyria, Babylonia,
Hatti, Mitanni—who wrote to the Egyptian kings as peers. Most of the
clay tablets, however, came from Egypt’s vassals in Canaan and Syria.
A few letters are actually copies of those dispatched by the pharaohs to
their vassal rulers or to the monarchs of the more distant states. Be-
cause peculiarities of language in the correspondence sent to the Egyp-
tian court often reflected the local speech of the sender’s region, the
Amarna Letters hold special interest for linguists studying the period.
The lapses of Canaanite scribes in particular have taught us about the
prehistory of the later Hebrew language, which was closely related to
their native dialects.
The messages between equal sovereigns largely concerned the ex-
change of ambassadors and expensive gifts, but occasionally concerned
the marriage of a foreign princess to a pharaoh. The Syro-Palestinian
letters describe the vicissitudes of cities such as Gezer, Shechem,
Hazor, Ashkelon, Gaza, Lachish, Jerusalem, Rehob, Megiddo, Taanach,
and Acco in the pre-Israelite era. These messages bespeak a time of un-
rest, intrigue, and intercity strife. For instance, Labayu of Shechem and
his sons formed a strong coalition to expand their territory in the cen-
tral hills. Biridiya of Megiddo, supported by Egyptian authorities,
formed a countercoalition and brought the Shechemite offensive to an
end. Meanwhile, Abdiheba of Jerusalem had “warned” the pharaoh that
tribute being sent to Egypt would probably not arrive due to an ambush
planned by Labayu and by Milkilu of Gezer. This complaint may have
been a ruse, though, for in another letter Shuwardata of Hebron char-
acterized Abdiheba as a rogue.

Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead is an elaborate compilation of magical spells de-
signed to bring about a dead person’s resurrection and to provide safety
from dangers in the afterlife.°’? The compilation reflects ritual acts per-
formed during and following mummification and burial. Usually in-
scribed on papyrus scrolls, the written spells were buried with the de-

59. J. Assmann, “Survey of Egyptian Literature,” ABD, 2:384-85; M. Heerma van

Voss, “Totenbuch,” in Lexikon der Agyptologie, 6:641-43; C. Lalouette, Textes sacrés et
textes profanes de l'ancienne Egypte, Connaissance de |'Orient 54, 63 ({Paris]: Gallimard,
1984), 1:270-76; M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, 3 vols.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973-80), 2:117-32; McCarter, Ancient Inscrip-
tions, 59-60; and G. Rachet, Dictionnaire de la civilisation égyptienne, References
Larousse: Histoire (Paris: Larousse, 1992), 167.
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 55

ceased. Formulas abounded for the dead to receive gifts of drink, food,
and fresh air, and to defend against crocodiles and monsters that pop-
ulated the netherworld.
At the beginning of the New Kingdom, the Book of the Dead was still
in process of formation. Drawing heavily at first on traditional materi-
als, it was the direct successor of the Middle Kingdom’s Coffin Texts,
which in turn descended from the Old Kingdom’s Pyramid Texts. The
collection achieved its definitive, more strictly canonized shape in the
Saite period (Twenty-sixth Dynasty, 664-525 B.c.), when all of its
roughly two hundred spells were put into a set sequence of “chapters.”
Anybody could purchase a mass-produced copy, the prospective
owner's name needing merely to be inserted into the ready-made scroll.
The majority of ancient Egyptians appear to have clung to the hope
of a bodily afterlife and to a reliance on magic as the means to achieve
it. Yet the Book of the Dead required the deceased person, upon reach-
ing the Hall of the Two Truths, to declare innocence before Osiris and
other assembled deities. In a so-called Negative Confession, the de-
parted human being had to deliver a long and conventional recitation
of sins not committed in order to pass the judgment of the gods.

Bubastite Portal
This hieroglyphic inscription primarily lists places Shoshenq I (945-
924 B.c.) conquered in Palestine.®° Most scholars believe the campaign
concerns what 1 Kings 14:25-26 and 2 Chronicles 12:2—9 mention as an
invasion by “Shishak.” The Bible actually speaks about an invasion of
only the fortified cities of Judah. Indeed, judging from the Bubastite
Portal list, Jerusalem seems to have been Shoshenq’s main initial tar-
get. On the way his army marched through Gaza to Gezer and then Aija-
lon and Gibeon—where presumably King Rehoboam of Judah paid the
heavy tribute to Shishak. This act of submission evidently persuaded
the pharaoh to spare the southern kingdom and turn northward. Many
prominent cities of Jeroboam I’s kingdom of Israel were enumerated on
the doorway, while few principal towns of Judah were. We are left to
wonder why Shoshengq so readily attacked his former protégé Jero-
boam, who had once fled for Egypt subsequent to leading an abortive
rebellion against Solomon.

Elephantine Papyri
During the fifth century B.c., the island of Elephantine in the Nile River
housed a Jewish military colony in the service of the Persian occupation

60. Aharoni, Macmillan Bible Atlas, 91-92; and McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 56-57.
56 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

to guard against incursions from the south.°! This colony's archives

comprise for the most part Aramaic contracts and letters, which shed
important light on its practices and customs.
The so-called Passover papyrus from a certain Hananiah instructed
the colony’s leader, Jedaniah, on the precise observance of Passover or
Unleavened Bread. (Perhaps we should identify Hananiah with Hanani,
brother of the scriptural Nehemiah.) But we can only guess whether the
letter may have been sent, for instance, to establish a fixed date for Un-
leavened Bread or to bring Elephantine’s Passover ceremonies into line
with Jerusalem’s. The reason cannot have been to introduce the Pass-
over celebration to Elephantine, since several ostraca dating half a cen-
tury earlier mentioned that festival.
At Elephantine, members of the colony had built a temple in honor
of Yahu (an abbreviated form of Yahweh) under the Egyptian pha-
raohs, before the Persian conqueror Cambyses entered Egypt in 525.
This temple was destroyed around 410. One of the papyrus letters
addressed the governor of Judea (with a copy to the sons of the gover-
nor of Samaria) for permission to rebuild the temple and reinstitute
sacrifice.

Execration Texts
The Egyptian state practiced the formal cursing of people who were
deemed undesirable and who lay outside direct Egyptian control.®”
The rite involved either symbolizing the enemy in a clay, stone, or
wood representation (whether inscribed or uninscribed) or else writ-
ing the enemy’s name on a pottery vessel. A curse formula was then
pronounced and the object deliberately smashed. A major collection
of bowls dates from the middle or end of the Twelfth Dynasty (1991-
1783 B.c.) under Senusert III or Amenemhet III and IV. A significant
lot of figurines dates about a generation or two after the bowls, that
is, to the end of the Twelfth Dynasty or the beginning of the Thirteenth
(1783-ca. 1640).
Two or three personal names are often associated with the same
place-name on the bowls. By contrast the figurines almost invariably
record one chieftain per place. It has been argued that the bowls indi-
cate a societal stage when each individual district was partitioned
among a number of clan leaders in a nonsettled condition, while the fig-
urines reveal a setting when each individual town was paired with a sin-

61. Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic, 53-70; McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 125-27; B.

Porten, “Elephantine Papyri,” ABD, 2:445-55; and Soggin, Introduction, 564-67.
62. McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 42-43; and D. B. Redford, “Execration and Exe-
cration Texts,” ABD, 2:681-82.
Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament 57

gle prince in a situation of increasing urbanization. This could reflect a

Middle Bronze Age transition in Canaan and Syria from a population
largely leading a nomadic existence or living in unwalled villages to a
population beginning to cluster in well-defined cities.

Merenptah Stela
In 1220 B.c. an army of Libyans marched into the Delta of Egypt from
the western desert.°* The Egyptian pharaoh Merenptah attacked and
defeated the foe and drove them out of his country. To commemorate
this accomplishment he commissioned the composition of a victory
poem. The hieroglyphic text’s final pair of lines describe what appears
to have been a separate battle against western Asian enemies, including
Israel. The reference to Israel is the only occurrence of the name in
Egyptian literature and is the earliest known mention from any ancient
Near Eastern source. “Israel” here precedes a compound determinative
that depicts a foreign people. (Determinatives were added to words to
indicate the class or category to which they belonged.) Such a writing
suggests that in the late thirteenth century Israel had developed a spe-
cific identity as a people but might not as yet have become a fixed po-
litical entity or state.

Sea Peoples Inscriptions

The group of persons designated “Sea Peoples” by modern historians
seems to have come originally from the Aegean Islands as well as Ana-
tolia.°* Those of this group lived the life of pirates, raiding and plun-
dering coastal towns, or of mercenaries, serving in the region’s armed
conflicts. Two separate records refer to an encounter between Rame-
ses III and the Sea Peoples during the first quarter of the twelfth cen-
tury B.c. The account of his eighth regnal year described the advance
toward his realm of a Sea People alliance—a confederation of Philis-
tines, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh. He boasted of halting
and defeating the coalition and repelling it away from the Egyptian
borders. The second record was found in a historical epilogue to a doc-
ument that was composed shortly after Rameses’ death to recount his
benefactions and achievements. A portion of this papyrus recites his
victory over the Sea Peoples: Denyen, Tjeker, Philistines, Sherden, and
Weshesh.

63. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2:73-78; and McCarter, Ancient Inscrip-
tions, 48-50.
64. McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 53-54; and R. Stadelmann, “Seevélker,” Lexikon
der Agyptologie, 5:814-22.
58 Epigraphic Light on the Old Testament

Shabaka Stone
This stone was inscribed in approximately 710 B.c. at the behest of
Egypt’s King Shabaka from the Twenty-fifth or Kushite Dynasty.® An
introductory passage alleges that Shabaka had the work copied from a
much earlier manuscript, which was originally written on some perish-
able material like leather, papyrus, or wood, and which consequently
was now “worm-eaten.” Egyptologists divide over whether to date the
composition as authentic to the Old Kingdom or to the Twenty-fifth
Dynasty.
In either case, the text promotes the new or renewed status of Mem-
phis as the Egyptian capital city and the supremacy of its patron deity
Ptah as the cosmic creator. Ptah is given priority over the sun god Re,
who created the world according to previous traditions. Although an-
cient Egypt usually described creation in physical terms—especially on
the model of sexual procreation—Ptah here creates alone and through
his thoughts and words. Scholars have compared the method with that
ascribed to the God of Israel in Genesis 1.

Tale of Two Brothers

The papyrus containing this tale was written during the late Nineteenth
Dynasty (1307-1196 B.c.), although at least the kernel of the story is
older by a millennium.® It bears remarkable resemblance to the bibli-
cal episode of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39. The first half of
the story finds Bata living within the household of his elder brother
Anubis. One day the young Bata, a herder, helped Anubis, a farmer, to
sow the latter’s fields. When Anubis sent Bata back home to retrieve
more seed, the former’s wife tried in vain to seduce Bata. Feeling
spurned, she slandered him that evening before her husband. Anubis
became enraged and Bata was forced to flee. Very soon, however, the
truth came out, and the brothers were reconciled. In the second part of
the story the pharaoh made Bata crown prince of all Egypt.

65. Lalouette, Textes, 225-30; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 1:51-57, 3:5;
McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 58-59; and F. T. Miosi, “Memphite Theology,” ABD,
4:691-92.
66. Assmann, ABD, 2:381; Lalouette, Textes, 2161-72; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian
Literature, 2:203-11; and McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions, 48.
Archaeological Light
on the Old Testament

Mark W. Chavalas and Murray R. Adamthwaite

Syro-Mesopotamia
The past generation of archaeological research in Syria and Iraq (an-
cient Syro-Mesopotamia) has offered a great deal of background infor-
mation for furthering our knowledge of Old Testament history, reli-
gion, and culture.
With the onset of the Gulf War, however, archaeological research in
Iraq was interrupted: sites were bombed, museums looted, thousands
of artifacts plundered, and clandestine digs abounded. Moreover, the
social conditions in Iraq today do not allow for the resumption of work
any time soon. This has caused scholars of ancient Iraq either to leave
for more profitable areas to work (e.g., Turkey, Cyprus, or Syria) or to
pause and reflect on the past years of archaeological research in Iraq.
In the years immediately preceding the war, there had been a shift in
research emphasis in Iraq. While many long-term projects continued,
others were either begun or resumed at Warka, Abu Salabikh, Isin,
Larsa, Nineveh, Nimrud, Kar Tukulti-Ninurta, Kish, Jemdet Nasr, and
Nippur.! Because of the impending dam projects in Iraq, the State An-
tiquities Organization mounted a massive campaign of rescue opera-

The section on Syro-Mesopotamia was written by Mark W. Chavalas; that on Egypt

and Palestine was written by Murray R. Adamthwaite.
1. For a general survey, see M.-T. Barrelet, ed., L’Archéologie de I’Iraq du début de
l’Epoque Néolithique a 333 avant notre ére: Perspectives et limites de l’interpretation anthro-
pologique des documents (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scienti-
fique, 1980).

Sy
60 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

tions in various regions of Iraq, including the Hamrin basin, the Ha-
ditha Dam project, and the Eski Mosul Dam region (now called the
Saddam Dam Salvage Project).
The situation in Syria has been vastly different. Compared to Iraq,
Syria had not been the recipient of much archaeological investigation
until the past generation. There are now, however, over sixty archaeo-
logical expeditions to Syria, most of which are concerned with periods
that shed light on the Old Testament.
Like Iraq, the last generation of research in Syria has witnessed nu-
merous salvage projects in areas threatened by modern dam construc-
tion and other development projects, as well as numerous major projects
that have revolutionized our understanding of the region. The Tishreen
Dam project has probed many sites, collected environmental informa-
tion, and has chosen some specific sites in which to do salvage opera-
tions. Since over two dozen sites in the Khabur basin in northern Syria
are imperiled by dams, the Syrian government has assembled an inter-
national team to study the environmental setting of the Khabur plains.
Although they are separate because of modern political affiliations,
I will henceforth combine the treatment of the archaeological research
of Syria and Iraq. This survey is not exhaustive but emphasizes archae-
ological work of particular importance and relevance to developing a
greater understanding of the background of the biblical world. Each
chronological period will be treated separately, beginning with the
Neolithic period and ending with the Iron Age.

Neolithic Period (ca. 8000-4000 B.c.)

Archaeological research in the past generation has shown that civiliza-
tion in the early Neolithic period in the Near East (before the Halaf pe-
riod, ca. 5200 B.c.) was far more widespread than previously thought.
Not only did it flourish in the Levant, but from a series of chance dis-
coveries and salvage operations there is now massive evidence of a
widespread and uniform material culture (in terms of ceramics and
lithics) from the Mediterranean coast to eastern Syria and northern
Iraq. A Soviet team has investigated the Sinjar area (about 60 km. north
of Mosul in northern Iraq), primarily at the site of Maghzaliyah, finding
obsidian blades and other cultural material not similar to any else

2. See Researches on the Antiquities of Saddam Dam Basin Project and Other Re-
searches (Baghdad: State Organization of Antiquities and Heritage, 1986); and M. Roaf,
“A Report on the Work of the British Archaeological Expedition in the Eski Mosul Dam
Salvage Project,” Sumer 39 (1980): 68-87.
3. See H. Weiss, “Archaeology in Syria,” AJA 95 (1991): 683-740; AJA 98 (1994): 101-
58; and AJA 101 (1997): 97-149.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 61

found in Iraq.’ But this is not an isolated case, since there have been a
large number of international teams in the Eski Mosul Dam Project re-
gion, finding material similar to that of the Natufian period in the
southern Levant.° Many of the newly excavated sites in the Sinjar re-
gion in particular and in northern Iraq in general have shown new evi-
dence for the beginning of agriculture and the transition to sedentary
life. This has also been evidenced at the sites of Umm Dabagiyah and
Tell es-Sawwan.° Syria likewise was a significant cultural force in the
prehistoric Neolithic period with major centers of occupation in the
Khabur and Balikh regions, both of which have been systematically
surveyed, showing evidence of Neolithic levels at Tell Abu Hureyra, Tell
Mureybit, and Tell Aswad, among others.’ The Khabur basin project in
particular has found innovations in agricultural technology, from the
development of new cereals and livestock to the use of animal-drawn
plows and new storage techniques.
The Halaf period (ca. 5200-4800 B.c.) has also been better understood
because of the last generation of work in Syro-Mesopotamia. Because of
the work at the mounds of Yarim Tepe, we can now perceive what ap-
pears to be a sudden spread of Halaf material culture into northern
Syria, Iraq, and southern Turkey, much like that of the preceding peri-
ods.® A recent survey in the upper Balikh Valley in Syria has exposed a
number of small Halaf period sites (but only a few larger permanent set-
tlements, e.g., Tell Sabi Abyad), which have helped further our under-
standing of the origins of the Halaf culture.? Once thought to have orig-
inated in the later Ubaid period, seals—the earliest in Syria—have been

4. N. Bader, Earliest Cultivators in Northern Mesoptamia: The Investigations of Soviet

Archeological Expedition in Iraq at Settlements Tell Magzaliya, Tell Sotto, Kiiltepe (Moscow:
Nauka, 1989).
5. J. Huot et al., eds., Préhistoire de la Mésopotamie: La Mésopotamie préhistorique et
l'exploration recente du Djebel Hamrin (Paris: Editions recherche sur les civilisations,
1987); and J. Oates, “The Background and Development of Early Farming Communities
in Mesopotamia and the Zagros,” Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 39 (1973): 147-81.
6. D. Kirkbride, “Umm Dabagiyah,” in Fifty Years of Mesopotamian Discovery, ed. J.
Curtis (London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1982), 11-21. C. Breniquet, “Tell
es-Sawwan 1988-1989: Comte rendu des fouilles menées par la DAFIO,” Orient Express
1.1 (1991): 7-8.
7. Fora general description of the prehistoric period in Syria, see A. Moore, “The Pre-
history of Syria,” BASOR 270 (1988): 3-12.
8. N. Merpert and R. Munachey, “The Earliest Levels at Yarim Tepe I and Yarim Tepe
Il in Northern Iraq,” Jraq 49 (1987): 1-37. Arpachiyah in northern Iraq was also excavated
by I. Hijara; see idem et al., “Arpachiyah 1976,” Iraq 42 (1980): 131-54. See also N. Yoffee
and J. J. Clark, eds., Early Stages in the Evolution of Mesopotamian Civilization: Soviet Ex-
cavations in Northern Iraq (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993).
9. P. Akkermans, Excavations at Tell Sabi Abyad (Oxford: British Archaeological Re-
ports, 1989).
62 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

found at Sabi Abyad. A number of small sites (such as Khirbet Garsour)

have also been studied in the north Jezira in Iraq.'° The Halaf cultures
must have employed methods of administration and agriculture that did
not include many large settlements.'! Theories now abound that the
Halaf period was not an intrusion but an integral part of the Near East.
The southern portion of Iraq was until recently considered a late-
comer to sedentary life, as no permanent settlements were known be-
fore the Ubaid period (ca. 5000 B.c.) at Eridu. But research on village
sites such as Tell el-‘Ouelli (about 3 km. from Larsa) has pushed back
the origins of permanent settlements in the south. According to the ex-
cavators, this small site exhibited an apparently egalitarian society and
little foreign trade.'* ‘Ouelli displays fully developed agriculture and ir-
rigation techniques without local antecedents. Furthermore, the water
table at ‘Ouelli did not allow the excavators to uncover the earliest levels
of the site. The work at ‘Ouelli shows that the succeeding Ubaid period
did not exist without precedent but was a logical continuation of this
earlier material culture. We now know that the Ubaid culture of south-
ern Iraq was the first to expand into the north and into the Syrian Eu-
phrates region.!* Various Syrian sites such as Tell Brak, Tell Leilan, Tell
Hammam al-Turkman, Zaidan, Carchemish, Samsat, a number of the
mounds on the plain of Antioch, and Hama all have Ubaid material re-
mains. In fact, an entire ceramic sequence from the Halaf to Ubaid pe-
riods can be seen in Syria from Halula.'*

Uruk Period (ca. 4000-3000 B.c.)

Massive urbanization began in the Uruk period in southern Iraq. Re-
cent archaeological excavations and surveys in Syria and northern Iraq
(and as far away as Turkey) have given us a chance to explore a number
of questions about the Uruk expansion and colonization into outlying
areas.!> Since lower Mesopotamia lacked the natural resources to sus-

10. T. Wilkinson, “The Development of Settlement in North Jezira between the Sev-
enth and First Millennia B.c.,” Iraq 52 (1990): 49-62.
11. S. Campbell, “The Halaf Period in Iraq: Old Sites and New,” BA 55 (1992): 182-87.
12. J. Huot et al., “Ubadian Village of Lower Mesopotamia: Permanence and Evolution
from Ubaid 0 to Ubaid 4 as Seen from Tell el Oueilli,” in Upon This Foundation: The Ubaid
Reconsidered, ed. E. Henrickson and I. Thuesen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum
Press, 1989), 19-42; and J. Huot, “The First Farmers at Oueilli,” BA 55 (1992): 188-95.
13. J. Oates, “Ubaid Mesopotamia Reconsidered,” in The Hilly Flanks and Beyond: Es-
says in the Prehistory of Southwestern Asia Presented to Robert J. Braidwood, ed. T. C.
Young et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 251-81; and I. Thuesen, “Dif-
fusion of Ubaid Pottery into Western Asia,” in Upon This Foundation, 419-40.
14. M. Molist in H. Weiss, AJA 98 (1994): 105-6.
15. See G. Algaze, The Uruk World System: The Dynamics of Expansion of Early Meso-
potamian Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 63

tain its newly formed complex social system, it has been posited that
the inhabitants had to import them from the periphery. Recent excava-
tions show a loosely integrated supraregional interaction system using
an informal mode of imperial domination. This was accomplished by
the establishment of a network of strategically located enclaves and
garrisons. The Uruk “states” appear to have had direct control of the Su-
siana plain and Upper Tigris, and intensified trade contacts in other ar-
eas. It has also been postulated that there may have been periodic mil-
itary expeditions against areas resistant to trade.'® In the north only a
small number of urban-sized enclaves were found, surrounded by a
cluster of dependent villages. The presence of urbanized sites with an
Uruk assemblage represents not a break in the cultural sequence but a
select infringement into the environment of the indigenous material
cultures. The enclaves are found along the Euphrates (Tell Habuba Ka-
bira, Jebel Aruda, Carchemish, and Samsat), the Khabur (Tell Brak),
and Nineveh along the Tigris.'!’ These settlements were large and
heavily fortified. Their locations suggest that the Uruk polities desired
to facilitate downstream commerce. Smaller stations also existed along
the waterways and were links between large urban enclaves. Although
many of the enclaves were fortified, there does not appear to be evi-
dence of an attempt to control] the hinterland. Rather, a take-over of
strategic locations, tapping into preexisting trade networks, causes
some to call this an informal empire.!®
This trading relationship came to an abrupt halt in the succeeding
Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3000 B.c.) but had a profound impact on the so-
ciopolitical and economic evolution of the indigenous cultures in Syria
in particular. There was evidence of institutional change, with the copy-
ing of Uruk architecture, artifacts, ceramics, and sealing practices at
many sites in the outlying areas. The Uruk expansion may have acted
as a catalyst to foster growth to complexity and independent sociopolit-
ical systems across northern Iraq and Syria.

Early Bronze (3000-2 100 B.c.)

The Early Bronze Age represents the rise of city-states in the southern
part of Iraq, or Sumer. Although there has been ongoing work at Abu
Salabikh, and a reconsideration of work at Fara (ancient Shurrupak)

16. M. Larsen, “The Tradition of Empire in Mesopotamia,” in Power and Propaganda:

A Symposium on Empires, ed. M. Larsen (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1979), 97.
17. See D. Siirenhagen, “The Dry Farming Belt: The Uruk Period and Subsequent De-
velopments,” in The Origins of Cities in Dry-Farming Syria and Mesopotamia in the Third
Millennium B.c., ed. H. Weiss (Guilford: Four Quarters, 1986), 7-44.
18. G. Algaze, “The Uruk Expansion: Cross-Cultural Expansion in Early Mesopota-
mian Civilization,” Current Anthropology 30 (1989): 571-608.
64 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

and Kish,!? the recent large-scale excavations at al-Hiba (ancient La-

gash) have arguably helped the most to shed light on the Early Dynastic
(or Early Bronze) period of Mesopotamia (ca. 2900-2300 B.c.). One in-
teresting feature there is the Ibgal temple, which has an oval exterior,
showing that the oval building type found at Khafaje was not as un-
usual as once thought.”° The earliest brewery yet found was at Lagash,
dating to about 2500 s.c. Archaeological research has shown that much
of the city of Lagash was abandoned in the late Early Dynastic period,
only to be rebuilt by Gudea in the twenty-second century B.c.
In the Early Bronze Age, the indigenous cultures in northern Iraq
and Syria became more powerful, and southern Mesopotamian inter-
ference did not occur again for at least five hundred years. Whereas the
Uruk culture was able to penetrate the area relatively easily, the Sume-
rian and Sargonic kings were required to exercise force to control local
rulers and walled towns,”! showing that the south was no longer unique
in its incipient urbanism.”? A new type of settlement in dry-farming re-
gions began to foster a new relationship with southern Mesopotamia.
Both the Khabur region (Tell Hamoukar, Tell Leilan, Tell Mozan, Tell
Brak, and Tell Chuera) and the plains of Aleppo in coastal Syria (Byb-
los, Homs, Ebla, and Qatna on the Euphrates) permitted the extensive
cultivation of wheat and barley without major irrigation, relying in-
stead on dry farming and extensive raising of sheep and goat herds.”3
Moreover, Akkadian period remains have been found in the Hamrin
basin in northern Iraq at several sites.7+ The political and economic or-
ganization of this region in the first half of the millennium is presently
unknown, but probably revolved around small towns, without any cen-
tral control.?°
It is not clear whether these newly created walled towns were initi-
ated by the southerners or were autonomous.”° One of these was Tell

19. J. N. Postgate, Abu Salabikh Excavations, vol. 1, The West Mound Surface Clear-
ance (London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1983); H. P. Martin, Fara: A Recon-
struction of the Ancient City of Shuruppak (Birmingham: Chris Martin, 1988); P. R. S.
Moorey, Kish Excavations, 1923-1933 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978).
20. D. Hansen, “Royal Building Activity at Sumerian Lagash in the Early Dynastic Pe-
riod,” BA 55 (1992): 206-12.
21. Algaze, “The Uruk Expansion,” Current Anthropology 30 (1989): 601.
22. See I. Gelb, “Mari and the Kish Civilization,” in Mari in Retrospect, ed. G. Young
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 122.
23. H. Weiss, “Introduction: The Origins of Cities in Dry-Farming Syria and Mesopo-
tamia in the Third Millennium B.c.,” in Origins ofCities, 1-6.
24. D. Hansen, “A Reevaluation of the Akkad Period in the Diyala Region on the Basis
of Excavations from Nippur and in the Hamrin,” AJA 86 (1982): 531-38.
25. H. Weiss, “Tell Leilan and Shubat Enlil,” MARI 4 (1985): 269.
26. H. Weiss in Origins of Cities, 2.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 65

Mardikh (ancient Ebla) in northwest Syria, the only site in that region
that showed signs of sophistication in urbanization equal to any con-
temporary site in the south.”’ The city displayed cultural autonomy but
historical continuity from earlier periods; it also had numerous similar-
ities with Sumer, including the employment of the cuneiform script.
Like Ebla, Tell Hariri (ancient Mari) on the Euphrates exhibited no-
table cultural independence from the Sumerian south. Recent excava-
tions have shown that the city may have been founded either at the end
of the Early Dynastic I or at the beginning of the Early Dynastic II pe-
riod.*® The excavators may have located a dike in the hills south of the
mound, a branching canal that traversed the city, and a number of
canal feeders, facilitating the production of wheat. The city had a large
wall, three rebuildings of the Ishtar temple, and a large Sargonic palace.
Graves reminiscent of the Ur III period tombs have been uncovered in
a small structure of the same period (ca. 2100 B.c.).
North of Mari on the Euphrates River is the site of Tell Ashara (an-
cient Terqa), which had a massive defensive system rivaling any other
site of this period.’? Further north in the Middle Euphrates region there
is also evidence of occupation in the late third millennium B.c. at Selen-
kahiye and Tell Hadidi.*° Still further north, the Tishreen Dam salvage
project just south of Carchemish on the Euphrates near the Turkish
border has revealed occupation in that area, showing an increase in the
number of settlements in the second half of the third millennium B.c.,
notably Tell es-Sweyhat.*!
Much has also been learned from investigations in the Syrian
Khabur region about the Hurrians, a major ethnic group firmly rooted
in the Mesopotamian tradition.** One of these Hurrian sites was Tell

27. General works concerning Ebla include P. Matthiae, Ebla: An Empire Rediscovered,
trans. C. Holme (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981); G. Pettinato, The Archives of Ebla: An
Empire Rediscovered in Clay (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981); idem, Ebla: A New Look
at History, trans. C. F. Richardson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
28. The most recent excavation reports can be found in MARI 1-6 (1982-90), and J.
Margueron in Weiss, AJA 98 (1994): 130-31.
29. G. Buccellati et al., Zerga Preliminary Reports 10: Introduction and the Strati-
graphic Record (Malibu: Undena, 1979), 42-83.
30. M. van Loon, “1974 and 1975 Preliminary Reports of the Excavations at Selen-
kahiye near Meskene, Syria,” in Archeological Reports from the Tabga Dam Project—
Euphrates Valley, Syria, ed. D. N. Freedman, 44 (Cambridge: ASOR, 1979), 97-113; R.
Dornemann, “Tell Hadidi: A Millennium of Bronze Age City Occupation,” in ibid., 113-
51; idem, “Tell Hadidi: One Bronze Age Site among Many in the Tabqa Dam Salvage
Area,” BASOR 270 (1988): 13-42.
31. T. McClellan et al. in H. Weiss, AJA 95 (1991): 700-707; on Tell es-Sweyhat see T.
McClellan and R. Zettler in H. Weiss, AJA 98 (1994): 139-42.
32. See G. Wilhelm, The Hurrians, trans. J. Barnes (Warminster: Aris & Phillips,
1989).
66 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

Chuera, which had similarities with the Sumerian south.*? It showed

evidence of the large stone architecture of this period, as well as a well-
defined upper and lower citadel, typical of many of the northern Syr-
ian centers. Another large site excavated in this region is Tell Mozan
(ancient Urkesh),?4 which has a city wall and one of the largest bent-
axis temple structures in this period, located on the high mound. The
structure has walls 1.6 meters thick, in addition to a statue of a lion in
a building interpreted as a cella. Tell Brak in this period had a number
of large Akkadian period buildings and a unique ceramic sequence
from the Uruk to Akkadian periods.*° Lastly, the Middle Khabur
Drainage Project has investigated the social and economic organiza-
tion of small rural communities in this period, particularly the site of
Raqai.*°
Near the border of Iraq on the Khabur plains of Syria is Tell
Leilan.?’ There, the lower town shows evidence of third- and second-
millennium B.c. setthements with a number of domestic units, drain-
filled alleys, and planned streets.*® The lower town appears to have
been built about 2600-2400 B.c., and the excavators have speculated
that a profound social transformation occurred soon after, changing
Tell Leilan into a class-based society. The excavators have noticed that
many walled cities of the type at Tell Leilan were constructed at this
time.’ It also has been speculated that these cities were not formed
through intimate contact with the southern centralized states (i.e.,
Sargonic Akkad), but were the result of an indigenous and autono-
mous process. The urbanization in this area may have caused the
southern states to move into the area during the Sargonic period.*°
Many of these walled towns were in fact larger than their southern
counterparts.

33. W. Orthmann, “The Origin of Tell Chuera,” in The Origins of Cities, 69.
34. G. Buccellati and M. Kelly-Buccellati, Mozan 1: The Soundings of the First Two
Seasons (Malibu: Undena, 1988); idem, “Urkesh: The First Hurrian Capital,” BA 60
(1997): 77-96.
35. D. Oates and J. Oates, “Akkadian Buildings at Tell Brak,” Irag 51 (1989): 193-211;
idem, “Excavations at Tell Brak, 1990-1991,” Iraq 53 (1991): 127-46.
36. H. Curvers and G. Schwartz, “Excavations at Tell al-Raqa?i: A Small Rural Site of
Early Northern Mesopotamia,” AJA 94 (1990): 3-23.
37. H. Weiss, “Tell Leilan on the Habur Plains of Syria,” BA 48 (1985): 5-35; and H.
Weiss et al., “1985 Excavations at Tell Leilan, Syria,” AJA 94 (1990): 529-82.
38. H. Weiss, “Tell Leilan 1989: New Data for Mid-Third Millennium Urbanization
and State Formation,” MDOG 122 (1990): 193-218.
39. H. Weiss, “The Origins of Tell Leilan and the Conquest of Space in Third Millen-
nium Mesopotamia,” in Origins of Cities, 83.
40. H. Weiss, “Third Millennium Urbanization: A Perspective from Tell Leilan,” in Tall
al-Hamidiya, ed. S. Eichler et al., OBO Series Archaeologica 4.6 (Freiburg: Universitits-
verlag, 1990), 2:163.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 67

Middle Bronze (2100-1600 s.c.)

Although excavations continued at the sites of Isin, Larsa, and Tell ed-
Der,*’ a number of moderately sized sites from the Middle Bronze Age
(ca. 2100-1600 B.c.) in both Syria and Iraq have been excavated in the
past generation, and have increased our overall understanding of the pu-
tative period of the biblical patriarchs. One of these is Mashkan-Shapir
in the northernmost part of the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates.
The city was a major trade center and the residence of the last Larsa
kings. Though its heyday was brief, whole building plans have been un-
covered that have helped us to understand regional urbanism and town
planning.*?
Khirbit ed-Diniye (ancient Haradum, 90 km. southeast of Mari, situ-
ated on the Iraqi portion of the Middle Euphrates) was a new river
town, apparently founded in the eighteenth century B.c. (after the fall of
Mari) as a frontier province of Babylon and lasting for over a century.
The Délégation Archéologique Francaise en Iraq performed a vast se-
ries of salvage projects at the site for six seasons in the 1980s.*? Al-
though the site of Haradum is very small, it had town wall fortifica-
tions. It was a planned urban center, exhibiting a very regular town
layout, with straight streets connecting at right angles. The regularity
of the city plan is a rare discovery in Syro-Mesopotamia, permitting the
student a chance to view a very elaborate urban plan.
In this period (named the Old Syrian period in Syria) Syria contin-
ued to have close cultural relations with the Mesopotamian south. Ex-
cavations were made at a number of major political centers such as
Shubat-Enlil (Tell Leilan),*4 a major Assyrian center at this time, ruled
by Shamshi-Adad I (1814-1781 B.c.). It is evident that during his reign
the upper Khabur triangle emerged for the first time as a dominant
power. The area had not previously been integrated into a unified polit-
ical system. Soon after his reign, however, the area reverted back to

41. E.g., B. Hrouda, ed., Isin-ISan Bahriyat, vols. 1-2 (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1977-81); J. Huot, ed., Larsa et Ouelli, travaux de 1978-
1981 (Paris: Editions recherche sur les civilisations, 1983); L. de Meyer, ed., Tell ed-Der, I-
IV (Louvain: Peeters, 1977-84).
42. E. C. Stone and P. Zimansky, “Mashkan-shapir and the Anatomy of an Old Baby-
lonian City,’ BA 55 (1992): 212-18.
43. C. Kepinski-LeComte et al., Haradum I: Une ville nouvelle sur Le Moyen-Euphrate
(XVILe-XVIle siécles av. J.-C.) (Paris: Editions recherche sur les civilisations, 1992).
44. The identification of Tell Leilan as Shubat-Enlil is generally accepted; see D.
Charpin, “Subat-Enlil et le pays d’Apum,” MARI 4 (1985): 129-40; H. Weiss, “Tell Leilan
and Shubat Enlil,” MARI 4 (1985): 269-92; and R. Whiting, “Tell Leilan/Subat-Enlil:
Chronological Problems and Perspectives,” in Tall al-Hamidiya, 2:167-218.
68 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

small, relatively independent and unintegrated city-states, much like

the political polities of the third millennium B.c.*°
About 50 km. north of Mari was Terga, which gained importance
later in this period.*® There is a body of architectural documentation (a
temple complex, an administrative complex, and private houses) com-
ing from this site dated to the so-called dark age between the fall of Mari
(ca. 1760 B.c.) and that of Babylon (ca. 1595 B.c.). At this time, Terga
was most likely the capital of the kingdom of Khana on the Middle Eu-
phrates. Moreover, Terga was a major Amorite center in this period and
thus sheds light on the overall cultural environment of the patriarchs.

Late Bronze (1600-1200 B.c.)

New research has provided evidence that much of southern Mesopota-
mia was abandoned at the end of the eighteenth century for about four
centuries. This was a long period of deurbanization, possibly resulting
in part from a change in the course of the Euphrates.*’ Recent work at
the site of Dilbat in central Iraq, however, has closed this intellectual
gap in knowledge.
The situation in Syria in this period was quite different. The region
suffered domination from both Egypt and Anatolia (Hittites), and en-
dured a major Hurrian dynasty in the Khabur region (Mitanni), in ad-
dition to nomadic pressure and sedentarization, especially from the
Arameans. Arising out of the ruins of Babylon, the Hurrians (kingdom
of Mitanni) reasserted themselves in the Khabur region, uniting Syria
for the first time since Shamshi-Adad I.
One of the most influential Syrian cities during this period was
Ugarit, well known in the field of biblical studies. It was a major trading
post on the Mediterranean coast that was tributary to Hatti. The art and
architecture of this site have proved to differ from other earlier Syrian
excavations, providing evidence of an independent cultural tradition.
Current hydrographic surveys show that the town water at Ugarit evi-
dently came from two small rivers encircling the mound.*® Further-
more, remains of a stone mound have been discovered and have been
interpreted as functioning as a river dam. This research enabled ar-
chaeologists to locate the main entrance to the town.4?

45. Fora survey of the sites in the Khabur region in this period, see D. Oates, “Walled
Cities in Northern Mesopotamia in the Mari Period,” MARI 4 (1985): 585-94.
46. Fora general survey, see M. Chavalas, “Terga on the Euphrates,” BA 59 (1996): 90—
103; G. Buccellati, “The Kingdom and Period of Khana,” BASOR 270 (1988): 43-61.
47. J. Armstrong, “West of Edin: Tell al-Deylam and the Babylonian City of Dilbat,”
BA 55 (1992): 219-26.
48. Y. Calvert and B. Geyer, “eau dans l’habitat,” RSO 3 (1987): 129-56.
49. M. Yon, “La ville d’Ougarit au XIIle s. av. J.-C.,” CRAIBL (1985): 705-21; idem, The
City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1998).
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 69

Although much of Syria was under political domination by Hatti in

the latter part of this period, it had many thriving centers other than
Ugarit with independent cultural traditions, such as Emar on the Eu-
phrates. Although there is evidence of Hittite presence at Emar, espe-
cially in regard to architecture,°? there was apparently no influx of Hit-
tite population, and the culture was not deeply affected by their
political and bureaucratic presence.

Early Iron (1 200-600 B.c.)

Excavations have been renewed at Nineveh to understand its neighbor-
hoods, dating to the first millennium B.c., that were overlooked in early
excavations.°! The overall design of the city has now been discerned.
Sennacherib (ca. 705-681 B.c.) recast major components of the land-
scape for a sweeping urban design. The most spectacular portion was
the work at the Halzi Gate, the southernmost port of entry. Here the
last moments of active use were seen before the destruction of 612 B.c.
It appears that the inhabitants took urgent steps to improve the quality
of defense. In the vicinity of the gate were the remains of a number of
people who died violently. Numerous bronze and iron arrowheads
were found, overlapping the skeletons. One is able to speculate anew
about why the allies were able to overcome the defenders in the north.
Defenders were drawn to the north and south gates, while the Khosr
River was flooded. The fall of Nineveh was clearly due to the effects of
flooding.
Early on in the Iron Age Syria was subjected to destruction and frag-
mentation for at least four centuries until the rise of imperial Assyria.
The site of Tell Afis north of Ebla, however, shows political and eco-
nomic stability in this north central economic region when there was a
“dark age” on the coast of Syria.** There was a dramatic increase in the
size of sites in the later Iron Age (ninth century B.c. and onward), best
exhibited by Tell Ahmar.>?
It will doubtless take generations for biblical scholars to digest the
relevant archaeological data from Syro-Mesopotamia that will shed
light on the general geographical and cultural milieu of the Old Testa-
ment. The sheer wealth of information coming from this region affords
many opportunities to better understand the biblical world.

50. G. Beckman, “Hittite Administration in Syria in Light of Texts from Hattusa,

Ugarit, and Emar,” in New Horizons in the Study of Ancient Syria, ed. M. Chavalas and J.
Hayes (Malibu: Undena, 1992), 41-49.
51. D. Stronach and S. Lumsden, “UC Berkeley's Excavations at Nineveh,” BA 55
(1992): 227-33.
52. S. Mazzoni in H. Weiss, AJA 95 (1991): 729-32.
53. G. Bunnens, Tell Ahmar: 1988 Season (Leiden: Brill, 1990).
70 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

Egypt and Palestine

The first biblical mention of Egypt occurs in the account of the patri-
arch Abraham when he went to Egypt to escape a famine and then be-
came embroiled in a cover-up regarding his wife Sarai (Gen. 12:10-20).
It would be hazardous to attempt to identify the king or pharaoh in this
narrative with a king known from either Manetho or the Egyptian
records.*4 For that very reason the incident exemplifies the emphasis
adopted in this chapter: to highlight certain problems in the biblical
text in regard to Egypt that as yet defy solution or at least leave some
loose ends. These problems involve either historical correlations—for
example, the perennial question of the pharaoh of the exodus—or iden-
tification of biblical sites once thought to be settled.
Another issue concerns the relation of the Bible to the archaeology of
Palestine and Egypt, or more particularly the conclusions of certain ar-
chaeologists. For much of this century the Albright school has exercised
considerable influence; some would say Albright has reigned supreme.
In the years since his death in 1971, however, the scene has changed
considerably. Many of his conclusions have either been overthrown or
at least challenged. One example is the old chestnut regarding Abra-
ham’s camels. Albright’s contention that the domestication of the camel
did not take place until about 1100 B.c. was mainly based on the inscrip-
tional evidence of the Broken Obelisk of Tiglath-pileser I (1115-1077
B.c.), now attributed to Ashur-bel-kala, which refers to the breeding of
the Bactrian camel.*> Unfortunately, observes Ripinsky, this school
tended to ignore or explain away the now considerable archaeological
evidence of early domestication.*° In any case, the archaeological axiom
remains that absence of evidence (in this case the inscriptional variety)
is not equivalent to evidence of absence. In regard to the patriarchal
narratives and early Israel, “historical minimalists” such as Redford,
Van Seters, Thompson, Whitelam, and the like have argued against the
older Albright consensus.°’ We indeed live in a post-Albright phase of

54. Manetho, an Egyptian priest of the third century B.c., arranged the history of
Egypt into thirty dynasties. His history remains only in fragments preserved in other an-
cient authors. For a translation see Manetho, trans. and ed. W. G. Waddell, LCL (London:
Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940).
55. A. K. Grayson, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1976), no. 89; idem, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.c. II (858-745 B.c.),
Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1996), 103-4. ‘
56. M. Ripinsky, “Camel Ancestry and Domestication in Egypt and the Sahara,” Ar
chaeology 36.3 (1983): 26.
57. D. B. Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story ofJoseph (Genesis 37-50), VTSup 20
(Leiden: Brill, 1970); idem, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Prince-
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 71

biblical archaeology. I feel forced to accept many of the negative judg-

ments of these scholars on the Albright consensus, but seek to solve
these problems in a different way, in accord with a more positive ap-
proach to the biblical material, particularly in regard to early Israel.
Contrary to possible impressions, the approach to these and other is-
sues is not primarily to engage in “Albright bashing,” which, regrettably,
seems in danger of becoming a fashion. Neither is it to adduce new evi-
dence to buttress conventional theories having their origin with Albright,
but rather to argue that in the light of new evidence conventional ap-
proaches have led to a dead end, and that a new approach is required.
Some problems will have to remain unsolved until further evidence
comes to hand. Other issues do have a solution, or at least the path to one,
provided a different framework is adopted. Accordingly, in this chapter I
concentrate on certain aspects of the Joseph story; the exodus-conquest
problem, particularly in the light of the recent challenge by Redford to its
historicity; and Egyptian-Israelite contacts during the first millennium
B.c. Finally, I examine the location of Palestinian sites, with Gibeah as a
case in point. As to literary matters, the old question of the relation of
Proverbs and the Teaching of Amenemope has received thorough discus-
sion over recent decades, and I refer the reader to those discussions.>®

The Joseph Story: Aspects and Problems

As we introduce this set of narratives we immediately confront a histor-
ical minimalist such as Redford. While his discussion allows for some
authenticity in matters of detail and local color, his main conclusion is
that the narratives belong to and reflect the first millennium B.c. Al-
though Kitchen has replied to him and made some worthwhile points
on the linguistic and local color aspects, he has not addressed the mat-
ter of a precise historical location for Joseph.*? First of all, however,
some comments on the linguistic and local color aspects are in order.

The Episode of the Royal Cupbearer and Royal Baker

At the outset we should note a distinction between the royal butler
(Egyp. wb3 nsw), whose task it was to select wines, and the royal cup-

ton University Press, 1992); J. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1975); T. L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People (Leiden:
Brill, 1992); K. Whitelam, “Recreating the History of Israel,” JSOT 35 (1986): 45-70.
58. See, e.g., J. Ruffle, “The Teaching of Amenemope and Its Connection with the
Book of Proverbs,” TynBul 28 (1977): 29-68, and references.
59. K. A. Kitchen, “Review of Redford, Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph,” OrAnt 12
(1973): 233-42.
(2 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

bearer (Egyp. wdpw nsw), who presented the wine to the king after first
tasting it in his presence.®° Which office is to be understood by the He-
brew terms masqéh melek-misrayim (Gen. 40:1) and sar hammasqim
(40:2) is difficult to specify. Vergote has proposed that the title of the
first officer denotes the royal cupbearer (wdpw); however, Kitchen fa-
vors “butler” (wb3) as the more precise equivalent.®! The royal baker, by
contrast, is an office as yet unidentified in Egyptian literature but that
must have existed. In antiquity all were highly responsible roles. Both
the butler and cupbearer had responsibility for the king’s wine before
the latter drank it. The royal baker’s task would have been to ensure
quality control in baked items, of which there was a wide variety. Cer-
tain Egyptian texts indicate a diverse fare of breads, pastries, fruit
breads, cakes, and the like, particularly as funerary or temple offer-
ings.®* The Harris Papyrus, from the time of Rameses III, itemizes at
least thirty different kinds of baked items in its list of temple offerings.
From the royal food supply there was the constant danger of poison-
ing attempts resulting from palace intrigues. The imprisonment of the
cupbearer and royal baker most likely reflects such an attempt on the
king. Meanwhile, that these two landed in the same prison as Joseph in-
dicates further that the prison was a detention center attached to “the
captain of the (royal) guard” (Sar hattabbahim, i.e., Potiphar) and also
in proximity to the palace.®* These conclusions appear safe and in turn
reinforce the earlier proposal of a palace intrigue. When such intrigues
occurred, Egyptian procedure was to round up all suspects, incarcerate
them, interview each in turn, then charge and sentence (usually execu-
tion) the person(s) believed to be responsible, and reinstate the inno-
cent. By way of illustration, one case is extant of a harem-inspired con-

60. The two are often confused in the literature. See, e.g., E. M. Blaiklock, “Cup-
bearer,” NIDBA, 143. However, see relevant entries in R. O. Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary
of Middle Egyptian (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Griffith Institute, 1976), 58, 73.
61. J. Vergote, Joseph en Egypte: Genése chap. 37-50 4 la lumiére des études égyp-
tologiques récentes (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1959), 33; K. A. Kitchen, “Re-
view of Vergote, Joseph en Egypte,” JEA 47 (1961): 159. Also G. J. Wenham, Genesis 16—
50, WBC (Waco: Word, 1994), 381.
62. As noted in W. A. Ward, “Egyptian Titles in Genesis 39-50,” BSac 114 (1957): 43-45.
63. The Harris Papyrus in J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, 5 vols. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1906-7), 4: §§238, 291.
64. For information on Egyptian prisons, see W. C. Hayes, A Papyrus of the Late
Middle Kingdom in the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum, 1955; re-
printed 1972), 37-42. C. F. Aling (Egypt and Bible History [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981],
37) draws attention to the Great Prison at Thebes, prominent during the Middle King-
dom. He speculates that this may have been the actual prison where Joseph was held,
but the Twelfth Dynasty royal residence was at Itjtawy, in the Faiyum region. See J.
Baines and J. Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Phaidon; New York: Facts on File,
1984), 40.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 73

spiracy to usurp Rameses III in favor of one of his sons.®° In the

investigation, a series of suspects is brought one by one to the “Place of
Examination,” and in turn each is convicted and sentenced or, in the
case of the highborn, invited to commit suicide. Interestingly, several of
the conspirators were palace butlers, and one of the examiners proved
in the end to be a co-conspirator, again a palace butler, Pai-Bes.

The Land of Goshen

The name “Goshen” for the residential region of Jacob’s extended fam-
ily occurs in eleven texts beginning at Genesis 45:10, when Joseph
makes the initial promise to his father of a settlement area, and ending
in the context of the great hailstorm at the time of the exodus, Exodus
9:26. In the Hebrew text it is always referred to as the land or territory
of Goshen, res g6sen, giving the impression of a region. This impres-
sion is reinforced by the reference in Genesis 47:11, wherein the same
region (or so it would appear) is designated as “the land of Rameses”
(bé-eres ramésés). In Egyptian records there is mention of Gsmt, but
this could also be read as Ssmt; thus whether it is a reference to the bib-
lical Goshen remains problematic, since it depends on the reading of
the first biliteral sign.°° Naville long ago argued (contra A. H. Gardiner)
that Gsmt was the correct reading and that m and n can interchange in
Semitic transcriptions.®’
The Septuagint, however, gives a different impression. In both Gen-
esis 45:10 and 46:34 it reads “in the land of Gesem of Arabia (en gé
Gesem Arabias). This reading is at least consistent with the Gsmt of the
Egyptian monuments, if indeed that is the correct reading. Then in
Genesis 46:28, 29 the reading is each time “at the city of Heroes” (kath’
Héroon polin). The latter reference places this city in the land of Rame-
ses (eis gén Ramessé), the region mentioned in Genesis 47:11.
Suspicion that Goshen may have been a city that gave its name to the
surrounding region comes from a fourth-century pilgrim, Egeria: “They
arrived there at the place now known (from the fort there) as Clysma,
and from Clysma we wanted to go on into Goshen to the so-called ‘City

65. ANET; 214-16.

66. In NBD (483) Kitchen dismisses this reference as irrelevant, but in his entry in
ZPEB (2:779) he is more open, citing Montet and Van Seters as supporting the possibility
of this equation (see J. Van Seters, The Hyksos: A New Investigation [New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1966], 146, 148). H. G. Stigers in Theological Wordbook of
the Old Testa-
ment, ed. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, and B. K. Waltke, 2 vols. (Chicago: Moody, 1980),
1:174, is much more definite on the reading Gsmt. W. A. Ward, “Goshen,” ABD, 2:1076, is
more skeptical of the reading, but he does not appear to have studied the detailed argu-
ments of E. Naville, “Geography of the Exodus,” JEA 10 (1924): 28-32.
67. Naville, “Geography of the Exodus,” 28-32.
74 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

of Arabia.’ It gets its name from the region, which is called ‘the land of
Arabia, the land of Goshen.’”®® While Egeria clearly echoes the LXX, just
as surely she was recording local tradition, since she refers to her queries
of the locals regarding biblical sites.°? Another clue in the same vein that
may confirm this is found in Josephus: “[Pharaoh] then permitted [Ja-
cob] to live with his children in Heliopolis, for it was there that the king’s
own shepherds had their pasturage.”’? He seems to equate here the
Héro6n polin of the LXX, as above, with Heliopolis, Egyptian Junu, the
famous center of the worship of Re‘-Atum. This city, at the southern end
of the Delta, is too far south of the region generally recognized as the bib-
lical Goshen. A more likely candidate for the Septuagint’s Hérd0n is
Pithom (modern Tell er-Reteba), according to Thackeray.”!
There is, however, another possibility for Hérd66n. The city Phacusa/
Phakussa is mentioned by Ptolemy the Greek geographer-astronomer
in his Geographica, in which he records that the nome of Arabia (the
twentieth nome) had this city as its capital.’ Phacusa is readily identi-
fiable as modern Fakus, 7 km. south of modern Qantir.’* The latter is
now the accepted site of Pi-Rameses, the Nineteenth Dynasty Rameside
palace, and prior to that the site of the Hyksos capital Avaris.”* In turn,
if we analyze the name Phacusa as Pa-Kes/Kus, an eastern Delta city in
the immediate vicinity of Avaris, it is possible to see there a later version
of the name Goshen, whereby the definite article p? attaches to the
name Kus. The latter in turn may relate to the phonemes g and s of the
LXX Gesem. If the Israelites were based here, then the cities of Pi-
Rameses (Rameses) to the north and Pi-Tum (Pithom) to the east
southeast are in the immediate general area. This concurs with the re-
port of Egeria that “four miles from the city of Arabia [i.e., Goshen] is

68. Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land, trans. and ed. J. Wilkinson, rev. ed. (Jerusalem:
Ariel; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1981), 100-101.
OS), Monel, MO,
70. Jewish Antiquities 2.7.6 §188.
71. H. St. J. Thackeray, Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, Books I-IV, Loeb Classical Li-
brary (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), 243
n. z. Likewise Albright in BASOR 140 (1955): 31 n. 19. The connection suggested there
with the much later Geshem the Arabian (Neh. 6:1, 6) is gratuitous. T. E. Wei, “Pithom,”
ABD, 5:377, sees the Pithom identification as at least a viable option; so also J. W. Wevers,
Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 787.
72. Ptolemy Geographica 1.4.5, 53.
73. Ward, “Goshen,” 1076.
74. See the argument in Van Seters, Hyksos, 127-49; M. Bietak, Avaris and Piramesse
(Oxford, 1986), 271-83; proposed by E. P. Uphill, “Pithom and Raamses: Their Location
and Significance,” JNES 27 (1968): 308-16; J. J. Bimson, Redating the Exodus and Con-
quest, 2d ed., JSOTSup 5 (Sheffield: Almond, 1981), 30-43, esp. 33-40; also Aling, Egypt,
65-69. In recent times Kitchen (ZPEB, 5:14) has also championed this site as that of Pi-
Rameses.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament vie)

Rameses.”’° Here then is a point where ancient versions and authors

may well preserve traditions that provide important clues.

Chronological Setting of Joseph

The determination in more general terms of the time period for the Jo-
seph story depends on the time period of the sojourn in Egypt. Here the
430 years of Exodus 12:40 is conventionally added to the 1275 of the
late-date exodus to yield a time of about 1700..c. for Joseph, that is, the
early Hyksos period. But certain texts would appear to militate against
a Hyksos date. Consider, for example, Genesis 41:14: why would a Hyk-
sos pharaoh require Joseph to shave? It is standard in Egyptian art that
Egyptians are shown as clean shaven, whereas “Asiatics” always have
beards.’° Two chapters later, Genesis 43:32, it is clear that the court is
filled with native Egyptians who wanted a clear demarcation from the
Hebrews, since they abhorred the Asiatic shepherds. This is not consis-
tent with a Hyksos court. Finally, if the pharaoh was a Hyksos mon-
arch, why in Genesis 46:34 would Jacob have to de-emphasize his shep-
herd role to a king who had a similar background, if indeed the
“shepherd-king” tradition is at all accurate? However, all these texts are
consistent with a native Egyptian on the throne; thus Joseph lies out-
side the Hyksos period. Significantly, C. F. Pfeiffer, a late-date exodus
advocate, expresses his discomfort with a Hyksos setting.’”
A much more likely setting is in the Twelfth Dynasty, probably in the
reign of Senusert (Sesostris) III or his successor, Amenemhet III. This
will become apparent in the following section. For the present it can be
noted that the el-Khata’na or Goshen region, as above, abounds in ruins
from the Twelfth Dynasty.’® Meanwhile, it is interesting that Kitchen,
an otherwise late-date advocate, argues that many of the names in the
narrative (e.g., Zaphenath-paneah, Asenath, Potiphera, Gen. 41:45), be-
long to the Middle Kingdom and for the most part not later.’””

Joseph’s Land-Reform Initiatives

The account in Genesis 47:13-26 records the progressive acquisition by
the palace of first the lands, then the livestock, and finally the very persons

75. Egeria’s Travels, 102 n. 15.

76. Cf. the scene from the tomb of User-het depicting Egyptian barbers at work,
ANEP. no. 80.
77. C.F. Pfeiffer, Old Testament History (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973), 52.
78. Atlas of Ancient Egypt, 177-78.
79. K. A. Kitchen, “Genesis 12-50 in the Near Eastern World,” in He Swore an Oath:
Biblical Themes from Genesis 12-50, ed. R. S. Hess, G. J. Wenham, and P. E. Satterthwaite
(Cambridge: Tyndale, 1993), 80-86.
76 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

of the Egyptian peasantry. An operative clause regarding this final phase

of the process is found in Genesis 47:25, where the people admitted to Jo-
seph, “You have saved our lives. . . We shall be Pharaoh’s slaves.” Thus
they sold themselves to the palace in return for the sustenance of life.
Though we do not otherwise know of such a practice in Egypt, it is
known elsewhere in the ancient Near East. Certain Amarna texts refer to
it in Syria-Palestine of the later Eighteenth Dynasty period, the Nippur
texts of the Late Assyrian period likewise attest it, and it is implied in the
Middle Assyrian laws.*° By far the largest number of texts that attest this
practice, however, come from the late Hittite-Middle Assyrian period,
from Emar on the Middle Euphrates. No less than seventeen texts of this
type are extant, some of which involve personal surrender in time of fam-
ine (“year of distress,” ina MU KALA.GA and variants), while others in-
volve the sale of family members. One example of the latter category has
already achieved some fame: foot impressions of four children were
made and recorded in the contract, three of which have been recovered.®!
All of these Emar famine texts are personal contracts, but as Hurowitz
has observed, the technical term bullutu, “to keep alive,” occurs in many
of these documents.* In others the term used is palahu, “to take care of.”
This compares with the expression in Genesis 47:25, hehéyitani, denot-
ing the Egyptians’ acknowledgment that since the palace administration
has supplied essential provisions to maintain life during the famine, they
are by recognized custom the slaves of the palace. Thus here is a whole-
sale entry into servitude along with movable and immovable property,
whereby the palace stands in the place of the slave owner/dealer of the
Emar texts.
At Emar many of the famine texts also reveal purchase of land “in a
time of distress.” Perhaps significantly, several of these transactions in-
volve the local royal family of Emar acquiring property, though not,
contrary to what one would expect, at bargain prices.8* Many of the

80. See, respectively, EA 75:13-14; 81:39-40; 85:13-14; 90:36-9; W. L. Moran, The

Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), in loc., for transla-
tions; A. L. Oppenheim, “Siege Documents from Nippur,” Jrag 17 (1955): 69-89. ANET,
183 §39, discussed in Oppenheim, “Siege Documents,” 75.
81. See my thesis, “Late Hittite Emar,” part B, chap. 4, to be published by Peeters. Ini-
tial discussion of the foot impressions is in E. Leichty, “Feet of Clay,” in DUMU-E2-DUB-
BA: Studies in Honor of Ake W. Sjéberg, ed. H. Behrens, D. Loding, and M. T. Roth (Phila-
delphia: Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, University Museum, 1989), 349-56; and my “Emar’s
Window on the Old Testament: A Preliminary View,” Buried History 29 (1993): 82-86.
82. V. A. Hurowitz, “Joseph’s Enslavement of the Egyptians (Genesis 47:13-26) in the
Light of Famine Texts from Mesopotamia,” RB 101 (1994): 355-62.
83. If anything, the price increases during a “time of distress,” though more examples
are needed to confirm this. See my “Late Hittite Emar,” part B, chap. 5; E. Leichty, “Feet
of Clay”; and my “Emar’s Window on the Old Testament.”
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament v1

other transactions in this category, however, are acquisitions by private

persons.
What these texts show is that entry into slavery during famine was a
recognized procedure, and that in such a circumstance the obligation
of the purchaser was “to maintain life” (bullutu). In the texts, both this
term and paldhu have the status of legal termini technici. Since this pro-
cedure is now well attested from the Late Bronze Age texts, there is
every reason to suppose that this in turn reflects a standard legal proce-
dure from earlier times and is based on acknowledged legal precedent.
This evidence, admittedly circumstantial, is therefore suggestive of a
time setting for Genesis 47 in second-millennium Egypt, likely early
rather than mid-millennium. Thus the narrative of Genesis 47 as it
stands reflects a real procedure and indicates that it should be taken as
a unitary narrative from somewhere near the time of the events de-
scribed and not as a later redaction of disparate fragments that bears
little relationship to what allegedly happened in the time of Joseph.
As to when this land reform probably took place it is worthwhile to
note Battenfield’s argument that the well-known administrative re-
forms of Senusert III constitute the chronological location for Joseph.*4
Under his rule the nomarchs lost their traditional power in favor of the
vizier, who then directed the administration of the entire country. Bat-
tenfield argues that this centralization of power is precisely that of Jo-
seph according to Genesis 47. A footnote to this is that under the feudal
type rule of the Hyksos, borrowed from Syria-Palestine, power was dis-
persed back to the nomarchs, first in the Delta, then to all of Egypt; but
this was a later development.*°
However, this placement involves another problem. If, as will be ar-
gued below, the exodus is to be placed earlier than even the date postu-
lated by the conventional “early date” model (i.e., prior to Thutmose III),
yet Joseph is still to be placed in the Twelfth Dynasty (conventionally
1878-1843 B.c., but possibly lowered to 1836-1801 B.c.), the time span is
much shorter than the 430 years of Exodus 12:40.°° Here the testimony
of the Septuagint should be assessed. In regard to the time of the so-
journ, the LXX in Exodus 12:40 adds, after the words “in the land of
Egypt,” kai en gé Chanaan (“and in the land of Canaan”). This reading,
also supported by the Samaritan Pentateuch, treats the 430 years as cov-

84. J. R. Battenfield, “A Consideration of the Identity of the Pharaoh of Genesis 47,”

JETS 15 (1972): 77-85.
85. Ibid., 84 nn. 44, 45.
86. K. A. Kitchen, “The Basics of Egyptian Chronology in Relation to the Bronze
Age,” in High, Middle, or Low? Acts of an International Colloquium on Absolute Chronol-
ogy Held at the University of Gothenburg, 20th-22nd August 1987, ed. P. Astrém (Gothen-
burg: Astréms, 1987-89), 1:44-45.
78 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

ering both the sojourn of the patriarchs in Canaan and that of the Isra-
elites in Egypt. Scholars have often been ambivalent about this LXX
reading, but it would appear to harmonize with Paul’s observation in
Galatians 3:17 that the law came 430 years after Abraham, a time frame
that is difficult to harmonize with the traditional Masoretic Text.3’ How-
ever, the Dead Sea Exodus fragment from cave 2 seems to support the
Masoretic reading, though the restoration is to some extent doubtful.88
While a 215-year sojourn (half of 430 years) would be too short (possibly
the Hyksos period could be reduced), nevertheless the shorter period, in
accord with the LXX reading, remains within the bounds of plausibility.

Exodus and Conquest: Historicity and Date

Since an enormous amount of ink has been spilled on the vexed but as
yet unsolved problem of the date of the exodus, the approach here,
rather than arguing a specific case, is the more conservative one of lay-
ing down some parameters and guidelines for a way forward. Equally,
some clear indication must be given concerning paths that have proved,
in my view, to be dead ends. Meanwhile, in the light of evidence now
apparent after excavations over many sites during the course of this
century, and particularly in recent years, many critical scholars have
now altogether abandoned the quest to harmonize the exodus with
Egyptian history and have adopted instead quite radical approaches.
Thus after nearly a century of discussion of this issue without a solu-
tion, it is time for all assumptions, “settled conclusions” (as believed),
“historical benchmarks,” literary analyses of sources, and speculative
theories to be either seriously questioned or at least reinvestigated. This
may be a painful process, but evangelicals must face the challenge of
historical minimalists who insist on the pattern of evidence. For exam-
ple, Redford argues strongly that the biblical account is so out of kilter
with the known facts of Egyptian history, or of other civilizations for
that matter, that the Bible must be jettisoned.*? In the process he issues
a challenge to conservative Jews, Christians, and even Muslims, whom
he regards as obscurantist, to face the evidence. This is a challenge we
must accept, but at the same time we must be prepared to depart radi-
cally from existing paradigms in order to find a harmony.

87. A good presentation of the arguments for and against is found in L. J. Wood, A
Survey ofIsrael's History, rev. ed., revised by D. O’Brien (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986),
65-69.
88. M. Baillet, J. T. Milik, and R. de Vaux, eds., Les “Petites Grottes” de Qumran: Ex-
ploration de la falaise, les grottes 2Q, 3Q, 5Q, 6Q, 7Q a 10Q, le rouleau de cuivre, DID 3
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), 51.
89. See Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 257-63.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament fie)

Hence, at the outset, it is well to survey both the biblical and the ar-
chaeological sides of the debate, which in turn can serve as parameters
for discussion. As to the former, the following points should, I believe,
be accepted as firm.

The Exodus in Biblical Tradition

The exodus-conquest theme outside the Pentateuch is so pervasive and
consistent that it cannot be arbitrarily dismissed. Whether one looks at
the historical psalms, which celebrate God’s great acts of deliverance at
phe exodiisd cles 674219215 3077215-203 782125532a0327- 105225-42:
114:1-4; 136:10-16), prophecy (cf. Hos. 2:14-15; Jer. 2:1-6; Ezek. 16:8-
13), or the “second exodus” theme (cf. Isa. 43:1-7; Jer. 23:7-8), the exo-
dus is at the heart of Israel’s historically based faith.
In all these (and many other) references, there is not a hint of a sep-
arate tradition such as might have come from tribes of a separate ori-
gin, still less of no exodus tradition at all. Thus if a separate “Sinai”
tribal group merged with other tribes of a “non-Sinai” background in
the land, as split-exodus theories maintain, this has taken place without
leaving any trace of the latter “tradition.”’° Likewise, theories that dis-
count the exodus and conquest traditions altogether encounter the
same difficulty on an even greater scale. They must aver that the tradi-
tion somehow either crept into or even popped into Israel’s conscious-
ness, ultimately out of thin air. Yet, based on recent archaeological
work, historical minimalists allege that successive local conquests in a
drawn-out series of regional wars slowly coalesced into a tradition of a
single conquest. With its almost complete discounting of the exodus
tradition, this approach seems like theorizing without any real textual
or transmissional warrant. We must first make sense of the text, then
face the archaeological issues, and to these we now turn.

Archaeological Considerations
Turning from the exegetical to the archaeological, certain conclusions
arising from recent excavations in Palestine are unavoidable, and any
identification of the chronological locus of the exodus must satisfy the
following incontestable facts.

The Archaeology of Palestine

At aseries of sites all over Palestine the clear picture is that Egyptian
occupation continued until the end of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1150
B.c.). Sometimes the evidence of that Egyptian occupation occurs in the

90. K. A. Kitchen in particular makes this point; see his Ancient Orient and Old Testa-
ment (London: Tyndale, 1966), 71. See also the same point in idem, “Exodus,” ABD, 2:701.
80 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

stratum immediately below that dated to the divided monarchy.”! To

begin with, from Lachish there occur several indications of Egyptian
occupation in the Late Bronze period: sherds inscribed in hieratic with
a fair degree of certainty belong to the late Rameside period and appear
to indicate the operation of an Egyptian taxation system.”* A bronze
plaque bearing the prenomen of Rameses III provides the terminus
post quem of the Lachish gatehouse where it was found, while a temple
in Area P, though having manifestly Canaanite features, is just as
clearly Egyptian in many of its other features.”
Megiddo reveals a similar picture. One of the subterranean chambers
attached to the Canaanite palace yielded the famous Megiddo ivories, but
one of these also bears the name of Rameses III.7* At Beth-shan there was
revealed a building in Egyptian style and a secondarily used statue of
Rameses III.?° The best interpretation of the building is that Beth-shan
was an Egyptian stronghold at this time. In the south Hebron was unin-
habited during the entire Late Bronze era.”° In short, this is one striking
fact that, among others, has driven such historical minimalists as P.
Davies and T. L. Thompson to abandon the biblical accounts altogether.
All the above indicates that the Late Bronze era was one of Egyptian
presence and occupation. Furthermore, this picture is so pervasive that
on present historical-chronological schemes an Israelite presence much
before 1150 B.c. is hard to reconcile with it. Therefore to harmonize this
with a coherent conquest a la Joshua 1-11 is well-nigh impossible. Some
scholars do indeed attempt such a harmony, but the evidence makes it
appear as an exercise in special pleading. Other scholars such as A.
Mazar, T. L. Thompson, and N. Gottwald have given up any such ap-
proach, and for them it is the biblical narrative that must be set aside.?”

91. This became evident, for example, in the 1987 season at Lachish that I attended.
To date, however, I am not aware that the report on this season has been published.
92. O. Goldwasser, “An Egyptian Scribe from Lachish and the Hieratic Tradition of
the Hebrew Kingdoms,” Tel Aviv 18 (1991): 248-52.
93. On the former see D. Ussishkin, Excavations at Tel Lachish 1978-1983 (Tel Aviv:
Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology, 1983), 176. On the latter see idem, Excava-
tions at Tel Lachish 1973-1977 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology,
1978), 10-25.
94. A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land ofthe Bible 10,000-586 B.c.£., ABRL (New York:
Doubleday, 1990), 299.
95. Ibid., 297-98.
96. Ibid., 332. Bimson, Redating, 189, makes the same point.
97. See N. Gottwald, “Were the Israelites Pastoral Nomads?” BAR 4 (June 1978), 2-7;
idem, “Response to William Dever,” in The Rise of Ancient Israel, ed. H. Shanks (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992), 70-75. Also the conversation, “Face to
Face: Biblical Minimalists Meet Their Challengers,” BAR 23.4 (1997): 26-42, where N. P.
Lemche, T. L. Thompson, W. Dever, and P. Kyle McCarter Jr. expound their minimalist
views.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 81

Alternatively, D. Ussishkin and others, following this evidence, favor a

conquest, of sorts, after 1150 B.c.%8
Another fact to emerge from excavation is that there is no pattern of
Palestinian walled and fortified cities in the Late Bronze period. In-
deed, archaeological investigation of many of the cities mentioned in
the conquest narratives indicates a lack of any occupation at all in the
Late Bronze era.”’ If Bimson and his school of chronological revision-
ists, for all their detractors, have contributed to the exodus-conquest
problem at all, this is one solid conclusion.!” According to the biblical
account these heavily fortified cities provoked the fear of the Israelites
(see Num. 13:28; Deut. 1:28). Hence if we are to take at all seriously not
merely the walls of Jericho but the system of walled and fortified cities
across the entire countryside, we must either rule out the Late Bronze
period as a chronological context for the conquest or else discount the
biblical record in this regard. The latter is not easy to do, however,
since walled cities are linked with the “unbelief” theme of Israel’s cultic
memory (Ps. 106:24-26; Neh. 9:15-17; and possibly in mind in Ps.
95:9-11).

Amarna Age Palestine

Although the Amarna Letters have been known for over a century,
the picture they provide of Canaan during the reigns of Amenhotep III
and Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) has not often been properly faced by
advocates of the early-date model.!°! On the latter scheme Israel is in
the land, yet the Amarna picture is that of a set of petty Canaanite king-
lets with their internecine squabbles and parleys with the Egyptian pha-
raoh.!° This on the face of it seems strongly to support the alternative
late-date scheme whereby Amarna Canaan precedes the conquest.

98. As implied in Tel Lachish 1978-1983, 170.

99. A point made forcefully by M. Kochavi, “The Israelite Settlement in Canaan in the
Light of Archaeological Surveys,” in Biblical Archaeology Today: Proceedings of the Inter-
national Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, April 1984, ed. J. Aviram (Jerusalem:
Israel Exploration Society; Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in cooperation
with the American Schools of Oriental Research, 1985), 54-60. Likewise J. M. Miller, “Ar-
chaeology and the Israelite Conquest of Canaan: Some Methodological Observations,”
PEQ 109 (1977): 87-93.
100. Bimson, Redating, chap. 7; J. J. Bimson and D. Livingston, “Redating the Exo-
dus,” BAR 13.5 (1987): 45.
101. Several early-date advocates still cling to the now untenable theory that the Ha-
biru are the advancing Israelites under Joshua. See Wood, Survey, 82-84; G. L. Archer,
A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago: Moody, 1974), 265-71. Aling, Egypt,
109-10, finally rejects such an identification but is obscure as to how to account for the
Amarna phenomenon.
102. See R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament (London: Tyndale; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), 319.
82 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

Merenptah: A Terminus ad Quem

The reconstruction by Yurco of the Canaanite campaign reliefs of
Merenptah at Karnak has seriously altered the picture of Israel from the
Egyptian perspective in the Nineteenth Dynasty.'°? No longer can the
famous “Israel Stela” be examined in isolation, nor can its historical
testimony be dismissed. Merenptah must now be reckoned as a victori-
ous pharaoh who subdued several Canaanite cities and defeated an Is-
raelite army in the field. This immediately raises two significant prob-
lems: (1) if the late-date scheme is true, how could an Israelite army
engage a pharaoh of Egypt so soon after its arrival in Canaan? and
(2) in the “Israel register” on the Karnak wall, the relief depicts the Is-
raelite army with chariots having six-spoked wheels long before chari-
otry is attested biblically as part of Israel’s military technology.!
The Negev
The sites in the Negev and Transjordan connected with the wilder-
ness wanderings and the initial conquest likewise reveal nothing of
Bronze Age settlement corresponding to the biblical narratives of the
conquest of Arad (Num. 21:1) and Hormah (Num. 21:2-3), or of the
camp at Kadesh-barnea. This last site, identified with Ain el-Qudeirat,
has revealed nothing from either the Late Bronze or Early Iron I, but
during the united monarchy a royal fortress was erected.!° At Tell
Arad, usually but not unanimously identified with Canaanite Arad,
there is a similar occupational gap between Early Bronze and the
united monarchy period.!°* However, Aharoni identifies Canaanite
Arad with Tel Malhata (Tell el-Milh), where Middle Bronze II remains
evidenced a sedentary population in that period.!°7
Tell Hesban and Transjordan
A further problem arises in respect of Transjordan. In summary,
with regard to identifying Tell Hesban with biblical Heshbon, we must
face the fact that no remains exist prior to Iron I, and hence this site as
the capital of an “Amorite state” is either a historical anachronism or

103. F. J. Yurco, “Merenptah’s Canaanite Campaign,” JARCE 23 (1986): 189-215. See

also idem, “3,200-Year-Old Picture of Israelites Found in Egypt,” BAR 16.5 (1990): 20-38;
and the challenge by A. F. Rainey, with reply by Yurco, BAR 17.6 (1991): 56-61.
104. Note the problem that this poses for both Rainey and Yurco (ibid., 59, 61, respec-
tively), who each explains it in his own (implausible) way.
105. Mazar, Archaeology, 330, 444; R. K. Harrison, “Kadesh Barnea,” NIDBA, 275.
106. Mazar, Archaeology, 330.
107. Ibid., 330; Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, trans. and
ed. A. G. Rainey, 2d ed. (London: Burns & Oates; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979), 215-
16. See also Bimson, Redating, 190-91.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 83

the site has been misidentified.!°* The same can be said of Moab gener-
ally: Late Bronze remains are in the main lacking.!°? There are, how-
ever, certain notable exceptions to this picture.
In regard to Tell Hesban particularly, this site was excavated by the
Andrews University expedition over six seasons during the 1970s. In all,
twenty-four strata were identified covering Iron Age I (1200 B.c.) to the
Ottoman Empire period (a.p. 1870).''° This leaves a problem for the
Transjordan conquest as recorded in Numbers 21:21-31 and Deuteron-
omy 2:30-35, especially as Deuteronomy 3:5 notes that the cities of the
Bashan area were heavily fortified, and it is highly likely that this de-
scription applies to the Heshbon region as well. Even the Iron Age evi-
dence at Hesban was scanty, and probably represents an unfortified
pastoral village.
The question arises, then, as to whether Tell Hesban is the correct
site, despite what is essentially the same name. Since in antiquity
names had a way of shifting around with the relocation of a sedentary
population, the case for an alternative site should be investigated. Tell
Jalul, 9 km. southeast of Hesban, would appear to be a good candidate,
or possibly Tell el-Umeiri, 10 km. northeast of Hesban. From surface
surveys each one of these sites is a city with firm attestation of Middle
and Late Bronze occupation.!!! It is perhaps significant that in the Late
Iron Age and more particularly in the Persian period the evidence of oc-
cupation is slim but well attested at Hesban.!!? This admittedly circum-
stantial evidence could indicate a population shift at that time. If Tell
Jalul is indeed the Heshbon of Numbers 21:26, it would fit with a late
Middle Bronze era conquest as proposed by Bimson.
In summary, most sites in these regions mentioned in Numbers and
in later Psalms reflecting on the incidents recorded in Numbers were,
according to the archaeological picture, uninhabited in the Late Bronze
period, either early or late. While some adjustments can be made to the
picture because of possibly mistaken identifications, this conclusion in
general still stands.
The only conclusion to draw from all the above considerations is that
the Late Bronze era should be ruled out as a chronological setting for
the exodus-conquest. This in turn entails that “burn levels” in a number

108. Mazar, Archaeology, 330; B. C. Chapman, “Heshbon,” NIDBA, 236.

109. R. Ibach Jr., “Expanded Archaeological Survey of the Hesban Region,” AUSS 16
(1978): 209-10, 213.
110. R. S. Boraas and L. T. Geraty, “1976 Heshbon Expedition,” AUSS 16 (1978): 16,
chart.
111. R. Ibach Jr, “An Intensive Surface Survey at Jalul,” AUSS 16 (1978): 215-22; on
Tell el-‘Umeiri, see idem, “Expanded Archaeological Survey,” 210.
112. Cf. the results for the Iron Age as reported in Ibach, “Expanded Archaeological
Survey,” 206-9.
84 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

of Palestinian sites, so frequently cited in this connection, are irrelevant

to the issue.!!3 Furthermore, if the exodus tradition is to be harmonized
with archaeology and history, we must look elsewhere, in another ar-
chaeological period. Thus some are now advocating the Early Iron Age
(Rendsburg), or, on other schemes, looking back to the Middle Bronze
period (Bimson, Livingston).'!4 I favor the latter approach.

Guidelines for a Solution

The above factors seem on the surface to present an impenetrable puz-
zle, and there are basically three alternatives, particularly in the light of
the Yurco reconstruction of the Karnak wall. To draw these and other
threads together, I set forth the following propositions.

The Late-Date Chronology Must Be Rejected

Before the archaeological discussion, some exegetical points are in
order. The approach to Exodus 1 in much late-date-exodus literature
proceeds on the assumption that the chapter covers a fairly short period
that can be subsumed under one reign, which is usually then identified
with that of either Seti I or more particularly his son and successor
Rameses IT.!!° On this view the assigning of the name “Ra‘amses” to the
city for Seti’s time is proleptic, since Seti built only the palace. But this
misconstrues the narrative of Exodus 1:8-22. What is recorded there is
a series of increasingly repressive measures to counter the prodigious
growth of the Hebrew people: first, the enslavement with the conse-
quent construction of the two “store cities” (Gré miskéndt); then, on the
perceived failure of that policy, the intensification and extension of the
slavery to all manner of projects, including field work (Exod. 1:14). Fi-
nally, the repressive policy climaxes in, first, enforced infanticide on the
part of Hebrew midwives and then deliberate genocide by the native
Egyptians.!!° Only at this last stage does Moses appear on the scene.

113. Argued exegetically quite cogently by E. H. Merrill, “Palestinian Archaeology and

the Date of the Conquest: Do Tells Tell Tales?” Grace Theological Journal 3.1 (1982): 107—
21. Merrill points out that the Book of Joshua records the implementation of the Mosaic
conquest policy, that the Israelites merely captured (/akad) cities but did not burn (sarap)
them. The simple fact is that the Israelites wanted to live in them, as stated in Josh. 24:13.
114. G. A. Rendsburg, “The Date of the Exodus and the Conquest/Settlement: The
Case for the 1100s,” VT 42 (1992): 510-27; Bimson and Livingston, “Redating the Exo-
dus,” 40-68. See also B. Wood, “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the
Archaeological Evidence,” BAR 16.2 (1990): 44-59,
115. See, e.g., Kitchen, Ancient Orient, 57 n. 3; also implied in the discussion by J. A.
Thompson, The Bible and Archaeology (Exeter: Paternoster, 1962), 57-58.
116. Cf. the discussion in W. H. Gispen, Exodus, Bible Student’s Commentary (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 32-38 (a trans. of Korte Verklaring der Heilige Schrift). U. Cas-
suto adopts essentially the same exegesis; see his A Commentary on the Book of Exodus,
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 85

Clearly a lengthy period of time, possibly a century or more, is covered

by this series of experiments in “population control” and “social engi-
neering,” since time would be necessary to implement and then assess
the impact of each succeeding measure. Moreover, a natural reading of
the narrative indicates that the construction of the cities belongs to the
beginning of the oppression, not to the end as Kitchen contends.!!7 Bim-
son, for example, envisages an Egyptian bondage from about 1700 B.c.
to the exodus, which he places at 1470 B.c.!!8 One suspects that in this
late-date approach to the narrative, archaeological considerations con-
trol the exegesis.
A similar observation should be made about dating notices regard-
ing the exodus. It is common in much of the literature on the exodus
issue to regard the 430 years of Exodus 12:40 ina straightforward sense
but the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1 as artificial. This is despite the fact that
the latter is matched with the fourth year of Solomon and that in the
same chapter the completion of the temple is matched to the eleventh
year of Solomon in a later month.!!° This sounds like normal arith-
metic procedure rather than a treating of the figure as symbolic or rep-
resentative. Again one suspects that the conventional explanation of
the 480 years, that it represents twelve generations of the biblical “forty
years” (in reality twenty-five), owes more to considerations of harmony
with Egyptian history than to the demands of exegesis of the text.!?°
The exodus was to Israel as the Norman Conquest is to England or the
American Revolution to the United States: a pivotal event that serves as
a historical watershed and dating point.
A final observation is that Judges 11:26, indicating an interval of 300
years between the conquest of Transjordan and the time of Jephthah,
supports a straightforward interpretation of the 480-year figure. All too
often late-date advocates either ignore the Judges text or give it passing
mention in exodus discussions. Insofar as scholars regard its testimony

trans. from the Hebrew by I. Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, Hebrew University, 1967),
11-16; also B. S. Childs, Exodus (London: SCM, 1974), 14, albeit in outline form and
without historical comment.
117. Bimson, Redating, 39, makes this same point contra Kitchen, Ancient Orient,
57 nm. 33
118. Bimson, Redating, 222.
119. Cf. Kitchen, ABD, 2:702, who stigmatizes the acceptance of the 480 years as “the
‘lazy man’s solution,’” yet in Ancient Orient, 53, accepts the 430 years of Exod. 12:40 with
little question, while the 480 years is for him “a total of selected figures” (Ancient Orient,
74). Redford, Egypt, 260, says the conventional treatment of the 480 years (i.e., 12 x 40
generations of 25 years each) “smacks of prestidigitation and numerology.”
120. Thus Kitchen, ABD, 2:702, cites what for him is the real problem, i.e., the men-
tion of Rafamses in Exod. 1:11, whereby the exodus “could not precede the accession of
[Rameses II] at the earliest”; he also cites other archaeological evidence.
86 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

at all, they usually seem more interested in explaining away the refer-
ence than in giving it due weight.!7!
The first proposal is a negative one, but nevertheless important: the
conventional late-date scheme whereby either Seti I or even Rameses IT
is the pharaoh of the oppression, and the latter the pharaoh of the exo-
dus, is untenable. This is so for the following reasons:

1. There is simply not enough time for Israel to depart from Egypt,
spend forty years in the wilderness, conquer the land, and then,
either during or just after the conquest, engage a well-equipped
Egyptian army under Merenptah in his fifth year. Without en-
gaging in a debate about precise chronology, we may date the
67 years of Rameses II’s reign from 1279 to 1213 B.c. and the 10
years of his son Merenptah from 1213 to 1203 s.c.!?? The early
years of Rameses’ reign were occupied with a war against the
Hittites and concluded with a treaty in year 21. Also in this pe-
riod the new royal city of Pi-Rameses, the biblical Rameses, was
constructed (almost certainly at the modern Qantir),!** which
would have occupied the same length of time, probably until
about 1258 or 1255. An exodus before then, on this scheme, is
highly unlikely. The assumption here is that Pi-Rameses was
constructed just prior to the exodus, but this conflicts with the
exegesis of Exodus 1:7-14 as a whole, which envisages a series
of increasingly severe stages in the oppression, of which the
building of the cities is merely the first.!** Furthermore, this
means that by the time Israel arrives Rameses has either died
or is very close to death.
Then we must consider the early reign of Merenptah: on any
reckoning Israel has hardly arrived in the land when they face
a battle with Egypt, about 1208. Add to this Yurco’s reconstruc-
tion of the Ashkelon wall at Karnak: it depicts the Israelites with
a chariot force (!) and many wearing long tunics. This implies
for Yurco that the Israelites coalesced with and emerged from
Canaanite society, and in turn implies for him that the conquest
tradition must in large measure be discounted.!5

121. As M. Woudstra observes in The Book of Joshua, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1981), 23. Kitchen, Ancient Orient, 74, treats this text in much the same way as he
treats 1 Kings 6:1, as a computation. The analogies he draws may be interesting but are
in no way demonstrative.
122. Kitchen, “The Basics of Egyptian Chronology,” 1:38-40.
123. See the discussion in Bimson, Redating, 33-40. Kitchen (ZPEB, 5:14) has cham-
pioned this site as that of Pi-Rameses.
124, See Bimson, Redating, 39. Aling, Egypt, 65-66, 69, makes the similar point.
125. Yurco, BAR 17.6 (1991): 61.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 87

2. Death of a pharaoh during Moses’ Midianite sojourn rules out

Rameses II (or any other pharaoh) as the pharaoh of both the
oppression and exodus. As is well known, there is no evidence
of building activity at Qantir prior to the reign of Rameses II,
until we go back to the Hyksos period and thence to the Middle
Kingdom.!?° Because of the mention of Rameses in Exodus
1:11, and the known fact that Rameses II built Pi-Rameses in
the Delta, the conventional conclusion is that this is the termi-
nus a quo for the oppression and exodus. This entails also that
Rameses is the pharaoh of both the oppression and the exodus.
This conflicts, however, with Exodus 2:23, that there was a
change of king during Moses’ Midianite sojourn, apparently to-
ward the end.!?? One scholar to note the problem is J. P. Hyatt.
He thinks we must either opt for a Rameside exodus and dis-
count Exodus 2:23, or adopt Merenptah as the exodus pharaoh
and discount the wilderness wandering because of the “Israel
stela” attestation.!?8
3. The radical compression of the judges period consequent to a
late-date chronology constitutes a serious problem. While all
admit some contemporaneity of judgeships, particularly in the
latter stages, the text shows at least 250 years up to the time of
Abimelech’s abortive kingship. Each oppression is introduced
by the formula, “the people of Israel again did evil” (Judg. 3:7,
12; 4:1; 6:1; 8:33; 10:6; 13:1). This certainly sounds like a se-
quential narrative. If this at all represents the real course of
events, then much more is required than the approximately 150
years for the entire period, as on the late-date scheme. Even
Harrison, a late-date advocate, is not entirely comfortable with
iia
4. Finally, the sequence of nineteen generations from Korah to
Heman in David's time in 1 Chronicles 6:32—39 represents a pe-
riod of at least 450 years, too long for any late-date chronol-
ogy.!3° While Christine Tetley has tried to undermine the force
of this consideration, she has to admit that at least some of her

126. Bietak, Avaris, 271-73.

127. The conventional conclusion, without due consideration of Exod. 2:23, can be
found in E. M. Yamauchi, The Stones and the Scriptures (London: Inter-Varsity, 1972), 44;
Kitchen, ABD, 2:702; M. Noth, The History of Israel (London: Black, 1960), 120; J. Bright,
A History ofIsrael, 3d ed. (London: SCM, 1981), 123; E. W. Nicholson, Exodus and Sinat
in History and Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), 54.
128. J. P. Hyatt, Exodus, NCB (London: Oliphants, 1971), 43-44.
129. Note his discussion in Introduction, 330-31.
130. A point argued by Bimson, Redating, 88.
88 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

assumptions and identifications in the genealogical lists are

speculative.!?!
The Conventional Early-Date Model Also Is Untenable
Another negative conclusion is that an Eighteenth Dynasty exodus is
likewise impossible. More conservative scholars such as Aling, Davis,
Wood, and Merrill adopt the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1 as a straightfor-
ward figure that yields about 1447 B.c. as the date of the exodus, archae-
ologically Late Bronze I.!*? This makes Thutmose II the pharaoh of the
oppression and Amenhotep II the pharaoh of the exodus. Yet there are
some decisive objections to this view.

1. The location of the capital during the early Eighteenth Dynasty

was Thebes in the south, and while Thutmose and his son
Amenhotep II did maintain an alternative palace at Memphis,
actual residence there seems to have been occasional.!*? More-
over, Memphis is still several days’ journey from Goshen. This
standard objection therefore remains.
2. Building activity by Thutmose III was conducted mainly in the
south (at Karnak), and while there is evidence of building work
in the Delta, it was neither at Qantir (the accepted site of Pi-
Rameses) nor at Tell er-Reteba (Pithom).!*4 In all, his building
there was neither extensive nor protracted.
3. Chronology poses a problem, whichever scheme is adopted. If
one opts for the short chronology (Kitchen) that gives Thutmose
III the regnal dates of 1479-1425 and Amenhotep II as 1427-
1400, the neat scheme would be upset in that the exodus would
have to be redated to about 1420 B.c.'7° On the other hand, some
historians adopt a long chronology for Thutmose, 1504-1450,
which would be too early, though perhaps tolerable.!*°

131. M.C. Tetley, “The Genealogy of Samuel the Levite,” Buried History 33 (1997): 20-
30, 39-51.
132. Aling, Egypt, 53-96; J. J. Davis, Moses and the Gods of Egypt (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1971), 16-33; Wood, Survey, 65-86; E. H. Merrill, “Palestinian Archaeology,”
107-21.
133. A. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1961).
134. Ibid., 188. The clear evidence is that Pi-Rameses/Qantir was unoccupied during
the Eighteenth Dynasty. See Bietak, Avaris, 273; Baines and Malek, Atlas, 176; W. H.
Shea, “Exodus, Date of the,” SBE, 2:231, reporting the work of M. Bietak at Tell el-Dab?a.
In regard to Pithom, the oldest building so far found at Tell er-Reteba is a Rameside tem-
ple to Atum. See Kitchen, ABD, 2:703.
135. Kitchen, “Egyptian Chronology,” 52.
136. As in CAH, 2.1:818-19, after W. C. Hayes. Gardiner, Egypt, 443, proposes middle
dates for Thutmose III, 1490-1436.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 89

4. If the plague narratives are to be taken seriously, the com-

bined effect of these, plus the loss of Egypt's slave labor force,
would have been economically, agriculturally, and militarily
devastating. To deny this point is ultimately to explain away
the whole import and purpose of the plagues. But this period
was precisely the period of Egyptian prowess, prosperity, and
military expansion. To place the exodus here entails the con-
clusion that the event left hardly a scratch on Egypt or at most
was for Egypt a temporary setback from which it quickly re-
covered. For that matter, a Rameside exodus faces the same
objection.
5. We know of several Egyptian military expeditions through Pal-
estine subsequent to Thutmose II: Amenhotep II (years 7, 9),
Horemheb (probably), Seti I (year 1), Rameses II (year 5), Mer-
enptah (year 5), none of which finds mention in the books of
Judges or 1 Samuel. Omission of some is perhaps explicable,
but omission of all is not. Again, the same objection applies to
a Rameside exodus, as noted above in part, though perhaps not
to the same degree.

Pathway to a Solution
As observed above, placing the exodus-conquest anywhere into the
Late Bronze era is an exercise in fitting the proverbial square peg into
the round hole. But radical rejection of the biblical narrative is ulti-
mately a dead end also: it is simply too cavalier an approach to com-
mend itself. The only path remaining is to seek a chronological locus
elsewhere. Thus J. Bimson, B. Wood, and D. Livingston have sought
such a locus at the end of the Middle Bronze, with a consequent exten-
sion of the Middle Bronze IIC terminus somewhere near 1400 B.c.!°7
There remains the problem of the Amarna letters and the picture of
Palestine that emerges from them. This can be harmonized with an
early-date perspective. While I will not rehearse here what I have writ-
ten elsewhere, I will summarize the main points:

1. Labayu was not king of Shechem, and the only text that in any
way links the two (EA 289) cannot be read so as to make him
such. He is much more plausibly king of Pella (Pi-hi-li) in Trans-
jordan. Moreover, we cannot even be sure that KUR Sa-ak-mi in

137. See the diagram in Bimson and Livingston, “Redating,” 46-47. A similar ap-
proach, though without relocating the Middle Bronze termination, is in B. Wood, “Did
the Israelites Conquer Jericho?” 44-58; idem, “Dating Jericho's Destruction” (reply to P.
Bienkowski), BAR 16.5 (1990): 47-49, 68-69.
90 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

EA 289:23 refers to Shechem.!38 With Labayu, and an alleged

Labayan empire, removed from the central hill country, the
scene is open to accommodate early Israel.
2. As has been shown in the various studies of the SA.GAZ deno-
tation, hapiru or habiru is most likely an inclusive term of op-
probrium for social outcasts, but it can tolerably refer to the Is-
raelites in the Canaanite context, even if not elsewhere.'*? No
attempt is hereby made to equate “bri and hapiru/habiru pho-
netically, nor does there need to be.

With these two points in mind, the picture of Amarna Canaan that
emerges is that of kinglets ruling precisely those cities that the Israelites
are recorded as not having conquered under Joshua. Meanwhile, the Ha-
piru, whom the other kinglets regard as a common enemy, can in this
context be identified with the Israelites. While certain exceptions remain,
such as Lachish (La-ki-su), we need to note that with the various oppres-
sions and occupations during the judges period some territory and cities
were lost to enemies. First Samuel 7:14 states that the Israelites recov-
ered territory they had lost earlier to the Philistines. What was true in re-
gard to the Philistines was likely true in regard to earlier conquerors.

Egypt and Palestine in the First Millennium B.c.

Before discussing first-millennium synchronisms, one point must be
kept in mind when identifying the pharaoh of the exodus. Any such
scheme must also consistently and plausibly identify the biblically at-
tested kings of Egypt of later centuries (i.e., in the first millennium B.c.).
Exegetical considerations are important in this regard. Two problems
remain for the conventional scheme: the identities of “Zerah the Ethio-
pian” (2 Chron. 14:9) and “So, king of Egypt” (2 Kings 17:4) have
proved to be scholarly enigmas, despite Kitchen’s confident equation of
So with Osorkon IV.!4° We examine each in turn.

138. See my “Lab?’aya’s Connection with Shechem Reassessed,” Abr-Nahrain 30

(1992): 1-19, esp. 8-12. Partial support for the thesis has now come from a recently dis-
covered cuneiform inscribed cylinder from Beth-shan. See W. Horowitz, “The Amarna
Age Inscribed Clay Cylinder from Beth-Shean,” BA 60 (1997): 97-102.
139. The literature on this theme is considerable, but see in particular the study by
M. Greenberg, The Hab/piru, American Oriental Series 39 (New Haven: American Orien-
tal Society, 1955); M. G. Kline, “The Ha-BI-ru—Kin or Foe of Israel?” WTJ 19 (1956): 1—
24; WTJ 19 (1956): 170-84; WTJ 20 (1957): 46-70. Of more recent vintage see M. B. Row-
ton, “Dimorphic Structure and the Problem of the @piri-dbrim,” JNES 35 (1976): 13-20;
N. Naaman, “Habiru and Hebrews: The Transfer of a Social Term to the Literary
Sphere,” JNES 45 (1986): 271-88; N. P. Lemche, “Habiru,” ABD, 3:6-10. ’
140. K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, 1100-650 z.c., 2d ed. with
supplement (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1986), 372-75. On other contributions see below.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 91

Zerah the Ethiopian

This admittedly untitled individual bearing the epithet “Cushite” (zerah
hakkuas?, 2 Chron. 14:9-[14:8 MT]) is often either ignored or regarded as
a mere military commander under an unmentioned Egyptian king
(sometimes identified with Osorkon I).!4! This view ignores the parallel
between the militia attributed to Zerah in 2 Chronicles 14:9 and that to
Shishak in 2 Chronicles 12:2-3, both of whom are said to have “come
out/up against Judah/Jerusalem with chariots and troops.” How can
one be admitted to have been a pharaoh (Shishak) but the other (Zerah)
not? It is regular in the Old Testament for military forces to be ascribed
to the king, not to a general (cf. Exod. 14:7, 9, Pharaoh; Num. 21:21-23,
Sihon; 2 Kings 25:1, Nebuchadnezzar). Thus for exegetical reasons the
explanation is unconvincing.
As to the historical question, this individual belongs to the divided
monarchy period—according to the biblical text, in the reign of Asa and
probably late in his fourteenth or early in his fifteenth year (2 Chron.
15:10). Following Thiele’s chronology, this would place the event at
about 894 B.c.!** No pharaoh of Zerah’s prowess seems to have existed
in this period, based on either the conventional chronology or any rad-
ical revision. The only suggestion with any plausibility is that of
Kitchen, that Zerah was a general of Nubian extraction acting for the
aging Osorkon I.'43 Apart from the exegetical problem mentioned
above, there is the problem of a lack of any historical evidence for a ven-
ture into Canaan by this pharaoh, either personally or by proxy. While
we would not expect a defeat to be recorded, such a major incursion
with a force of three hundred chariots plus a host of infantry would
surely have had some successes deserving of record other than the en-
counter with Asa. But there is no indication of such at all. Thus the
identity of Zerah remains a mystery.

The Identity of “So”

The mention of this king of Egypt in 2 Kings 17:4 has caused consider-
able fuss among historians, and there is no agreed solution as to his
identity. Christensen opts for the suggestion that Tefnakht (I) is in-
tended.!44 Meanwhile, there is the proposal that “So” is really the city

141), Ibids, 309.

142. E.R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, rev. ed. (Grand Rap-
ids: Zondervan, 1983), 82. Kitchen, Third Intermediate Period, 309, sets the date at 897,
which does not affect the point made here.
143. Kitchen, Third Intermediate Period, 309.
144. See also the summary of the various other candidates in D. L. Christensen, “The
Identity of ‘King So’ in Egypt (2 Kings XVIL:4),” VT 39 (1989): 140-53. The older sugges-
tion of “Sib’e, turtan of Egypt,” has now been abandoned.
92 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

of Sais and thus not an Egyptian king at all. This still has its advo-
cates,!45 but it has not commended itself to others because it involves
an arbitrary emendation of the text. Thus by the insertion of an addi-
tional ’el before melek misrayim to read “to So (= Sais), to the king of
Egypt,” the actual king is left unnamed. Kitchen has objected to such a
procedure, pointing out that Israel had no dealings with Sais or the
western Delta region. By contrast, as noted above, he alleges an abbre-
viation of the name by which he confidently identifies him with
(O)so(rkon) IV.!4° But what help Hoshea of Israel imagined he could
obtain from this weak, shadow monarch, who ruled only part of the
eastern Delta, Kitchen does not satisfactorily explain.'*” His appeal to
a longstanding alliance with the Twenty-second Dynasty does not really
answer the point, and besides, the “alliance” that Kitchen alleges is not
well established from his evidence.'*® The adage of diplomacy, “your
enemy’s enemy is your friend,” the common enemy in this case being
Assyria, is a shaky basis for an alliance at the best of times, as history
well shows. In summary, there is no real agreement, since all the pro-
posed candidates have serious problems.

The Balaam Texts

The story of Balaam and his talking ass is familiar to Bible readers, and
apart from the exegetical issues of the biblical text there is a consider-
able amount of archaeological material to shed light on the Balaam ep-
isode. In particular there is now extant a remarkable text from Deir
‘Alla in Transjordan that not only mentions Balaam but also attributes
a prophecy to him.

Balaam’s Home
According to the textual information Balaam’s home is said to be
(1) Pethor on the River in the land of “the sons of #w” (béné ammo,
Num. 22:5), and (2) Pethor of Aram-Naharaim (“Aram of the Two Riv-
ers,” Deut. 23:4). The biblical Aram-Naharaim is not the Mesopotamia
of classical sources and modern designation—the whole region be-
tween the Euphrates and Tigris—but the northern part of that area
from the Orontes to the Khabur. In particular, the term denotes the re-

145. Most recently, J. Day, “The Problem of ‘So, King of Egypt’ in 2 Kings XVII 4,” VT
42 (1992): 289-301, esp. 293-94 nn. 25-30. See also W. H. Barnes, Studies in the Chronol-
ogy of the Divided Monarchy ofIsrael (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 131-35.
146. Kitchen, Third Intermediate Period, 372-75.
147. Note Kitchen’s own introduction to his account of this ephemeral king, ibid., 372.
148. Ibid., 375. Christensen concurs on this point; see “The Identity of ‘King So.’”
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 93

gion around the bend of the Euphrates, south of Carchemish, past the
ancient city of Emar, and downstream to Tuttul at the confluence of the
Balikh and Euphrates.!4? The name can be identified with the Naharin
of Egyptian campaign lists from the New Kingdom,!° since the latter
clearly corresponds to the region of the Euphrates bend. This much is
straightforward. Likewise, Pethor is generally equated with the Pitru of
the Kurkh Monolith Inscription of Shalmaneser III, which states that it
is on the river Sagur (modern SAjar), the western tributary of the Eu-
phrates that enters just south of the Carchemish.!*!
The only problem in this apparently neat scheme concerns béné
‘ammo. Following Albright, modern translations have given full conso-
nantal status to the final radical of #2w to read Amaw, which in turn
seems to equate to the Amae of the Idrimi inscription. Amaw appears
in an inscription in the tomb of Qen-Amun, an official of Amenhotep
I1.!>? While Oller defends this identification against the criticism that
the region is not named in Amenhotep II’s own campaign lists, he does
find a difficulty in the lack of mention in Hittite, Amarna, or Ugaritic
archives.!°3 Apart from this consideration, however, the Albright iden-
tification fits the data quite neatly, despite Oller’s skepticism concern-
ing the location of Amae/u.!*4

The Balaam Texts from Deir “Alla

In 1967 a remarkable set of Aramaic fragments turned up in the Trans-
jordanian site of Deir <Alla.'*> Since they are discussed in chapter 2 of
the present volume, only one aspect of them will be treated here.
Of considerable interest are the deities whom Balaam invokes: the
Sdyn and Sgr. While André Lemaire alters Hoftijzer’s restoration /s/gr--]

149. Cf. A. Malamat, “The Aramaeans,” in Peoples of Old Testament Times, ed. D. J.
Wiseman (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), 140.
150. See Gardiner, Egypt, 178, 190, 194.
151. As argued by Albright ina comment on the Idrimi inscription. See W. F. Albright,
“Some Important Recent Discoveries: Alphabetic Origins and the Idrimi Statue,” BASOR
118 (1950): 15 and n. 13; also Malamat, “Aramaeans,” 141.
152. As cited in Albright, “Some Important Recent Discoveries,” 15-16 n. 13.
153. G.H. Oller, “The Autobiography of Idrimi: A New Text with Philological and His-
torical Commentary” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1977), 182-85. A possible
mention of Ama?u in an Emar text may supply this lack: ni-si MES Sa A-me-e, in text 9:3,
which Arnaud translates as “les gens d’Ameu.” See D. Arnaud, Les textes syriens de l’age
du bronze récent, Aula Orientalis Supplementa 1 (Barcelona: Sabadell, 1991), 33-34. But
problems of orthography and interpretation forbid any definite statement.
154. Layton has reinterpreted the biblical data to conclude that Balaam came from
Deir ‘Alla in Ammon. See S. C. Layton, “Whence Comes Balaam? Num. 22,5 Revisited,”
Bib 73 (1992): 32-61.
155. For the editio princeps of the texts, see J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij, Aramaic
Texts from Deir Alla (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 173-78 (transcription), 179-82 (translation).
94 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

to read /s/m/]s: Sha[ma]sh, the sun deity, in line 6 (Hoftijzer, line 8),'°°
there is no question of the reading in line 14 (Hoftijzer, line 16), sgr
w&tr: “Saggar and ‘A8tar.” The observation of Dalley and Teissier that
Saggar in North Syrian and Mari texts is a male deity would thereby in
this text yield a standard coordinate pair of male-female deities.!°’
Hence a good case can be made for asserting that sgr is in fact a deity,
as appears to be the case in Ugaritic, Mari, and Old Babylonian texts.
The component 430 in Emarite names also could well be Saggar, ac-
cording to hieroglyphic seals (e.g., 430-a-bu is Saggar-abu).!°°
The real interest, however, lies in the undoubted attestation of the
Sdyn-deities, since they seem to have clear links with the sédim of Deu-
teronomy 32:17 and Psalm 106:37. The more traditional translation of
this term is “demons,” cognate with Akkadian sédu (same meaning);
however, the Deir ‘Alla text gives a new aspect to the word. Here the
Sdyn are deities who take their place in a divine assembly (wnsbw ...
mw@), and who together with the other gods (7/n) resolve to send ca-
tastrophe to the earth. But the 7in gods reveal the plan to Balaam in
a dream or vision. This certainly has its parallel with Numbers 22:8-9,
12, 19-20. Hence we can conclude that the sdyn are a group of gods,
worshiped in Transjordan and possibly even in Canaan proper, and
are most likely the same as the sédim of the two biblical texts above.!>?
Indeed, they could well be the deities of the Baal-peor incident (Num.
25:3; Ps. 106:28). According to Numbers 31:16 it was Balaam who en-
ticed Israel to sacrifice to strange gods at Baal-peor. Hence the men-
tion of sdym in this general context of Psalm 106 is significant, in that
according to the Aramaic texts these are the gods whom Balaam
served.

Two Palestinian Sites

Two sites are significant in different ways: one for newly discovered cu-
neiform documents, the other a case in point regarding the uncertainty
of site identification.

Hazor
In 1991 renewed excavations at Hazor brought to light a partly pre-

156. A. Lemaire, “Fragments from the Book of Balaam Found at Deir Alla,” BAR 11.5
(1985): 34.
157. S. Dalley and B. Teissier, “Tablets from the Vicinity of Emar and Elsewhere,” Iraq
54 (1992): 90-91.
158. Ibid., 90 nn. 43-53a.
159. Cf. the insightful discussion by J. Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir Alla, HSM
31 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980), 85-89.
Archaeological Light on the Old Testament 05

served cuneiform tablet whose original locus was not apparent.!© But
the fragment could have some significance for pre-Israelite, or even
early Israelite, history. The tablet is a portion of a letter to Ib-ni-[x] re-
garding the transfer of a young woman, and Ben-Tor suggests that the
name might be restored as Ib-ni-[“IM], that is, Ibni-Addu, a king of
Hazor (*"Ha-su-ra) attested also in the Mari documents.!°!
The biblical name Jabin (yabin) occurs as the name of two kings of
Hazor, one at the time of the conquest (Josh. 11:1, 10), the other in the
time of the judges (Judg. 4:2). As Yadin, Malamat, and more recently
Bimson have pointed out, an argument can be constructed to equate
the Hebrew Jabin with the Ibni prefix, allowing for a missing
theophoric component.'®* Since Ibni-prefix names are fairly common
in the Amorite onomasticon, especially from Mari, it is readily under-
standable that there would have been several “Jabins” of Hazor, what-
ever the theophoric component in the names. The correspondence of
this name with the biblical Jabin would make us understand the latter
as a proper name rather than a dynastic title, as some have con-
tended.!°

Gibeah
While there is no dispute regarding the identity of Tell el-OQedah with
Hazor, the site of Saul’s palace at Gibeah, long thought to have been set-
tled, is now disputed again. After Albright’s excavations in 1922-23 and
1933 of an Iron Age citadel just north of Jerusalem, the site of Gibeah
had been confidently identified with Tell el-Ful, as contrasted with an
earlier identification with the modern village of Jeba. More recently,
however, the original identification has been reasserted. Arnold in par-
ticular has argued that the Tell el-Ful-Gibeah equation is untenable on
both literary-topographical and archaeological grounds, and has in-
stead resurrected the older identification with Geba (modern Jeba).!*4
The principal difficulties with Tell el-Ful are as follows:

160. W. Horowitz and A. Shaffer, “A Fragment of a Letter from Hazor,” JEJ 42 (1992):
165-67.
161. For references to Hasura/Hazor in the Mari texts see ARM 16.1.1, 14; for Mari
references to Ibni-Addu see ARM 16.1.2, 113.
162. Y. Yadin, Hazor: With a Chapter on Israelite Megiddo, Schweich Lectures, 1970
(London and New York: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1972), 5;
idem, Hazor: The Rediscovery ofa Great Citadel (New York: Random House, 1975), 16;
A. Malamat, “Hazor: ‘The Head of All Those Kingdoms,’” JBL 79 (1960): 17; Bimson,
Redating, 181.
163. Note that Kitchen, Ancient Orient, 68, argues for this position.
164. P.M. Arnold, Gibeah: The Search for a Biblical City, JSOTSup 79 (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1990).
96 Archaeological Light on the Old Testament

1. According to 1 Samuel 14:16 Saul’s watchmen at Gibeah could

look on the Philistine disarray at Michmash. Tell el-Ful, how-
ever, is 7 km. away from the modern Mukhmas (Michmash),
and even a watchtower would not afford a view from such a dis-
tance. From Geba, by contrast, such a view is clear and close.
2. The textual references indicate an association with sites north
of Jerusalem, not with Jerusalem itself. Tell el-Ful is a mere 4
km. from the Old City, while the other sites such as Gibeon, Ra-
mah, Mizpah, and Michmash are all to the north of Tell el-Ful.
3. According to 1 Samuel 14:2 Saul and his six hundred men
lodged under the pomegranate (hdrimmé6n), on the outskirts of
Gibeah. This is surely the Rock of the Pomegranate/Rimmon
(sela‘ harimmén) of Judges 20:45-47; 21:13—not a tree, but a
rock formation. This can be identified with a formation 2 km.
southeast of the Geba Pass, a cave named el-Jaia that looks like
a split pomegranate and that could well accommodate the six
hundred men of either Benjamin’s (Judg. 20:47) or Saul’s army
ClSamr 4 aie

Whether we accept Arnold’s argument at every point or not, he has pre-

sented a good case, and it illustrates the more general point that identi-
fication of ancient sites in Palestine is far from settled.
While discussion of the above topics has been far from exhaustive, it
is submitted in the hope that further research will shed more light on
the unsolved problems that remain.

165. See ibid., chap. 2, for these points in more detail.

 4
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study
Tremper Longman III

Summarizing and evaluating the literary study of the Old Testament

over the past quarter century is a daunting task. During that period of
time, more books and articles that focus on the literary method and its
application have appeared than in the previous century and a half.!
Indeed, the literary approach has been revitalized within the time pe-
riod specifically covered by this survey. I begin at the moment of the
method's rebirth, then acknowledge its earlier history, while exploring
the reasons for its temporary demise. After this, I trace the associations
between Old Testament studies and different permutations of literary
studies beyond the formalism with which its modern phase began.
After describing the current state of the field in the last half of the
1990s, I outline an agenda for the future.

(Re)birth of the Literary Approach to the Old Testament

From the perspective of biblical scholarship, the watershed was the
publication of Robert Alter’s Art of Biblical Narrative in 1981.7 The liter-

1. A look at M. Minor, Literary-Critical Approaches to the Bible: An Annotated Bibliog-

raphy (West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill, 1992), confirms this impression. Of its 2,254
entries, the vast majority date after 1980 and very few were written before 1970. See also
idem, Literary-Critical Approaches to the Bible: A Bibliographical Supplement (West Corn-
wall, Conn.: Locust Hill, 1996); and P. R. House, “The Rise and Current Status of Literary
Criticism of the Old Testament,” in Beyond Form Criticism: Essays in Old Testament Lit-
erary Criticism, ed. P. R. House, SBTS 2 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 3-22;
hereafter abbreviated as BFC.
2. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), though many
would also point to the earlier significant study by E. Auerbach, Mimesis: The Represen-
tation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W. Trask (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1957), particularly chap. 1, entitled “Odysseus’ Scar.”

oT,
98 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

ary study of the Old Testament had been advocated by some before this
time,? but Alter’s study attracted the attention of the field in an unprec-
edented way and led to a renewed interest in the literary form of the bib-
lical text. Whereas in the years before his work there were sporadic at-
tempts at literary studies of the Old Testament,’ afterward a movement
was born.
At the time of the publication of The Art of Biblical Narrative, Alter
was an established literary critic with a specialty in comparative liter-
ature. This book was his first major statement about the Old Testa-
ment. To describe why Alter’s book captivated the imagination of
countless biblical scholars requires some speculation. One might sug-
gest that the regnant historical-critical methods were yielding fewer
and fewer new insights. They also tended to obscure rather than illu-
minate the meaning of the final form of the text, which was of interest
to many readers of the Bible. Source and form criticism of the Old Tes-
tament focused on small units of the text for the most part and were
concerned with their prehistory. The literary approach advocated by
Alter did not reject these diachronic methods? but reordered priorities
so that biblical texts were examined in their final context as a literary
whole.
Evangelical scholars, whose presence in the guild of Old Testament
scholarship has been on the increase since 1980, were attracted to the lit-
erary approach because of its interest in the final form of the text and its
tendency to treat biblical books as whole compositions rather than a col-
lection of different sources. The literary approach allowed evangelical
scholars to bracket the question of the historicity of narrative and carry
on a conversation with their colleagues who did not share their views on

3. Most notably J. Muilenburg, “Form Criticism and Beyond,” JBL 88 (1969): 1-18,
reprinted in BFC, 49-69. In this publication of his SBL presidential address, Muilenburg
calls on his fellow biblical scholars to go beyond an analysis of the small units of biblical
text and their prehistory to attend to the rhetorical structure of the final form of the text.
His challenge to supplement form-critical study of the Bible was heard by a few scholars
in the next twelve years; see n. 4 below.
4. Besides Muilenburg, notable among these initial explorations are L. Alonso
Schokel, Estudios de Poetica Hebraea (Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1963); D. J. A. Clines, J, He,
We, and They: A Literary Approach to Isaiah 53, JSOTSup 1 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1976);
idem, “Story and Poem: The Old Testament as Literature and Scripture,” nt 34 (1980):
115-27, reprinted in BFC, 25-38; D. M. Gunn, The Story of King David: Genre and Inter-
pretation, JSOTSup 16 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980); D. Patte and J. F. Parker, “A Struc-
tural Exegesis of Genesis 2 and 3,” Genesis 2 and 3: Kaleidoscopic Structural Readings, ed.
D. Patte, Semeia 18 (1980): 55-75, reprinted in BFC, 143-61; S. Bar-Efrat, “Some Obser-
vations on the Analysis of Structure in Biblical Narrative,” VT 30 (1980): 154-73, re-
printed in BFC, 186-205.
5. Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative, 131-54, after all, argued that the Genesis narratives
were the end result of “composite artistry.”
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 99

the origin of the Bible.® It also provided arguments in favor of the unity
of the biblical text whereas other scholars saw seams and breaks.’
Other developments in biblical studies had prepared the way for a
ready acceptance of the literary approach, most notably canon criti-
cism as developed by Brevard Childs, which was an important develop-
ment in Old Testament studies since 1970.8 Canon criticism also fo-
cuses on the final form of the biblical text and treats biblical books as
literary wholes. Indeed, though Childs vigorously denies any influence,
John Barton has persuasively demonstrated a formal similarity be-
tween canon criticism and the literary strategy called formalism (or
New Criticism; see below).?
Finally, we must also acknowledge the persuasive power of Alter’s
readings of the biblical text. He did not lecture to biblical scholars; he

6. For examples of evangelical scholars using the literary approach in various ways,
see D. Tsumura, “Literary Insertion (A x B Pattern) in Biblical Hebrew,’ VT 33 (1983):
468-82; idem, “Literary Insertion, A x B Pattern, in Hebrew and Ugaritic,” UF 18 (1986):
351-61; L. Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984);
R. B. Chisholm Jr., “Structure, Style, and the Prophetic Message: An Analysis of Isaiah
5:8-30,” BSac 143 (1986): 46-60; K. J. Vanhoozer, “A Lamp in the Labyrinth: The Herme-
neutics of‘Aesthetic’ Theology,” TJ 8 (1987): 25-56; idem, “The Semantics of Biblical Lit-
erature: Truth and Scripture’s Diverse Literary Forms,” in Hermeneutics, Authority, and
Canon, ed. D. A. Carson and J. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 53-104;
idem, Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: A Study in Hermeneutics and
Theology (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); T. Longman ITI,
Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987); B. G.
Webb, The Book ofthe Judges: An Integrated Reading, JSOTSup 46 (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1987); L. C. Allen, “Ezekiel 24:3-14: A Rhetorical Perspective,” CBQ 49 (1987): 404-14;
R. P. Gordon, J and IT Samuel: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan; Exeter: Pater-
noster, 1989); V. P. Long, The Reign and Rejection of King Saul: A Case for Literary and
Theological Coherence, SBLDS 118 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); K. L. Younger Jr., An-
cient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing,
JSOTSup 98 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990); P. R. House, The Unity of the Twelve, JSOTSup
97 (Sheffield: Almond, 1990). These are just a few of many literary studies by evangeli-
cals. Literary studies have also heavily influenced commentaries, introductions (see R. B.
Dillard and T. Longman III, An Introduction to the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Zonder-
van, 1994]), and other reference works by evangelical scholars.
7. Anotable instance of this is G. J. Wenham, “The Coherence of the Flood Narrative,”
VT 28 (1978): 336-48, reprinted in “J Studied Inscriptions from before the Flood”: Ancient
Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to the Old Testament, ed. R. S. Hess and
D. T. Tsumura, SBTS 4 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 436-47. Evangelicals
were not the only ones to use the literary approach as an argument in favor of the unity
of a biblical text; see also R. N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological
Study, JSOTSup 53 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987); and I. M. Kikawada and A. Quinn, Be-
fore Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985).
8. See his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1979).
9. J. Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study (Philadelphia: West-
minster; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1984).
100 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

showed them how it was done, with striking results. His treatment of
the biblical stories in The Art of Biblical Narrative, particularly those
from Genesis, makes sense of and illuminates the biblical text. His work
is also interesting to a broader audience, something that could not be
said of many previous form-critical readings of the text.
Alter does not situate his approach to literary analysis within the
panoply of different schools of thought, but his approach may generally
be described as a kind of formalism or New Criticism. That is, Alter fo-
cuses on the text, not on the author or the reader; specifically he desires
to describe the function of the ancient Hebrew literary conventions.
While there are similarities between the literatures of different cultures
and different time periods, each people, ancient Israelites included, tell
their stories and write their poems in different ways:

Every culture, even every era in a particular culture, develops distinctive

and sometimes intricate codes for telling its stories, involving everything
from narrative point of view, procedures of descriptions and character-
ization, the management of dialogue, to the ordering of time and the
organization of plot.!°

The purpose of Alter’s analysis is to explore and understand the literary

conventions of Hebrew stories and poems in order to understand their
meaning.
Alter’s work inspired many to attempt literary readings of biblical
narrative. A number of biblical scholars followed his method in general
outline.!!

Ancient Precursors
I have already mentioned the work of Muilenburg and others who pro-
duced literary studies sporadically in the years before the blossoming
of the method.'? Further study reveals ancient roots to the practice of

10. R. Alter, “How Convention Helps Us to Read: The Case of the Bible’s Annunciation
Type Scene,” Prooftexts 3 (1983): 115.
11. J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis, SSN 17 (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum,
1975), 11-45, was a precursor. Others include A. Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Bib-
lical Narrative, BLS 9 (Sheffield: Almond, 1983); M. Weiss, The Bible from Within: The
Method of Total Interpretation (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984); J. Licht, Storytelling in the
Bible (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986); S. Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, BLS 17 (Shef-
field: Almond, 1989). M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Litera-
ture and the Drama of Reading, ILBS (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), also
comes from this general school of thought, though a major point of his book is that Alter
wrongly reduces the biblical text to a literary function, thus neglecting its ideological
purpose.
12. See nn. 3 and 4.
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 101

applying literary methods, concepts, and insights to biblical narrative

and poetry.
Indeed, Stephen Prickett has persuasively argued that the applica-
tion of literary studies to biblical studies is not a totally new phenome-
non but rather is the reintegration of an age-old union.!? He attributes
the separation of biblical studies from literary analysis to the forces of
the Enlightenment. Specifically, he cites the founding of the University
of Berlin in 1809 as the moment, symbolic at least, when literary studies
and biblical studies parted paths. He believes that when the biblical de-
partment was removed from the humanities and placed with a separate
theology department a “glacial moraine” was erected between the Bible
and its literary perception.
Previous to this time it was a matter of course for the Bible to be un-
derstood in literary terms. One need only appeal to the early church fa-
thers to illustrate this claim. Augustine and Jerome were trained in clas-
sical rhetoric and poetics. As a result, they frequently applied the
principles of literature that they learned in school to the study of the Bi-
ble. They often compared biblical stories and poems with ones familiar
to them in classical literature. The result was, from a modern perspec-
tive, a distortion of understanding and evaluation of the biblical texts.
Jerome, for example, scanned Hebrew poems and described their po-
etic form in labels developed for Greek and Latin poetry.'* James Kugel
quotes Jerome as saying:

What is more musical than the Psalter? which in the manner of our Flaccus
or of the Greek Pindar, now flows in iambs, now rings with Alcaics, swells
to a Sapphic measure or moves along with a half-foot? What is fairer than
the hymns of Deuteronomy or Isaiah? What is more solemn than Solomon,
what more polished than Job? All of which books, as Josephus and Origen
write, flow in the original in hexameter and pentameter verses.!>

Jerome is just one example that can be multiplied throughout the

history of the Christian and Jewish interpretation of the Bible. The lit-
erary study of the Bible in the latter part of the twentieth century is a
reunion of a split that took place due to an unwarranted and unhealthy
obsession with historical criticism of the Old Testament.!®

13. S. Prickett, Words and the Word: Language Poetics and Biblical Interpretation (New
York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
14. See J. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1981), 149-56.
15. Quoted in ibid., 159-60.
16. In Prickett’s words, “To discuss biblical hermeneutics in the light of poetic theory
is not to apply an alien concept, but to restore a wholeness of approach that has been di-
sastrously fragmented over the past hundred and fifty years” (Words and the Word, 197).
102 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

The reemergence of the literary study of the Bible, however, was not
a monolithic phenomenon. Biblical scholars observed very quickly that
formalism was not the only literary game in town. Some competing lit-
erary reading strategies began to dot the landscape of the guild. These
different approaches are not always easy to understand or to relate to
one another. With this in mind, I offer the following description.

Conceptual Map of Literary Approaches to the Old Testament

While formalism continues as a viable literary approach within biblical
studies, other methods have made their impact as well. Indeed, biblical
studies reflects the situation in the field of literary theory. Literary the-
ory, like most academic studies, is a rather fractious discipline. Differ-
ent schools of thought compete with each other for dominance. New
approaches to literature have appeared with increasing frequency, and
after a lag of time biblical scholars assimilate the new method and
apply it to the text that is the object of their attention.
In surveying the different schools of literary study that biblical schol-
ars have employed over the past few decades, I describe them in the order
that they made their entrance into the field. This is not to say that when
a new approach was introduced into biblical studies the old approach
disappeared. The new approach becomes a kind of avant-garde, while
the older approaches continued to be practiced in books and articles.
At this point, lam merely descriptive and illustrative. Having already
described the “close reading” of Alter and others, I now define four
schools of thought: structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction,
reader-response, and ideological readings (particularly Marxist and
feminist approaches, as well as New Historicism). At the conclusion of
this brief survey, I describe the situation as it is at the present moment
before moving to a concluding evaluation of the literary approach.

Structuralism and Semiotics

Structuralism and semiotics are two labels that are sometimes used in-
terchangeably and at other times slightly differently. In their manifes-
tation in literary theory,'’ however, both focus on the nature of the lit-
erary text as sign.

17. [am concentrating on the use of these terms in literary theory and their applica-
tion to biblical studies. As V. P. Poythress has pointed out, “structuralism is more a di-
verse collection of methods, paradigm and personal preferences than it is a ‘system,’ a
theory or a well-formulated thesis” (“Structuralism and Biblical Studies,” JETS 21
[1978]: 221). Most important, perhaps, structuralism is broad in that it claims to be “not
a method of inquiry, but a general theory about human culture” (Barton, Reading the Old
Testament, 77-88).
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 103

Most studies of the history of the idea of structuralism begin with the
pioneering work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.!* Others
appeal to the work of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce
for a richer conception of the nature of the sign.'? Such neat distinc-
tions are interesting and important, but not for our purpose, which is
to give a general description of this movement and its application to the
literary study of the Bible.
At the heart of structuralism is the sign, whether linguistic, literary,
or cultural. The sign is understood as having two parts, the signifier and
the signified. The signifier is the word, the text, the custom. The signi-
fied is that to which these refer, the concept.?°
As we focus on the nature of the literary text as sign, we see that the
text is made up of a number of linguistic signs or words. Structuralism’s
initial insight is that the literary work is an arbitrary system of signs.
That is, the signs that constitute a literary work have an arbitrary or
conventional, not an inherent or necessary, relationship to that which
they signify. The arbitrary nature of language is illustrated by the fact
that different languages have each adopted different names for the
same object, state, or action. If there were a necessary connection be-
tween a dog and the word dog, then French would not use the term
chien nor would German use the term Hund.
Two further observations made by structuralist thought become in-
creasingly important later. First, Saussure argued that language is
made up of differences: “In the language itself, there are only differ-
ences. Even more important than that is the fact that, although in gen-
eral a difference holds, in a language there are only differences, and no
positive terms.”*! The difference between the words hat, cat, and bat is
a single letter, and language is built on such differences.
One of the important insights that structuralism made concerning
literature is that it, like language itself, operates by certain “conven-
tions.” Like syntax, grammar, and lexicon of a linguistic system, the lit-
erary conventions are underlying structures that may be discerned
across literature as a whole. To be competent in a language does not

18. See his posthumously published Course in General Linguistics, ed. C. Bally and A.
Sechehaye, trans. W. Baskin (London: Owen, 1959; reprinted, New York: McGraw-Hill,
1966).
19. See M. Shapiro, The Sense of Grammar: Language as Semiotic (Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1983), 25-102, for a cogent description of a Peircean semiotic as
applied to language and literature.
20. For helpful general discussions of structuralism, see J. Culler, Structuralist Poet-
ics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975); T. Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics,
New Accents (Berkeley: University of California Press; London: Methuen, 1977).
21. Saussure, Course, 118.
104 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

mean learning every word or every possible syntactical arrangement,

but it does mean learning the basic rules of the language. The same is
true of literature. To be literarily competent does not mean knowing
the literature exhaustively, but being aware of the major conventions,
or literary devices, genres, and so forth. After all, according to structur-
alist thought, the meaning of a text is found not in the author's inten-
tion but in the text’s conventional code. Reading is a “rule-governed
process.”??
When understood as simply describing the native literary conven-
tions of a particular culture or time, this type of analysis is not much
different from the formalism practiced by Alter. But some structuralist
analysis of narrative in the Bible is quite esoteric in a way that obscures
rather than illumines the meaning of a text.
Perhaps this tendency toward an obscure and esoteric analysis of the
text is in part due to the scientific pretension of the approach. Structur-
alists desire to give literary studies a method of approaching texts that
can be demonstrated and repeated. R. C. Culley summarized it by say-
ing that structuralists “are seeking a method which is scientific in the
sense that they are striving for a rigorous statement and an exacting an-
alytical model.”?3 This desire sometimes leads to treating a literary text
like a problem to be solved by amathematical formula.**
This quasi-scientific impulse with its resulting esotericism may also
have to do with structuralism’s obsession with binary opposition.
Structuralists’ study of the sign leads them to believe that signs (includ-
ing linguistic and literary signs) derive their meaning by opposition
with other signs.
A recent example of a structuralist/semiotic approach to biblical lit-
erature is E. J. van Wolde’s analysis of Genesis 2—3.”° In this study, she
combines the insights of the folklorist A. J. Greimas and the American
philosopher C. S. Peirce to produce a very sophisticated form of analy-
sis of these chapters in Genesis, beginning with the forms of expression,
which are the various phonological, prosodic, and semantic wordplays,

22. Culler, Structuralist Poetics, 241. According to R. Scholes, Semiotics and Interpre-
tation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 14, both readers and authors are “di-
vided psyches traversed by codes.”
23. R. C. Culley, “Exploring New Directions,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern In-
terpreters, ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker (Philadelphia: Fortress; Chico, Calif.: Schol-
ars Press, 1985), 174.
24. R. M. Polzin reduces the Book of Job to the following mathlike formula: FL je
Fy (b) = F, (b) : F,.r (y). See his Biblical Structuralism: Method and Subjectivity in the Study
of Ancient Texts, SemSup (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 75. See comments on E. J. van
Wolde below.
25. E. J. van Wolde, A Semiotic Analysis of Genesis 2-3: A Semiotic Theory and Method
of Analysis Applied to the Story of the Garden of Eden, SSN 25 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1989).
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 105

to the discursive form, which is the final interpretation resulting from

the interaction between reader and text.”°
In her general description of semiotics in the first part of the book,
van Wolde represents well the essential insight of this approach into the
sign nature of language, literature, and reality. But she also illustrates
well the quasi-scientific and obscurantist nature of the approach as she
reduces Genesis 2 and 3 to a series of formulas that only the initiated
can understand. Reading her comments on these formulas and their ex-
egetical implications leads one to question the need for such a convo-
luted approach to the text, considering that her interesting ideas about
the meaning of the text could be discovered simply through the normal
rules of close reading. It is for these reasons that few scholars would
consider themselves structuralists today.?’

Reader-Response Approach
New Criticism (formalism) wrests the focus of literary attention from
the author and his intention to the text itself. Positing the “intentional
fallacy,’° it makes attempts to understand a literary work via the biog-
raphy or psychology of an author appear misguided. Structuralism and
semiotics took on a quasi-scientific cast, but by focusing solely on the
text, they ignored the author.
Even with a common focus of study—the text—it is not at all unusual
to have as many interpretations as there are readers of a text. This ob-
servation illustrates the role of the reader in the interpretive process.
Readers come to the same text from different gender, racial, and eco-
nomic perspectives, all influencing their understanding of a text.
In general, and at its simplest, reader-response theory can be de-
scribed as those literary approaches that recognize that the reader has

26. It is in Peirce, rather than Greimas, that van Wolde finds her methodological jus-
tification for including the perspective of the reader; cf. Semiotic Analysis, 23.
27. Other examples of structuralist studies of the Old Testament include R. Barthes,
“The Struggle with the Angel: Textual Analysis of Genesis 32:23-33,” in R. Barthes et al.,
Structural Analysis and Biblical Exegesis: Interpretational Essays, trans. A. M. Johnson Jr.,
PTMS 3 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1974), 21-33; R. Detweiler, Story, Sign, and Self: Phenom-
enology and Structuralism as Literary Critical Methods, SemSup (Philadelphia: Fortress;
Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1978); E. V. McKnight, The Bible and the Reader: An Intro-
duction to Literary Criticism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985); D. Jobling, The Sense ofBib-
lical Narrative: Three Structural Analyses in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 13-31, Numbers
11-12, 1 Kings 17-18), JSOTSup 7 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978).
28. The intentional fallacy, first proposed by W. K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley in
1946, “identifies what is held to be the error of interpreting or evaluating a work by ref-
erence to the intention, the conscious design or aim, of the author who wrote the work”
(cf. M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 4th ed. [New York: Holt, Rinehart, Win-
ston, 1981], 83).
106 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

a share in the act of literary communication.’? A more specific descrip-

tion of that share, however, uncovers the difference of opinion among
different advocates of this approach. Readers do more than recognize
and describe the meaning of a text as if it is totally external to them. But
do readers shape the meaning of a text to their situation or do they ac-
tually construct the meaning?
W. Iser articulates a moderate reader-response approach that ac-
knowledges that the text is external to the reader and serves as a re-
straint on the interpreter’s understanding.*° That is, different interpret-
ers can shape the text to their situation, but they have to justify their
reading by means of the text.?! By contrast, Stanley Fish believes that
the interpretive community actually constructs the meaning of a text>?
The text has no inherent or determinate meaning.
Before passing on to the next stage of literary approach, I would like
to describe what might be called ideological criticism here, as a subset
of reader-response criticism. Ideological criticism is the practice of in-
terpreting texts from a decidedly ideological viewpoint. The most com-
mon such interpretations are feminist and Marxist.**? One might also

29. See W. S. Vorster, “Readings, Readers and the Succession Narrative: An Essay on
Reception,” ZAW 98 (1986): 351-62, reprinted in BFC, 395-407.
30. His works include The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
31. A similar sentiment is expressed by the biblical scholar E. V. McKnight: “The re-
lationship between reader as subject (acting upon the text) and the reader as object (be-
ing acted upon by the text), however, is not seen as an opposition but as two sides of the
same coin. It is only as the reader is subject of text and language that the reader becomes
object. It is as the reader becomes object that the fullness of the reader's needs and desires
as subject are met” (The Bible and the Reader, 128).
32. See his Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).
33. Besides the work of Alice Bach, described below, a representative list of important
feminist works includes P. Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, OBT (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1978); C. V. Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book ofProverbs, BLS 11
(Decatur and Sheffield: Almond, 1885); J. C. Exum, “Murder They Wrote: Ideology and
the Manipulation of Female Presence in Biblical Narrative,” USQR 43 (1989): 19-39;
A. L. Laffey, An Introduction to the Old Testament: A Feminist Perspective (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1988; reprinted as Wives, Harlots, and Concubines: The Old Testament in Femi-
nist Perspective [London: SPCK, 1990]); M. Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings
of Biblical Love Stories, Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987). See also The Bible and Feminist Hermeneuitics, ed. M. A. Tolbert,
Semeia 28 (1983).
In the field of literary studies in general, for Marxist interpretation see F. Jameson, The
Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1981). See also N. K. Gottwald, “Literary Criticism of the Hebrew Bible: Retro-
spect and Prospect,” in Mappings of the Biblical Terrain: The Bible as Text, ed. V. L. Tollers
and J. Maier (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press; London and Toronto: Associated
University Presses, 1990), 27-44; F. O. Garcia-Treto, “A Reader-Response Approach to
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 107

place New Historicism in this category, though I am unaware of any

biblical study that takes this viewpoint as a conscious starting point.*4
Feminist interpretation approaches the text from a definite ideologi-
cal point of view, beginning with the view that women have been subju-
gated through most if not all of human history. This subjugation is often
embedded in literary works. It is the function of feminist interpretation
first of all to expose the patriarchy of literary and biblical texts and then
either to reject the text completely or to reclaim it by subverting it.
Alice Bach, for instance, in her provocative but, in the final analysis,
failed reading of the Sotah in Numbers 5, offers a clear example.*° Her
failure arises from her unwillingness to enter the world of the text
where the ancient promise of descendants makes childbearing a critical
theological enterprise. She also refuses to enter the world of the text
that expects God to work through material means (the potion that the
woman drinks) as the text expresses he would. The result is that she
sees women being treated callously by being forced to drink a suspi-
cious liquid because of the mere jealousy of their husbands. Since God
is not behind the rite, the woman may be put through a horrible ordeal
unjustly, and in any case the root of the jealousy is the result of a double
standard and male sexual anxiety.
Such readings are extremely important in jarring us out of our own
interpretive fantasy worlds. We all read the text from a restricted presup-
positional stance, and we need the readings of others outside our own
“faith stance” to alert us to our misconceptions. But they are misconcep-
tions about the text. The text, in the tradition of Iser and others, is the
final arbiter of meaning. We must justify our interpretation in its light.

Deconstruction
Formalism (New Criticism) moved the field away from authorial inten-
tion and toward the text. Structuralism and semiotics also looked to the
text for the meaning of a literary work. Reader-response criticism

Prophetic Conflict,” in The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, ed. J.C. Exum
and D. J. A. Clines, JSOTSup 143 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 114-24;
T. K. Beal, “Ideology and Intertextuality: Surplus of Meaning and Controlling the Means
of Production,” in Reading between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, ed. D. N.
Fewell (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 27-40. See also Ideological Criticism
ofBiblical Texts, eds. D. Jobling and T. Pippin, Semeia 59 (1992).
34. See H. A. Veeser, The New Historicism (New York and London: Routledge, 1989),
though Semeia 51 (1990), titled Poststructural Criticism and the Bible: Text/History/Dis-
course, ed. G. A. Phillips, comes close with influence from Michel Foucault and Hayden
White, an important contemporary philosopher of history.
35. A. Bach, “Good to the Last Drop: Viewing the Sotah (Numbers 5:11-31) as the
Glass Half Empty and Wondering How to View It Half Full,” in New Literary Criticism,
26-54.
108 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

casts doubt on this enterprise by highlighting the role of the reader in

the shaping or even creation of the meaning. One might predict the
next move on the basis of the direction of previous thought. Since the
locus of meaning has proved so elusive, perhaps we should entertain
the possibility that there is no determinate meaning in the text to begin
within
Deconstruction attacks the heart of structuralism by questioning the
relationship between a sign and that which it signifies.*’ That is, there
is slippage between the two with the result that literary communication
is on unstable ground. Deconstruction questions structuralism’s objec-
tive and scientific pretensions.
But first, Imust comment on an important presupposition of decon-
struction that will be relevant to my later evaluation. Deconstruction
denies the presence of an absolute signifier.** That is, nothing and no
one exists outside and above the literary process that insures the viabil-
ity of communication. Advocates of deconstruction regard any asser-
tions of an absolute signifier as maintaining a false logocentrism. Noth-
ing and no one, whether author, speaker, or God, is present out there to
ground the meaning of a text. Literary texts have no determinate mean-
ing, and one common feature of a deconstructive analysis is to under-
mine any attempts to provide a stable meaning for a text.
Deconstruction is most often associated with the work of the French
philosopher Jacques Derrida, who had a major influence on Western
literary theory from the late 1960s through the 1980s. In literary theory,
Derrida’s influence was mediated through Geoffrey Hartman and the
Yale school of deconstruction;*’ but today, while still practiced, it no
longer has the force and power it once enjoyed in philosophical and lit-
erary circles.

36. As we will see below, certain forms of reader-response approach also deny the
presence of any determinate meaning in the text, and that provides the rationale for the
reader to create it.
37. S. Moore, Poststructuralism and the New Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994),
13, describes deconstruction as a “strategic recasting” of structural linguistics. For in-
sightful introduction to deconstruction as a literary method, see J. Culler, The Pursuit of
Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981);
idem, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1982); C. Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London: Meth-
uen, 1982); V. B. Leitch, Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1983).
38. Abrams, Glossary of Literary Terms, 38, describes the absolute signifier as “an ab-
solute foundation, outside the play of language itself, which is adequate to ‘center’ (that
is, to anchor and organize) the linguistic system in such a way as to fix the particular
meaning of a spoken or written discourse within that system.”
39. See Leitch, Deconstructive Criticism, 88, 116-21, and more popularly, C. Camp-
bell, “The Tyranny of the Yale Critics,” New York Times Magazine, Feb. 9, 1986.
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 109

Derrida attacks the Western philosophical tradition that subordi-

nates writing to speaking. Since at least Plato, speech has been thought
to bear a closer relationship to pure thought than does writing. Writing
removes communication a step further from authorial presence. Derr-
ida contends that this attitude, which underlies Western philosophy,
demonstrates a stubborn belief in presence that must be undermined.
He argues instead for the priority of writing over speech. He believes
that writing is a clearer illustration of what characterizes all language
acts: the slippage between sign and referent, signifier and signified.
Derrida’s extreme language skepticism calls into question the act of lit-
erary Communication.
The fundamental force behind Derrida’s writing is his heightening
the distance between signifier and signified. Here he threatens the pos-
sibility of literary communication. He begins with Saussure’s premise
that a sign has no inherent meaning but finds meaning only in distinc-
tion from other elements in the semiotic system. Meaning is thus a
function not of presence but of absence. Derrida’s concept of “differ-
ance’ is helpful here. (The a in “differance” shows that the word is a ne-
ologism, constructed from two different French words, one meaning
“to differ,” the other “to defer.”) The meaning of a linguistic or literary
sign is based on its difference in comparison with other signs and as
such is always deferred, or delayed. With deconstruction one enters the
“endless labyrinth.”*° Meaning is never established; the pun becomes
the favored interpretive device.
This interpretive strategy reads a text looking for the inevitable apo-
ria that a literary text will produce due to the slippage between a sign
and that which it signifies. The aporia, or “undecidables,” will show
that the text produces no certain meaning. The only option is to play
with the text.*!
As we will see later, deconstruction is still a lively option in biblical
studies. Often, however, it is one of a number of interpretive strategies
adopted by a contemporary critic. To illustrate a deconstructive analy-

40. F. Lentricchia, After the New Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Lon-
don: Methuen, 1980), 166.
41. Characteristic of Derrida is an analysis of pivotal philosophers such as Plato,
Rousseau, Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and Austin. He exposes their logocentrism (belief in
a “metaphysics of presence”), which is implied in their fundamental phonocentrism
(priority of speech over writing). He probes the text of these philosophers until he un-
covers an aporia (a basic contradiction), which usually involves the philosopher's use of
metaphor or some other rhetorical device. Metaphor is key in this regard because it dis-
plays the slippage between sign and referent. Its use by the philosopher demonstrates,
contra the philosophers, that the truth claims of philosophy are no different from those
of fiction.
110 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

sis of a biblical text I go back to an early example, Peter Miscall’s anal-

ysis of the David and Goliath story.’
The traditional interpretation of David’s confrontation with Goliath
is guided by the narrator of the story. David is a young man who is vis-
iting his brothers on the front line as the Israelites encounter the Philis-
tines who encroach on their land. The Philistines have suggested indi-
vidual combat as the way in which the conflict can be resolved. They
have no fears; after all, their champion is Goliath, a seemingly unbeat-
able professional soldier. He is huge and armed to the teeth.
David, on the other hand, is inexperienced, not even a part of the
army of Israel. Nonetheless, Goliath’s arrogance affronts him and he
takes up the cause of Yahweh. He refuses armor and weapons like the
sword or shield in favor of facing Goliath only with a slingshot and his
faith in Yahweh. With Yahweh’s aid (1 Sam. 17:45-47) he defeats the
giant and Israel wins the day.
Miscall, however, suggests a subversive reading of the text. David is
not so much faithful as he is cunning, not so much naive as scheming.
After all, without armor, David can run circles around Goliath. With a
simple slingshot he can dispatch Goliath without getting close enough
to be struck by his weapons.
The result of this analysis is a demonstration that there is no stable
meaning of the text. Deconstructive analyses result in a basic skepti-
cism in the light of the indeterminacy of the meaning of the text.43 This
suspicion continues in the poststructuralist era.

Contemporary Poststructuralist Approaches

Since the 1940s, the field of literary studies has passed through succes-
sive stages of new approaches to literary texts. Once the connection
with authorial intention was severed, the search was on for a new locus
of meaning. Starting with the text (formalism/New Criticism/structur-
alism), attention moved to the reader (reader-response and ideological
readings) and then finally to a denial of any meaning at all.
Deconstruction appeared to many to be as far as one could go.*4

42. See P. D. Miscall, The Workings of Old Testament Narrative, Semeia Studies (Phil-
adelphia: Fortress; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), 57-83.
43. While deconstruction is a leading part of the poststructuralist approach, de-
scribed in the next section, Miscall is the best example of a predominantly deconstructive
approach to the text. His other studies include: “Jacques Derrida in the Garden of Eden,”
USQR 44 (1990): 1-9; and 1 Samuel: A Literary Reading, Indiana Studies in Biblical Lit-
erature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). See also Derrida and Biblical
Studies, ed. R. Detweiler, Semeia 23 (1982).
44. But we should note the efforts of N. Royle, After Derrida (New York and Manches-
ter: Manchester University Press, 1995), to read Derrida in the light of New Historicism.
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study eel

Where could one turn after denying meaning? Indeed, many have gone
no further. While suffering serious setbacks in the late 1980s and early
1990s, deconstruction lives on. It is premature to pronounce Derrida’s
thought passé, but it is no longer ruling the literary roost.
Some have taken a turn back to history. New Historicism scorns the
idea that literature is totally nonreferential.*+ It advocates the historical
setting of texts; it also insists on the textual setting of history.
But, at least in biblical studies, the best adjectives for describing cur-
rent literary practice are “varied” and “eclectic.” On the one hand, all
the above-mentioned methods are still used by scholars. Though the
avant-garde has moved far beyond formalism, some scholars still find
it productive.** Deconstruction has been rapidly declining in literary
theory since the revelation of Paul de Man’s early involvement in fas-
cism, but it too is still practiced by biblical scholars.
The cutting edge of the field, however, is not only varied in its ap-
proach to the literary study of the Bible but is also eclectic. That is, it
utilizes not one but a variety of approaches at the same time. This trend
in biblical studies may be illustrated by two recent collections of writ-
ings produced by some of the most active members of the guild: The
New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible*’ and Reading between
Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible.*®
These two works contain the writings of twenty-six scholars, who
may not agree in details but who share a broad consensus on what a lit-
erary approach to the text means. Foundational to their approach is the
assertion that the text has no determinate meaning. This belief, of
course, shapes the goal of the interpretive task. If there is no meaning to
be discovered in the text, then the interpreter’s job is to construct a
meaning. In a postmodern world, it seems wrong, even ridiculous, to be-
lieve that we can recover some hypothetical author’s meaning or even
believe that the text itself contains the clues to its meaning.” If anything,

45. See Veeser, New Historicism, and Semeia 51.

46. Many of the essays in L. Ryken and T. Longman II, A Complete Literary Guide to
the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), may be called formalist, describing native lit-
erary conventions to understand the meaning of the biblical book under study.
47. Ed. J. C. Exum and D. J. A. Clines, JSOTSup 143 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1993).
48. Ed. D. N. Fewell (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992).
49. Of course, postmodernism’s skepticism flows out of its denial of God. One would
think that this would immediately invalidate it as a Christian worldview. But T. J. Keegan,
“Biblical Criticism and the Challenge of Postmodernism,” Bib/nt 3 (1995): 1-14, argues,
unsuccessfully in my opinion, that Christian scholars can still profitably use postmodern
approaches. However, this judgment does not imply that Christian reading of the Bible
cannot benefit from a postmodern critique of modernism; see my “Reading the Bible
Postmodernly,” Mars Hill Review 12 (1998): 23-30.
112 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

the reader is the one who endows the text with meaning,°? and since
readers represent diverse cultures, religions, genders, sexual prefer-
ences, and sociological and economic backgrounds, how can any right-
minded person insist on something so naive as a determinate meaning?
An additional trait of contemporary literary approaches to biblical
interpretation rests awkwardly with its denial of the determinate mean-
ing of a biblical text. Clines and Exum assert, and the essays in their vol-
ume illustrate, a desire to move beyond interpretation of the text to cri-
tique of the text. They call for a method of interpretation that challenges
the worldviews of our literature.°'! While such a challenge seems to con-
tradict the claim that the text has no meaning, one gets the impression
that most of the authors of these two volumes feel it is their task to un-
dermine the message of the text in the interests of their own pressing
concerns.*?
Alice Bach’s essay on the Sotah (Numbers 5), mentioned above in re-
gard to feminist reader-response criticism, illustrates these principles
well.°? In the first place, she practices diverse literary methods in her
study including feminist, deconstructive, and psychoanalytic ap-
proaches. Second, she constructs, supposedly from the perspective of
her gender, the underlying ideology of the text. In this regard, she ar-
gues that the text, a description of a ritual to be undertaken in the case
of a wife suspected of adultery, is really masking male anxieties con-
cerning their own sexuality and is exerting a divinely sanctioned con-
trol on woman’s sexuality. She then moves beyond interpretation, or
the construction of the text’s meaning, to critique, basically pointing
out how bad and unjust and ridiculous the text is.
In the light of her denial of determinate meaning, it is unlikely that
Bach would be shaken to hear that her interpretation has little to do
with the clear message of the text. The Sotah is not about sexual anxi-
eties as such but about the importance of paternity in the fulfillment of
the promise of offspring in Genesis 12:1—3. The text also does not reflect

50. “A text means whatever it means to its readers, no matter how strange or unac-
ceptable some meanings may seem to other readers”; so Clines and Exum, New Literary
Criticism, 19.
51. Ibid., 14.
52. See D. J. A. Clines, Interested Parties: The Ideology ofWriters and Readers ofthe He-
brew Bible, Gender, Culture, Theory 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). In this
book of collected essays, Clines proposes that we read the Hebrew Bible from left to right
(unlike English, Hebrew is correctly read from right to left). This seems to be his version
of a hackneyed idiom of contemporary critics of the Bible who read “against the grain”
of the biblical text. That is, they do not like what they read so they argue with the text
from the standpoint of their modern prejudices. See specifically Clines’s essay “The Ten
Commandments, Reading from Left to Right,” chap. 2 in Interested Parties.
53. Bach, “Good to the Last Drop,” 26-54.
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 113

a willful disregard for women’s rights. In other words, innocent women

are not being harmed as a result of male pettiness. Rather, God super-
intended the ritual, and innocent women would be exonerated, while
duplicitous women would be implicated.
While Bach’s essay illustrates the general trends in contemporary lit-
erary studies, the most telling essay in these two books is one written by
Clines himself, “A World Established on Water (Psalm 24): Reader-
Response, Deconstruction, and Bespoke Criticism.”°° In this essay, he
focuses his attention on Psalm 24 by subjecting it to the three reading
strategies listed in the subtitle to his chapter. What he does with Psalm
24 is not as important or as interesting as what he seems to be advocat-
ing methodologically, especially under the name “bespoke criticism.”
On the basis of the lack of meaning of biblical texts and the importance
of community acceptance of interpretation, he presents himself as the
“bespoke interpreter,” based on the analogy with the “bespoke tailor.”
The “bespoke tailor,” he reminds us, cuts the cloth according to the cus-
tomer’s specifications. So, he argues, since there is no determinate
meaning, we should tailor our interpretation to meet the needs of the
group we are addressing, those who are paying us for our wares.*°
Perhaps this is the logical route to go once one loses faith in any kind
of authority of the text, any kind of determinate meaning. It is almost
too easy to poke fun at such a view of interpretation, suggesting other
more colorful but less respectable analogies to someone who manipu-
lates his or her product to bring the best price. But there are other al-
ternatives to Clines. The first is to refuse to base one’s presuppositions
on the work of the “masters of suspicion,” Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud,
and instead to consider building them on the authoritative text itself.>’
The other is to acknowledge, as Clines does, the absence of meaning in
the text, and then to resign oneself to silence. Perhaps I am being nos-
talgic for the 1960s, but I find much more noble and honest existential-
ism’s avowal of meaninglessness, followed by despair, than postmod-
ernism’s embrace of meaninglessness, followed by play and ideological
manipulations of the text.

54. Further, it is wrong to charge the Bible with a double standard. David too is held
responsible for his adultery with Bathsheba.
55. In New Literary Criticism, 79-90.
56. Ibid., 87.
57. A wonderful first step toward the construction of a distinctively Christian under-
standing of literature, which also takes into account the helpful insights of deconstruc-
tion, is the work of M. Edwards, Towards a Christian Poetics (London: Macmillan; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984). See also K. J. Vanhoozer, Js There a Meaning in This Text? The
Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1998).
114 Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study

Into the Future with Literary Studies

Once again, we have been able only to take a glimpse at the activity in
literary studies and the Bible over the past quarter of a century. To at-
tempt more would require at least a monograph. It is not the usual ac-
ademic hyperbole to say that interest in the literary approach to the
Bible has been unprecedented during this time period.
Indeed, the interest has been so great that at one time it was possible
to believe that we were in the midst of a paradigm shift in biblical stud-
ies, that is, a shift away from obsession with issues of history and diach-
rony to a concern with the text “as it stands.”°° Few today would go so
far, however, and indeed in literary studies there is presently a healthy
swing back to matters of history from both an evangelical as well as a
historical-critical perspective.°’? Nonetheless, to the detriment of our
understanding of the text, many contemporary literary scholars con-
tinue to “bracket” historical (as well as theological/ideological) ques-
tions as they study the Bible.
The popularity of the literary approach has not gone unchallenged,°
but most students of the Bible are not so much put off by it as they are
overwhelmed by the different varieties of literary approaches as well as
by the technical and philosophical sophistication needed to understand
and apply these approaches. While many of the most recent literary
studies of the Bible are eclectic, a host of different approaches are ad-
vocated, with considerable competition among them.
Moore and Carr have helpfully pointed out that there are three basic
stances one can take toward biblical narrative with its gaps, doublets,
and tensions.®! One might explain the narrative as the result of the con-
vergence of different textual traditions (source criticism). This would
be a more traditional historical approach. A second stance would be to
understand the gaps, repetitions, and tensions as a function of all liter-
ature. All literature is “undecidable.” All literature ultimately subverts

58. D. Robertson, “Literature, the Bible as,” JDBSup, 548; and J. D. Crossan, “‘Ruth
amid the Alien Corn’: Perspectives and Methods in Contemporary Biblical Criticism,” in
The Biblical Mosaic, ed. R. Polzin and E. Rothman, Semeia Studies (Philadelphia: For-
tress; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982), 199.
59. For the former, see in particular V. P. Long, The Art of Biblical History (Grand Rap-
ids: Zondervan, 1994). For the latter, a good recent example of a book that is sensitive to
history and literary issues in the study of the composition of the Pentateuch is D. Carr,
Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (Louisville: Westmin-
ster/John Knox, 1996).
60. Most notably by J. Kugel, “On the Bible and Literary Criticism,” Prooftexts 1
(1981): 99-104.
61. Moore, Poststructuralism and the New Testament, 66-71; Carr, Reading the Frac-
tures, 10-11.
Literary Approaches to Old Testament Study 115

itself. This is the starting point of deconstruction and poststructural-

ism. The third stance is that of narrative criticism. The text appears to
have gaps, unwarranted repetitions, and tensions. We simply need to
recover the ancient literary conventions that will help us elucidate the
text. There are no ultimate contradictions here.
It is this third view that I advocate. While the other approaches
throw some light on the nature of the biblical text, the most fruitful av-
enue to pursue is the one with which this essay began, namely formal-
ism.°? But I acknowledge that any exploration of the literary nature of
the text is just one aspect of the interpretive task, and it must be com-
plemented by other approaches, including those that focus on history
and theology.

62. Poststructuralism not only asserts that the text is divided against itself (prohibit-
ing any determinative meaning) but adds that the same is true of the reading subject.
63. For a fuller, more descriptive presentation of my views, see my Literary Ap-
proaches to Biblical Interpretation; and L. Ryken and T. Longman III, eds., A Complete Lit-
erary Guide to the Bible, with bibliographies.
Pondering the Pentateuch:
The Search for a New Paradigm

Gordon J. Wenham

Three decades ago pentateuchal studies seemed to have arrived at a

comfortable consensus.'! The documentary hypothesis popularized by
J. Wellhausen in his Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Germ. 1878)
and by S. R. Driver in his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Tes-
tament (1891) and in his numerous commentaries had come to be al-
most universally accepted among the academic community. Since it
was first advocated, there had been some powerful challenges to the
documentary hypothesis, but by 1970 these had been forgotten, and
everyone who wanted to be thought a serious Old Testament scholar
had to believe in J, E, D, and P and in the dates assigned to them by the
consensus.
The nineteenth-century version of the documentary hypothesis had
been made more comfortable for the twentieth century by updating the
model in a few respects. A. Alt, for example, had argued in “The God of
the Fathers” (Germ. 1929) that the religion of the patriarchs as por-
trayed in Genesis is typical of seminomads and that at least some of the
promises made to them by God may go back to patriarchal times.” Thus
although the earliest pentateuchal sources J and E may have been com-
mitted to writing some thousand years after the period in which the pa-

1. G. J. Wenham, “Trends in Pentateuchal Criticism since 1950,” The Churchman 84

(1970): 210-20.
2. Reprinted in A. Alt, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 1 (Munich:
Beck, 1953), 1-78; in English translation as Essays on Old Testament History and Religion,
trans. R. A. Wilson (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday; Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 1-100.

116
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 117

triarchs lived, they still preserve a kernel of authentic historical tradi-

tion. In his study on “The Origins of Israelite Law” (Germ. 1934) he
likewise argued that the casuistic (“if a man does. . .”) laws of the Pen-
tateuch reflect standard Near Eastern legal formulation and were prob-
ably borrowed from the Canaanites soon after the settlement, while the
apodictic (“thou shalt not . . .”) laws were uniquely Israelite and proba-
bly derive from covenantal settings such as Sinai. Neither type of law,
then, goes back quite to the time of Moses, but its origin may have been
much closer to his time than the documentary hypothesis would have
led one to suppose.
Alt’s disciples continued the process of arguing for an essential con-
tinuity between the biblical accounts of the patriarchal and Mosaic
ages and historical reality. G. von Rad in “The Form-Critical Problem
of the Hexateuch” (Germ. 1938) argued that the present form of the
Hexateuch had grown out of a very ancient creed enshrined in Deuter-
onomy 26:5-9, which sums up Israelite history from the time of Jacob
to the conquest.* The same pattern of thought controls the present
shape of the Hexateuch. Thus the essential kerygma of the Hexateuch
has not changed over many centuries; later retellers of the story have
filled it out and enriched it. Similarly, his great commentary on Genesis
(Germ. 1949), while working within the framework of the documentary
hypothesis, gives a theological interpretation in which the Christian
themes of sin, grace, and promise are prominent.°
If von Rad tended to emphasize theological continuity between the
earliest and latest theologies in the Pentateuch, Alt’s other great disci-
ple, M. Noth, did the same for the history and sociology of early Israel.
In The System of the Twelve Tribes of Israel (Germ. 1930) he argued that
the twelve-tribe league of Israel, its covenantal organization, and wor-
ship at the central sanctuary go back to the earliest days of the judges.®
Then in A History of Pentateuchal Traditions Noth argued that behind
both the literary sources J and E lay a common, probably oral tradition,
G (Grundlage), which originated in the judges period.’ G contained five
major themes: guidance out of Egypt, guidance into the land, promise

3. Kleine Schriften, 1:278-332; Essays, 101-71.

4. G. von Rad, Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs (Stuttgart: Kohlham-
mer, 1938); English translation in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, trans.
E. W. Trueman Dicken (New York: McGraw Hill; Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1966), 1-78.
5. G. von Rad, Genesis, ATD (Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1949); in English,
Genesis, trans. J. H. Marks, 2d ed., OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SCM,
1972).
6. M. Noth, Das System der zwolf Stéimme Israels (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1930).
7. Trans. B. W. Anderson (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972); original Ger-
man edition: Uberlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuch (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1948).
118 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

to the patriarchs, guidance in the wilderness, and revelation at Sinai.

Once again the drift of Noth’s work was to suggest that the pentateuchal
sources gave us a more accurate picture of earliest Israel than their late
date would imply.
Across the Atlantic, W. F. Albright, his disciples, and fellow travelers
such as E. A. Speiser and C. H. Gordon had been piling up parallels be-
tween the patriarchal stories and second-millennium laws and social
customs that seemed to demonstrate the essential historicity of the bib-
lical tradition. Furthermore, they identified many of the poems within
the Pentateuch as very early (e.g., Gen. 49, Exod. 15, Num. 23-24, Deut.
33) and appealed to them in support of the later prose narratives. On
the basis of such evidence R. de Vaux affirmed “that these traditions
have a firm historical basis,” while J. Bright claimed: “We can assert
with full confidence that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were actual histor-
ical individuals.”® Thus the general conclusion from all these studies
was that, although the Pentateuch was composed from sources written
many centuries after the events it describes, it was a fairly valid account
of both the history and the theology of earliest Israel.
Admittedly, students new to the academic study of the Old Testa-
ment might have been struck by the discrepancies between, for exam-
ple, the biblical account of Moses and the critical accounts, but those
brought up on the skepticism of Wellhausen found the mid-century
critical stance reassuring. Wellhausen had written: “We attain to no his-
torical knowledge of the patriarchs, but only of the time when the sto-
ries about them arose in the Israelite people; this later age is here un-
consciously projected . . . into hoar antiquity, and is reflected there like
a glorified mirage.”? The traditio-historical approach of the Alt school
on the one hand and the archaeological approach of the Albright school
on the other had laid to rest scholarly unease about the implications of
the documentary hypothesis, and by 1960 it was well-nigh universally
agreed to be one of the “assured results of modern criticism.”
But since the 1970s the comfortable consensus has begun to break
up. There have been challenges to the principle of source analysis; there
is uncertainty about the dating of the sources themselves and doubt
about the validity of the alleged archaeological parallels. In the 1980s
the debate intensified, and as we approach the end of the millennium
there is no sign of it being resolved. On the one hand there are those

8. R. de Vaux, The Early History ofIsrael, vol. 1, trans. D. Smith (Philadelphia: West-
minster; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1978), 200; original French edition: Histoire
ancienne d'Israel (Paris: Gabalda, 1971); J. Bright, A History ofIsrael, 2d ed. (Philadelphia:
Westminster; London: SCM, 1972), 91.
9. J, Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, trans. J. S. Black and A.
Menzies (1885; reprinted, Cleveland: World, 1965), 318-19.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 119

who argue that the J source, traditionally regarded as the earliest major
source, is both post-Deuteronomic and postexilic. On the other there
are those who deny the existence of J and E altogether, proposing in-
stead a pervasive Deuteronomic layer through Genesis to Deuteron-
omy, whereas Noth had denied that any Deuteronomic hand could be
discerned in Genesis-Numbers. By and large, those who adopt these
approaches are also quite skeptical about the value of archaeological
parallels to the Bible and tend to maintain that the Pentateuch is fic-
tional. Going in a totally different direction, other scholars have argued
that the Priestly source, traditionally supposed to be the latest source,
may come from the early monarchy period with elements from the
judges period. Others have suggested that both the J source and Deuter-
onomy may be earlier than conventional criticism suggests. No longer
is it just different versions of the documentary hypothesis that find their
advocates, but as at the beginning of the nineteenth century, both frag-
mentary and supplementary hypotheses enjoy support. Others prefer to
give up trying to establish how the text originated and concentrate in-
stead on its final form and meaning.
Among those writing most prolifically about the Pentateuch today
there is thus no consensus. “Every man does what is right in his own
eyes.” Doubtless there is still a strong and silent majority of those who
grew up with the traditional documentary hypothesis and feel no incli-
nation to jettison it, and given the lack of an agreed alternative hypoth-
esis there is a certain justification in a wait-and-see policy. The aca-
demic community is looking for a fresh and convincing paradigm for
the study of the Pentateuch, but so far none of the new proposals seems
to have captured the scholarly imagination.
A diversity of methods has led to the variety of conclusions that now
characterizes the world of pentateuchal studies. This makes it very dif-
ficult to review adequately the scholarly approaches that have emerged
in the last few decades; hence this essay attempts to highlight some of
the key developments in the discussion, evaluate their strengths and
weaknesses, and finally make suggestions for future research.
The first trend apparent in this period is the tendency toward a uni-
tary reading of the text as opposed to the dissection practiced by tradi-
tional source criticism. For some, this is a methodological principle
prompted by New Criticism in literary theory or by canonical criticism;
for others, the motivation seems more pragmatic and arises out of a
feeling of dissatisfaction with source-critical exegesis. Pragmatism
seems to have been a major factor prompting the abandonment of the
J/E analysis of the Joseph story. In 1968 R. N. Whybray wrote a short
article suggesting that the usual source analysis of Genesis 37-50 was
inappropriate and that the Joseph story was much more of a unity than
120 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

usually held.!° Then in 1970 D. B. Redford wrote a full-length study of

the Joseph story that argued not for the interweaving of two originally
independent sources J and E, but for a Judah source (J) being subse-
quently expanded by a Reuben (E) source. Commenting on these new
ideas, von Rad noted that they did show that the Joseph story could be
understood as a substantial unity, but that still left the duplication of J
and E in the rest of the Pentateuch to be explained. This, he said, “must
come from a comprehensive new analysis of the Pentateuchal narrative
material, which we urgently need.”!! These must be almost the last
words von Rad wrote, as he died in 1971. The next decade saw a variety
of answers to his call. But before looking at the comprehensive new
analyses that have been offered, we should note some of the integrative
readings of the Joseph story that have been put forward.
In two books and several articles, G. W. Coats argued for the unity of
much of Genesis 37-50, as did H. Donner, W. L. Humphreys, R. E.
Longacre, H. Schweizer, and H. C. White.!* C. Westermann also sup-
ported a more unified reading in the third volume of his Genesis com-
mentary.!? Among these writers there is broad agreement that chapters
37 and 39-45 constitute a story from a single source, but there is less
unanimity about chapter 38 (the Judah and Tamar episode) and chap-
ters 46-50 with its P-like list (46:8-27), the account of Joseph’s famine
relief (47:13-26), Jacob’s blessing (chap. 49), the various interlinkages
with the Jacob cycle (chaps. 25-35), and the renewed fraternal recon-
ciliation (50:15-21). Do these apparently unrelated episodes not sug-
gest that we are dealing with material from a variety of sources?
Although it is easy to affirm diversity of sources on the basis of genre
and content, it is also apparent that at some time some editor or author

10. R. N. Whybray, “The Joseph Story and Pentateuchal Criticism,” VT 18 (1968):

522-28.
11. Von Rad, Genesis, 440.
12. G. W. Coats, From Canaan to Egypt: Structural and Theological Context for the Joseph
Story, CBQMS 4 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1976); idem, Genesis,
with an Introduction to Narrative Literature, FOTL (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983); idem,
“The Joseph Story and Ancient Wisdom: A Reappraisal,” CBO 35 (1973): 285-97: idem,
“Redactional Unity in Genesis 37—50;” JBL 93 (1974): 15-21; H. Donner, Die literarische Ge-
stalt der alttestamentlichen Josephsgeschichte (Heidelberg: Winter, 1976); W. L. Humphreys,
Joseph and His Family: A Literary Study (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1988); R. E. Longacre, Joseph: A Story of Divine Providence (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 1989); H. Schweizer, Die Josefgeschichte (Tiibingen: Francke, 1991); H. C. White,
Narration and Discourse in the Book of Genesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991); idem, “The Joseph Story: A Narrative Which ‘Consumes’ Its Content,” in Reader Re-
sponse Approaches to Biblical and Secular Texts, ed. R. Detweiler, Semeia 31 (1985): 49-69.
13. C. Westermann, Genesis 37-50, BKAT 1.3 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Ver-
lag, 1982); English translation by J. J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg; London: SPCK,
1986).
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 121

thought these materials were interconnected. Could the modern ten-

dency to posit multiple sources reflect modern readers’ failure to per-
ceive the connections that were self-evident to the author? Along these
lines Humphreys and Alter, for example, have drawn attention to the
numerous verbal and thematic linkages between Genesis 38 and the
surrounding chapters, so that far from it being a foreign body in its con-
text, it “provides a counterpointing commentary on what we have wit-
nessed of this family and a proleptic look at what is yet to come.”!4
The issues in chapters 46-50 are more complex and cannot be dealt
with here. It must suffice to say that Coats has made a good case for see-
ing the Joseph story continuing to 47:26. Then Longacre argues that in
chapters 48-50 the blessing of Jacob, “in that it is poetry, seems to be
intended to be a high point of the toledot yaqob (i.e., chs. 37-50), if not
the whole book of Genesis. . . . In this chapter . . . we have a glimpse of
the embryonic nation—with the Judah and Joseph tribes destined to
have preeminence in the south and north respectively.”!> Similarly,
Schweizer has underlined the significance of the renewed plea for
mercy by Jacob’s brothers in 50:14—26. “Whoever eliminates this scene
really eliminates the climax of Gen. 50 if not . . . that of the whole orig-
inal Joseph story.”!® Furthermore, in my commentary I have attempted
to show how the arrangement of the conclusions of the Abraham and
Jacob cycles in 22:1-25:10 and 35:1-29 parallels the close of the Joseph
story in 48:2-50:14.'7 While this does not show that a variety of sources
may not have been used in compiling these chapters, it does suggest a
more coherent redactional or authorial policy than has been recognized
hitherto.
These attempts to read the Joseph story as a unity involve only minor
modifications to the old model of the documentary hypothesis. With J.
Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition,'® the outline of a com-
pletely fresh paradigm of the Pentateuch began to emerge. He has de-
veloped his proposals in numerous articles and in two further books,
Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis and The Life of
Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus—Numbers.'? These books are

14. Humphreys, Joseph and His Family, 37; R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New
York: Basic Books, 1981), 3-12.
15. Longacre, Joseph, 23, 54.
16. H. Schweizer, “Fragen zur Literaturkritik von Gen 50,” BN 36 (1987): 68.
17. Genesis 16-50, WBC (Dallas: Word, 1994), 461-62.
18. J. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1975).
19. Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Louisville: Westminster/
John Knox, 1992); The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus-Numbers (Lou-
isville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994).
122 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

radical in abandoning many of the traditional criteria for source anal-

ysis, offering a totally fresh view of the contents of the sources, their
dating and interrelationships, and finally arguing that these books of
the Pentateuch contain very little historical tradition; they should
rather be understood as ideological fiction. I shall look at these books
in order of publication, spending most time on the first, for it has had
the most impact on other scholars.
Abraham in History and Tradition, as its title suggests, divides into
two parts. The first part attacks the position of Albright, Speiser, Gor-
don, and others who had argued that parallels between Genesis and sec-
ond-millennium Mesopotamia demonstrated the historicity of the Gen-
esis accounts. On the contrary, Van Seters argues that the nomadic
lifestyle of the patriarchs fits better into the late Neo-Assyrian or even
the Neo-Babylonian period, that is, the seventh and sixth centuries
B.c.29 Similarly he finds parallels between the lists of the children of
Abraham and Ishmael and the names of Arabian tribes found in Neo-
Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian texts.*! Next Van Seters turns to the al-
leged parallels between the social and legal customs associated with
marriage, adoption, sale, and covenant making in Genesis and the an-
cient Near East.*? He argues that it is wrong to compare the biblical ac-
counts just with early second-millennium texts, for in fact some cus-
toms changed very little between the second and the first millennium,
and indeed some biblical practices correspond more closely with orien-
tal customs of the first millennium than with those of the second mil-
lennium. Finally he looks at the sites that Genesis says the patriarchs
visited and asserts that the archaeological evidence does not show that
these places were inhabited in the early second millennium in the way
that one would expect if the traditions originated then.?? In particular,
the story of Abraham's battles with the kings in Genesis 14 appears to
have been written by a Judean in the Babylonian exile.
Van Seters’s arguments against the historicity of Genesis were sup-
ported by T. L. Thompson in his misleadingly titled The Historicity of
the Patriarchal Narratives.** Thompson’s work is much more thorough
and judicious than that of Van Seters. He draws attention to some of the
fallacies that have characterized the archaeological defense of Genesis,
but he is not so dogmatic as Van Seters in propounding an alternative,
very late setting for the traditions in Genesis. Since the publication of

20. Abraham, 13-38.

21. Ibid., 39-64.
2, Menly, OS=M03.
23. Ibid:, 104=22.
24. T. L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the His-
torical Abraham, BZAW 133 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1974).
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm {23

these two books, scholars have generally admitted that the arguments
for the antiquity and authenticity of the Genesis accounts are not so co-
gent as Speiser and others alleged, but that is not to say the balance of
probability may not still lie in that direction.?>
Here it is sufficient to note that Van Seters uses his historical argu-
ment as a springboard for a fresh approach to the source criticism of
Genesis. After a review of earlier critical approaches, he outlines his
own methodology, which holds loosely to many of the criteria em-
ployed by traditional source critics. Only duplication of episodes is a
clear marker of different sources (e.g., 12:10-20 and chap. 20, or chaps.
15 and 17). Repetition within a story may not indicate different sources
since it may be merely stylistic. Nor does variation in vocabulary or di-
vine names suffice to separate sources, though material analyzed into
sources on other grounds may be identified through distinctive vocab-
ulary.”° Finally he suggests that Olrik’s epic laws, first used by Gunkel
in his Genesis commentary, provide a good guide to distinguishing
originally oral material in the tradition.*’
He then proceeds to examine the duplicate narratives in Genesis 12-
26. From the three stories of a patriarch passing off his wife as his sis-
ter, he believes he can see three stages in the tradition. Closest to oral
tradition and the earliest is 12:10-20. Then comes 20:1-18, which pre-
supposes knowledge of the first story and must therefore have been
written after it. Finally, 26:1-11 alludes to both chapters 12 and 20, and
must have been written last of all. According to classical source criti-
cism both chapters 12 and 26 come from the same hand (J), while chap-
ter 20 comes from E. But Van Seters argues that only chapter 26 should
be ascribed to J. Genesis 12:10—20 is part of an early tradition that in-
cluded only three episodes in the life of Abraham. This was subse-
quently expanded by some material now found in chapters 20-21, tra-
ditionally ascribed to E. Then at last came the real Yahwist, responsible
for nearly all the non-Priestly material in Genesis 12-26, including
26:1-11. Throughout his literary discussion, Van Seters tends to argue
for the substantial unity of material usually ascribed to J and to suggest
that it comes later in biblical history than traditionally supposed. Dis-
cussing Genesis 15, for example, he notes its kinship with Deutero-
nomic ideas and Deutero-Isaiah, and suggests that the boundaries of
the land (15:18-21) suit the exilic era better than any other period.’® He

25. For further discussion see A. R. Millard and D. J. Wiseman, eds., Essays on the Pa-
triarchal Narratives (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns; Leicester: InterVarsity, 1980); and
for a brief assessment of the debate, Wenham, Genesis 16—50, xx—xxviii.
26. Van Seters, Abraham, 155-57.
27. Ibid., 159-61.
28. Ibid., 263-78.
124 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

regards the P material essentially as a supplement to J and dates it to

the postexilic period. He holds that chapter 14 is later still: the kings of
the East are a coy way of referring to the Persians, while vv. 18-20
(Melchizedek and Abraham) attempt to justify syncretism that may
have occurred in the late fourth century. Thus, according to Van Seters,
Genesis reached its present form about 300 B.c.”?
In his later works Van Seters tries to show that his critical conclu-
sions hold for other parts of the Pentateuch. In Prologue to History, Van
Seters deals with the parts of Genesis not considered in his first book
about Abraham. Most of it is concerned with the primeval history, Gen-
esis 1-11, which Van Seters compares with both Near Eastern and
Greek mythology. He thinks it has an affinity with Greek antiquarian
writers active in the late first millennium as well as with Mesopotamian
sources. He suggests that this is explained if the Yahwist lived in the
Babylonian exile, where he could have encountered these ideas. Van
Seters also looks at the Jacob and Joseph stories, again drawing com-
parisons with other promise texts, especially Second Isaiah, which he
believes confirms a late date for J.
In The Life of Moses, Van Seters completes his case for a complete re-
ordering of the documentary hypothesis. As in his earlier works, he
tends to view the JE material as a unity emanating from the Yahwist,
and argues for its late date. Basically, the Yahwist was writing an intro-
duction to the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy to Kings) and
borrowed freely and creatively from these earlier works in writing his
own. Thus Deuteronomy’s brief allusions to conquests in Transjordan
or to the golden calf are turned into full-scale accounts. Joshua’s en-
counter with the captain of the host of Israel becomes the model for the
burning bush. Moses’ reluctance to be a prophet is modeled on the calls
of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the idea of an exodus from a land of oppres-
sion derives from Second Isaiah.

The call of Moses reflects very well the nature of the Yahwistic composi-
tion of the Pentateuch. As a writer of the exilic period, the Yahwist made
extensive use of both the DtrH [Deuteronomistic History] and a corpus of
prophetic traditions to shape his presentation of Moses and the exodus.
The call narrative is not the beginning of the prophetic call tradition but
the end of the process by which Moses becomes the greatest of all the
prophets. He experiences a theophany like that of Isaiah and of Ezekiel,
but in a way that epitomizes the divine presence forever afterward, as the
menorah. He becomes the reluctant prophet who struggles with the peo-
ple’s unbelief, like Jeremiah. He is given the dual task of proclaiming both
salvation to his people and judgment on the rulers, in this case the hea-

29. Ibid., 304-8.

Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 125

then. As in Second Isaiah, the God of the patriarchs becomes revealed as

the God of the exodus deliverance.*?

Van Seters’s approach is a tour de force. It might be described as the

ultimate application of Wellhausen’s view that the law came after the
prophets. Wellhausen meant that the laws within the Pentateuch were
post-prophetic: for Van Seters the whole Torah, laws plus narrative,
was written after and modeled on the prophets. If Van Seters’s view is
right, it has even more serious consequences for the historicity of the
Pentateuch than the traditional documentary hypothesis. Though some
may see this as the reductio ad absurdum of the documentary hypoth-
esis, his view that the J(E) redaction is no earlier than the exile has
found a number of adherents, most notably E. Blum and C. Levin (see
below). My evaluation of this approach must therefore wait until I have
reviewed some other modern views. At this point it is sufficient to say
that while I do not find Van Seters’s views persuasive, it is difficult to
find decisive and cogent counterarguments. This highlights one of the
chief problems in current debate: the lack of agreed scholarly criteria
and starting points.
If Van Seters is the leading North American dissident in the field of
pentateuchal criticism, in Germany this title must go to Rolf Rendtorff,
whose Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch (Germ.
1977) represented not a modification of the documentary hypothesis
and its conclusions but an outright challenge to its methods.*! Accord-
ing to Rendtorff, the methods of source criticism as exemplified in
Wellhausen’s work and the methods of form criticism first practiced by
Gunkel are fundamentally incompatible. Yet Gunkel and his succes-
sors, including Noth and von Rad, tried to combine the two methods.
On the one hand they used form criticism to explain the development
of pentateuchal traditions in the oral stage of transmission. On the
other hand they affirmed that these oral traditions somehow coagu-
lated into the literary sources, J, E, P, and so on.
Rendtorff believes that the form-critical approach is the right start-
ing point and that its approach should be carried through into the ex-
planation of the larger units.

The Pentateuch as a whole as it lies before us is no longer the point of

departure, but rather the concrete individual text, the “smallest literary
unit.” The work begins as it were at the opposite end. The contexts in

30. Van Seters, Life of Moses, 63.

31. R. Rendtorff, Das iiberlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch, BLAW 147
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977); translated as The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the
Pentateuch, trans. J. J. Scullion, JSOTSup 89 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990).
126 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

which each individual text now stands, however large, are not yet a mat-
ter of attention in this approach, nor must they be the primary concern
of the interpreter.*”

He illustrates his approach by a discussion of the patriarchal nar-

ratives. He begins with the Joseph story, which most people agree is a
distinct entity that stands on its own. He follows Gunkel’s proposal
that the Jacob stories are a combination of two cycles, one dealing
with Jacob and Esau and the other with Jacob and Laban. But the
Abraham and Isaac stories do not form such tightly knit cycles: each
episode seems rather independent, and this suggests what they were
like in the earliest stage of oral tradition. They have subsequently been
linked up by adding the divine promises of descendants, land, and
blessing. The different formulations of the promises (e.g., sometimes
“land,” sometimes “descendants,” sometimes “to you,” sometimes “to
your descendants”) give a clue to the different stages in the process of
amalgamation. These divine promises in their simplest form glued to-
gether the Abraham stories. Meanwhile, other stories about other
themes were developing (e.g., the primeval history, the Joseph story,
the exodus, Sinai). But at this stage one should not talk about a docu-
mentary source running from creation to conquest. Linking all the
blocks of stories up into a lengthy narrative akin to our Pentateuch did
not occur till a Deuteronomist or someone like him did this, often de-
veloping the land promise to connect the previously separate blocks
together.
Rendtorff thus argues that it is quite misleading to talk about a Yah-
wist or Elohist, for there never was a stage in the growth of the Pen-
tateuch when the J or E traditions existed as connected documents cov-
ering all the earliest history of Israel. Nor is it valid to speak of a P
source. The criteria for assigning material to the P source are often cir-
cular and are just special pleading. On chapter 23 he says: “When all is
said and done, I see no valid reasons for accepting that Genesis 23 is a
part of a P-narrative, but numerous reasons against.”*? According to
Rendtorff, there is less P material in Genesis than often supposed, and
it merely represents a supplementary layer helping to link together the
originally independent blocks of narrative in the same way as the Deu-
teronomic layer does.
His work contains many other sharp jibes at the methods of literary
criticism and at the dating criteria that are often invoked.*4

B2eilbidieas:
Sevllloyial.. yey
34. E.g., on linguistic criteria for source division, ibid., 113, 118.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 7

It must be conceded that we really do not possess reliable criteria for dat-
ing of the pentateuchal literature. Each dating of the pentateuchal
“sources” relies on purely hypothetical assumptions which in the long
run have their continued existence because of the consensus of scholars.
Hence, a study of the Pentateuch which is both critical and aware of
method must be prepared to discuss thoroughly once more the accepted
datings.*°

Despite his belief that the dating of the Yahwist in the time of the
united monarchy is an example of consensus dating rather than proof,
he is not advocating a late dating of the Pentateuch. He explicitly criti-
cizes those who would date J late. Indeed, he argues that the Deutero-
nomic editor responsible for producing the overall shape of the Pen-
tateuch may have operated two centuries earlier than often surmised.*°
He also notes that “the common dating of the ‘priestly’ sections, be they
narrative or legal, to the exilic or the post-exilic period, likewise rests
on conjecture and the consensus of scholars, but not on unambiguous
criteria.”>”
In this book, Rendtorff does not pretend to offer a comprehensive
refutation of the documentary hypothesis; rather he intends to open up
the subject to debate about methods.*® In that regard, his book must be
viewed as a success, and his pupil Erhard Blum has, in two long works,
put Rendtorff's method into practice throughout the Pentateuch. To
Blum’s work I now turn.
In Die Komposition der Vatergeschichte, Blum traces the multiple
stages of growth through which the patriarchal stories have passed.*”
The earliest elements are found in the stories of struggle between Jacob
and Esau and between Jacob and Laban in Genesis 25, 27, and 31. “Ob-
viously this text cannot be dated before David’s subjugation of Edom.”*°
This was next expanded by the addition of other stories in Genesis 27-
33. The interest in Israel, northern sanctuaries such as Bethel, and the
special place of Joseph among the sons of Jacob date this material be-
tween the period of the united monarchy and Josiah’s destruction of the
Bethel sanctuary.
The next stage in the development of the tradition involved filling out
the story of Jacob and his sons that begins in chapter 25 and ends in
chapter 50. That these stories concern the northern tribes (e.g., Joseph)

35. Ibid., 201-2.

36, Motel, AME.
Bieelibic:
38. Ibid., 181.
39. E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vétergeschichte, WMANT 57 (Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 1984).
40. Ibid., 202-3.
128 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

and yet look to the leadership of Judah points to a period when Judah
was asserting its supremacy over the north. This, Blum suggests, points
to the reign of Josiah, who attempted to control that area.
Meanwhile, stories about Judah and its neighbors, Moab and Am-
mon, circulated in the southern kingdom. These relationships are re-
flected in the narrative about Abraham and Lot (Gen. 13, 18-19). These
were tacked on to the Jacob narrative to form the first patriarchal his-
tory (Vétergeschichte 1). According to Blum, this must have been done
at the earliest sometime between the fall of Samaria and the fall of
Jerusalem.*!
During the exile a second form of the patriarchal history (Vdter-
geschichte 2) was produced. This involved filling out the Abraham sto-
ries (e.g., parts of chaps. 12, 16, 21, 22, 26) and connecting that material
with the promise of descendants, the gift of the land, and blessing.
In the postexilic period, perhaps between 530 and 500, the patriar-
chal history was first linked to the rest of the Pentateuch through the
editorial work of D, the Deuteronomist.*” In Genesis his hand is evident
in chapters 15, 18, 22:16ff., 24, and some other places; he may be re-
sponsible for inserting chapters 20 and 21 dealing with Abimelech. This
editor stresses God’s response to the faith and obedience of Abraham
(e.g., 15:6; 22:16-18; 26:2-5) and is concerned about marrying outside
the community (chap. 24), a preoccupation of the postexilic commu-
nity.
Like the Deuteronomistic layer, the Priestly layer is the only other
layer that is found throughout the Pentateuch. Blum’s second volume,
Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, deals first with the Deuteron-
omistic redaction of the Pentateuch and then second with the Priestly
texts.43 J and E are never mentioned, though in some respects Blum’s
D-layer is like Van Seters’s late and expanded J. But in his definition
and dating of P, Blum comes closest to traditional pentateuchal criti-
cism. He regards it as a layer rather than a source, but it does include
passages like chapter 23, which Rendtorff was dubious about, as well
as the ¢6lédot formulas and chapter 17.
C. Levin’s Der Jahwist is a response to the Rendtorff-Blum ap-
proach.*4 Levin accepts that, as far as the Yahwistic material is con-
cerned, it is right to think in terms of a supplementary hypothesis,
whereby successive editions of J were produced, each expanding J. He

41. Ibid., 297.

42. Ibid., 392.
43. E. Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, BZAW 189 (Berlin and New
York: de Gruyter, 1990).
44. C. Levin, Der Jahwist (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 34.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 129

also concurs with Rendtorff and Blum that there was no full E source.
Only Genesis 20-22, a Genesis midrash, can be termed E. But whereas
Rendtorff and Blum stress the oral origin of the material later assigned
to J, Levin argues that J used sources. He thinks his J is roughly equiv-
alent to Van Seters’s late J and Blum’s Vdtergeschichte 2, but he thinks
J wrote an account of Israel’s history that runs from Genesis 2 to Num-
bers 24.45 Contrary to Rendtorff and Blum, who think the first panpen-
tateuchal redactor was a Deuteronomist, Levin holds that J was con-
sciously refuting Deuteronomy’s demand for a central sanctuary.*° J
does this by portraying Abraham and the other patriarchs worshiping
at a variety of sites (e.g., 12:7, 8; 13:18; 28:16), and prefacing the laws in
Exodus 21-23 by an altar law (Exod. 20:24—26) that allows worship any-
where. Levin therefore suggests that J was written by one of the royal
deportees trying to offer hope of a return to the land and a practical pro-
gram of worship in exile. J was aimed at the early exiles, such as those
in the colony of Elephantine. J then follows the Deuteronomic law, but
it precedes both the Deuteronomistic History and Second Isaiah, both
of whom seem to be familiar with its contents.
After J had edited the earlier sources into a coherent, national origin
story, it was supplemented at various places (J*), and then P was
added. Since P was an independent source before it was combined
with J, Levin admits that at this point he follows a documentary hy-
pothesis. Eventually there were yet further additions (R°) to the mate-
rial. Thus, according to Levin, the Tetrateuch grew like this: J+ P+D
+ other additions, not J + E+ D+ Pas the normal documentary theory
maintained.
R. N. Whybray, well known for his studies of wisdom literature, re-
turned to a discussion of the Pentateuch with The Making of the Pen-
tateuch: A Methodological Study.*’ Its subtitle indicates its focus, a dis-
cussion of the methods used by pentateuchal critics. Chapter 1 explains
and evaluates the methods of criticism used to formulate the documen-
tary hypothesis. Chapter 2 looks at the traditio-historical method, and
chapter 3 explains his own proposal.
Whybray begins by observing that the documentary hypothesis, the
fragmentary hypothesis, and the supplementary hypothesis are not mu-
tually exclusive. Indeed, at many points the classic defenders of the doc-
umentary hypothesis invoked fragmentary or supplementary explana-
tions where something did not seem to fit the profile of one of the main

45. Ibid., 34.

46. Ibid., 430.
47. JSOTSup 53 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987). For his earlier discussion of the Joseph
story see “The Joseph Story and Pentateuchal Criticism,” VT 18 (1968): 522-28.
130 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

documents—J, E, or P. Indeed, of all the types of explanation for the

growth of the Pentateuch,

the least plausible of them is the Documentary Hypothesis. For whereas

the Fragment and Supplement Hypotheses envisage relatively simple,
and it would seem, logical processes and at the same time appear to
account for the unevennesses of the completed Pentateuch, the Docu-
mentary Hypothesis is not only much more complicated but also very
specific in its assumptions about the historical development of Israel's
understanding of its origins.

Whybray has two fundamental objections to the documentary hy-

pothesis. First, it is illogical and self-contradictory and fails to explain
what it professes to explain. The Pentateuch is split up into sources, be-
cause it is held that the present text contains redundant repetition and
contradiction. The original sources, it is held, were noncontradictory
and not repetitious, and the documentary hypothesis labors to recon-
struct them on this assumption. But when the sources were linked to-
gether, a repetitious and contradictory account was produced. Why,
asks Whybray, should we suppose that the methods of Hebrew writers
changed so drastically? If early writers did not tolerate contradiction or
repetition, why did later writers revel in it? But if later writers did not
mind such features, why should we suppose that the earlier sources did
not contain contradiction and repetition? But if they did, how can we
separate out the sources? “Thus the hypothesis can only be maintained
on the assumption that, while consistency was the hallmark of the var-
ious documents, inconsistency was the hallmark of the redactors.”*°
Second, Whybray maintains that the phenomena of repetition and
stylistic variation found in the Pentateuch, which the documentary hy-
pothesis is alleged to explain, may be understood quite differently, as
they usually are in other literatures. For example, since other religious
texts use a variety of names for God, why should a change of divine
name in Genesis signal a change of source? Sometimes there could be
a theological reason why one name is preferred to another; at others the
writer may just unconsciously want a change. Repetition is often done
for stylistic reasons or to emphasize something (e.g., for rhetorical ef-
fect and in poetic parallelism). It is now recognized that the study of
repetition may give important insights into the meaning of the text and
the skill of the author. Furthermore, Whybray holds that the attempts
to describe the theology of J or E rest on too narrow a base to be con-
vincing. But if this applies to these relatively lengthy texts, how much

48. Ibid., 18.

49. Ibid., 49.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 131

less plausible are the attempts of Rendtorff and Blum to define editorial
layers on the basis of alleged editorial passages.
Having argued that the documentary style of analysis is both too
complicated and implausible, Whybray proceeds in chapter 2 to criti-
cize the traditio-historical approach of Gunkel and Noth more tren-
chantly still. He argues that the task of tradition critics is even more dif-
ficult than that of source critics. At least the latter deal with partially
extant texts, but the former deal with hypothetical reconstructions for
which we have no tangible evidence.

The Documentary Hypothesis is simply an attempt to unravel the extant

text: to show that the material is composite and to explain how it came to
be arranged in its present form. As has been stated, the documentary crit-
ics did not think it possible to penetrate back beyond the extant words of
the Pentateuch and to discover and identify earlier forms of the material
which no longer exist and for which there is no direct evidence. This can
only be done on the basis of some even more fundamental assumptions.~°

These assumptions include the oral origin of these traditions, their

faithful transmission over many centuries, and that Israelite patterns of
transmission were like those in other cultures. Whybray argues that
there is little to support these suppositions and few good extrabiblical
parallels to unravel the process of oral transmission in Israel. It is one
vast speculation. “Much of Noth’s detailed reconstruction of the Pen-
tateuchal traditions was obtained by piling one speculation upon an-
other.”>! He illustrates his point by outlining how Noth believed the Lot
stories grew out of a place-name, Beth-haran, in Numbers 32:36. He re-
marks justly, “There is not a single feature of this series of speculations
which is supported by concrete evidence, from the mysterious rise and
fall of a ‘Haran tradition’ to the supposition of an otherwise unat-
tested—and surely quite unnecessary—deity Haran. But each supposi-
tion is made to serve as the basis for another.”°? Noth’s method is char-
acterized by “an undue propensity to pile hypothesis upon hypothesis
and so to construct a whole ‘tradition-history’ out of the flimsiest of
‘clues.”>?
Rendtorff and Blum profess to be tradition critics, but Whybray says
this is true only in the sense that they see the process of growth that
characterized the oral phase continuing in the literary phase, for their
methods of analysis of the text are much closer to classic source criti-

50. Ibid., 138-39.

51. Ibid., 194.
52. Ibid., 196.
53. Ibid., 198.
132 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

cism. He finds their conclusions less than convincing. “Rendtorff has

merely replaced the comparatively simple Documentary Hypothesis
which postulated only a small number of written sources and redactors
with a bewildering multiplicity of sources and redactors.”°* As for
Blum, Whybray thinks his approach is if anything more complex and
more dogmatic, yet less demonstrable, than Rendtorff’s.
So what does Whybray himself believe? His agnosticism about most
of the complex reconstructions of the documentary and tradition crit-
ics is manifest. He considers most of their hypotheses at best unveri-
fiable and at worst illogical speculation. Let us admit that we just do
not know much about the growth of the Pentateuch. Modern literary
criticism (cf. Alter and Clines) has shown that the Pentateuch is a well-
constructed work, which indicates that it is the work of an author, not
the end product of haphazard growth like the Midrash. So let us sup-
pose it is the work of one writer from the late sixth century as Van Set-
ers argued. Whybray thinks the parallels Van Seters noted with the
Greek historians are quite valid; they were writing the history of their
people from earliest times to their own day. Though they claim to be
using written sources from time to time, they evidently rewrite them
in their own words and even more so when they retell oral informa-
tion. Greek writers do not mind repeating themselves or varying their
style, so why should these features in Hebrew literature be ascribed to
different sources or layers? Van Seters and Rendtorff have been going
in the right direction in seeing the Pentateuch as an essentially single
literary work by either the late Yahwist or a Deuteronomist, but they
have failed to take them to their logical conclusion. “There appears to
be no reason why (allowing for the possibility of a few additions) the
first edition of the Pentateuch as a comprehensive work should not
also have been the final edition, a work composed by a single histo-
rian.”°° Van Seters, Rendtorff, and Blum regard the P material as post-
J, but Whybray notes that M. Haran and A. Hurvitz (discussed below)
have argued that P is preexilic. Hence the P material could be just one
of the sources used by the author of the Pentateuch. Most of the nar-
ratives were based on folktales or made up by the author. This means
that most of the story should be regarded as fiction, including “the
whole presentation of Moses . . . in its present form.”>°
On the one hand, Whybray’s work on the Pentateuch could be viewed
as the logical conclusion of the direction in which much pentateuchal
criticism has been moving in the last three decades. More and more

54. Ibid., 210.

55. Ibid., 232-33.
56. Ibid., 240.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 133

studies have been insisting on the sixth century as the time in which the
whole work started to take shape, and there has been an ever stronger
trend to unitary readings and a reaction against minute dissection. On
the other hand, he could be viewed as the embodiment of the English
commonsense tradition as opposed to the Continental love of complex
theorizing. His book is a powerful and valid critique of the methods that
have been taken for granted in pentateuchal criticism for nearly two
centuries. Nonetheless, though I think his model for the composition of
the Pentateuch is essentially correct (one major author using a variety
of sources),°’ he has not demonstrated this by giving detailed attention
to the texts, nor has he shown that it was composed so late or should be
regarded as fiction.
Though in recent study of the Pentateuch the pace has been set by
those rejecting traditional critical views, many studies take these views
for granted. One of the few attempts to refute the radical arguments is
K. Berge, Die Zeit des Jahwisten, which tries to turn the critical clock
back in various ways.°® Its chief thrust is to argue that J was indeed
composed in the tenth century B.c., in the time of David and Solomon.
Berge argues that the promises of nationhood (Gen. 12:2) and victory
over other nations (27:27-29) fit the period of the Davidic-Solomonic
empire. The promise that God would be with the patriarchs shows that
memories of the patriarchs and the wilderness wanderings were still
alive. He thinks the alleged parallels with Deuteronomic literature and
Deutero-Isaiah are weak; and even if they were valid, similarity of ideas
does not mean a similar date of composition. The weight of the points
under discussion is that they together all indicate one and the same pe-
riod as the likeliest time of origin: the early period of the empire.°?
Another significant contribution from a more traditional critical po-
sition is S. Boorer, The Promise of the Land as Oath.®® Boorer examines
those passages in Genesis to Deuteronomy that mention within a Deu-
teronomistic context that God is giving the land to Israel because of his
oath to the patriarchs. She compares each passage to Deuteronomy and
concludes that they were written in the following order: Exodus 32:13
and 33:1; Numbers 14:23a; Deuteronomy 10:11; Deuteronomy 1:35;
Numbers 32:11. Boorer argues that her findings rule out the views of
Van Seters, who would date the Yahwistic redaction post-Deuteronomy,

57. I argued the same independently of Whybray in my commentary, Genesis I-15,

WBC 1 (Waco: Word, 1987). See further my “The Priority of P,” VT 49 (1999): 240-58.
58. K. Berge, Die Zeit des Jahwisten, BLAW 186 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990). He also be-
lieves in E as a separate source.
59. Ibid., 313.
60. S. Boorer, The Promise of the Land as Oath: A Key to the Formation of the Pen-
tateuch, BZAW 205 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992).
134 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

and of Rendtorff, who believes that several of these texts come from the
same Deuteronomistic layer. “Our results support most closely Well-
hausen’s overall conception of the formation of the Pentateuch, and also
lend some support to aspects of the second paradigm initiated by
Noth.”®! Though the evidence for her conclusion is presented at great
length, it rests on too narrow a basis to be compelling.
In Europe and the United States pentateuchal critics have concen-
trated their attention on the narratives, particularly those of Genesis.
Very little attention has been given to the laws and instructions usually
identified as Priestly, even though they constitute more than half of
Genesis through Numbers. Israeli and American Jewish scholars, how-
ever, often prefer another paradigm of pentateuchal criticism. Follow-
ing Y. Kaufmann, scholars like A. Hurvitz, M. Haran, J. Milgrom, and
M. Weinfeld have argued that P precedes D, indeed may be contempo-
rary with J.°
Now I. Knohl has produced an important study of this material that
profoundly challenges many accepted views.®? According to the tradi-
tional documentary hypothesis, the Priestly material has several com-
ponents. One of the earlier sections is the Holiness Code (H; Lev. 17-
26), which is often dated in the early exile, whereas the bulk of the
Priestly code (P) may be up to a century later. Furthermore it is usually
held that there are P insertions or editorial changes to H.
Knohl challenges all these points. Employing methods used in the
critical analysis of the Talmud, he argues that the Holiness School ed-
ited the P material, not vice versa. By comparing the P version of the
festivals in Numbers 28-29 with the H version in Leviticus 23, he shows
that the latter is an H expansion of a P text. For example, Leviticus
23:39-43 looks like a supplement to the P text 23:33-38. In 23:21 the
first and last parts of the verse appear to be glosses on the middle part
of the verse. His criterion for detecting glosses is “that they may be re-
moved without disturbing the logical order of the original sentence.”4

61. Ibid., 437.

62. Y. Kaufmann, The Religion ofIsrael: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile,
trans. and abridged by M. Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); A.
Hurvitz, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship between the Priestly Source and the Book of
Ezekiel (Paris: Gabalda, 1982); M. Haran, Temples and Priestly Service in Ancient Israel
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1978; reprinted, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1995); J. Milgrom,
Leviticus 1-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 3 (New York:
Doubleday, 1991); M. Weinfeld, “Social and Cultic Institutions in the Priestly Source
against Their Ancient Near Eastern Background,” in Proceedings of the Eighth World Con-
gress of Jewish Studies, vol. 5 (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1983), 95-129.
63. I. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1995).
64. Ibid., 12.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 135

The double title of 23:2, 4 makes it appear likely that vv. 2-3 are both
additions. This close analysis of Leviticus 23 allows Knohl to determine
the characteristics of P and H. For example, in P God speaks in the third
person, whereas in H he speaks in the first. P is concerned purely with
cultic matters (e.g., sabbath sacrifices), whereas H is concerned with
moral matters (e.g., not working on the sabbath). Using a mixture of
linguistic, theological, and content-related criteria, Knohl goes on to
argue that wide stretches of P material have been edited by H. These
come from Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. He argues that “there are
many indications of HS editing of PT material but. . . no evidence at all
for influence in the opposite direction.”®> Not only did HS edit PT and
not vice versa, but “HS is responsible for the great enterprise of editing
the Torah, which included editing and rewriting the legal scrolls of the
PT and blending them with the non-Priestly sources.”©° In other words,
Knohl sees HS not simply as a pentateuchal source but as the last re-
dactor of the Pentateuch. In his schema HS has a similar nature and
role to P in the classical documentary hypothesis.
Having delineated the content of HS and PT, Knohl proceeds to an-
alyze their leading religious ideas. PT differentiates sharply between
the Genesis era and the Mosaic era. In the Genesis era, God is known as
Elohim or El Shaddai; from the time of Moses, as Yahweh. The early
period was characterized by unmediated revelation, God’s direct care
for humankind, and his intervention to punish. In the Mosaic era he
spoke only to Moses, and both punishment and atonement are imper-
sonal; indeed, few acts are ascribed to God. PT shuns anthropomor-
phisms in the Mosaic era. It wants to emphasize the loftiness of God.
“The impersonal, nonanthropomorphic language of the period of
Moses expresses the majesty of the holy and its awesomeness.”®’ In-
deed, Knohl believes that PT did not envisage any prayer, song, or
praise in the cult. He admits that songs and prayers were used in other
places and in much Israelite worship. But “the PT description is an ide-
alized approach, which apparently was never put into practice outside

65. Ibid., 204. Because Knohl believes that H and P have not always been correctly
distinguished, his definitions of H and P do not always coincide with the traditional ones.
For this reason he speaks of HS = Holiness School and PT = Priestly Torah.
66. Ibid., 6. Cf. 101: “HS is responsible for the final form of the books of Exodus, Lev-
iticus and Numbers. In places that contain Priestly traditions alongside those of JE, the
editorial stamp of HS is evident. The characteristics of this editing project are transition
passages, skillfully constructed to create frameworks for the various traditions; the
blending of Priestly and non-Priestly language; and marked affinities to the language of
Ezekiel. Even passages belonging primarily to PT bear signs of HS's editing; this indicates
that PT came into the possession of HS in the form of individual scrolls, and it was HS
that edited and combined them.”
67. Ibid., 146-47.
136 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

the limited area in which the Priestly cult was performed.”©* PT was not
interested in the land, agriculture, kingship, and administrative proce-
dures—only the cult. Furthermore it does not know of any moral code
given to Moses: all the laws he received had to do with the cult. Finally
it sees the God-Israel relationship sealed at Sinai not as a bilateral con-
ditional covenant (bérit) but as a one-sided divinely imposed pact
(edit). This relationship is “independent of the relation of reward and
punishment—humans recognize their true status and are transformed
into people who ‘worship through love,’ without expecting any recom-
pense for their deeds.”®? This level of theological abstraction and lofty
conception of God remained unequaled in Judaism until the Jews of the
Middle Ages interacted with philosophy.
In HS, however, we have a development of Priestly theology that in-
corporates both the ideas of PT about holiness and the centrality of the
cult with more popular notions of a God who is concerned with every-
day life outside the cult; who wants all Israel, not just the priests, to be
holy; and who regards the whole land, not just the sanctuary, as holy.
“According to PT, holiness, which results from God’s presence, is re-
stricted to the cultic enclosure. ... HS, on the other hand, believes that
the holiness of God expands beyond the Sanctuary to encompass the
settlements of the entire congregation, in whose midst God dwells.””°
What is more, HS understands that holiness involves morality and so-
cial justice, as shown by all the laws in Leviticus 19. “Through absorb-
ing morality and social justice into the concept of holiness, and through
extending the demand to live a life of holiness to the entire community,
it [HS] combines the many streams of faith and cult present in the Isra-
elite nation. For HS, the primary mission of the entire nation is the at-
tainment of holiness; it is this that separates Israel from the nations.””!
Having analyzed the different theological stances of HS and PT,
Knohl finally tries to locate them historically. He thinks that Leviticus
17 suggests that HS was written in a period when the cult was being
centralized, because it forbids the offering of sacrifice anywhere but at
the tabernacle. This could connect it with Hezekiah’s or Josiah’s re-
forms. He thinks the former more likely as Molech worship was a prob-
lem in the eighth century. Also, the eighth century was a time of social
polarization, which HS tries to counter with the jubilee provisions of
Leviticus 25. The eighth-century prophets like Amos and Isaiah sav-
agely attacked priestly rituals and demanded moral purity. HS counters

68. Ibid., 149.

69. Ibid., 158.
70. Ibid., 185.
71. Ibid., 198.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 137

this prophetic onslaught by insisting that holiness does involve moral-

ity, but also that the cult has its proper place. “We thus find a moral re-
finement of the purely cultic conception, stemming from Priestly cir-
cles themselves, under the influence of the prophetic critique.””? The
prophetic preaching about social and moral issues led to the priests
emerging from their introverted world, solely preoccupied with cultic
holiness, and interacting with popular concerns. Thus Knohl dates the
emergence of HS somewhere in the late eighth century. These writing
priests continued their work over a period of time, however, finally
compiling the whole Pentateuch in the spirit of HS in the late exile or
shortly after the return to Zion.
PT was written before HS. Indeed, it probably originated in the pe-
riod when Solomon's temple was being built in the mid-tenth century.
“We may safely assume that the establishment of the ‘King’s Temple’ of
Jerusalem and the creation of a closed, elitist Priestly class dependent
on the royal court are all part of the background leading to the develop-
ment of PT.”’> The loftiness and abstraction of PT by no means require
a late date. PT and J probably came into existence about the same time.
“If we add the flourishing of poetry, psalmody and wisdom literature,
we may generalize by saying that this was the peak period of all Israelite
literature—in every genre.””4
Knohl’s work marks such a break with the consensus view of pen-
tateuchal criticism that it is quite exhilarating. His analysis of the re-
daction of P texts by HS is at many points convincing. He has made a
good case for holding that many P texts have been edited by HS. His
methods and conclusions seem more sober and empirical than most at-
tempts at source and redaction criticism. His exposition of the theolog-
ical stance of HS is masterly. But his view of P and his dating arguments
seem less well-grounded. These depend too much on arguments from
silence: PT does not mention something, therefore it did not believe in
it. It does not include moral commands, therefore its concept of holi-
ness is purely cultic. We do not have the original PT, however, only the
version edited by HS. We therefore cannot be sure what PT once con-
tained, only what parts HS chose to retain. In fact, PT does begin with
several moral passages, about the duty of procreation (Gen. 1:28), keep-
ing the sabbath (Gen. 2:1-3), murder (Gen. 9:6), and food laws. And it
insists that Abraham, father of the nation, be perfect (Gen. 17:2). Knohl
acknowledges these points but thinks these apply to all people, not just
Israel. It is in the Sinai revelation that moral commands are missing.

IP, Mostal, YAS)

73. Ibid., 221-22.
74. Ibid., 222 n. 78.
138 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

Again we do not know what PT may have said here: are we to imagine
an account of Sinai that did not include or assume the Decalogue? But
certainly putting the accounts of Genesis 1, 9, and 17 before the Sinai
law-giving gives them special force and underlines PT’s concern with
moral issues.
Similarly, one might argue that we do not know what was said or
sung during worship, but we assume that something was said because
this was standard throughout the ancient Near East and also accords
with other Old Testament texts. Knohl makes the opposite assumption:
that the absence of reference to singing or prayer with the sacrifices
means nothing was said. But as archaeologists say, “Absence of evi-
dence is not evidence of absence.” It would seem extraordinary, if PT
were written to describe temple worship in Solomon’s time, a time
when Knohl says psalmists were also active, that the text would envis-
age a sanctuary of silence. Knohl notes two texts (Lev. 16:21 and Num.
5:19) that do mention prayer.
Similarly, it is odd that other legal texts in the Old Testament deal
with ethical issues and envisage them as part of holiness, but only PT
does not. Could it be that the original, putative PT dealt with such issues
but such passages were replaced or rewritten by HS?
Knohl’s view that PT antedates HS has been accepted by J. Joosten in
an excellent exegetical study of the Holiness Code, but he questions
whether the Holiness School was active for as long as Knohl suggests.”°
He contends that Hurvitz has put forward the strongest arguments in
favor of the preexilic date of P and H based on their archaic vocabulary
and that this dating is confirmed by the implied audience of H.”° They
are understood to be living in the land of Canaan but are invited to imag-
ine themselves as receiving the laws at Sinai as a way of impressing on
them the relevance of these events to their situation. The text pictures the
people of Israel enjoying real autonomy: they are not beholden to foreign
powers as they were in the exilic and postexilic eras. This is most evident
in the description of the gér (resident alien), who is a real foreigner, not
a convert to Judaism, who is bound to observe the most important reli-
gious and moral laws (e.g., on idolatry, blasphemy, and sex) but is not
compelled to participate in Israelite worship.’” The idea that God really
dwells with his people in the land is also fundamental in H, and this too
is incompatible with the loss of the temple in the exile. The failure to
mention the king leads Joosten to suggest that H was not produced by

75. J. Joosten, People and Land in the Holiness Code: An Exegetical Study of the Ide-
ational Framework ofthe Law in Leviticus 17-26, VTSup 67 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 16 n. 82.
76. See Hurvitz, Linguistic Study.
77. Joosten, People and Land, 63-70.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 139

those living in the capital but by country people, perhaps rural priests.”
Joosten admits that all these arguments are rather tenuous, but he con-
cludes: “No convincing arguments contradicting a date in the monarchi-
cal period are known to me, however. To the contrary, the most convinc-
ing approach to the problem of dating, the linguistic method developed
by A. Hurvitz, strongly favours the pre-exilic period.””?
Within all this turmoil about the existence of E and the dating of J,
H, and P, one fixed point remains in the broad consensus: the date of
Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history. Ever since de Wette ar-
gued in 1805 that Deuteronomy’s laws were aimed at limiting all wor-
ship to the one sanctuary in Jerusalem,®? scholars have widely accepted
that the composition of the Deuteronomic code must be connected ei-
ther as program or product of Josiah’s reforms in 622 B.c. And since M.
Noth first proposed that the present Book of Deuteronomy is the initial
volume of a unified history of Israel whose other volumes are the
Former Prophets, his views have been widely accepted. But most re-
cently C. Westermann has pointed out that the different books are dis-
tinctive in their presentation of history and do not constitute a unified
history.®!
In Law and Theology in Deuteronomy J. G. McConville has indirectly
offered the most serious challenge to the linkage between Deuteronomy
and Josiah’s reform. He argues that Deuteronomy subordinates legal
precision to theological rhetoric in order to encourage the people to
obey the law. Thus the differences between its code and other OT col-
lections represent not historical development but theological motiva-
tion. Second, he endorses the Israeli/Jewish stance that Deuteronomy
comes after P, not before it. Third, he holds that the attempt to link the
laws on the place of the altar, profane slaughter, feasts, and priestly
dues with Josiah’s reform has actually led to their misinterpretation.
Nowhere do these laws show evidence of the revolution in cultic prac-
tice that is usually said to have marked the Josianic reform. “On the
contrary there were signs of continuity in cultic practice, and indica-
tions that Deuteronomy generally legislated for conditions which char-
acterized a considerably earlier period than Josiah.”®? McConville finds
it difficult to be more dogmatic than this about the dating of Deuteron-

78. Ibid., 163.

79. Ibid., 9, quotation on 207.
80. W. M. L. de Wette, Dissertatio critica-exegetica qua Deuteronomium a prioribus
pentateuchi libris diversum (Jena, 1805).
81. C. Westermann, Die Geschichtsbticher des Alten Testaments: Gab es ein deuterono-
mistisches Geschichtswork? (Giitersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1994).
82. J. G. McConville, Law and Theology in Deuteronomy, JSOTSup 33 (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1984), 155.
140 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

omy, though he does say “the laws are consistently compatible with
Deuteronomy’s self-presentation as speeches on the verge of the prom-
ised land.”®3 With most pentateuchal critics’ attention focused on the
source criticism of Genesis, McConville’s work has not been widely no-
ticed, but if a new critical paradigm is to emerge, it will have to reckon
with McConville’s arguments.
So far I have discussed only diachronic approaches to pentateuchal
criticism, that is, attempts to trace how the Pentateuch evolved over
time. But such studies involve much speculation and reconstruction of
texts, which, as Whybray said, involves piling hypothesis upon hypoth-
esis. But within the last few decades, synchronic methods have come
into prominence. These look at the shape of the text at a particular
point in time and discuss its shape, literary form, and meaning without
reference to its earlier stages. These synchronic readings have had an
impact on diachronic studies to a greater or lesser extent. The studies
of Van Seters, Rendtorff, Blum, and Whybray all adopt some of the in-
sights of the New Criticism. But some purely synchronic studies, while
not always denying the validity of diachronic study, deliberately eschew
it or introduce it only as an afterthought.
D. J. A. Clines heralds this new wave of study.8+ He laments the vast
attention given to the unprovable speculations of source criticism and
the neglect of the present shape of the Pentateuch. He stresses that he
does not deny the validity of diachronic study, but he thinks it occupies
too much scholarly attention.

It is ironic, is it not, that the soundest historical-critical scholar, who will

find talk of themes and structures “subjective” in the extreme, will have
no hesitation in expounding the significance of a (sometimes conjectural)
document from a conjectural period for a hypothetical audience of which
he has, even if he has defined the period correctly, only the most meagre
knowledge, without any control over the all-important questions of how
representative of and how acceptable to the community the given docu-
ment was.®>

Clines goes on to distinguish theme from plot, subject, intention,

narrative pattern, and so on. The theme of a work is its “central or dom-
inating idea,” and he argues that “the theme of the Pentateuch is the
partial fulfillment . . . of the promise to or blessing of the patriarchs.”°°

83. Ibid. McConville has refined his views in J. G. McConville and J. G. Millar, Time
and Place in Deuteronomy, JSOTSup 179 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 89-141.
84. D. J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch, JSOTSup 10 (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1978).
85. Ibid., 14.
86. Ibid., 18, 29.
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 141

The promises focus on descendants, the divine-human relationship,

and land. Most of the rest of his book is taken up with showing how
these are developed in different parts of the Pentateuch, and that recog-
nition of the theme allows us to see the coherence of sections of the Pen-
tateuch, such as the Book of Numbers, often regarded as confused and
illogical. In the penultimate chapter he shows how this understanding
of the Pentateuch’s theme fits in with the needs of the exilic community
who could have read the story of Israel’s wanderings outside the land as
prefiguring their own life in exile. According to Clines, this shows that
attention to the major literary issues such as theme may clarify histor-
ical issues, so that synchronic and diachronic study need not be in op-
position to each other.
Other studies emphasizing the final form of the text have tended to
look at shorter sections. In The Redaction of Genesis, G. A. Rendsburg
deals with the whole of Genesis, while J. P. Fokkelman and M. Fishbane
each look at parts of Genesis, including the Jacob cycle (chaps. 25-
35).87 More recent works on the narratives of Genesis include L. A.
Turner and R. Syrén.8* Many other studies of parts of Genesis have ap-
peared in journals and in books such as those by J. Licht, R. Alter, and
M. Sternberg.®? Studies on other parts of the Pentateuch have been
fewer, but a final form reading of Exodus 32-34 has been offered by
R. W. L. Moberly, of Numbers by D. T. Olson, and of Deuteronomy by
R. Polzin.” In various books and articles R. Westbrook has been offer-
ing synchronic readings of biblical law, especially Exodus 21-22.?! This
brief list gives only a hint of the range of new work now devoted to in-
terpreting the final form of the text. Much of it is exciting and fresh, but
as with all studies, conclusions need to be weighed against the text itself
to establish their validity.
Though most final-form studies pay lip service to the continuing
place of diachronic study, few have really attempted to create a new syn-

87. G. A. Rendsburg, The Redaction of Genesis (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,

1986); J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis, SSN 17 (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum,
1975); M. Fishbane, Jext and Texture (New York: Schocken, 1979).
88. L. A. Turner, Announcements of Plot in Genesis, JSOTSup 96 (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1990); R. Syrén, The Forsaken First-Born, JSOTSup 133 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993).
89. J. Licht, Storytelling in the Bible (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1978); R. Alter, The Art of
Biblical Narrative, ILOS (New York: Basic Books, 1981); M. Sternberg, The Poetics ofBib-
lical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
90. R. W.L. Moberly, At the Mountain of God, JSOTSup 22 (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1983); D. T. Olson, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New: The Framework of the
Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch, BJS 71 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985); R.
Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist (New York: Seabury, 1980).
91. E.g., R. Westbrook, Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Law (Paris: Gabalda, 1988).
See also J. M. Sprinkle, “The Book of the Covenant”: A Literary Approach, JSOTSup 174
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994).
142 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

thesis bringing together the two ends of the discipline. An exception is

R. W. L. Moberly, The Old Testament of the Old Testament.”* He begins
by looking at two passages in Exodus 3 and 6, which tell of the revela-
tion of the name of Yahweh to Moses. In the first, Moses standing be-
fore the burning bush asks God what his name is. He is told “I am that
Iam” (i.e., Yahweh). In the second passage, God simply introduces him-
self: “I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as
God Almighty, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known
to them” (Exod. 6:2-3). Standard documentary criticism sees these texts
as justifying the analysis of pentateuchal narratives into the main
sources, E in Exodus 3:14—15 and P in Exodus 6:2-3, because they could
be held to be repeats. They also enable a contrast to be made with the J
source, which uses the name Yahweh frequently in the patriarchal sto-
ries, whereas E and P say it was an innovation from the time of Moses.
Moberly, however, shows that Exodus 6 is not simply repeating Ex-
odus 3. Indeed, the plot of the narrative demands that something like
chapter 6 follow chapter 3. Thus, if it is right to distinguish sources
here, which Moberly doubts, both the old E source and late P source
agree that there is a distinction to make between the religious experi-
ence of Moses and that of the patriarchs. Why then is God so often re-
ferred to as “Yahweh” in Genesis? Moberly argues that this does not
represent a historical perspective peculiar to the J source; rather it is a
way of insisting that the God who spoke to the patriarchs was the same
God who spoke to Moses. The patriarchs may have known God as El
Shaddai or El or Elohim, but that does not mean he was a different
deity from Moses’ Yahweh. The use of the name Yahweh in Genesis is
a reminder of the continuity between patriarchal and Mosaic religion,
and also that patriarchal history is told from the perspective of Mosaic
Yahwism. Thus, all the putative sources in the Pentateuch see both con-
tinuity and difference between the ages.
Moberly goes on to explore other points of similarity and difference
between the patriarchal and Mosaic periods as the texts portray them.
While the patriarchs worship one God, there is not the exclusivism that
characterizes Mosaic monotheism. The patriarchs generally live peace-
ably with the Canaanites, without trying to exterminate them or drive
them out as the Mosaic law requires. God reveals himself directly to the
patriarchs, and they themselves build altars and offer sacrifices without
the mediation of Moses or the priests. The patriarchs practice circum-
cision, but it is not clear that they observed the sabbath or food laws
that figure so largely in later books of the Pentateuch. Finally, “the no-

92. R. W. L. Moberly, The Old Testament of the Old Testament, OBT (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 1992).
Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm 143

tion of holiness, which from Exodus onward is a basic characteristic of

God and a major requirement for Israel, is entirely lacking in the patri-
archal traditions.”
Moberly argues that the relationship between the patriarchal stories
and the rest of the Pentateuch is like that between the Old and New Tes-
taments. The same God revealed himself in both Testaments, but the
coming of Christ revealed a radical new perspective on his nature. Sim-
ilarly the revelation at Sinai represented a new theological dispensation
in his dealings with Israel. That is not to invalidate the old revelation
given to the patriarchs or to say that their experience of the life of faith
is not most illuminating to later ages, but it is to insist that the revela-
tion to Moses, like the coming of Christ, brought new insights into
God's character and purposes unknown before.
Thus, penetrating the mind of the writers of Genesis and Exodus is
for Moberly the prerequisite for a new approach to pentateuchal criti-
cism. He questions whether it is useful to speak of a Yahwist anymore,
when this title reflects the erroneous view that J held that the name
Yahweh was known prior to Moses, whereas E and P did not hold that.
“If our thesis is correct, this distinguishing characteristic is unwar-
ranted, for we have argued that all the pentateuchal writers shared a
common and undisputed tradition that the name YHWH was first re-
vealed to Moses, but they all felt free nonetheless to use the name
YHWH in the patriarchal context.””4
Moberly suggests that the whole project of naming the sources J, E,
and P is flawed, because so much rests on postulating religious distinc-
tions between the sources, which really represent differences between
the patriarchal era and the Mosaic dispensation. He would prefer a dif-
ferent approach. “It would be most helpful to adopt categories that are
descriptive of the content of the text: patriarchal traditions (subdivided
into Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph cycles .. .); similarly Mosaic tradi-
tions” (again subdivided).?° Then one can proceed to find the linking
vocabulary and theological themes that spanned these different sec-
tions of text and build up a new critical theory. This may sound a little
like the program of Rendtorff and Blum, but Moberly emphasizes that
he thinks tradition criticism tends to be far too speculative.?° He also
thinks much historical criticism tends to read against the grain of the
text instead of trying to appreciate the text’s own theological perspec-
tive. For example, John Ha has argued that the purpose of Genesis 15 is
to encourage the exiles by replacing the bilateral Sinai covenant with a

Cle}. Iovtel.,, 28)

94. Ibid., 177.
95. Ibid., 181.
96. Ibid., 180.
144 Pondering the Pentateuch: The Search for a New Paradigm

one-sided divine promise.®” But this is to misread Genesis completely:

it is looking back on the patriarchs from the standpoint of Mosaic Yah-
wism, so it cannot be denying the fundamentals of the Sinai covenant.
“Ha’s way of reading the text turns the logic and dynamic of the pen-
tateuchal story upside down.”?* But there are of course many examples
of pentateuchal critics misreading the text in this way.
Finally, Moberly’s approach to the distinctiveness of the patriarchal
era, which he holds is recognized by the writers themselves, makes the
skepticism of Van Seters and others about the historicity of these tradi-
tions unwarranted. The pentateuchal writers cannot be simply project-
ing back into the patriarchal past contemporary popular religious prac-
tice with which they disagree. The writers believed in Mosaic Yahwism,
yet they have described different beliefs and practices that they are sup-
posed to have wanted to abolish without condemnation. Indeed, they
have gone further:

They have given traditions depicting non-Yahwistic ethos and practices

the considerable luster of inseparable association with the ancestor of
Israel’s faith, Abraham, and the eponymous ancestor of the whole nation,
Jacob/Israel. They have refrained from all adverse comment. And they
have gone to considerable lengths to relate such material to Mosaic Yah-
wism in the way we have shown above. One would have thought that
straightforward suppression would not only have been easier but also
more in keeping with the generally exclusive and polemical nature of
Yahwism in Exodus—Deuteronomy.”’

Thus the debate about the Pentateuch continues. In the present situ-
ation of scholarly polarization, sometimes the polemic is becoming so
strident that the different sides in the debate are in danger of neglecting
valid criticism of their own positions.!°° There is certainly as yet no con-
sensus on a new paradigm for understanding the growth of the Pen-
tateuch. Many feel that the claims of the old source criticism are exag-
gerated and that more attention should be given to the final form of the
text. But while the New Critical methods have greatly enhanced the ap-
preciation of the biblical narratives, they will need to be combined with
sober historical criticism (cf. Moberly and Knohl) if a satisfactory new
model of pentateuchal origins is to emerge.

97. J. Ha, Genesis 15: A Theological Compendium of Pentateuchal History, BLAW 181
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989).
98. Moberly, Old Testament, 188.
99. Ibid., 195.
100. Cf. G. J. Wenham, “Method in Pentateuchal Source Criticism,” V7 41 (1991): 84—
109.
 O
Historiography of the Old Testament
V. Philips Long

Among the various features on the face of Old Testament studies, the
historiography of the Old Testament is one of the most widely discussed
but least well defined. Not only do the differing personalities and per-
spectives of various scholars prompt them to trace the contours of this
feature in sometimes radically different ways, but there is ambiguity
even as to what constitutes the proper object of study. Consider, for in-
stance, the assigned title of this essay. Is the phrase “of the Old Testa-
ment” to be understood as a subjective genitive or an objective genitive?
Is our concern in this essay to be with the oft-noted historical con-
sciousness of ancient Israel, evident in the purportedly historiographic
writings of the Old Testament (subjective genitive), or with the various
recent attempts to write a history of ancient Israel (objective genitive)?
In other words, is our focus to be on “biblical history, i.e., the history as
told in the Bible,” or on “Israelite history, i.e., the history of ancient Is-
rael as modern research presents it”?! In short, are we to concern our-
selves with [srael’s history writing or with writing Israel’s history?
Since the intent of the present volume is to survey the state of Old
Testament studies, the emphasis of this essay naturally falls on the lat-
ter. But perhaps I may take the ambiguity in the title as an encourage-
ment to give some attention to both these matters in the pages that fol-
low. Until recently the two have been viewed as interrelated issues, and
even today the distance between biblical Israel and historical Israel re-
mains a disputed matter. Some scholars regard the two as rather closely

1. M. Tsevat, “Israelite History and the Historical Books of the Old Testament,” in The
Meaning of the Book of Job and Other Biblical Essays (New York: Ktav, 1980), 177-87 (ci-
tation is from 177).

145
146 Historiography of the Old Testament

tied—“biblical history” being an essentially reliable literary representa-

tion of selected aspects of “Israelite history’—while others view the two
as virtually unrelated—“biblical history” being little more than a liter-
ary fiction with minimal bearing on the reconstruction of ancient Isra-
elite history.’
Whether one’s concern is with ancient Israel’s history writing or with
writing ancient Israel’s history, one cannot read far into contemporary
scholarly discussion without becoming aware that the study of the “his-
toriography of the Old Testament” is in a state of flux.* No longer does
Troeltschian-style historical criticism enjoy the hegemony that it held
in mainline scholarship in the nineteenth century and for much of the
twentieth (though in some scholarly circles the method continues to
dominate). In the last several decades, modern literary approaches have
arisen to offer alternatives to traditional historical-critical practice and
in some instances to challenge earlier conclusions. Yet literary readers
themselves are far from unified. Robert Morgan describes “the recent
[i.e., post-1960] history of secular literary criticism [as] a hurricane of
conflicting tendencies.”* Literary critics often seem unable to agree on
what constitutes a properly literary approach to the Old Testament.
Some are convinced that a competent literary reading of texts is a nec-
essary condition for discovering the texts’ truth claims, be they histori-
cal, theological, or whatever; others assume that the biblical texts
should be read as “pure” literature, largely devoid of historiographical
intent and thus useless for purposes of historical reconstruction.
While traditional historical criticism (diachronic) and modern liter-
ary criticism (synchronic) debate how the biblical texts are to be read
(or processed), other contemporary approaches show little interest in
texts at all. Among socio-archaeological circles today, one sometimes
hears a call to abandon the biblical texts, or at least to set them aside,
so that a genuine history of Israel, or Syria-Palestine, can be recon-
structed on the basis of the more “objective” data unearthed by archae-
ological investigation. But of course artifactual evidence does not
emerge from the ground with museum labels already affixed, and so

2. Arecent, extreme example ofthe latter viewpoint is that of P. R. Davies, who insists
on distinguishing “three Israels: one is literary (the biblical), one is historical (the inhab-
itants of the northern Palestinian highlands during part of the Iron Age) and the third,
‘ancient Israel,’ is what scholars have constructed out of an amalgam of the two others”
(Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel,” JSOTSup 48 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1992], 11). In principle, the basic tripartite distinction is useful, but few scholars are
likely to be happy with the size of the wedge that Davies drives between the three.
3. R. Rendtorff, “The Paradigm Is Changing: Hopes—and Fears,” BibInt 1 (1993):
34-53.
4. R. Morgan, with J. Barton, Biblical Interpretation, Oxford Bible Series (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1988), 217; see also 218.
Historiography of the Old Testament 147

even archaeologists must bring to bear an explanatory model of some

sort to achieve any meaningful synthesis of the data. Here the social sci-
ences are ready and willing to step forward. The biblical texts—so the
argument goes—are not to be trusted (at least not for purposes of his-
torical reconstruction), because they, like most ancient texts, stem from
elitist (i.e., educated) male circles.° Instead, many contemporary schol-
ars look to the quantifying and generalizing methods of the social sci-
ences as a means of reconstructing “history from below.”
We shall return to these matters presently, but for now I mention
them simply to indicate that the last quarter century or so may have
seen more upheaval in the study of the “historiography of the Old Tes-
tament” than was apparent for many decades prior. In short, the disci-
pline is in a state of flux, or, to put it more positively, in a state of fer-
ment. This is perhaps not a bad thing. For when a discipline is in flux,
it has the opportunity to rethink its foundations and, if need be, to re-
build itself on a surer footing.
Before rebuilding can begin, however, it is necessary to examine how
the present foundations of the discipline were laid. Thus the next sec-
tion offers a brief sketch of trends in the scholarly study of the histori-
ography of the Old Testament that have led up to the current state of
affairs. A further section then surveys prevalent contemporary ap-
proaches and seeks to discover why there is such wide disagreement
among scholars as to how Israel’s history is to be reconstructed and
such wide divergence in the results achieved. A final section seeks to
discover some way out of the impasse in which contemporary discus-
sion of the historiography of the Old Testament finds itself.

How Did We Get Where We Are? A Brief History of

the Study of the Historiography of the Old Testament
The history of scholarship pertaining to ancient Israelite historiogra-
phy and to the reconstruction of ancient Israel’s history is well surveyed
in a number of places, and I need not fully rehearse it here.® Particularly

5. See W. G. Dever, “‘Will the Real Israel Please Stand Up?’ Part II: Archaeology and
the Religions of Ancient Israel,” BASOR 298 (1995): 45 (hereafter, “Archaeology and the
Religions”). Dever notes that the charge of male bias is leveled not only against the bibli-
cal texts but against traditional biblical and even archaeological scholarship. For a de-
scription, though not necessarily an endorsement, of the bias charge, see also J. M.
Miller, “Reading the Bible Historically: The Historian’s Approach,” in Jo Each Its Own
Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application, ed. S. R. Haynes
and S. L. McKenzie (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 25.
6. The following are but a sampling of the many works that might be mentioned: R.
de Vaux, “Method in the Study of Early Hebrew History,” in The Bible in Modern Scholar-
ship, ed. J. P. Hyatt (Nashville: Abingdon, 1965), 15-29; J. H. Hayes, “The History of the
148 Historiography ofthe Old Testament

worthy of note, both for its wide scope and the conciseness of its cover-
age, is the survey provided by John Hayes in /sraelite and Judaean His-
tory. Hayes’s survey begins with the first treatments of Israelite and
Judean history in the Hellenistic period, moves through the medieval
period, then on to a discussion of developments from the Renaissance
to the Enlightenment. He then considers developments in the nine-
teenth century, before finally concluding with a brief look at current ap-
proaches. Hayes’s last section requires updating, as the volume was
published in 1977, but his survey retains its value for the reasons given
and for the extensive bibliographies that accompany each section.
Pertinent to our concern in this essay is Hayes’s observation that “the
foundations of modern historiography were laid in the Renaissance,” a
period noted for its “militant humanism” as well as its “intellectual and
technological accomplishments.”’ It was in this period that “‘middle-
range explanations —what we today would call sociological, economi-
cal, geographical, climatic considerations—” began to be used.* Follow-
ing the Renaissance period, but still breathing its air, the seventeenth
century witnessed, in the writings of thinkers such as Grotius, Hobbes,
and Spinoza, the emergence of assumptions that many modern biblical
critics still hold—for example, that the Bible is to be treated like any
other book and that literary inconsistencies, repetitions, and the like
discredit traditional notions such as the Mosaic authorship of the Pen-
tateuch. It is important to note, as Hayes points out, that these thinkers
“had moved away from the typical Jewish and Protestant view of reli-
gious authority and revelation and that their criticism was probably the
result rather than the cause of such a move.”? In other words, for think-
ers such as Grotius, Hobbes, and Spinoza, it was not so much the devel-
opment of new critical methods that forced the abandonment of the
older model of reality as it was the abandonment of the traditional, bib-

Study of Israelite and Judaean History,” in Israelite and Judaean History, ed. J. H. Hayes
and J. M. Miller, OTL (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), 1-69; J. M.
Miller, “Israelite History,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. D. A.
Knight and G. M. Tucker (Philadelphia: Fortress; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), 1—
30; J. R. Porter, “Old Testament Historiography,” in Tradition and Interpretation: Essays
by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study, ed. G. W. Anderson (Oxford: Claren-
don, 1979), 125-62; H. G. Reventlow, “The Problem of History,” in Problems of Old Testa-
ment Theology in the Twentieth Century, trans. J. Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985),
59-124; J. A. Soggin, “Probleme einer Vor- und Friihgeschichte Israels,” ZAW 100 Supple-
ment (1988): 255-67; E. Yamauchi, “The Current State of Old Testament Historiography,”
in Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context,
ed. A. R. Millard, J. K. Hoffmeier, and D. W. Baker (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1994), 1-36.
7. Hayes, “History of the Study of Israelite and Judaean History,” 34.
8. Ibid., 39.
9. Ibid., 46.
Historiography of the Old Testament 149

lically derived model of reality, or worldview, that prompted the devel-

opment of new methods.
Moving to the eighteenth century, we see the Bible and Christianity
subjected to “an unprecedented and trenchant examination and cri-
tique” at the hands of the deists.!9 While the deists were by no means
uniform in their approach to the Bible, “as a rule, they sought to distil
the biblical traditions, to siphon off the supernatural, the miraculous,
and the unbelievable, and to leave behind the pure essence of a reason-
able faith” ''—reasonable, that is, in terms of the fundamental assump-
tions of the Enlightenment. Robert Morgan cites Reimarus as a typical,
if exceptionally influential, deist of the eighteenth century. Reimarus
“believed in God, but not in revelation, miracles, or other supernatural
interventions.”!* Reimarus sought in his writings “to destroy a tradi-
tional Christianity based on biblical revelation and miracle, and re-
place it with the rational, natural religion popular among intellectuals
of the Enlightenment or ‘age of reason.’”!* Again, what is to be noted
here is that it was a commitment to a particular (in this case, rational-
istic and naturalistic) model of reality that encouraged the develop-
ment and application of rationalistic critical methods, and not the
emergence of new methods that forced acceptance of a new model of
reality.!4
Building on trends begun in the preceding two centuries, the nine-
teenth century saw a number of major developments relevant to the his-
toriography of the Old Testament. Among these, if Imay draw together
Hayes’s remarks, are the following:

1. anincrease in religious liberalism that was “less dogmatic in its

theological orientation, more progressive in its relationship to
contemporary culture and thought, and more humanistic in its
perspectives than previous generations”;
2. advances in “general historiography,” including the develop-
ment of “a positivistic approach to history, which not only at-

10. Ibid., 47.

11. Ibid., 48.
12. Morgan, Biblical Interpretation, 53.
13. Ibid., 53-54.
14. For more on the impact of Enlightenment rationalism on the historical study of
the Bible, see ibid., esp. chap. 2, “Criticism and the Death of Scripture,” and chap. 3, “His-
tory and the Growth of Knowledge’; see also V. P. Long, The Art of Biblical History, Foun-
dations of Contemporary Interpretation 5 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 99-116; C.
Westermann, “The Old Testament’s Understanding of History in Relation to That of the
Enlightenment,” in Understanding the Word: Essays in Honour of Bernhard W. Anderson,
ed. J. Butler, E. Conrad, and B. Ollenburger, JSOTSup 37 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985),
207-19.
150 Historiography of the Old Testament

tempted but also believed it was possible to reconstruct past

history ‘as it had actually happened’”;
the decipherment of the languages of Israel’s ancient Near East-
ern neighbors in Egypt and Mesopotamia;
a new level of activity and competence in the historical geogra-
phy of the Near East; and
the gradual rise to dominance of the pentateuchal documentary
hypothesis, along with the belief that the “character, content,
and date of the individual documents were . . . of great signifi-
cance in understanding the religious development of Israelite
and Judaean life and in evaluating the historical reliability of
the documentary materials.”!°

Each of these nineteenth-century developments has made itself felt

in twentieth-century biblical scholarship, but none has escaped chal-
lenge or failed to precipitate new debate:

1. nineteenth-century-style liberalism has been challenged by

neoorthodoxy and neoevangelicalism: these movements, while
not wishing to ignore the concerns of contemporary culture,
have stressed the primacy of a theocentric over a merely hu-
manistic perspective on life’s ultimate issues;
. positivistic history has come under considerable strain through
advances in general hermeneutics and a greater awareness of
the distinction between “brute facts” of the past, which are of
course no longer subject to observation, and “historical facts”
as they are perceived in the present by means of probability
judgments based on the available evidence;
. the decipherment of, for example, Egyptian hieroglyphics and
Akkadian cuneiform has opened up a whole new world of com-
parative literary studies and with this advance has raised signif-
icant questions as to the proper uses and potential abuses of
comparative material in the study of the Bible;
the greatly increased archaeological and geographical explora-
tion of the “lands of the Bible” has raised as many questions as
it has answered, not least as regards the interrelationship of tex-
tual and artifactual evidence in the reconstruction of Israel’s
history; and finally,
. the documentary hypothesis, promoted most effectively in the
nineteenth century by J. Wellhausen, has been rigorously
challenged in the twentieth, as have other literary theories

15. Hayes, “History,” 54-55.

Historiography of the Old Testament 151

and, indeed, the whole general approach of Wellhausen and

his followers.!°

That Wellhausen-style literary criticism has been seriously challenged

and, in the minds of many, undermined has far-reaching implications
for the historical study of the Old Testament, since, as Hayes maintains,
“the primary influence on Wellhausen’s reconstruction of Israelite his-
tory was . . . the results and consequences of his literary study of the Old
Testament” (italics mine).!7

Where Are We Now? Contemporary Approaches

to the Historiography of the Old Testament
As suggested above, the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries introduced
sweeping changes in the way many people viewed the world. These
shifts in worldview in turn gave rise to the development of new methods
of research and to significant changes in already existing methods. Not
surprisingly, the radical disjunction between the Enlightenment model
of reality, which left no place for divine activity in the realm of human
history, and the pervasive biblical model of reality, in which the creator
God is the “Lord of history” and the controlling actor on its stage,!®

16. See, e.g., R. Rendtorff, who believes that “the traditional Documentary Hypothe-
sis has come to an end” (“The Paradigm Is Changing,” 44). For a survey of the current
state of scholarship on the Pentateuch, see D. A. Knight, “The Pentateuch,” in The Hebrew
Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker (Chico, Calif.: Schol-
ars Press, 1985), 263-96.
17. Hayes, “History,” 63.
18. So, e.g., D. N. Freedman, “The Biblical Idea of History,” Int 21 (1967): 43: “The
fixed points in the biblical view of history are at the beginning and at the end. The point
of departure is the confident assertion that God is the lord of history and that nothing of
importance happens without his decision, whether active or permissive”; G. B. Caird, The
Language and Imagery of the Bible (London: Duckworth; Philadelphia: Westminster,
1980), 217-18: “the most important item in the framework within which the people of
biblical times interpreted their history was the conviction that God was lord of history.
He uttered his voice and events followed (Isa. 55:11-12). Thus the course of events was
itself a quasi-linguistic system, in which God was disclosing his character and purpose.
... The interpretation of God's history-language required the exercise of moral judgment
(Jer. 15:19; cf. Heb. 5:14), and it was the task of the prophet to be the qualified interpreter.
... The prophet thus discharged for his people the kind of responsibility which in this
chapter we have been ascribing to the historian”; M. Delcor, “Storia e profezia nel mondo
ebraico,” Fondamenti 13 (1989): 33: “Di fatto, pit: che dei testimoni i profeti sono degli
interpreti della storia, che non é altro che l’opera delle nazioni, ma diretta in ultima in-
stanza da Dio che é il vero padrone degli eventi” [In fact, more than witnesses, the proph-
ets are the interpreters of the (his)story, which is none other than the affairs of nations,
but is ultimately directed by God, who is the true lord of the events] (my translation);
J. M. Miller, “Reading the Bible Historically,” 12: “the Bible presupposes a dynamic nat-
ural world into which God intrudes overtly upon human affairs from time to time”; cf.
152 Historiography ofthe Old Testament

posed a challenge to believing Jewish and Christian scholars who

wished to remain true both to “the faith” and to their scholarly calling.'?
Naturally, all reputable scholars wished to make use of “scientific”
methods in their research, but the purely naturalistic premises of the
Enlightenment inevitably introduced a point of tension for theists.
Today perhaps more scholars than ever before are beginning to ques-
tion the adequacy of Enlightenment assumptions for dealing with the
biblical literature, but it is probably still the case that the majority take
them for granted. Thus our present task of exploring and attempting to
explain current trends in the historical study of the Old Testament can-
not be accomplished without some further attention to the roots out of
which contemporary branches of learning have grown. Among the
more obvious outgrowths of the Enlightenment is the historical-critical
method, to which we now turn.

The Historical-Critical Method

The historical-critical method no longer enjoys the dominance it once
had; social science methods and modern literary approaches (discussed
below) are each providing alternative paradigms for today’s scholars.
Still, the continued influence of the historical-critical method should
not be underestimated. Thus it is both wise and necessary to gain some
understanding of its philosophical underpinnings.
The following words, penned by D. F. Strauss in his groundbreaking
Life of Jesus, are typical of the Enlightenment reasoning that gave rise
to the historical-critical approach to the Bible. (While Strauss’s focus
was on the historicity, or rather lack thereof, of the NT Gospels, the
same kind of philosophical framework made itself felt in studies of OT
historiography.) Seeking to articulate criteria whereby one could assess
the historical value of an account, Strauss contended that an account is
to be deemed unhistorical when

the narration is irreconcilable with the known and the universal laws
which govern the course of events. Now according to these laws, agreeing
with all just philosophical conceptions and all credible experience, the
absolute cause never disturbs the chain of secondary causes by single
arbitrary acts of interposition, but rather manifests itself in the produc-

also H. W. Wolff, “The Understanding of History in the Old Testament Prophets” (trans.
K. Crim), in Essays on Old Testament Interpretation, ed. C. Westermann (London: SCM,
1963 [original German edition, 1960]), 353-54; U.S. edition titled Essays on Old Testa-
ment Hermeneutics (Richmond: John Knox, 1963).
19. Cf. W. Brueggemann, “The Prophetic Word of God and History,” Int 48 (1994):
239-51; Westermann, “The Old Testament’s Understanding of History.”
Historiography of the Old Testament 153

tion of the aggregate of finite causalities, and of their reciprocal action.

When therefore we meet an account of certain phenomena or events of
which it is either expressly stated or implied that they were produced
immediately by God himself (divine apparitions—voices from heaven
and the like), or by human beings possessed of supernatural powers (mir-
acles, prophecies), such an account is in so far to be considered as not
historical.?°

As I have noted elsewhere,”! Strauss’s argument can be reduced to the

following syllogism:

1. Every account irreconcilable with the known and universal

laws that govern events is unhistorical.
2. Every account in which God disturbs the natural course of
events is irreconcilable with the known and universal laws that
govern events.
3. Therefore, every account in which God disturbs the natural
course of events is unhistorical.

While the above syllogism qualifies as logically valid, it merits accep-

tance as ontologically true only if each of its premises is true. This raises
significant questions. Whence comes knowledge of “the universal laws
that govern events”? By what authority does Strauss believe himself in
a position to pronounce on “all just philosophical conceptions and all
credible experience”? On what grounds does one assume that “God
never disturbs the natural course of events”? Strauss’s premises are
hardly the results of the application of new methods to the available
data; rather, they can only be regarded as metaphysical assumptions
about the nature of reality. That is, the premises themselves constitute
“statements of faith,” nothing more and nothing less.
That this Enlightenment faith continues today to influence schol-
arly debate about Old Testament historiography can hardly be dis-
puted. That it creates a tension for religiously oriented scholars wish-
ing to “keep the faith” both with their religious convictions/commu-
nities and with their scholarly guilds is equally indisputable. As Robert
Morgan observes, for example, the problem for religious persons
doing biblical studies is “how to speak meaningfully of ‘God whom we
worship’ in a culture whose rational methods do not use such religious
language.””?

20. D. F. Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. G. Eliot, ed. P. C. Hodg-
son (Philadelphia: Fortress; London: SCM, 1972), 88.
21. Art of Biblical History, 110.
22. Biblical Interpretation, 275.
154 Historiography of the Old Testament

As for the application of rational methods to historical study, proba-

bly no one has been more influential than Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923).*°
Troeltsch is credited with the establishment of the three well-known
principles of the historical-critical method—criticism, analogy, and cor-
relation—although there are foreshadowings already in Strauss’s Life of
Jesus.24 While the precise construal of each of the three principles is
open to debate (as we shall see in the next section), traditional historical
criticism of the Old Testament has tended to understand “criticism” in
terms of a presupposed skepticism toward one’s sources,”° “analogy” in
a more or less narrow sense whereby present human experience limits
what can qualify as “historical” in the past,”° and “correlation” as limit-
ing potential historical causation to either natural forces or human
agency.’’ The application of Troeltsch’s three principles to the Old Tes-
tament has, not surprisingly, raised grave difficulties.
According to J. M. Miller, the historical-critical method has difficulty
with the “frequent references in the ancient texts to divine involvement

23. On the recent revival of interest in the work of Troeltsch, see, e.g., R.Morgan,
“Troeltsch and Christian Theology,” in Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion,
trans. and ed. R. Morgan and M. Pye (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), 208-33.
For Troeltsch’s own articulation of his historical method, see “Ueber historische und dog-
matische Methode in der Theologie,” in E. Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, Zur re-
ligidsen Lage, Religionsphilosophie und Ethik (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1962), 729-53; En-
glish readers may also consult his article “Historiography,” Encyclopaedia ofReligion and
Ethics, ed. J. Hastings, 13 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1914), 4:716—23. For these and further
titles, see C. Brown, History and Faith: A Personal Exploration (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1987), 44 n. 22.
24. E.g., in addition to his primary negative criterion for establishing the nonhistoricity
of a document (i.e., direct involvement of the “absolute cause”), Strauss (Life of Jesus, 88)
mentions two secondary criteria: (1) the so-called “law of succession, in accordance with
which all occurrences, not excepting the most violent convulsions and the most rapid
changes, follow in a certain order of sequence of increase and decrease” (this anticipates
Troeltsch’s principle of correlation); and (2) “all those psychological laws, which render it
improbable that a human being should feel, think, and act in a manner directly opposed to
his own habitual mode and that of men in general” (cf. Troeltsch’s principle of analogy).
25. E.g., V. A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: A Confrontation between the
Modern Historian's Principles of Judgment and the Christian's Will-to-Believe (New York:
Macmillan, 1966), 111: “The beginning of wisdom in history is doubt”; G. W. Ramsey, The
Quest for the Historical Israel: Reconstructing Israel's Early History (Atlanta: John Knox,
1981; London: SCM, 1982), 7: “the first requirement of a good historian is a healthy streak
of skepticism”; Davies, In Search, 13: “Credulity does not become an historian. Scepti-
cism, rather, is the proper stance”; cf. also J. Barr, The Scope and Authority of the Bible
(Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SCM, 1980), 30-31.
26. In Troeltsch’s own words (as rendered in W. J. Abraham, Divine Revelation and the
Limits of Historical Criticism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982], 100): “Harmony
with the normal, familiar or at least repeatedly witnessed events and conditions as we
know them is the distinguishing mark of reality for the events which criticism can recog-
nise as really having happened or leave aside.”
27. On this third principle, see ibid., 105-8.
Historiography ofthe Old Testament 155

in human affairs . . . , especially when the involvement is depicted as di-

rect and overt.” Even among those historians who “may not specifically
deny the supernatural or miraculous,” it would appear from the history
books they write that they disregard “overt supernatural activity as a
significant cause” in history and are “skeptical of claims regarding sup-
posedly unique historical occurrences which defy normal explana-
tion—i.e., the miraculous.”28
Thus, Enlightenment-style historical criticism of the Old Testament
finds itself fundamentally at odds with its source. It can hardly accept
the Old Testament story as history, because that story contains too
many elements that by (Straussian or Troeltschian) definition are “un-
historical.” At best one may use the Old Testament as a body of data
from which one can extract “historical” information (if at all) only by
most rigorously applying the canons of historical criticism as outlined
above. But again, the very center of Old Testament historiography—the
notion that God is the Lord of history—is denied a priori by the funda-
mental assumptions of the historical method as typically practiced.??
In short, there is a distinctly atheological, or even anti-theological,
tendency in the historical-critical method that casts doubt on the
value—for historical purposes at least—of much of the biblical text,
since the Bible is pervaded by a divine presence that is anything but in-
active in human affairs. As G. von Rad observed more than three de-
cades ago,

[Israel] could only understand her history as a road along which she trav-
elled under Jahweh’s protection. For Israel, history consisted only of Jah-
weh’s self-revelation by word and action. And on this point conflict with
the modern view of history was sooner or later inevitable, for the latter
finds it perfectly possible to construct a picture of history without God. It
finds it very hard to assume that there is divine action in history. God has
no natural place in its schema.*°

Von Rad rightly noted that this fundamental distinction between Is-
rael’s own conception of history and “the modern view” brings “the his-
torical interpretation of the Old Testament” into “a kind of crisis’—in-
deed, it places the two conceptions on a collision course. He also rightly
anticipated “a question” that would “occupy theologians for a long time

28. The Old Testament and the Historian (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 17.
29. Cf. J. Goldingay, Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation, updated edition
(Leicester: Apollos; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990), 72-73.
30. Von Rad's original essay, “Offene Fragen im Umkreis einer Theologie des Alten
Testaments,” TLZ 88 (1963): 402ff., appears in English translation as a postscript in his
Old Testament Theology, 2 vols., trans. D. M. G. Stalker (New York: Harper & Row; Edin-
burgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962-65), 2:410-29 (citation from 418).
156 Historiography of the Old Testament

to come”—“whether it is still possible to say that each view is of equal

value in considering the phenomenon of Israel’s history in its various
conceptions, or whether nowadays we must choose between them.”?!
Developments in scholarship since von Rad first posed this question
suggest that, more often than not, a choice is indeed felt to be neces-
sary.°2 For those who continue today to practice Troeltschian-style his-
torical criticism, the historiography of the Old Testament (i.e., Israel’s
history writing) is seldom allowed to speak for itself but is consistently
“reconceptualized.” For example, after noting that “our modern his-
torical-critical methodologies presuppose a quite different under-
standing of historical reality than does the Bible,” Miller submits that
“historical-critical methodology would collapse altogether if the tradi-
tional Judeo-Christian understanding of God’s dynamic involvement
in human history were even taken as a possibility.” “What this means,”
Miller continues, “is that we modern critical historians, while depend-
ing on the Bible for almost all of our direct information about ancient
Israel, constantly reconceptualise what the Bible reports so as to bring
its historical claims into line with our own late twentieth century no-
tions of historical reality.”*
We shall return to the issue of “late-twentieth-century notions of his-
torical reality” below, but first we must consider two other approaches
that attract much attention today. Perhaps in part as a consequence of
historical criticism’s metaphysically driven “methodological disqualifi-
cation” of the Old Testament as a viable repository of historical infor-
mation, scholars interested in reconstructing the history of ancient Is-
rael have increasingly turned to other types of investigation. Prominent
among these are what might broadly be described as the social science
methods.

Social Science Methods

The publication in 1986 of J. M. Miller and John Hayes’s A History of
Ancient Israel and Judah** was met with great interest among biblical

31. Ibid., 417-18.

32. In his influential book In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World
and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983; reprinted, Wi-
nona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997), J. Van Seters articulates the standard approach as
follows: “the historian tells ‘how it actually was’ and therefore excludes wonders and di-
rect appearances and ‘physical’ intervention by the deity.”
33. “New Directions in the Study of Israelite History,” Nederduitse Gereformeerde Te-
ologiese Tydskrif 30 (1989): 152-53; cf. idem, “Reading the Bible Historically,” 15: “[there
is an] obvious tension between the dynamic and theocentric view of nature and history
presupposed by the biblical writers and the more ‘scientific’ or positivistic approach to
reality that characterizes modern Western thought.”
34. London: SCM; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986.
Historiography ofthe Old Testament 157

scholars who concerned themselves with historical method and with

the reconstruction of Israel’s history. A particularly burning question,
it seemed, was what part the biblical literature should play in historical
reconstructions of ancient Israel. The Annual Meeting of the Society of
Biblical Literature in that same year saw lively discussion of Miller and
Hayes’s approach, and, in the following year, an issue of the Journal for
the Study of the Old Testament put into print some of the highlights of
that discussion.*>
In his introduction to that JSOT issue, P. R. Davies characterized the
Miller-Hayes volume as belonging to the genre of “‘biblical history’ in
that it accepts the priority of the literary testimony of the Bible.”*° It
was not the case, of course, that the Miller-Hayes volume accepted the
biblical depiction of Israel’s history as basically reliable; I have just
noted Miller’s view about reconceptualizing what the Bible reports to
bring it into line with late-twentieth-century notions of historical real-
ity. But still, like their historical-critical predecessors, Miller and Hayes
continued to hold to the importance of the biblical literature for recon-
structing a history of ancient Israel. They held this view, as Davies
noted, “not for theological or religious reasons but, as the authors see
it, for pragmatic ones.”%”
For his part, Davies expressed hope that the Miller-Hayes volume
might mark the “end of the road for the genre ‘biblical history,” for it
was his conviction that “the way forward—if it exists—would seem to
lie with the (combined) methods of the social sciences: sociology, an-
thropology and archaeology.”*® Since Davies penned these words,
many others have expressed similarly negative sentiments regarding
the viability of biblical histories of Israel and have sought to find new
ways to proceed using social science methods.*?

35. JSOT 39 (1987).

36. Ibid., 3.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 4.
39. The literature is vast and growing rapidly; the following are but a sampling: N. P.
Lemche, “On the Problem of Studying Israelite History: Apropos Abraham Malamat's
View of Historical Research,” BN 24 (1984): 94-124; idem, “Is It Still Possible to Write a
History of Ancient Israel?” SJOT 8.2 (1994): 165-90; M. Weippert and H. Weippert, “Die
vorgeschichte Israels in neuem Licht,” TRu 56 (1991): 341-90; K. W. Whitelam, “Recre-
ating the History of Israel,” JSOT 35 (1986): 45-70; idem, “Between History and Litera-
ture: The Social Production of Israel’s Traditions of Origin,” SJOT 2 (1991): 60-74; idem,
“Sociology or History: Towards a (Human) History of Ancient Palestine?” in Words Re-
membered, Texts Renewed: Essays in Honour of John F. A. Sawyer, ed. J. Davies, G. Harvey,
and W. G. E. Watson, JSOTSup 195 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 149-66.
For criticism of the antitextual stance adopted by many social science approaches today,
see W. W. Hallo, “Biblical History in Its Near Eastern Setting: The Contextual Approach,”
in Scripture in Context: Essays on the Comparative Method, ed. C. D. Evans, W. W. Hallo,
158 Historiography of the Old Testament

Contemporary socio-archaeological or socio-anthropological ap-

proaches are not without ancestry, of course, which stretches back to
Max Weber and beyond.” But it is fair to say that, beginning with Men-
denhall and Gottwald in the 1960s and 1970s, there has been a revival
of interest in social science approaches that is “now gaining strength in
the work of younger American biblical scholars such as Frick, Flana-
gan, Coote, Halpern, and Thompson, complemented in Europe by de
Geus, Lemche, and others.”*!
What the various social science approaches have in common is a de-
sire to move away from an emphasis on idiographic concerns—a focus
on “great individuals” as primarily responsible for historical change—
and to emphasize nomothetic concerns—“laws” of historical change that
can be linked with social, economic, geographic, climatic concerns, and
the like (what I earlier referred to as “middle-range explanations’).
Many have looked to the field of Syro-Palestinian archaeology as holding
the best promise of yielding an “objective,” or “scientific,” history of Is-
rael. Others have gravitated toward the quantifying methods of sociology
or anthropology in an effort to bring historical study more into line with
the methods of the natural sciences. The most promising social science
approaches seek to employ a “highly multidisciplinary approach,” which
is of course commendable. Unfortunately, however, as Miller notes, “it
can hardly be said that this multidisciplinary approach has produced
any notable breakthroughs or compelling clarifications—at least none
that does not depend as much on the researcher’s methodological pre-
suppositions and working models as upon the various data compiled.”*?
In view of the chiefly nomothetic concerns of the social science ap-
proaches, it comes as no surprise that Old Testament narratives (whose
idiographic orientation tends to focus on significant, specific events in
the lives of individuals and nations) are often regarded as of little
value—if not downright hindrances—to the reconstruction of the his-

and J. B. White, PTMS 34 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1980), 1-26; idem, “The Limits of Skep-
ticism,” JAOS 110 (1990): 187-99; S. Herrmann, “Observations on Some Recent Hypoth-
eses Pertaining to Early Israelite History” (trans. F. Cryer), in Justice and Righteousness:
Biblical Themes and Their Influence, ed. H. Reventlow and Y. Hoffman, JSOTSup 137
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 105-16; Rendtorff, “Paradigm Is Changing,”
34-53; Yamauchi, “Current State of Old Testament Historiography,” 1-36. For a useful
anthology of seminal essays, see C. E. Carter and C. L. Meyers, eds., Community, Identity,
and Ideology: Social Science Approaches to the Hebrew Bible, SBTS 6 (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1996).
40. On early sociological studies, see Dever, “Archaeology and the Religions,” 37-38;
C. Osiek, “The New Handmaid: The Bible and the Social Sciences,” TS 50 (1989): 260-78.
41. Dever, “Archaeology and the Religions,” 40.
42. Following Hayes, “History,” 39. For more on the idiographic/nomothetic distinc-
tion, see Long, Art of Biblical History, 135-44.
43. “Reading the Bible Historically,” 25.
Historiography of the Old Testament 159

tory of Israel. In a recent essay, S. Herrmann traces the gradual decline

of the Old Testament as a significant factor in the reconstruction of Is-
rael’s history.** Beginning with the work of Astruc in the eighteenth
century, Herrmann surveys briefly the contributions of Wellhausen,
Gunkel, Alt, Weber, Noth, Albright, Mendenhall, de Geus, Gottwald,
Lemche, Thompson, and so on. Herrmann observes that scholars up to
Albright, whatever differences existed among them, at least agreed that
the Bible was central to any attempt to reconstruct the history of an-
cient Israel.*° Not so any longer.
In the 1960s the work of George Mendenhall began to undercut pre-
vious consensus positions, such as the notions that the twelve tribes of
Israel entered Canaan from the outside at the time of or shortly before
the “conquest,” that they were nomads or seminomads prior to their
settlement in the land, and that they were ethnically related and thus
distinct from the Canaanites. As scholars swayed by Mendenhall began
to lose confidence in these former areas of agreement, so too they began
to lose confidence in the biblical testimony on which the earlier areas
of consensus were based.*° Unlike their predecessors who had assumed
at least some significant relationship between the Old Testament and
the history of ancient Israel, many scholars today either ignore the Old
Testament as a historical source or reject it outright.*”
As noted above, the setting aside of the biblical text as an important
historical source has not led to significant new breakthroughs. Apart
from a few very general points of agreement, there is little unanimity.
Mendenhall is sharply critical of Gottwald;#8 Thompson of Ahlstrém;*?
Dever of Thompson, Ahlstrom, and Davies;>° and Halpern of “minimal-
ists” of all sorts.°!

44. “Die Abwertung des Alten Testaments als Geschichtsquelle: Bemerkungen zu einem
geistesgeschichtliches Problem,” in Sola Scriptura: VII Europdischer Theologen-Kongref;,
Dresden 1990, ed. H. H. Schmid and J. Mehlhausen (Giitersloh: Mohn, 1993), 156-65.
45. Ibid., 159.
46. Ibid., 159-60.
47. So ibid., 160-61.
48. Mendenhall, “Ancient Israel's Hyphenated History,” in Palestine in Transition: The
Emergence of Ancient Israel, ed. D. N. Freedman and D. F. Graf, SWBAS 2 (Sheffield: Al-
mond, 1983), 91-102: “Gottwald’s attempt to present us with a historical account of the
beginnings of biblical history is truly a tragic comedy of errors” (102).
49. Thompson, “Gésta Ahlstrém’s History of Palestine,” in The Pitcher Is Broken: Me-
morial Essays for Gésta W. Ahlstrém, ed. S. W. Holloway and L. K. Handy, JSOTSup 190
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 420-34.
50. Dever, “‘Will the Real Israel Please Stand Up?’ Part I: Archaeology and Israelite
Historiography,” BASOR 297 (1995): 62-69 (hereafter “Archaeology and Israelite Histo-
riography”).
51. B. Halpern, “Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel,” BibRev
11.6 (1995): 26-35, 47. By minimalists, Halpern has in mind those writers who “late date”
160 Historiography ofthe Old Testament

One of the few dominant threads, then, in the rather variegated fab-
ric of contemporary social science approaches is the general diminish-
ment of the importance of the biblical text as a historical source.
Thompson contends, for example, that exegesis and historical recon-
struction are best pursued independently of one another.*? But setting
aside the biblical text has done little to resolve the crisis in biblical
scholarship, contrary to Thompson’s apparent hope and expectation. It
has merely freed scholars from the constraints of the biblical story line
to write monographs and textbooks that tell stories of their own con-
struction.>? There is little agreement as to what a “scientific,” socioeco-
nomic history of Israel should look like. And even if today’s social sci-
entists should achieve a consensus, a large number of scholars would
continue to agree with R. Smend that “we can still learn more about an-
cient Israel, including her history, from reading the historical books of
the Old Testament than from reading the best textbook today on this
subject matter; and a textbook is perhaps at its best when its author
knows that.”>4
Does this mean that social science methods have little to offer? Not
at all! There is certainly a place for writing “history from below.” But it
must be understood that histories written on the basis of social science
researches alone do not present the whole picture, nor are they the only
kinds of histories that are worth writing. That the Old Testament itself

virtually all biblical material to the Persian period and thus conclude that the Bible can
tell us little about earlier periods in Israel's history. With characteristic forthrightness,
and not a little irony, Halpern writes: “The views of these critics [he has specifically in
mind Thompson, Davies, and Van Seters] would seem to be an expression of despair over
the supposed impossibility of recovering the past from works written in a more recent
present—except, of course, that they [the critics] pretend to provide access to a ‘real’ past
in their own works written in the contemporary present” (p. 31). Furthermore, contends
Halpern, in order to free themselves to write their own stories, minimalist scholars must
simply sweep aside much archaeological and inscriptional evidence that would lend sup-
port to the picture painted, e.g., by the books of Kings. As to what motivates the minimal-
ists, Halpern again has a theory and the boldness to state it: “In one the motivation may
be a hatred of the Catholic Church, in another of Christianity, in another of the Jews, in
another of all religion, in another of authority” (p. 47). While it is always hazardous to
speculate on someone else's motives, Halpern’s comment does rightly highlight that one’s
historical reconstructions invariably to some extent reflect one’s worldview and funda-
mental belief system. I would only add that those who recognize this fact are in a better
position to minimize distorting influences than those who do not.
52. For bibliography and critique, see Herrmann, “Abwertung,” 162.
53. E.g., of Lemche's reconstruction of ancient Israel independent of the OT, F. H. Cryer
writes: “He proffers a model based on modern sociological studies of nomadism, ethnicity,
and the like. In so doing, Lemche is in reality composing a new ‘source,’ . . . that is, he pro-
poses for our consideration a narrative of his own devising” (cited by Herrmann, ibid.).
54. “Tradition and History: A Complex Relation” (trans. D. Knight), in Tradition and
Theology in the Old Testament, ed. D. Knight (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 66-67.
Historiography of the Old Testament 161

does not present the kind of history in which social scientists are most
interested does not justify simply dismissing the Old Testament’s more
idiographic historiography as fiction. Even Lemche admits that “the
Old Testament [would be] a most obvious starting point for the study
of Israelite history and even prehistory,” were it not that “the Old Tes-
tament model—or account—of early Israelite history is .. . disproved
by the archaeological sources to such a degree that I consider it better
to leave it out of consideration.”°> But is Lemche’s confidence in the
“assured results” of archaeological investigation warranted? Is his dis-
missal of the Old Testament model on the basis of archaeological
sources justified? Today’s assured results may well be tomorrow's dis-
carded theories, and if there is any lesson to be learned from the “bibli-
cal archaeology” debates of the past, it is that we should go slowly in de-
claring just what archaeology has “proved” or “disproved.”
In the end, the issue comes down to reading and interpretation. On
the one hand, how are the material evidences to be “read,” or inter-
preted?°° On the other hand, how are the texts, biblical and others, to
be read and interpreted? I noted already the fact that Wellhausen’s his-
torical conclusions rested squarely on his literary judgments. Similarly,
it comes as no surprise that whenever the fit between socio-archaeolog-
ical theories and biblical texts is debated, much depends on how the ev-
idences—both material and textual—have been interpreted. This brings
us to another prevalent contemporary approach to the Old Testament
that has a (sometimes overlooked) bearing on Old Testament historiog-
raphy: modern literary approaches.>’

Modern Literary Methods

Perhaps a good place to begin in discussing these methods is with some
definitions. What do we mean by “literary” methods, and why do we
prefix the adjective “modern”? While the appropriateness of labeling
the Old Testament as “literature” continues to be debated,°® most con-
temporary approaches assume a broad definition of literature, such as
“an interpretive presentation of experience in artistic form” character-
ized by “artful verbal expression and compelling ideas.”°? On these

55. “On the Problem of Studying Israelite History,’ 121-22.

56. Cf. F Brandfon, “The Limits of Evidence: Archaeology and Objectivity,” Maarav 4
(1987): 5-43.
57. Fora fuller treatment of the social scientific study of the Old Testament, see chap.
15 of the present volume.
58. For a recent, insightful discussion, see M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in
Ancient Israel (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 14-19.
59. For the first definition see L. Ryken, The Literature of the Bible (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1974), 13. For the second, A. Berlin, “On the Bible as Literature,” Prooftexts
2 (1982): 324. For further discussion, see Long, Art of Biblical History, 149-54.
162 Historiography of the Old Testament

terms the Old Testament’s library of literary genres would certainly

qualify for a literary approach. The purpose of the adjective “modern”
is to distinguish newer literary critical approaches (which tend to be
synchronic, or text-immanent) from old-style literary criticism (which
tends to be diachronic, or excavative). The older tended to dissect texts
into putative sources in the hope of distinguishing earlier material from
later accretions and redactions. It was believed that by detecting earlier
source material, one could draw closer to historical reality. The more
recent trend is to take more seriously the text in its final form. The effect
has been to restore to the text its “voice.”
But what do modern literary studies have to do with historical ques-
tions? Confronted by biblical texts that are no longer silenced by dissec-
tion and fragmentation but are again able to speak, some scholars see
an opportunity to hear more clearly what the texts have to say, includ-
ing what they may have to say about the historical past; others, how-
ever, take the literary turn as an opportunity to call into question
whether what the biblical texts say has any relevance to historical re-
construction in the first place.®° To some the older, diachronic histori-
cal criticism and the newer, synchronic “literary” approaches seem
quite different in aim and orientation (even diametrically opposed). But
as Barton has pointed out, there is considerable common ground be-
tween them:

If we take the most obviously fragmentative branch of historical criti-

cism, source analysis, still flourishing all over the world despite the sup-
posed paradigm-shift away from it: there can be no doubt that the under-
lying perceptions that make such criticisms possible are essentially
literary ones, related to the attempt to appropriate a text as a living whole,
cohering in all its parts. Its German name, Literarkritik, is not the misno-
mer people sometimes think it. The difference between the different sorts
of critic is a matter of how soon they give up this attempt in the face of a
perception that they are dealing with recalcitrant material. Literary crit-
ics today, like other kinds of “final form” interpreters, generally see them-
selves as having a duty to persist with a holistic approach until the whole
text is in focus as a unified entity, even if this involves suppressing intui-
tive suspicions that the text was not originally designed by anyone to have
exactly its present form. Source critics on the other hand allow such sus-
picions to have full rein, and are content when they have divided the text
into sections each of which in itself has a coherent shape. But in both
cases the mental processes involved are literary. Both are concerned with
the Gestalt of the text, with the attempt to grasp it as a comprehensible
whole. Historical critics are much readier than modern literary interpret-

60. Such sentiments can be found in the works of, e.g., Barr, Davies, Lemche, Thomp-
son, Whitelam, and others.
Historiography of the Old Testament 163

ers to accept the possibility that the text is not such a whole. But the ques-
tion ought to be discussable between them, not regarded as just a matter
of incomprehensible expectations.°!

Barton makes an important point. For too long, scholars have failed
to see, or perhaps to admit, that the results of newer literary approaches
have a bearing on the results of older literary criticism.®? But as D. R.
Hall insists, “We should not only ask what new insights the literary per-
spective gives us today, but also ask how far the absence of that perspec-
tive in the past invalidated the methods, and therefore the conclusions,
of the scholars concerned.”*? In his 1983 presidential address to the In-
ternational Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, L. Alonso
Schokel articulates four options for how the newer (synchronic) and
the older (diachronic) methods might interact: through mutual con-
demnation, courteous noncommunication, division of labor, or dia-
logue. For his part, he prefers dialogue, “even if it should lead to open
controversy.”°4 The plea of Alonso Schékel, Barton, and others that the
older and the newer brands of literary criticism should engage in dia-
logue is welcome, for it should be obvious that a given textual feature—
repetition, for example—cannot logically be cited both as a mark of au-
thorial disunity and as a mark of authorial ingenuity, both as evidence
of composite authorship and as evidence of authorial competence.
While improved literary readings of biblical texts should yield a
clearer grasp of the texts’ truth claims, be they theological, historical, or
whatever, one must admit that some modern literary approaches un-
dercut interest in the historiographical import of the Bible. Sometimes
a focus on literary categories (such as characterization, plot, point of
view, pacing) leads to a genre mistake, whereby what was written as
utilitarian literature (history, legislation, liturgy, preaching, etc.) is
read as pure literature (simply art for art's sake).°° The danger of this
form of reductionism has been recognized as long as talk of the “Bible

61. J. Barton, “Historical Criticism and Literary Interpretation: Is There Any Com-
mon Ground?” in Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of
Michael D. Goulder, ed. S. E. Porter, P. M. Joyce, and D. E. Orton, Biblical Interpretation
8 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 7.
62. See, e.g., R. W. L. Moberly’s insightful discussion of “The Relationship between
the Study of the Final Text and the Study of Its Prehistory,” in At the Mountain of God:
Story and Theology in Exodus 32-34, JSOTSup 22 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983), 22-27;
cf. V. P. Long, The Reign and Rejection of King Saul: A Case for Literary and Theological Co-
herence, SBLDS 118 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), esp. 7-20.
63. The Seven Pillories of Wisdom (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1990), 110.
64. L. Alonso Schékel, “Of Methods and Models,” Congress Volume: Salamanca, 1983,
ed. J. A. Emerton, VTSup 36 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 7-8. See also Long, Reign and Rejec-
tion, 10-14.
65. See Long, Reign and Rejection, 13, for a critique of this error.
164 Historiography of the Old Testament

as literature” has been around. Commenting on the literary enjoyment

of the Bible, T. S. Eliot once wrote:

While I acknowledge the legitimacy of this enjoyment, Iam more acutely

aware of its abuse. The persons who enjoy these writings solely because
of their literary merit are essentially parasites; and we know that para-
sites, when they become too numerous, are pests. I could fulminate
against the men of letters who have gone into ecstasies over “the Bible as
literature,” the Bible as “the noblest monument of English prose.” Those
who talk of the Bible as a “monument of English prose” are merely admir-
ing it as a monument over the grave of Christianity. I must try to avoid
the by-paths of my discourse: it is enough to suggest that just as the work
of Clarendon, or Gibbon, or Buffon, or Bradley would be of inferior liter-
ary value if it were insignificant as history, science and philosophy
respectively, so the Bible has had a literary influence upon English litera-
ture not because it has been considered as literature, but because it has
been considered as the report of the Word of God. And the fact that men
of letters now discuss it as “literature” probably indicates the end of its
“literary” influence.®®

Precisely the above error is sometimes made in contemporary dis-

cussion of the place of the Old Testament in the reconstruction of Is-
rael’s history. As H. H. Klement warns in a discussion of the relevance
of literary interpretation for historical study, literary approaches to the
Bible are always in danger of slipping into a reductionism whereby the
Bible is viewed merely as literary art, while historical questions are sim-
ply ausgeblendet (shaded out).°’ In other words, inherent in the literary
approach is the danger of losing sight of and interest in the historical
truth claims of the text.

Conclusion
In view of the different purposes, perspectives, and potential pitfalls of
each of the three approaches discussed above, it is not surprising that

66. Selected Essays: New Edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), 244-45; cited by
J. A. Fitzmyer, “Historical Criticism: Its Role in Biblical Interpretation and Church Life,”
TS 50 (1989): 250 n. 17. For more on the potentials and pitfalls of literary approaches to
the Bible, see T. Longman III, Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation, Foundations
of Contemporary Interpretation 3 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), 47-62; M. Sternberg,
The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, ILBS
(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1985), chap. 1; A. C. Thiselton, New Hori-
zons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan; London: Marshall Pickering, 1992), chap. 13, esp. 475-79, 502.
67. “Die neueren literaturwissenschaftlichen Methoden und die Historizitat des Alten
Testaments,” in Israel in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. G. Maier (Wuppertal: Brockhaus;
Giessen and Basel: Brunnen, 1996), 88.
Historiography of the Old Testament 165

scholars today often hold widely divergent views about both the history
of ancient Israel and the character of ancient Israel’s history writing. As
we have seen, and as I have argued in more detail elsewhere,®® the stan-
dard historical-critical approach leaves little or no room for God in his-
tory, social science approaches often have little room for the Old Testa-
ment texts themselves, and modern literary approaches sometimes
show little interest in historical concerns at all. No wonder the disci-
pline is in flux.
Whether it be the diminishment of the theological, historical, or lit-
erary impulse of the Old Testament, each is unfortunate if, as Sternberg
has forcefully argued, biblical narrative is “a complex, because multi-
functional, discourse . . . regulated by a set of three principles: ideolog-
ical, historiographic, and aesthetic.”©’ Any method that neglects or de-
nies one or more of these impulses is a deficient method. Indeed,
Herrmann rightly contends that “the crisis in which the study of the
early history of Israel now finds itself has largely been brought about by
rather one-sided theories.””°
So where do we go from here? Will progress require entirely new ap-
proaches? Probably not. But progress will require that some modifica-
tions be made to the manner in which each method is conceived and ap-
propriated. The next section seeks to offer suggestions as to what the
way forward might look like.

Where Do We Go from Here? Is There a Way Forward in

the Study of the Historiography of the Old Testament?
In concluding his very useful 1985 survey of the state of mainline schol-
arship on Old Testament historiography, J. M. Miller wrote: “Probably
there is no other area of biblical studies so obviously in need at the mo-
ment of some fresh ideas based on solid research.””! Writing ten years
later, M. Z. Brettler observed simply: “The old consensus is gone, and
there is no indication that a new one is developing to replace it.”””
To be sure, new ideas with respect to method have not been lacking.
Indeed, if there is anything that characterizes contemporary biblical
scholarship generally, it is the rapid turnover of methodological ap-
proaches. It seems to me, however, that whatever fresh ideas may
emerge on the level of method, real progress in understanding will be

68. Art of Biblical History, chap. 4.

69. Poetics, 41.
70. “Observations,” 115.
71. “Israelite History,” 1-30.
72. Creation of History in Ancient Israel, 6.
166 Historiography of the Old Testament

made only as scholarly discussion is taken to a deeper consideration of

the models, or worldviews, that scholars themselves (consciously or un-
consciously) embrace and that underlie the diverse methods that today’s
scholars employ. The state of flux (some use the termcrisis) in which the
study of the history and historiography of ancient Israel now finds itself
may provide just the opportunity to wrestle with the all-important foun-
dational questions. After all, as V. A. Harvey has observed,

all of our judgments and inferences [including historical ones] take place
. against a background of beliefs. We bring to our perceptions and
interpretations a world of existing knowledge, categories, and judgments.
Our inferences are but the visible part of an iceberg lying deep below the
surface.”

My contention is that the way forward in the study of Israel’s history

and historiography must involve greater attention to the subsurface
portion of the iceberg. What B. A. Scharfstein says of philosophy seems
equally applicable to the issue before us: “we will be able to be more ob-
jective only if we learn to conceal our subjectivity less.””4
Thus Harvey is right to stress the vital role played by background be-
liefs (models of reality, worldviews, or whatever term we choose) in ar-
riving at historical judgments. Harvey is also right to warn against
“sweeping appeals to the modern world-view,””> though, ironically, he
comes close to just such an appeal in his own discussion. There is much
truth in his assertion that “we are in history as fish are in water, and our
ideas of possibility and actuality are relative to our time.” There is also
a measure of truth in F. H. Bradley’s “ethical imperative” for historical
study (cited approvingly by Harvey) that “one ought to make his inter-
pretation of the past consistent with his interpretation of the present.””°
But these very observations should at least raise the question of
whether there is such a thing as the modern worldview. Do all moderns
share a monolithic “interpretation of the present”? Harvey's unquali-
fied use of “we” in various statements betrays an assumption on his part
that there is but one modern view of things. He writes, for instance, “we
cannot see the world as the first century saw it... . Our memories are
indelibly stamped with the new vision of reality. . . . We have a new con-
sciousness.”77

73. The Historian and the Believer, 115.

74. Quoted in M. Broshi, “Religion, Ideology, and Politics and Their Impact on Pales-
tinian Archaeology,” Israel Museum Journal 6 (1987): 32.
75. The Historian and the Believer, 115.
76. Ibid., 114.
Tit, Moxie), Wilksy.
Historiography of the Old Testament 167

In this apparent assumption of a monolithic “modern” worldview,

Harvey is not alone. Lemche, for example, first describes “the so-called
‘primitive’ idea of causality” whereby “everybody considered his fate an
expression of the will of God, the outcome of his God’s approval or re-
jection of his behaviour,” and then contrasts this ancient view with the
modern view: “there exists an almost absolute contrast between our
idea of history and of the world and the one common among ancient
peoples. Therefore, from the beginning the endeavour to reconstruct
the historical course of events on the basis of a single documentary
source from the ancient Near East is really without prospect of suc-
cess.”78 Clearly, Lemche’s dismissal of the Bible as a viable source of
historical information does not result so much from the application of
particular methods to the biblical text but rather from the conflict be-
tween Lemche’s and the Bible’s “idea of history and of the world.”’°
Again, this simply raises the question of whether it is appropriate to
generalize about the modern worldview, as if there were but one. For
Harvey, Lemche, Davies, and many others, the answer would seem to
be yes. After all, has not R. Bultmann taught us that “it is impossible to
use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern med-
ical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New
Testament world of spirits and miracles”28° But surely not all modern
people find this bit of Bultmannian logic compelling. Are we to under-
stand that scientific advances in the understanding of the material
world and of secondary causes eventually destroy the viability of belief
in the spirit world and the Absolute Cause? Secular materialists may be
attracted to such a notion, but theistic believers will not be. Surely
moderns may come to understand and believe many things unknown to
the ancients and yet, like the ancients, remain theists. And if theists,
then their belief in God will be one of the most, if not the single most,
important of the “background beliefs” that come into play in making
historical judgments.
Thus I would argue that a way forward in discussions of the histori-
ography of the Old Testament might begin by framing the discussion
not in terms of a “primitive” versus a “modern” worldview but rather in
terms of a “theistic” versus an “a-” or “nontheistic” worldview. And
since, as M. Stanford puts it, “the final colour and shape of a historian’s
construction is bestowed by his or her own Weltanschauung [‘world-

78. “On the Problem of Studying Israelite History,” 119-20.

79. Cf. also Davies's insistence that “our modern understanding of what constitutes
historiography, and indeed what constitutes the past, is different” from the Bible's
(“Method and Madness: Some Remarks on Doing History with the Bible,” JBL 114
[1995]: 703).
80. Cited approvingly by Harvey, The Historian and the Believer, 114.
168 Historiography of the Old Testament

view’],”8! I would also stress the importance of scholars’ offering some

indication in their writings of their core beliefs about Reality. I under-
stand that this is not standard practice in scholarly discussion, where
some continue to propagate the myth of personal objectivity.** But
until greater care is taken to determine where points of disagreement
between scholars actually lie, we are destined to talk past each other. As
E. L. Greenstein stresses, “I can get somewhere when I challenge the
deductions you make from your fundamental assumptions. But I can
get nowhere if I think I am challenging your deductions when in fact I
am differing from your assumptions, your presuppositions, your prem-
ises, your beliefs.”*?
Finally, I would contend that scholars should take some care to in-
sure that harmony exists between the worldview that they themselves
embrace and the worldview underlying the methods they employ.
Where incompatibility is discovered (e.g., when theistic scholars find
themselves using methods that are by definition atheistic), they should
either adjust their own core beliefs, reject the incompatible method in
favor of amethod more in keeping with what they believe to be the truth
about “God, the universe, and everything,” or make whatever modifica-
tions are necessary to bring the method into line with Reality as they
understand it.
In what follows I suggest how the three major approaches discussed
in the preceding section might be adjusted to bring them into line with
a theistic set of background beliefs.*#

Refining the Canons of the Historical-Critical Method

In his highly instructive discussion of Divine Revelation and the Limits
of Historical Criticism, W. J. Abraham asks whether the believer may

81. The Nature of Historical Knowledge (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 96.

82. To be sure, most hermeneutically aware interpreters will readily admit their per-
sonal subjectivity. But there can still be a tendency to attribute a kind of objectivity to
their chosen method. Davies, for instance, insists that “it is precisely because I am no
more free from subjectivity than any human being that I insist on working to a method-
ology that will enable me and my fellow historians to agree on what counts as historical
knowledge and how we aim to secure it” (“Method and Madness,” 704). But Davies's
stance raises several questions. Does not the “methodology” itself rest on certain assump-
tions? Are not other assumptions possible, even contrary assumptions (such as those
which some moderns might share with the ancient historians)? And might not these
other assumptions call for significant methodological modifications?
83. “The Role of Theory in Biblical Criticism,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Con-
gress of Jewish Studies: Jerusalem, August 4-12, 1985 (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish
Studies, 1986), 167.
84. Due to space considerations, my comments must be brief; for more, see my Art of
Biblical History, chap. 4.
Historiography of the Old Testament 169

not continue to believe and yet still lay claim to the title of historian.
Abraham argues that an affirmative answer is possible, provided that
the three chief principles of the historical method are appropriately de-
fined. The principle of criticism, for instance, must be defined not in
terms of systematic doubt but in terms of a thoughtful appraisal of the
evidence in keeping with its source. For those who regard the Bible as
either not at all interested in history or as hopelessly incapable of con-
veying historical information, skepticism toward the possibility of
drawing historically valuable information from the Bible will indeed be
the appropriate “critical” attitude. But for those who do not share these
views, “systematic doubt” may be “the most inappropriate procedure
imaginable for dealing with the Bible.”®° As regards the principle of
analogy, Abraham argues for a broad, rather than a narrow, definition,
whereby plausibility is not judged solely by analogy to the historian’s
own personal experiences or those of contemporaries, but where rea-
sonable arguments can be made for belief in occurrences with which
the historian may have no personal acquaintance and where not only
may the present serve as a key to the past, but the past may also serve
as a key to the present.*® Finally, as regards the principle of correlation,
Abraham argues for a formal rather than a material definition. Accord-
ing to the latter, historical change can be brought about only by natural
causes or human agency. According to the former, agency is defined as
personal agency, not merely human agency, and thus God is allowed
back into the picture.®’
Now, to be sure, some might object to such a procedure. Davies, for
instance, states authoritatively: “I don’t allow divine activity or any un-
qualifiable or undemonstrable cause as an arguable factor in historical
reconstruction, and, even if I were to accept privately the possibility of
such factors, I do not see how I could integrate such explanations into
anything recognizable as a historical method.”** What must not be
overlooked, however, is that this statement is itself a statement of faith,
that is, a metaphysical statement.’? As Abraham observes: “If the histo-
rian discounts theological considerations as irrelevant, he does not en-

85. G. Maier, Biblical Hermeneutics, trans. R. W. Yarbrough (Wheaton, IIl.: Crossway,

1994), 24.
86. For full discussion, see Abraham, Divine Revelation, chap. 5. He uses the example
of a remote people group being convinced through reasonable discussion to believe in a
moon landing, even though such an event is completely foreign to anything they person-
ally have known.
87. Ibid., 108.
88. “Method and Madness,” 700.
89. See I. W. Provan, “Ideologies, Literary and Critical: Reflections on Recent Writing
on the History of Israel,” JBL 114 (1995): 586-606.
170 Historiography ofthe Old Testament

tirely cease to be theological. He is simply assuming the truth of certain

negative theological statements. . . . It were odd if the historian could
only rely on theological assertions when they are negative rather than
positive.” In short, then, if the canons of the historical-critical method
are refined along the lines suggested by Abraham, “there is nothing un-
historical in relying on theology.”?! In pursuing the task of the histo-
rian, the theist need suppress his metaphysical convictions no more
than the atheist.
But one might object: if God, for whom all things are possible, is al-
lowed a role in history, does this not render probability judgments
(upon which historical science depends) impossible? Do not those who
embrace the biblical view of God as a worker of wonders lose their ca-
pacity to judge the probability of miraculous accounts they hear? What
about Harvey’s contention that while “very few historians . .. would
hesitate to apply the category ‘legend’ to the story of the saint who, after
being beheaded, walked a few hundred yards to a cathedral with his
head under his arm, entered the sanctuary and there sang the Te
Deum,” “traditional belief” simply cannot account for the fact that mod-
ern people immediately tend to reject such stories as impossible??*
In response, one must ask whether Harvey's contention is true. Most
“traditional” believers, although reticent simply to dismiss miracle sto-
ries a priori, do have a conscious or subconscious set of criteria by
which they judge whether an unusual story deserves credence. To begin
with, most would agree with the assumption that God does not need-
lessly multiply miracles. Thus, while believing that with God all things
are possible, traditional believers are far from credulously accepting all
strange stories as probable. Further, just as some people are regarded as
more reliable witnesses than others (on the basis of their known char-
acter and the consistency of what they say), traditional believers usually
regard some sources of information as more deserving of credence than
other sources (e.g., texts of known and tested character that tell a coher-
ent story involving apparently historical truth claims will be trusted
over texts of unknown character whose story seems confused or inco-
herent). Finally, thoughtful believers innately apply a formal principle
of correlation that asks of miracle reports, “Just why would God choose
to do that? How does this putative miracle fit within the larger scheme
of God's working?” If satisfactory answers are not forthcoming, the re-
port is not believed (or, if it nevertheless appears that something para-
normal has occurred, an explanation may be sought along the lines sug-

90. Abraham, Divine Revelation, 158.

91. Ibid.
92. The Historian and the Believer, 115-16.
Historiography of the Old Testament 171

gested by, e.g., Matt. 24:24). Thoughtful believers do not understand

miracles as “bolts out of the blue” but as special divine actions intercon-
nected with the larger matrix of the divine governance of the world.
In this section I have argued that the historical-critical method,
though atheistic in its customary formulation, can be brought into line
with a theistic worldview, provided that the canons of the method are
refined as described above. As we turn now to the social scientific meth-
ods (e.g., anthropology, archaeology, sociology), we may again ac-
knowledge their usefulness, provided that the claims of the methods are
restricted in a manner consistent with their essentially nomothetic, as
distinct from idiographic, character.

Restricting the Claims of the Social Sciences

in Historical Reconstruction
Briefly stated, the social sciences are well suited to deal with general
features of societies and cultures, but they are usually ill suited to pro-
nounce on specific events and individuals. Their rightful function, then,
is to provide background information against which the specific ac-
tions of individuals and groups can be better understood. As B. Halpern
puts it, the chief function of the social sciences is to describe “the abid-
ing institutions and patterns of culture, against which the quicker
movements that catch the scholarly eye are visible.”
So long as practitioners recognize the proper role of the social sci-
ences in addressing background concerns, their studies provide a valu-
able service. It is only when they begin to make pronouncements on the
likelihood of specific events that they exceed the limitations of their
chosen method—and may wittingly or unwittingly find themselves
writing histories that bear a greater resemblance to their present con-
cerns than to past realities. I have written at some length elsewhere on
this potential danger, and I will not belabor the point here.”*
I noted above that an especially unfortunate aspect of some social
scientific studies of ancient Israel is their tendency to downplay literary
evidence, which is often our best (or only) evidence of specific individ-
uals, actions, and events. Here I would simply stress that the antiliter-
ary tendency is not a necessary component of the methods themselves.
In an essay on social science approaches to the early history of Israel,
Dever emphasizes the relevance of, for example, archaeological investi-
gation for reconstructing a history of early Israel.?° Not surprisingly,

93. The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1988), 122.
94. See Art of Biblical History, 135-49.
95. “Archaeology and Israelite Historiography,” 61-80.
172 Historiography ofthe Old Testament

Dever is quick to remind us that “archaeology cannot be used to ‘prove

the Bible.” But he is just as insistent that “there are a number of points
at which datable Iron Age archaeological evidence and literary refer-
ences in the Bible do ‘converge’ in such a way as to suggest contempo-
raneity.” According to Dever, this is “a fact that responsible historians
cannot deny.””° With this much, at least, I may heartily agree.
Less certain is Dever’s contention that “archaeological data will take
precedence, will constitute much of the ‘primary’ data in future, espe-
cially for the pre-Monarchical period,” since “any new ‘hard data’ in an-
cient Israel will come, by definition, out of the ground—artifacts or
texts—not out of the Hebrew Bible, which is a closed corpus.””’ While
there is some force in Dever’s assertion, we should at least note that, al-
though the Old Testament is a closed corpus, the task of understanding
that closed corpus is far from completed. Indeed, much suggests that at
numerous points the biblical texts have heretofore been misunder-
stood. Sometimes an archaeological discovery, an anthropological in-
sight, or a sociological observation may prompt a reconsideration of a
text, which may in turn lead to an improved interpretation of that text.
At other times, the improved literary competence arising from the nu-
merous studies in biblical poetics, narrative criticism, and so on may
have a similar effect. The point is simply that, if we would attempt a cor-
relation of texts and artifacts, we must first take care that both text and
artifact have been rightly interpreted. As de Vaux observed more thana
quarter century ago: “If the results of archaeology seem to be opposed
to the conclusions of text criticism, the reason may perhaps be that not
enough archaeological facts are known or that they have not been
firmly established; the reason also may be that the text has been
wrongly interpreted.”?* This brings us again to the literary task required
of those who would deal responsibly with the historiography of the OT.

Rethinking the Consequences of Modern Literary Criticism

for Historical Reconstruction
In my earlier discussion of modern literary approaches to the Old Tes-
tament and their import with respect to the historiography of the Old
Testament, I noted the tendency of some literary critics to slip into a re-
ductionism in which they view the Old Testament as “pure” literature—
simply art for art’s sake. This slippage is unfortunate and unnecessary.

96. Ibid., 72.

OS7 Lbidke7 In
98. R. de Vaux, “On Right and Wrong Uses of Archaeology,” in Near Eastern Archae-
ology in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Nelson Glueck, ed. J. A. Sanders (Gar-
den City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), 78.
Historiography of the Old Testament 173

A truly literary approach will want to “do justice” to the literature by ac-
knowledging whatever kinds of truth claims it makes, whether they be
purely literary or, as is often the case in the Bible, historical and theo-
logical as well. Much of the Bible appears to have been written as utili-
tarian literature intent on communicating information, commanding
obedience, calling to repentance, and so on, and it is perverse to ignore
or deny these intentionalities and to reduce the biblical texts to the level
of pure (autotelic) literature.
Reasons for ignoring the apparent historical truth claims of much
Old Testament narrative vary from scholar to scholar. For some, the
failure may stem from a kind of primal rebellion that insists on asking,
“Did God really say... ?” (Gen. 3:1); for others it may stem from a
methodological straitjacket that insists that texts describing divine ac-
tion are historically suspect; and for still others it may stem simply from
the naive assumption that literature and history are mutually exclusive
categories. The corrective for the first type of failure comes only with a
radical change of heart and mind (what the Bible calls “repentance’”).
The corrective for the second involves making adjustments to the
method so as to bring it into line with theistic reality. The corrective for
the third involves simply recognizing that literature and history are not
mutually exclusive concepts. As regards this last point, an analogy from
the visual arts may help.
A portrait is both art and history; that is, it is an artistic creation
serving a referential end. On the one hand, in appreciating a portrait,
one may admire its artistry (the consummate brushwork, the well-
conceived composition, the judicious selection of detail), but if one
fails to recognize that all of this artistry is marshaled to serve a histor-
ical purpose (to capture a true and telling likeness of a historical per-
son), then one has simply missed the main point. This I would liken to
the ahistorical literary approaches that one sometimes encounters in
biblical studies today. On the other hand, one may approach a portrait
fully aware of its referential/historical intent but with little under-
standing of the artistic medium in which it is rendered. The danger in
such cases is that lack of awareness of how the medium communicates
may lead to misunderstandings of just what the medium communi-
cates. This I would liken to some historical-critical approaches that
seek to mine the biblical texts for historical information but do not ap-
proach them with sufficient literary sensitivity to do them justice.
Just as the best way to “read” a portrait and to grasp its significance
is to combine historical interest with competent appreciation of the ar-
tistic medium employed, so the best way to “read” the historiography
of the Old Testament is to combine historical interest with competent
appreciation of the literary medium employed. In short, the better one
174 Historiography of the Old Testament

understands the artistic workings of portrait or biblical text, the better

one grasps the (historical) subject depicted.
It is just in this regard that modern literary approaches to biblical
texts may have much to offer, provided they can avoid the ahistorical
fallacy. The last couple of decades have witnessed an impressive in-
crease in fresh literary readings of individual Old Testament texts, and
some of these readings call into question historical judgments based on
earlier, inferior literary readings. More importantly still, there has been
an explosion of interest in the workings, or poetics, of Old Testament
literary genres (especially narrative and poetry). These studies are pro-
viding a generally improved sense of the rhetoric of biblical texts, and
historians interested in Old Testament historiography may have much
to gain from them. As D. Levin observed more than three decades ago
in a different context, “One of the first contributions that the critic of
history can make is to serve as an intelligent reader who is willing to un-
derstand and discuss the rhetoric in which history is written.”??

Conclusion
If the crisis in the study of Old Testament historiography/history of Is-
rael is in some measure due to “rather one-sided theories,” as I noted
earlier, citing Herrmann, then the best hope for the future of the histor-
ical study of the Old Testament will lie in more integrative approaches
that make use of a variety of methods. A multifaceted methodological
approach has the advantage of containing within itself a system of
checks and balances, whereby the results achieved by one method can
be checked against the results achieved by the others. In this essay I
have focused on three methodological approaches that have a bearing
on the historiography of the Old Testament, and I have made sugges-
tions as to how each can most appropriately be conceived and em-
ployed by theistic scholars. Specifically, I suggested refining the canons
of the historical-critical method, restricting the claims of the social sci-
ence methods, and rethinking the consequences of modern literary
methods. Provided that the necessary methodological adjustments are
made, an integrative approach that attends to each of the Old Testa-
ment’s chief impulses—theological, historical, and literary—will stand
the best chance of doing justice both to ancient Israel’s history writing
and to the writing of ancient Israel’s history.
In addition to discussing methods, I tried to underscore the impor-
tance of attending more closely to the reality models embraced (con-

99. In Defense of Historical Literature: Essays on American History, Autobiography,

Drama, and Fiction (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 23.
Historiography of the Old Testament is

sciously or unconsciously) by interpreters and implicit in texts. Atten-

tion to worldview issues, to metaphysical core convictions, is essential
because it is often at this level, rather than at the level of specific obser-
vations and results, that tensions and disagreements among interpret-
ers and texts lie. Irecognize, of course, that a call to be more self-reflec-
tive and open about one’s own fundamental beliefs will be challenged
by some who might like to contrast faith with “objective” science. But,
as J. Degenaar insists, “Theoretical self-reflection raises historiography
to a higher level, for the historian can now take into account his (hid-
den) assumptions.”
!

100. “Historical Discourse as Fact-Bound Fiction,” in Facts and Values: Philosophical

Reflections from Western and Non-Western Perspectives, ed. M. C. Doeser and J. N. Kraay,
Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library 19 (Dordrecht and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff,
1986), 76.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship
K. Lawson Younger Jr.

Over the last twenty years, biblical studies has witnessed tremendous
changes in the study of early Israel. During this period a number of
scholars have surveyed or reviewed the state of scholarship.! An exam-
ination of these surveys reveals an exponential increase in both the
quantity of literature devoted to the subject and the number of new the-
oretical models being applied to the data.
Despite N. P. Lemche’s recent proclamation that “the debate in this
area is almost at an end,”? it is becoming more and more unlikely that
a consensus will develop among biblical scholars concerning the early
history of Israel any time in the near future. If anything, there is a
heightened rhetoric that in some instances obscures the real issues.*

1. To name just a few, listed chronologically: B. S. J. Isserlin, “The Israelite Conquest

of Canaan: A Comparative Review of the Arguments Applicable,” PEQ 115 (1983): 85-94;
J. J. Bimson, “The Origins of Israel in Canaan: An Examination of Recent Theories,” The-
melios 15.1 (1989): 4-15; R. Gnuse, “BTB Review of Current Scholarship: Israelite Settle-
ment of Canaan: A Peaceful Internal Process—Part 2,” BTB 21 (1991): 109-17; R. S. Hess,
“Early Israel in Canaan: A Survey of Some Recent Evidence and Interpretations,” PEQ
125 (1993): 125-42; N. K. Gottwald, “Recent Studies of the Social World of Premonarchic
Israel,” CR:BS 1 (1993): 163-89; E~H. Merrill, “The Late Bronze/Early Iron Age Transi-
tion and the Emergence of Israel,” BSac 152 (1995): 145-62; N. P. Lemche, “Early Israel
Revisited,” CR:BS 4 (1996): 9-34; D. Merling Sr., The Book of Joshua: Its Theme and Role
in Archaeological Discussions, Andrews University Seminary Doctoral Dissertation Series
23 (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 1997), 1-105.
2. Lemche, “Early Israel Revisited,” 9-34.
3. Both W. G. Dever and K. W. Whitelam resort to a high degree of rhetoric in their
exchange in JSOT: W. G. Dever, “The Identity of Early Israel: A Rejoinder to Keith W.
Whitelam,” JSOT 72 (1996): 3-24; K. W. Whitelam, “Prophetic Conflict in Israelite His-
tory: Taking Sides with William G. Dever,” JSOT 72 (1996): 25-44. This is also true of
Dever and Lemche in CR:BS: W. G. Dever, “Revisionist Israel Revisited: A Rejoinder to

176
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship ee

This lack of consensus regarding premonarchic Israel can be seen in the

very diverse reconstructions that employ the same basic data.’ As the
field of biblical studies enters a new millennium, the only apparent con-
sensus is that the Albrightian “conquest model” is invalidated.
In the last two decades, archaeological interest has expanded from
simply excavating urban sites to regional surveys that are yielding im-
portant data concerning small village culture where early Israel finds its
setting. But as Norman Gottwald correctly observes, in the midst of all
the new evidence and fresh hypothesizing, there have arisen radical
doubts about the historical value of the biblical origin traditions that
greatly complicate the inquiry. In short, the knowledge gained along
the archaeological and sociological fronts is offset by an attrition along
the literary front that had been the foundation for previous reconstruc-
tions of Israel’s origins.°
After brief summaries of the different models, I offer a short presen-
tation of some important factors. This is followed by a discussion con-
cerning the role of the Book of Joshua and some suggestions for the de-
velopment of a more comprehensive model that considers all the data.

Niels Peter Lemche,” CR:BS 4 (1996): 35-50; N. P. Lemche, “Response to William G. Dever,
‘Revisionist Israel Revisited,” CR:BS 5 (1997): 9-14; and of I. W. Provan, T. L. Thompson,
and P. R. Davies in JBL: I. W. Provan, “Ideologies, Literary and Critical: Reflections on Re-
cent Writing on the History of Israel,” JBL 114 (1995): 585-606; T. L. Thompson, “A Neo-
Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?” JBL 114 (1995): 683-98; and
P. R. Davies, “Method and Madness: Some Remarks on Doing History with the Bible,” JBL
114 (1995): 699-705. In this regard, the suggestions of N. K. Gottwald are positive steps
forward (“Triumphalist versus Anti-Triumphalist Versions of Early Israel: A Response to
Articles by Lemche and Dever in Volume 4 [1996],” CR:BS 5 [1997]: 15-42).
4. E.g., W. G. Dever, “The Late Bronze-Early Iron I Horizon in Syria-Palestine: Egyp-
tians, Canaanites, ‘Sea Peoples,’ and ‘Proto-Israelites,’” in The Crisis Years: The Twelfth Cen-
tury B.c. from beyond the Danube to the Tigris, ed. W. A. Ward and M. S. Joukowsky (Dubu-
que: Kendall/Hunt, 1992), 99-110; I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology ofthe Israelite Settlement
(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988); but cf. I. Finkelstein, “The Emergence of Is-
rael: A Phase in the Cyclic History of Canaan in the Third and Second Millennia B.c.g.,” in
From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, ed. 1.
Finkelstein and N. Na?aman (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994), 150-78; Gnuse,
BTB 21 (1991): 109-17; N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion
of
Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.c.z. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979); B. Halpern, The Emer-
gence ofIsrael in Canaan, SBLMS 29 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983); N. P. Lemche,
Ancient Israel: A New History ofIsraelite Society, trans. F. H. Cryer, Biblical Seminar 5
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988); idem, Die Vorgeschichte Israels: Von den Anfdngen bis zum
Ausgang des 13. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Biblische Enzyklopadie 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
1996); W. H. Stiebing Jr., Out of the Desert? Archaeology and the Exodus/Conquest Narra-
tives (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1989); and K. W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Is-
rael: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).
5. Gottwald, “Recent Studies,” 163. An important volume dealing with some of the es-
sential issues is The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States, ed. V. Fritz and P. R. Davies,
JSOTSup 228 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
178 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

Summary of the Models

Theories in Which Israel Originates from outside Canaan
The Conquest Model
While the settlement process may have been complex, this view ar-
gues that archaeology has vindicated the essential historicity of the bib-
lical narratives of Joshua.® This archaeological evidence consists of a
number of sudden and violent destructions in the thirteenth century of
many sites (e.g., Hazor, Lachish).’ The Book of Joshua was understood
to narrate a straightforward threefold campaign (central, southern,
northern) that was a blitzkrieg of the land—an understanding under-
girded by archaeology.
There are, however, significant problems with the theory. William
Dever argues that only two sites out of nineteen with possible identifi-
cations with sites in Joshua demonstrate evidence of destruction in the
thirteenth century.’ Thus archaeology shows the Albrightian conquest
model to be mistaken because its claim that the Israelites destroyed nu-
merous Canaanite sites conflicts with the material evidence.

6. W. F. Albright, “Archaeology and the Hebrew Conquest of Palestine,” BASOR 58

(1935): 10-18; idem, “The Israelite Conquest of Canaan in the Light of Archaeology,”
BASOR 74 (1939): 11-23; idem, “The Role of the Canaanites in the History of Civiliza-
tion,” in The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor ofWilliam Foxwell Albright,
ed. G. E. Wright (1961; reprinted, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1979), 328-62. See
also Y. Yadin, “Is the Biblical Account of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan Historically
Reliable?” BAR 8 (1982): 16-28; idem, “Biblical Archaeology Today: The Archaeological
Aspect,” in Biblical Archaeology Today: Proceedings of the International Congress on Bib-
lical Archaeology, Jerusalem, April 1984 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, Israel
Academy of Sciences and Humanities in cooperation with the American Schools of Ori-
ental Research, 1985), 21-27; J. Bright, A History of Israel, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: West-
minster, 1981), 132. While Malamat follows the basic conquest model, his understand-
ing is much more sophisticated; see A. Malamat, “Israelite Conduct of War in the
Conquest of Canaan,” in Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the
Founding of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1900-1975), ed. F. M. Cross
(Cambridge, Mass.: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1979), 35-55; idem, “How
Inferior Israelite Forces Conquered Fortified Canaanite Cities,” BAR 8 (1982): 24-35;
idem, “Die Friihgeschichte Israels: Eine methodologische Studie,” TZ 39 (1983): 1-16;
idem, “Die Eroberung Kanaans: Die israelite Kriegsfiihrung nach der biblischen Reli-
gion,” in Das Land Israel in biblischer Zeit, ed. G. Strecker (Géttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1983), 7-32.
7. P. Lapp put it this way: “the stratigraphic evidence . . . outside the coastal cities and
the Plain of Jezreel, points . . . strongly to the thoroughgoing destruction of nearly all im-
portant cities in the last half of the 13th century” (Lapp, Biblical Archaeology and History
[New York: World, 1969], 295; see also idem, “The Conquest of Palestine in the Light of
Archaeology,” CTM 38 [1967]: 283-300).
8. Dever, “Israel, History of (Archaeology and ‘the Conquest’),” ABD, 3:545-58, esp.
548; see also Lemche, “Early Israel Revisited,” 13-15.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 179

But the model was doomed from the beginning because of its literal,
simplistic reading of Joshua. The Book of Joshua itself does not claim
such a sweeping widespread destruction by the Israelites. It specifically
states otherwise (e.g., Josh. 11:13). Moreover, the conquest account in
Joshua is a highly selective, stylized narrative. It is not intended to convey
the complete story of Israel’s emergence in the land; nor is it to be read
in a simple, literal fashion. For example, the narration of the conquest of
the cities of the south (Josh. 10:28-42) should not be read as implying a
total destruction of the physical structures of these sites, as it so fre-
quently is.” Its repetitive, stereotypical presentation marked with hyper-
bole demands a much deeper reading. Hence, the archaeological record
would have inevitably contradicted the model as Albright expressed it,
since the biblical reading supporting the theory was too simplistic.

The Peaceful Infiltration Model

This model posits that the Israelites were nomadic and semi-nomadic
clans who over a period of centuries, and from several different direc-
tions, gradually and peacefully settled the unoccupied hill country.
Gradual sedentarization took place and eventually the land became
dominated by Israel.!° A loose political association developed around
the worship of Yahweh and having the shape of a “twelve-tribe” amphic-
tyony.'! Thus, with a military conflict essentially excluded, this model
in its original form postulated that the tension between Canaanites and
Israelites was essentially the same as that between farmers and nomads.
Adam Zertal has argued that the distribution of ceramic types in the
settlement pattern in the region of Manasseh demonstrate a slow east-
to-west settlement of pastoral nomads entering from Transjordan.!”

9. K. L. Younger Jr., “The ‘Conquest’ of the South (Joshua 10:28-39),” BZ 17.2 (1995):
255-64.
10. A. Alt, “The Settlement of the Israelites in Palestine,” in Essays on Old Testament
History and Religion, trans. R. A. Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 135-69;
M. Noth, The History of Israel, trans. P. R. Ackroyd, 2d ed. (New York: Harper & Row,
1960), 66-84; M. Weippert, The Settlement of the Israelite Tribes in Palestine: A Critical Sur-
vey ofRecent Scholarly Debate, trans. J. D. Martin, SBT 2/21 (London: SCM, 1971), 1-146;
J. M. Miller, “Archaeology and the Israelite Conquest of Canaan: Some Methodological
Observations,” PEO 109 (1977): 87-93; J. Strange, “The Transition from the Bronze Age
to the Iron Age in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Emergence of the Israelite State,”
SJOT 1 (1987): 1-19, esp. 18-19; A. Lemaire, “Aux origines d'Israél: La montagne
d'phraim et le territoire de Manassé (XIII-XI° siécle av. J.-C.),” in La protohistoire d'Is-
raél de l’exode a la monarchie, ed. J. Briend et al. (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 183-292.
11. An amphictyony is a league of tribes or cities, usually with six or twelve members,
bound by common allegiance to a deity and to the god's shrine.
12. A. Zertal, “Israel Enters Canaan—Following the Pottery Trail,” BAR 17.5 (1991):
28-47, esp. 36-41; idem, “The Trek of the Tribes As They Settled in Canaan,” BAR 17.5
(1991): 48-49, 75.
180 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

This has not gone unchallenged,!’ and is in all likelihood insufficient to

bolster the infiltration model.
In Baruch Halpern’s estimation, since Rameses II was the pharaoh
of the oppression (Exod. 1:11), then Merenptah was the pharaoh of the
exodus of Israel from Egypt.'* Thus the Israel mentioned on the Mer-
enptah Stela was a displaced group of “homesteaders” who migrated
south from Syria through northern Transjordan. Later, a group of es-
caped slaves from Egypt arrived and transformed Israel’s beliefs with
the “myth” of the exodus, of the conquest, and of the deity Yahweh.
The model has been criticized on a number of fronts.!° It has been
especially criticized for the importation of the amphictyony concept
from classical Greece.!® The anthropological assumptions underlying
the theory’s original assertion have also been shown to be inaccu-
rate.!7 But recent proponents of the theory have emphasized the con-
tinuous presence of nomadic groups living in symbiotic relationship
with the settled inhabitants throughout the Near East.'® These groups
could easily move into the hill country of Canaan and occupy it.!?
Whether these groups were internal or external to Canaan is the area

13. W. Dever, “How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite,” in The Rise of Ancient Israel:
Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution, October 26, 1991, ed. H. Shanks et al. (Wash-
ington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992), 26-60, esp. 49-51.
14. B. Halpern, “The Exodus from Egypt: Myth or Reality?” in The Rise of Ancient Is-
rael, ed. Shanks et al., 87-113, esp. 102-8. See also Halpern, Emergence of Israel in
Canaan, 117, 216.
15. See the critique of Lemche, “Early Israel Revisited,” 11-13.
16. See, e.g., Gottwald, Tribes of Yahweh, 347-57.
17. See, e.g., M. Chaney’s evaluation, “Ancient Palestinian Peasant Movements and
the Formation of Premonarchic Israel,” in Palestine in Transition: The Emergence of An-
cient Israel, ed. D. N. Freedman and D. F. Graf, SWBAS 2 (Sheffield: Almond, 1983), 39—
90, esp. 43. The infiltration model as Alt proposed it seems to rest on a late-nineteenth/
early-twentieth-century nostalgic anthropology about the Bedouin that was unaware of
how pastoralism really operates (see Lemche, Ancient Israel, 19-21).
18. V. Fritz even proposes the name “symbiosis hypothesis” for the theory. See “Con-
quest or Settlement?” BA 50.2 (1987): 84-100; idem, “The Israelite ‘Conquest’ in the Light
of Recent Excavations at Khirbet el-Mehash,” BASOR 241 (1981): 71-88. Whereas Noth
favored the thirteenth century B.c. as the time when Israel's ancestors entered the land,
Fritz pushes their arrival back to the fourteenth or fifteenth century B.c. This longer pe-
riod of sedentarization allows for Israel to become archaeologically “visible,” since semi-
nomads leave few traces of their existence. Their penetration was from the south into
Judah, and their sedentarization was a response to changed economic conditions that af-
fected the whole of Canaanite society at the end of the Late Bronze Age.
19. Some scholars have suggested connecting these nomads with the @piru, Shasu,
or exodus Israelites. M. Weippert identifies them with the Shasu, known primarily from
Egyptian texts and reliefs (ca. 1500-1150 B.c.). See “The Israelite ‘Conquest’ and the Evi-
dence from Transjordan,” in Symposia, ed. Cross, 15-34; idem, “Canaan, Conquest and
Settlement of,” IDBSup, 125-30. See also D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in An-
cient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 275-80.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 181

of current debate, which naturally centers on the issue of ethnicity

(see below).

Theories in Which Israel Originates from within Canaan

The Revolt Models
Mendenhall. In George Mendenhall’s reconstruction, Israel origi-
nates in the alliance of extensive rural Canaanite groups with a small
but vital group of slaves who brought with them the myth of deliverance
from bondage by the god Yahweh and a political structure that centered
in covenant allegiance to this deity.”
Through their control of the surrounding agricultural land and vil-
lages, the semi-independent city-states of Canaan created sharp social
stratification between, on the one hand, the king and his urban popula-
tion and, on the other hand, the rural farmers and herdsmen. The result
was that the urban population oppressed the rural people. The emer-
gence in Canaan of an alienated group identified in the contemporary
inscriptions as Habiru/Hapiru (= the Hebrews) was the catalyst that in-
cited revolt among the peasant farmers.
Thus there was no real conquest of Canaan at all but rather a peas-
ants’ revolt against the network of interlocking Canaanite city-states.
According to Mendenhall, however, this “revolt” was more of a “cul-
tural and ideological revolution than a political one.”?!
Gottwald. Likewise, Gottwald understands the origins of ancient Is-
rael in terms of a “revolt” as opposed to a “conquest” or an “infiltra-
tion.””? He differs greatly from Mendenhall in that he sees the origins in
primarily a political revolution along the lines of Marxist ideology. For
him, the key to understanding (and appropriating) the origins of Israel
is the Marxist interpretive matrix. Thus one is to understand the “revolt”
as the overthrow of the power of the “feudal” city-states by “a cohesive
and effective revolutionary” peasant proletariat.** The origin of the peo-
ple of Israel lay in their socioeconomic and religious revolution.
Anthropologically, there are significant problems with the theory (as
pointed out especially by Lemche).”4 First, nomads do not need to have

20. G. E. Mendenhall, “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine,” BA 25 (1962): 66-87;

idem, The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition (Baltimore and London:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); idem, “Biblical History in Transition,” in The
Bible and the Ancient Near East, ed. Wright, 32-53; idem, “Ancient Israel's Hyphenated
History,” in Palestine in Transition, ed. Freedman and Graf, 91-103.
21. Mendenhall, “Ancient Israel’s Hyphenated History,” 92.
22. See Gottwald, Tribes of Yahweh, 192-209.
23. Ibid., 586.
24. N. P. Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite
Society before the Monarchy, VTSup 37 (Leiden: Brill, 1985).
182 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

an egalitarian system of rulership. Second, rather than farmers and

urban dwellers being opposed to one another, they are often interde-
pendent on one another.?> Third, sedentarization is not necessarily an
advance on nomadism.
Extrabiblically, it is clear that in the vast majority of cases the term
Hapiru cannot to be equated with the biblical Hebrews.*° There are too
many philological, ethnic-social, and historical problems to equate the
two. This assessment is reinforced by the recently discovered “Hapiru”
Posin
Biblically, there are also problems. Since the ideology that lies behind
the text of Joshua is one like that underlying other ancient Near Eastern
conquest accounts—namely, imperialistic—then “egalitarian, peasant”
Israel is employing a transmission code that is self-contradictory.”®

Other Theories in Which Israel Is Indigenous

In the last decade the scholarly trend has been to understand the Is-
raelites as indigenous to Canaan.”? There are various nuances, but the
basic underlying assumption is that Israel did not originate outside
Canaan. This has been augmented by the general trend to date the pen-

25. Lemche emphasizes a polymorphic view of traditional oriental society as opposed

to the dimorphic view of Gottwald.
26. A. F. Rainey, “Who Is a Canaanite? A Review of the Textual Evidence,” BASOR 304
(1996): 1-15; idem, “Unruly Elements in Late Bronze Canaanite Society,” in Pomiegran-
ates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Liter-
ature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom, ed. D. P. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz (Wi-
nona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 481-96.
27. See M. Salvini, The Habiru Prism of King Tunip-TesSep of Tikunani (Rome: Istituti
Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 1996). On this prism, 438 men are named and iden-
tified as Hapiru. Some of these men have Hurrian names, and others Semitic names; all
appear to be dependents (either soldiers or servants) of the Hurrian king Tunip-TesSup
(ca. 1500 B.c.). Obviously, here Hapiru is not an ethnic designation.
28. See K. L. Younger Jr., Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern
and Biblical History Writing, JSOTSup 98 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990),
255. For further rebuttal of the “peasant revolt” theory, see A. J. Hauser, “Israel’s Con-
quest of Palestine: Peasants’ Rebellion?” JSOT 7 (1978): 2-19; idem, “The Revolutionary
Origins of Ancient Israel: A Response to Gottwald,” JSOT 8 (1978): 46-69; and B. Halp-
ern, “Sociological Comparativism and the Theological Imagination: The Case of the Con-
quest,” in “Sha@rei Talmon”: Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Pre-
sented to Shemaryahu Talmon, ed. M. Fishbane and E. Tov, with W. W. Fields (Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 53-67.
29. Some scholars are difficult to assess. Thus H. Ringgren concludes: “I assume that
social changes in the Canaanite community led to (or were caused by?) the formation of
a group called Israel. Whether or not this group had anything to do with the habiru is
uncertain, but not unlikely. An element coming from Edom/Egypt may have joined this
group bringing with them their god Yahweh” (“Early Israel,” in Storia e tradizioni di Is-
raele: Scritti in onore di J. Alberto Soggin, ed. D. Garrone and F. Israel [Brescia: Paideia,
1991], 217-20, esp. 219-20).
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 183

tateuchal and Deuteronomistic sources as much later than once

thought so that these sources are now understood as simply the ideo-
logical product of the restored, postexilic Jewish community and there-
fore in the vast majority of cases convey only late and fictitious tradi-
tions. There is, of course, a wide range within this trend with particular,
individual exceptions (e.g., Dever, Finkelstein, Ahlstrém, Coote). A
number of these scholars feel that archaeology alone or for the most
part can explain the origins of the Israelite states. While there are some
major differences in the various interpretations of the archaeological
data, the differences among most of these scholars revolve around the
issue of the ethnicity of the Iron I central hill country inhabitants.
Hence the questions center on: Are these central hill country people “Is-
rael” or not? Where did they come from? Did they derive from the low-
land Canaanite city-states or from pastoralists in the eastern areas?
What caused them to settle in the highlands? Was there any cultural dif-
ference between Canaanites and Israelites?
Dever. Dever has written a plethora of articles addressing the issues
surrounding an understanding of Israelite origins.*? While his own
view has evolved, it is possible to describe it in the following way. He
stresses that both the continuity and discontinuity between the Late
Bronze Age and Iron Age cultures are important to a study of the emer-
gence of the “proto-Israelites.” There is a clear continuity in the mate-
rial culture, especially in the pottery repertoire, between the Late
Bronze Age sites in the lowlands and the Iron I sites in the highlands.*!

30. Besides the articles already mentioned, see W. G. Dever, “Archaeology, Ideology,
and the Quest for an ‘Ancient’ or ‘Biblical’ Israel,” Near Eastern Archaeology 61 (1998): 39-
52; idem, “Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Question of Israel’s Origins,” BA 58 (1995): 200-
213; idem, “The Tell: Microcosm of the Cultural Process,” in Retrieving the Past: Essays
on Archaeological Research and Methodology in Honor of Gus W. Van Beek, ed. J. D. Seger
(Starkville, Miss.: Cobb Institute of Archaeology, 1996), 37-45; idem, “‘Will the Real Is-
rael Please Stand Up?’ Archaeology and Israelite Historiography: Part I,” BASOR 297
(1995): 61-80; idem, “Archaeology, Texts, and History: Toward an Epistemology,” in Un-
covering Ancient Stones: Essays in Memory of H. Neil Richardson, ed. L. M. Hopf (Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 105-17; and idem, “The Collapse of the Early Bronze Age
in Palestine: Toward a Systemic Analysis,” in L’urbanisation de la Palestine a l'age du
Bronze ancien, ed. P. de Miroschedji (Oxford: BAR International Series, 1989), 235-46.
31. See also along similar lines, Gottwald, “Recent Studies,” 175-76. Callaway argued
against any semi-nomadic origins for the Iron I settlers, preferring to view them as
Canaanite villagers displaced from the coastal plain and the Shephelah. To him the cause
of these refugees’ movement was pressure and conflict as the result of the arrival of the
Philistines and other “Sea Peoples.” These highland settlers eventually emerged as Israel,
so that Israel's origins must ultimately be sought in the Canaanite villages of the plains and
lowlands. See J. A. Callaway, “A New Perspective on the Hill Country Settlement of
Canaan in Iron Age I,” in Palestine in the Bronze and Iron Ages: Papers in Honour of Olga
Tufnell, ed. J. N. Tubb (London: Institute of Archaeology, 1985), 31-49. A few years later,
however, Callaway sees the origins in a myriad of different peoples: “In short, Israel
184 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

In his estimation, this indicates that the inhabitants of the Iron I sites
originated from the sedentary (especially rural) population of the Late
Bronze Age sites.*? The residents of the Iron I sites were “pioneer farm-
ers settling the hill-country frontier of central Palestine, which had
been sparsely occupied before Iron I.”3? They were “displaced Canaan-
ite agriculturalists from the fringe of Canaanite society, creating brand
new, small, isolated sites without a city wall.’*4 Dever employs a col-
lapse model to explain the process of the wave of hill country popula-
tion.?> These settlers utilized technological advances best related to
subsistence agriculture and small-scale stockbreeding, including the
intensive terracing of hillsides, the hewing of water cisterns, stone silos
and large “collar-rim” jars for storage, and the introduction of iron im-
plements. The high degree of usage of these technological advances
combined with “the stereotyped ‘agglutinative’ plan with clusters of ho-
mogeneous four-room or courtyard houses” argues for the unique eth-
nicity of this group.*° Since “the basic Israelite material culture of Iron
I prevails until the fall of Judah in the early sixth century B.c.£.,” this
group is best designated “proto-Israelite” (in order to stress the conti-
nuity with the later Israelite states).7’ Dever argues adamantly that

seems to have emerged from a ‘melting pot’ of peoples in the land of Canaan at the begin-
ning of Iron Age I, peoples whose origins can be traced only rather generally and in many
different directions” (“The Settlement in Canaan,” in Ancient Israel: A Short History from
Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, ed. H. Shanks [Washington, D.C.: Bib-
lical Archaeology Society, 1988], 53-84, 243-45, esp. 78). See further D. Hopkins, The
Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age, SWBAS 3 (Sheffield: Almond,
1985).
32. Cf. also G. Ahlstr6m, Who Were the Israelites? (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1986), 26-36.
33. Dever, “How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite,” 52.
34. Dever, “Late Bronze—Early Iron I Horizon in Syria-Palestine,” 105.
35. Ibid., 105-7. The factors included the decline of the Egyptian empire in Palestine,
the exhaustion of natural resources, the cessation of international trade, both the decline
and innovation in technology, and ethnic movements such as the Sea Peoples. These set
in motion a downward spiral that fed on itself, increasing in momentum until the disin-
tegration of the Bronze Age culture in Syria-Palestine was inevitable. “Collapse, in gen-
eral, ensues when the center is no longer able to secure resources from the periphery, usu-
ally having lost the ‘legitimacy’ through which it could ‘disembed’ goods and services of
traditionally organized groups. . . . Economic disaster, political overthrow, and social dis-
integration are the likely products of collapse” (The Collapse of Ancient States and Civili-
zations, ed. N. Yoffee and G. L. Cowgill [Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988], 13).
See also M. Liverani, “The Collapse of the Near Eastern Regional System at the End of
the Bronze Age: The Case of Syria,” in Center and Periphery in the Ancient World, ed. M.
Rowlands, M. Y. Larsen, and K. Kristiansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987), 66-73. Similarly, I. Sharon, “Demographic Aspects of the Problem of the Israelite
Settlement,” in Uncovering Ancient Stones, ed. Hopfe, 119-34.
36. Dever, “Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Question of Israel's Origins,” 200-213.
37. Dever, “How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite,” 46.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 185

these Iron I people were not pastoral nomads settling down in the hill
country.°®
Finkelstein. Like Dever, Israel Finkelstein has written numerous ar-
ticles and a book concerned with Israelite origins. And like Dever, his
view has evolved over the last decade. In 1988 Finkelstein suggested a
pastoral nomadic model as an explanation of Israelite origins.*? Al-
though nomadic groups are difficult to detect archaeologically, he ar-
gued that sanctuaries and cemeteries attest to the existence of such
groups during the Late Bronze Age, who may tentatively be identified
with the shasu referred to in ancient (mostly Egyptian) texts. The three
evidences for these “sedentarizing pastoralists” are:

1. Pillared four-room houses,*° which were a successful adapta-

tion to the environment from the Bedouin tent. But since archi-
tectural forms are generally linked with their environments, the
origins of this house might better be sought in developments
within rural village life rather than from Bedouin/pastoralist
antecedents.*!
2. Proliferating use of silos for grain storage, which “generally
characterizes groups in the process of sedentarization or soci-
eties organized in local rural frameworks.”** But Douglas Esse
rebuts this, claiming that the presence of such silos need not
imply a group of pastoralists in the process of “sedentariza-
fom
3. Hdsér-style elliptical settlement compounds, which reflect the
intermediate stage between pastoralism and rural village life,
that is, the process of settling down. But these compounds
might also reflect simply functional requirements rather than a
process. They may illustrate specialized architecture for the
pastoralist end of the continuum, contemporary with the four-
room house construction of the village end of the continuum.”
Finkelstein understood these architectural items to be attribut-
able to a distinct ethnic group, the Israelites. He subsequently

38. Dever, “Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Question of Israel’s Origins,” 200-213.
39. Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement. See D. Esse, review of The Ar-
chaeology ofthe Israelite Settlement, by I. Finkelstein, BAR 14.5 (1988): 8-10.
40. See Y. Shiloh, “The Four Room House: Its Situation and Function in the Israelite
City,” JEJ 20 (1970): 180-90; and A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (10,000-
586 B.c.E.), ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 340-45, 485-89.
41. So argues Esse, review of Finkelstein, 10.
42. Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 266.
43. Esse, review of Finkelstein, 10.
44. Ibid.
186 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

revised the ethnic part of his argument (1991 and all subse-
quent references).*°

Finkelstein has recently suggested a more sophisticated theory based

on regional survey data from the Early Bronze I through Iron I periods
and combined with Braudel’s la longue durée. Thus he argues for dis-
tinct demographic developments between the lowlands and the high-
lands throughout history.*° He asserts that there were cyclic rhythms in
the occupational history of all three zones of the southern Levant in the
fourth to first millennia B.c.: in the lowlands, rise and collapse of urban
civilizations; in the steppelands, settlement oscillations with rise and
collapse of desert polities (in particular, alternating periods of sedenta-
rization and nomadization in the southern and eastern steppes); and in
the highlands, waves of settlement with intervals of decline.*’
In the central hill country in the third and second millennia B.c.,
there were three waves of settlement (the Chalcolithic period and Early
Bronze; Middle Bronze II-III; and Iron I) with two intervals of decline
(Intermediate Bronze, including the Middle Bronze I; and Late
Bronze).*> The three waves of settlement demonstrate certain parallels
in material culture and political developments. All three led to the rise
of complex political formations; but while the first two degenerated, the
third resulted in full-scale statehood.*? Pastoralism is especially evident
in the two intervals of settlement decline.
Thus, to Finkelstein, the best way to explain these settlement fluctu-
ations is in terms of socioeconomic change. The shifts toward seden-
tary or pastoral society were made for socioeconomic reasons, and not
as the result of migrations of new groups or demographic fluctuations
from the lowlands. Early Israel was “the latest phase in the long-term,
cyclic processes of settlement oscillations and rise and fall of territorial
entities in the highlands.”°° It was the third stage in the process of
movement from indigenous pastoral nomadism to sedentarization in
the central hill country.>!

45. Finkelstein, “The Emergence of Israel in Canaan: Consensus, Mainstream and

Dispute,” SJOT 5.2 (1991): 47-59; idem, “Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron I Settlers in the
Highlands of Canaan: Can the Reat Israel Stand Up?” BA 59 (1996): 198-212, esp. 206.
46. Finkelstein, “Emergence of Israel,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy, ed. Finkel-
stein and Na’aman, 150-78.
47. Ibid.; idem, “Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron I Settlers,” 207.
48. Finkelstein, “Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron I Settlers,” 207.
49. Finkelstein, “Emergence of Israel,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy, ed. Finkel-
stein and Na?aman, 171-77.
50. Finkelstein, “Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron I Settlers,” 207. Note the similarities
to Coote and Whitelam (see discussion below).
51. Finkelstein, “Emergence of Israel,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy, ed. Finkel-
stein and Na’aman, 163-69.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 187

Finkelstein recognizes some broader, short-term, local, political,

economic, and social events such as foreign interventions and migra-
tion of local and alien groups. These noncyclic phenomena explain the
dissimilarities between the phases of the cyclic processes. Thus the
emergence of Israel and the other “national” entities in the southern Le-
vant was determined by a combination of long-term history and short-
term historical circumstances.”
While Finkelstein’s insights are helpful, it is important to remember
that the lack of data for the history of the ancient Near East limits the
historian’s ability to elucidate cyclic patterns. The elucidation of such
patterns even in modern settings is not without problems. How much
more so in the very ancient settings of the third and second millennia
B.c.2 Furthermore, there is always the danger, inherent in Braudelian
time scales, to reduce the historical explanation to environmental de-
terminism—a criticism that has been leveled on that generation of
French Annales scholarship (see below).
Lemche. Lemche considers the traditions of Israel’s early history to
be so late as to be useless for historical reconstruction: “I propose that
we decline to be led by the biblical account and instead regard it, like
other legendary materials, as essentially ahistorical, that is, as a source
which only exceptionally can be verified by other information.”°* His
alternative reconstruction is based entirely on what can be deduced
from archaeological materials of the social, economic, cultural and po-
litical developments in Palestine towards the close of the second millen-
nium. He feels that all of this indicates that there was a very gradual
(re)tribalization process from the fourteenth century B.c. on and that Is-
rael is the product of this evolutionary process.** Thus Israel is in part
a continuation and intensification of the social marginalization of the
Amarna age city-state populace.*°
Perhaps most controversial is Lemche’s view of the Canaanites.°°
For him, the biblical tradition of the Canaanites is not a historically ac-
curate reflection of the ethnic situation of the Iron Age I period (ca.
1200-1000 B.c.). The term Canaan in the second-millennium sources
was imprecise and ambiguous and may have designated a vast area of

52. Finkelstein, “Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron I Settlers,” 209.

53. Lemche, Early Israel, 411-35 (quotation on 411); idem, Ancient Israel, 85-90, 100-
102.
54. Lemche, Early Israel, 411-32.
55. Lemche, Ancient Israel, 85-91.
56. N. P. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites,
JSOTSup 110 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 48-51; idem, Prelude to Israel’s
Past: Background and Beginnings of Israelite History and Identity, trans. E. F. Maniscalco
(Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998), 104—5.
188 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

territory from southeastern Anatolia to the Egyptian border or a

smaller area within it. “Canaanite” was a name used by scribes to des-
ignate a person who did not belong to the local society or kingdom,
while “Canaan” was considered to be a country different from one’s
own. The biblical Canaanites, as other pre-Israelite nations of the Old
Testament, are to be seen “as literary and ideological figures, playing
the villain’s part in a literary plot about dominance in Palestine.”°’ The
biblical writers applied the term Canaanite to describe the former in-
habitants of the land whom their own ancestors had defeated and dis-
possessed.
As Rainey has recently explicated, however, the second-millennium
textual evidence demonstrates that there was a geographical entity
known at this time as “Canaan.”°* Furthermore, the people were known
and recognized themselves as “Canaanites.” While there may have been
some theological overlay by the biblical writers, the idea that the
Canaanites were the former inhabitants of Palestine is not a literary
construction; nor is the description of their land a late scribal invention.
“Their memory,” as Na?aman has shown, “was rooted in the people’s
consciousness, and their image was invoked by Israelite scribes to con-
vey a message according to their own historiographical objectives and
didactic-theological aims.”°?
Coote and Whitelam. Coote and Whitelam explicitly reject the biblical
narratives as a source for the reconstruction of Israel’s early history.°°
Rather, the historian’s task is “to explain the archaeological record in
the context of comparative history and anthropology.” Two of the first
among biblical scholars to approach their study from the perspective of
the French school of les Annales, Coote and Whitelam seek to view the
origin of Israel as part of Palestine’s history, following a pattern well
known from the territory itself, instead of tracing this origin on the
basis of what they considered to be late and secondary sources found in
the Bible. The origin of Israel is to be found in the context of an eco-
nomic decline that occurred at the end of the Late Bronze Age, resulting
from a breakdown of the inter-regional trade on which Canaan’s urban
economy ultimately depended, and spurred a combination of other pro-
cesses. Thus Israel’s early history is simply part of a repeating and nor-

57. Lemche, Canaanites and Their Land, 51.

58. Rainey, “Who Is a Canaanite?” 1-15.
59. N. Naaman, “The Canaanites and Their Land,” UF 26 (1994): 397-418, esp. 415.
Lemche’s dismissal of this article as “simplistic and hardly adequate” is not an answer at
all to Na’aman’s substantial scholarly criticisms. See now also N. Na?aman, “Four Notes
on the Size of Late Bronze Age Canaan,” BASOR 313 (1999): 31-37.
60. R. B. Coote and K. W. Whitelam, The Emergence of Early Israel in Historical Per-
spective, SWBAS 5 (Sheffield: Almond, 1987), 117-38.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 189

mal process of fluctuation between two extremes: a flourishing system

of small states engaged in rich trade and this same system dissolving
into a series of other independent, self-contained units. At the time of
the Late Bronze—Early Iron transition, the settlement of various groups
such as peasants, bandits, and pastoral nomads into villages in the hill
country “was given political and incipient ethnic form in the loosely
federated people calling themselves Israel.”°!
One major criticism of this study, however, is that Coote and White-
lam “have employed a historical theory about long-term developments
without reference to another part of the historian’s craft, the close scru-
tiny of historical sources pertinent to the period under investigation.
Coote and Whitelam have bypassed the evidence of the Amarna letters
from Palestine!”
Thompson. T. L. Thompson argues that evidence of a period of
drought in the eastern Mediterranean during the last part of the sec-
ond millennium B.c. was a major factor in the origin of early Israel.°?
In his estimation, the transition in Palestine from the Late Bronze Age
to the Early Iron Age was caused by increasing drought and the effects
of shortages within the land. He does not find in the hill country set-
tlements of Iron I any evidence of migrations from outside, certainly
no evidence of an entity such as Israel. Instead, he surmises that this
is a continuation of a process already begun in the Late Bronze Age
and reflecting subsistence strategies among native Palestinians. He
feels that the settlers of the Iron I hill country were not re-sedentarized
nomads (contra Finkelstein 1988), but instead should be linked to the
lowland inhabitants who were dispersed eastward.°* Thompson ex-
pends a great amount of ink arguing that the biblical texts are of no
value in the historical reconstruction of the history of Palestine. In his
estimation, all of the biblical texts are the product of the Persian pe-
riod, “when Israel itself is a theologoumenon and a new creation out
of tradition.”®

61. Ibid., 136.

62. Lemche, “Early Israel Revisited,” 22. See the discussion of the Amarna Letters
below.
63. T. L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and Archae-
ological Sources, SHANE 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 216-19, 304-5. Note here the similarity
to Dever above.
64. Ibid., 10-12 (see esp. n. 48).
65. Ibid., 423. Thompson observes that “many of the fictive and folkloric qualities of
the stories of Genesis—Kings can legitimately be described as manifest and explicit. Their
referential and historical qualities, on the other hand, are substantially less so, and are
rather to be described as possible and, at best, implicit” (T. L. Thompson, “Gésta Ahl-
strém’s History of Palestine,” in The Pitcher Is Broken, ed. S. W. Holloway and L. K.
Handy, JSOTSup 190 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995], 422).
190 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

Ahlstrom. Ahlstrém argues that although around 1200 B.c. something

called Israel certainly existed in Palestine, this was hardly the Israelite
nation of the Old Testament.® In the highlands of Palestine at the tran-
sition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, there was a very
mixed demographic situation.°’ The population included: (1) Canaan-
ites who had withdrawn from the cities of the coastal plain or the Gali-
lee; (2) Indo-Europeans of Aegean origin (like the biblical Danites,
whom Ahlstrém identifies with the descendants of one group among the
Sea Peoples, the Danuna, probably Homer’s Danaioi);°* (3) people of
Anatolian origin; (4) individuals of Hurrian background; and (5) other
ethnic groups and subgroups.
At this time (according to Ahlstrém), “Israel” was not an ethnic name
but the name of a territory (based on his understanding of the Meren-
ptah Stela; see below).°? Only at a much later date was it taken up by
King Saul as the name of his territorial state of central Palestine. It was
the selection of the exilic Jews many centuries later that changed the
name into an ideological concept, the “Israel” of the Bible.
Davies. Davies brings together much that is in Thompson, Ahlstrém,
and Lemche.’? In an attempt to add clarity to the discussion, Davies ar-
gues that there are three “Israels”: historic Israel, biblical Israel, and an-
cient Israel. “Historic Israel”. would be the Israel referred to in ancient
Near Eastern inscriptions from its first occurrence in the Merenptah
Stela down to the Assyrian sources of the first millennium. Most refer-
ences speak of a tiny state in north and central Palestine roughly be-
tween 900 and 700 B.c. “Biblical Israel” is the Israel of the Old Testa-
ment, an ideological concept produced by the late Persian-Hellenistic
Hasmonean Judaism in an attempt to justify its self-identity (i-e., to vin-
dicate its continued existence after the disastrous fall of Jerusalem and
the exile). “Ancient Israel” is the scholarly construction of an Israel on
the basis of both historic and biblical Israel.’! For Davies there is no ar-
chaeological reason to identify the Iron I population of the central hill
country with historic Israel. Indeed, the Israel of the Hebrew Bible is a
late literary construct, without any archaeological or historical setting.

66. Most recently, G. Ahlstrém, The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic
Period to Alexander's Conquest, JSOTSup 146 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).
67. Ahlstrém, Who Were the Israelites? 11-24; idem, “The Origin of Israel in Pales-
tine,” SJOT 5 (1991): 19-34.
68. But note Rainey’s cogent objections (“Who Is a Canaanite?” 11).
69. Ahlstrém, “Where Did the Israelites Live?” JNES 41 (1982): 133-38; G. W. Ahl-
strém and D. Edelman, “Merneptah’s Israel,” JNES 44 (1985): 59-61.
70. P. R. Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel,” JSOTSup 148 (Sheffield: Sheffield Aca-
demic Press, 1992).
71. Ibid., 11-25,
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 191

Whitelam. Whitelam contends that a substitution of terminology is

needed.’ Instead of a history of Israel, it is the task of the historian to
write a history of Palestine, and instead of speaking exclusively about
“Israelites,” thereby indicating members of the biblical nation of Israel,
historians should speak about Palestinians, the ancient inhabitants of
the landscape of Palestine, who were as distinctive or nondistinctive as
the mountain dwellers of Lebanon in the second and first millennia B.c.
During the history of Palestine, the brief period of the history of the
kingdoms of Israel and Judah was part of the fluctuation between flour-
ishing small states and periods of dissolution. The rise of these states
was not an event—hence no collapse theory like Dever’s is invoked—but
rather a lengthy process involving many economic and social factors.
Archaeology cannot determine the ethnicity of the early Iron I settlers
since they were simply a small segment of this process.

Factors
Philosophy of History
There can be little doubt about the recent popularity of the Annales
school. Or perhaps more correctly the interest is in Braudelian time
scales, if the recent penchant for the quotation of the phrase “la longue
durée” by biblical and archaeological scholars is any indication. How-
ever, it is clear from the usage of this phrase that not all of these schol-
ars have read the Annales philosophers. For one thing, the Annaliste
movement is not monolithic. Braudel is a voice, but certainly not the
only voice. The movement is united not so much by a coherent method
or theory or singular viewpoint as by a common reaction against narra-
tive, politically based history. But even this has changed so that “fourth-
generation” Annalistes’ are returning to narrative political history.”

72. K. W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian His-
tory (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). See the review of Lemche, “Clio Is Also
among the Muses! Keith W. Whitelam and the History of Palestine: A Review and a Com-
mentary,” SJOT 10 (1996): 88-114.
73. It is difficult to assess what the impact of “New Historicism” will be on historio-
graphic issues in the Hebrew Bible. For examples of New Historicist readings, see L.
Rowlett, “Inclusion, Exclusion, and Marginality in the Book of Joshua,” JSOT 55 (1992):
15-23; and esp. idem, Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence: A New Historicist Analysis,
JSOTSup 226 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). For an introduction to New
Historicist methodology, see P. Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and
Cultural Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 172-90. See also the
essays devoted to New Historicism in BibInt 5.4 (1997).
74. For political narrative, see the signal by J. Le Goff, “After Annales: The Life as His-
tory,” Times Literary Supplement (14-20 April 1989), 394, 405. For overviews of the An-
nales school, see P. Burke, “Overture: The New History, Its Past and Its Future,” in New
Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. P. Burke (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State
192 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

While it is good to see biblical and archaeological scholars beginning

to pay some attention to the philosophy of history as the theoretical un-
dergirding of their inquiries, there are certainly more contributions in
the arena of the philosophy of history than simply the Annales move-
ment!?5 I have wrestled with some of these issues in the first chapter of
my monograph.”° More recently, and perhaps more cogently, Marc
Brettler has investigated some of these issues that are important to any
investigation and reconstruction of Israelite history.’’ But there is
much more that can and should be done in this area by biblical schol-
ars. While speaking directly concerning the revolt model, Hauser aptly
sums up a caution that should be remembered in every respect: “The
forces of history in general, and the psyche of man in particular, are a
vast labyrinth of interacting impulses, and to attempt to reduce these to
essentially one element is unrealistic.””®

Archaeology
Rural Studies
Regional demographic surveys and nomadic studies have greatly in-
creased in the last fifteen years. As a result our knowledge of the history

University Press, 1992), 1-23. This contains the best straightforward, concise outline of
the Annaliste movement. See also J. Bintliff, “The Contribution of an Annaliste/Structural
History Approach to Archaeology,” in The Annales School and Archaeology, ed. J. Bintliff
(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991), 1-33; P. Burke, The French Historical Revo-
lution: The Annales School, 1929-89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990); S. Clark,
“The Annales Historians,” in The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences, ed. Q.
Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 177-98; T. Stoianovich, French
Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1976); and A. B. Knapp, “Archaeology and Annales: Time, Space, and Change,” in Archae-
ology, Annales, and Ethnohistory, ed. A. B. Knapp (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), 1-21. For some recent evaluation with reference to archaeology, see R. W.
Bulliet, “Annales and Archaeology,” in Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory, 131-34;
and A. Sherratt, “What Can Archaeologists Learn from Annalistes?” in Archaeology, An-
nales, and Ethnohistory, 135-42. See also P. Carrard, “Theory of a Practice: Historical
Enunciation and the Annales School,” in A New Philosophy of History, ed. F. Ankersmit
and H. Kellner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 108-26.
75. For example, a very important essay on historicity has recently been written by
N. F. Partner, “Historicity in an Age of Reality-Fictions,” in A New Philosophy of History,
ed. F. Ankersmit and H. Kellner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 21-39. Also
see C. Lorenz, “Can Histories Be True? Narrativism, Positivism, and the ‘Metaphorical
Turn,” History and Theory 37.3 (1998): 309-29.
76. Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, 25-58, 267-79.
77. M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London and New York:
Routledge, 1995). Cf. also M. Ottosson, “Ideology, History, and Archaeology in the Old Tes-
tament,” SJOT 8 (1994): 207-23; R. Sollamo, “Ideology, Archaeology, and History in the
Old Testament: A Brief Response to Magnus Ottosson’s Paper,” SJOT 8 (1994): 224-27.
78. Hauser, “Israel's Conquest of Palestine,” 7.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 193

of the land of Palestine has greatly increased, especially in the earlier

periods.
Nonetheless, Anthony Frendo’s recent article is an important re-
minder of the capabilities and limitations in ancient Near Eastern no-
madic archaeology.’? For instance, there are various types of pastoral-
ism, of which pastoral nomadism is but one. Moreover, these different
types of pastoralism may not be adequately reflected in archaeological
materials, making their reconstruction much more difficult and often
arbitrary.®° Thus, no matter how refined one’s field techniques are,
there are times when the material remains of nomads are no longer re-
coverable by the archaeologist. Yet it would be incorrect to conclude
that no pastoral nomads had been around in a particular area at a par-
ticular time in the ancient Near East simply because archaeologists
have not uncovered their remains.®!
It is also essential to remember the limitations and subjectivity in-
herent in regional surveys. All of this information is helpful and useful
so long as caution is employed,*? since the accuracy of such surveys is
not guaranteed. Miller notes correctly: “Having conducted one of the
regional archaeological surveys, I must tell you that surveys are not en-
tirely reliable either. The data collected represent a highly selective
sampling at best and are usually open to a range of interpretation.”*?
Christa Schafer-Lichtenberger adeptly adds:

Stones and walls do not speak for themselves and even their descriptions
are not unambiguous. Data derived from archaeological artifacts exist
only in linguistic form. Being elements of a linguistic structure, however,
they are subject to an interpretation as well. The description of archaeo-
logical findings is already interpretation and it is subject, like any other
literary form of expression, to the singular choice of the narrative proce-

79. A.J. Frendo, “The Capabilities and Limitations of Ancient Near Eastern Nomadic
Archaeology,” Or 65 (1996): 1-23.
80. O. Bar-Yosef and A. Khazanoyv, “Introduction,” in Pastoralism in the Levant: Ar-
chaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives, ed. O. Bar-Yosef and A. Khazanov,
Monographs in World Archaeology 10 (Madison, Wis.: Prehistory Press, 1992), 3.
81. Frendo, “Capabilities and Limitations,” 18, 23.
82. For instance, I have recently employed Zvi Gal’s survey of Iron I Galilee (Lower
Galilee during the Iron Age, ASORDS 8 [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992]) ina study
of the deportations of the Israelites in order to argue for a uni-directional policy of de-
portation by Tiglath-pileser III (as opposed to the more usual bi-directional policy of the
Assyrians). But the regional survey information is only part of the evidence, and the the-
sis does not rest solely on it. See K. L. Younger Jr., “The Deportations of the Israelites,”
JBL 117 (1998): 201-27.
83. J. M. Miller, “Is It Possible to Write a History of Israel without Relying on the He-
brew Bible?” in The Fabric of History: Text, Artifact, and Israel's Past, ed. D. V. Edelman,
JSOTSup 127 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 93-102, esp. 100.
194 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

dure, to the concept of explanation, as well as to the value-orientation of

the descriptive archaeologist. And—depending on the perspective of the
describer or the observer—there are various interpretational levels which
can be differentiated, ranging from the singular data to the immediate
context, or from the immediate and the extended environment to a geo-
graphical region or even beyond.**

Ethnicity
The crux revolves around whether it is possible to identify the high-
land settlements of the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition as “Israelite.”*°
Dever’s answer is affirmative: these are proto-Israelites.°° He argues on
the basis of ceramic continuity that the inhabitants of the Late Bronze—
Iron Age highland sites are indigenous.®’
Finkelstein, however, feels that identifying ethnicity in the material
culture is a “perplexing, complex, and treacherous task.”°*

If material culture of the Iron I highlands sites did not depart from the
Late Bronze traditions until ca. 1100-1050, how can one distinguish a
distinct new ethnos in the late-thirteenth century, over a century before
this point of departure? I refer to the methodological problem of identi-
fying this supposed ethnos, not to the theoretical question whether it
existed or not. Overnight creation of an ethnic entity is difficult to com-
prehend even in cases of discontinuity in the material culture; how much
more in this case of continuity.®?

84. C. Schafer-Lichtenberger, “Sociological and Biblical Views of the Early State,” in

Origins ofthe Ancient Israelite States, ed. Davies and Fritz, 78-105, esp. 79-80.
85. See the discussion of H. G. M. Williamson, “The Concept of Israel in Transition,”
in The World of Ancient Israel, ed. R. E. Clements (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 141-61; W. E. Rast, Through the Ages in Palestinian Archaeology: An Intro-
ductory Handbook (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), 110. The “low level
of planning” is another characteristic of these sites. See Z. Herzog, “Settlement and For-
tification Planning in the Iron Age,” in The Architecture of Ancient Israel: From the Pre-
historic to the Persian Periods, ed. A. Kempinski and R. Reich (Jerusalem: Israel Explo-
ration Society, 1992), 231-74. Two recent important essays are found in Ethnicity and
the Bible, ed. M. G. Brett, Biblical Interpretation 19 (Leiden: Brill, 1996): M. G. Brett,
“Interpreting Ethnicity: Method, Hermeneutics, Ethics,” 3-22; and D. V. Edelman, “Eth-
nicity and Early Israel,” 25-55. A new monograph has now been devoted to the topic.
See K. L. Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of
Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 1998).
86. Dever, “Revisionist Israel Revisited,” 35-50; idem, “Cultural Continuity, Ethnicity
in the Archaeological Record, and the Question of Israelite Origins,” in Avraham Malamat
Volume, ed. S. Ahituv and B. A. Levine, EJ 24 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society,
1993), 22-33, esp. 33 n. 22.
87. See Dever, “Identity of Early Israel,” 3-24, esp. 13-18.
88. Finkelstein, “Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron I Settlers,” 203.
89. Ibid., 198-99.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 195

While Finkelstein’s own arguments concerning the formation of eth-

nic identity can be used (as he does) to undermine Dever’s position,
they also undermine his own. The same “perplexing, complex, and
treacherous task” in identifying ethnicity in the material culture that
Finkelstein applies to the archaeological data to argue against Dever
also appertains, so that Finkelstein has no real grounds for denying the
existence of a distinctive Israelite ethnicity. Cutting through all the an-
thropological rhetoric, it is evident that archaeology is not really in a
very good position to say all that much authoritatively about ethnicity
(especially about the ethnicity of the latter part of the second millen-
nium B.c.).7°
Sometimes the data can be used in conflicting ways in the ethnicity
debate. On the one hand, Dever argues that collared-rim jars are not in-
dications of Israelite ethnicity. The rims were simply functional differ-
ences between the pottery of urban and rural sites. That they are found
in earlier periods and in Transjordan in clearly non-Israelite contexts
indicates that these receptacles “are not an Israelite-type vessel.”?! Yet
he argues that these collared-rim jars are one of the “discontinuous and
new” indications of “proto-Israelite” ethnicity.
According to Dever, the common early Israelite pottery turns out to
be nearly identical to that of the late thirteenth century B.c.; it comes
right out of the Late Bronze Age urban Canaanite repertoire.?? More-
over, the Israelite alphabetic script may simply be a development of the
Canaanite alphabetic tradition.
One item that may prove promising in the ethnicity debate is that of
pig husbandry.”4 In the Bronze Age this was practiced in both the low-
lands and the highlands. In Iron I, pigs appear in great numbers in the
Shephelah and the southern coastal plain (Tel Miqne/Ekron, Tel
Batash, and Ashkelon). But they seem to disappear from the faunal as-
semblages of the central hill country. Pigs were apparently already
taboo in the hill country of Iron I, while they were quite popular at a
proto-Ammonite site and numerous Philistine sites.?° Pig husbandry
may be the most valuable area for the study of ethnicity of an Iron I

90. Edelman asserts: “Little positive can be said about the ethnicity of premonarchic
Israel” (“Ethnicity and Early Israel,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, 54).
91. Dever, “How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite,” 26-60, esp. 43-44.
92. Dever, “Identity of Early Israel,” 3-24, esp. 15.
93. Dever, “How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite,” 40. But see cautions of Edel-
man, “Ethnicity and Early Israel,” 44.
94. Perhaps archaeologically documented food systems can reflect ethnicity (or reli-
gious dietary distinctions?). See B. Hesse, “‘Pig Lovers and Pig Haters’: Patterns of Pales-
tinian Pork Production,” Journal of Ethnobiology 10 (1990): 105-205.
95. See B. Hesse, “Animal Use at Tel Miqne-Ekron in the Bronze Age and Iron Age,”
BASOR 264 (1986): 17-27; idem, “‘Pig Lovers and Pig Haters.”
196 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

site.°° This type of ethnic indicator is ultimately ideological.?’ However,

it is premature to draw any definite conclusions about dietary prohibi-
tions at these highland sites since the data are so few and inadequate.
Only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of sites that have been dated to the
Iron I period have been excavated, and a very small part of these have
been dug systematically.?®
In my opinion, the fact that the early Israelites were in almost
every case culturally indistinct from the Canaanites is not surpris-
ing.?? The biblical traditions do not hide the fact that Israelite origins
come out of the Semitic stock of the Levant. Such general Asiatic eth-
nic links are consistently maintained in the Hebrew Bible (from the
earliest writings to the latest), although it was apparent that in some
way the ancient Israelites perceived a difference between themselves
and other Levantine groups.!°° Thus should we really expect to find
“smoking gun” evidence of Israelite material culture distinctions? In
fact, the biblical traditions evince an attitude of assimilation on the
part of the Israelites, who were determined to make themselves indis-
tinguishable from the other inhabitants of the hill country (cf. Judg.
3:5-6).!°! Certainly over a period of time and especially with the rise
of the monarchy, distinctions may have developed, but even these de-

96. L. E. Stager, Ashkelon Discovered (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Soci-

ety, 1991), 9, 19, 31; and Finkelstein, “Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron I Settlers,” 206. See
also Hess, “Early Israel in Canaan,” 125-42.
97. Ideology, especially as it is conveyed through textual materials, can also be a
means of detecting ethnicity. For an example, see C. Zaccagnini, “The Enemy in the Neo-
Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: The ‘Ethnographic’ Description,” in Mesopotamien und seine
Nachbarn: Politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1.
Jahrtausend v. Chr., ed. H.-J. Nissen and J. Renger, BBVO 1, RAI 25 (Berlin: Dietrich Rei-
mer, 1982), 409-24.
98. See Edelman’s cautious assessment (“Ethnicity and Early Israel,” 47-49).
99. Burial practices are another area where ethnicity may be indicated. See, e.g., the
results of the studies of R. Gonen, Burial Patterns and Cultural Diversity in Late Bronze
Age Canaan, ASORDS 7 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992); and E. Bloch-Smith,
Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead, JSOTSup 123 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1992). The current data on Iron I burials is relatively scanty. See Edel-
man, “Ethnicity and Early Israel,” 53-54.
100. This is not surprising since tribal or clan identity can also generate such feelings.
101. Archaeologically speaking, there appear to be few distinctions religiously be-
tween the ancient Israelites and Canaanites. An important qualification, however, should
be remembered: religious beliefs and convictions are very difficult to trace, even when
written sources exist. Therefore, what historic Israel believed or did not believe will al-
ways be to some extent uncertain or unprovable. See M. S. Smith, The Early History of
God: Yahweh and the Other Deities ofAncient Israel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990);
J.C, de Moor, “Ugarit and Israelite Origins,” in Congress Volume: Paris, 1992, ed. J. A.
Emerton, VTSup 61 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 205-38; and J.-M. van Cangh, “Les origines d’Is-
raél et de la foi monothéiste: Apports de l’archéologie et de la critique littéraire,” RTL 22
(1991): 305-26, 457-87.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 197

velopments would not speak necessarily in every case to issues of eth-

nic origins.

Extrabiblical Texts
Merenptah Stela
The earliest extrabiblical mention of “Israel” is found in the Meren-
ptah Stela (ca. 1207 B.c.): “Israel is wasted, his seed is not.”!°? Two re-
cent studies offer excellent summaries of the different problems and in-
terpretations of the inscription.!°? Both Hasel and Hoffmeier rightly
note that the inscription’s mention of Israel provides historical infor-
mation that should not be dismissed regarding the origins of ancient Is-
rael. Moreover, the literary structure of the inscription reinforces that
Israel was an entity within the region of Canaan, a people, possibly sed-
entary, and not a city-state or territory (contra Ahlstrém above). It was
powerful enough to be included within a list of the other political pow-
ers in Canaan.
A number of interpreters identify the new ethnic group that was
formed in the highlands in the Iron I with the “Israel” named on the
Merenptah Stela. Thus, for example, Dever states concerning the Iron I
inhabitants: “This ethnic group may be presumed to be roughly the
same as that which had called itself ‘Israelite’ since the late 13th century
B.c.E. and was thus well enough established to be listed as ‘Tsrael’. . . in
the well known ‘Victory Stele’ of Merneptah.”!4 Finkelstein argues that
since scholars do not agree on the size, socioeconomic nature (pastoral
or sedentary people), or geographical location of Merenptah’s Israel,
“one cannot make an instinctive connection between Israel of 1207 B.c.
and the area where the Israelite monarchy emerged two centuries later”
(emphasis mine).!°° But since Israel must have been one of the peoples
in Canaan according to the Merenptah Stela, it seems likely that at least
some of the material culture from some of these hill country sites is Is-
raelite. Dever’s argument for continuity with the later Israelite monar-
chic material culture may prove significant as well in this connection.

102. See K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Historical and Biographical, 8 vols.

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1975-90), 4:19.3-8.
103. M. G. Hasel, “Jsrael in the Merneptah Stela,” BASOR 296 (1994): 45-61. He
adeptly discusses a number of issues that cannot be entered into here (though I must dis-
agree with his interpretation of prt in this context as “grain”). See also J. K. Hoffmeier,
Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 27-31, 44-46; and F. J. Yurco, “Merenptah’s
Canaanite Campaign,” JARCE 23 (1986): 189-215.
104. Dever, “Cultural Continuity,” 24.
105. Finkelstein, “Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron I Settlers,” 203.
198 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

To deny that there is any connection between the “Israel” (ysrr/l) of

the Merenptah Stela and early biblical Israel (as described in the earli-
est biblical texts) is tantamount to denying that “Israelite” (“""siraldia)
in Shalmaneser III’s Kurkh Monolith has any connection to biblical Is-
rael (as described in the so-called Deuteronomistic History’s account of
the divided monarchy). The problem with accepting the Merenptah ci-
tation is that it is too early for some scholars’ reconstructions of “his-
toric” Israel.

Amarna Tablets
Any study of the origins of Israel must employ the study of the Amarna
Letter corpus.!° The corpus provides a glimpse at the historical back-
ground to the rise of ancient Israel. These letters enable us to reconstruct
in some detail the territorial, political, social, and economic situation in
the lowlands and highlands of Canaan in the fourteenth century B.c.!°7
The corpus is an important source for understanding the identification
of the apiri.!°8 Their use can prevent incorrect conclusions concerning
the archaeological data.!°?

Tribal Organization
An understanding of the societal components of early Israel, whether
Israelite households, clans, or tribes, is hindered by the fragmentary
biblical and archaeological evidence.!!° The household seems to have

106. An example in this regard can be seen in Rainey, “Who Is a Canaanite?” 1-15.
107. See N. Na?aman, Borders and Districts in Biblical Historiography, JBS 4 (Jerusa-
lem: Simor, 1986); idem, “Historical-Geographical Aspects of the Amarna Tablets,” in
Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Panel Sessions: Bible Studies
and Ancient Near East, ed. M. Goshen-Gottstein (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 17-26.
108. Rainey, “Unruly Elements”; see also idem, “Who Is a Canaanite?”; and Salvini,
Habiru Prism, 12-55.
109. See N. Na’aman, “The Contribution of the Amarna Letters to the Debate on
Jerusalem’s Political Position in the Tenth Century B.c.£.,” BASOR 304 (1996): 17-27;
idem, “Cow Town or Royal Capital?” BAR 23.4 (1997): 43-47, 67.
110. See Gottwald, Tribes of Yahweh, 228-341; Lemche, Early Israel, 245-90; L. Stager,
“The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” BASOR 260 (1985): 1-36; J. W. Roger-
son, “Was Early Israel a Segmentary Society?” JSOT 36 (1986): 17-26; idem, Anthropol-
ogy and the Old Testament (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978; reprinted, Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1984); A. G. Auld, “Tribal Terminology in Joshua and Judges,” in J. A. Soggin et al., Con-
vegno sul Tema: Le Origini di Israele (Roma, 10-11 Febbraio 1986) (Rome: Accademia Na-
zionale dei Lincei, 1987), 87-98; Halpern, “Sociological Comparativism,” in Sha arei Tal-
mon, 53-67; H. Cazelles, “Clans, état monarchique, et tribus,” in Understanding Poets and
Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson, ed. A. G. Auld, JSOTSup 152
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 77-92; F. Lambert, “Tribal Influences in Old
Testament Tradition,” SEA 59 (1994): 33-58; and S. Bendor, The Social Structure of An-
cient Israel: The Institution of the Family (Beit Ab) from the Settlement to the End of the
Monarchy, JBS 7 (Jerusalem: Simor, 1996).
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 199

been the fundamental unit of social structure, with the mispahda, “max-
imal lineages” (i.e., a descent group that established ties of kinship be-
tween families through a common ancestor who was no longer living),
adding to a protective and social function. The tribe, however, is more
difficult to define, since social groups can be bound together in many
different ways: by descent, by residence, by common dialect, or by a
common religion. In the Old Testament, tribes were certainly groups
connected to one another by residence and descent as well as possibly
dialect (cf. Judg. 12:6, where the Ephraimites could not pronounce the
word shibboleth). Studies of modern tribal societies demonstrate that
Old Testament tribal culture was not necessarily an evolutionary stage
following that of the band and preceding the state, but could represent
a social form in its own right.'!! The term tribe may be applied to any
kind of organization that has unity at the center but freedom and vari-
ation at the periphery. In the Old Testament, therefore, a tribe seems to
be the largest social unit for mutual defense against foreigners or other
Israelite social units.'!?
While the amphictyonic proposal was rightly rejected, in doing so
biblical scholars often forgot that anthropology provides a range of
confederate forms among pre-state peoples that may be used with heu-
ristic caution to examine the ways in which the village communities of
early Israel might have been able to join in a larger whole. These tribal
confederations are leagues that facilitate important political, eco-
nomic, social, and religious purposes.!!?
Zecharia Kallai has recently investigated once again the twelve-tribe
systems of Israel.!'!* He notes that four different systems for organiza-
tion of the tribal lists exist in the biblical material. He concludes that
the phenomenon of one basic assemblage of eponyms in all systems,
and the points of contact between the geographical distribution of the
tribes and the genealogical representation of the tribal interrelation-
ships, support the suggestion that all schemes stem from one formal-
ized structure, from which the other diverse modes of representation
are extrapolated. The eminent place of the twelve-tribe systems among
the fundamental historiographical concepts is unqualified. There are,
therefore, no earlier or later historical situations that created the di-
verse schemes or their variants. The different literary formulations are

111. Lambert, “Tribal Influences,” 33-58.

112. See the discussion and bibliography in Gottwald, “Recent Studies,” 178-80.
113. Gottwald observes: “While properly suspicious of the biblical traditions that
show a tribal people solely formed and united by religious commitment, scholars are con-
scious that some form of early Israelite unity involving religion is not to be excluded”
(ibid., 181).
114. Z. Kallai, “The Twelve-Tribe Systems of Israel,” VT 47 (1997): 53-90.
200 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

only modes of utilization and application of these systems, reflecting

requirements of presentational emphasis.

The Role of the Book of Joshua

Besides the rejection of the Albrightian “conquest” model, the general
consensus among OT scholars is that the Book of Joshua has no value
in the historical reconstruction. They see the book as an ideological ret-
rojection from a later period—either as early as the reign of Josiah or
as late as the Hasmonean period.!!°
Many objections to the use of the Book of Joshua in the reconstruc-
tive process are based on supposed contradictions between Joshua and
Judges. These are routinely expressed in the following way: Joshua pre-
sents a complete conquest by “all Israel,” while Judges presents the con-
quest as tribal and incomplete. However, better narrative reading strat-
egies that recognize the figurative aspects of both the Joshua account
and that of Judges eliminate these supposed contradictions and dem-
onstrate that these are instead the results of simplistic reading agen-
das.'!© Hence Judges 1 is no more historically accurate than Joshua 10-
11. Both are complex, artistic impositions of form on the past and must
be carefully read as such.
It is readily admitted that there are textual difficulties, corruptions,
and apparent internal contradictions.'!’ Moreover, this does not mean
that we have a final authoritative interpretation of these passages.
Quite to the contrary, much more work is needed. But literality has only
obscured the interpretation.

115. For the former, see N. Na’aman, “The ‘Conquest of Canaan’ in the Book of
Joshua and in History,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy, ed. Finkelstein and Na?aman,
218-81. For the latter see J. Strange, “The Book of Joshua: A Hasmonaean Manifesto?”
in History and Traditions of Early Israel: Studies Presented to Eduard Nielsen, May 8th,
1993, ed. A. Lemaire and B. Otzen, VTSup 50 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 136-41. The evidence
is certainly stronger for a Josianic date. How much is a retrojection of the ideology of this
period or how much reflects certain historical events is difficult to determine simply
based on the text’s date. See T. C. R6mer, “Transformations in Deuteronomistic and Bib-
lical Historiography: On ‘Book-Finding’ and Other Literary Strategies,” ZAW 109 (1997):
1-11.
116. For Joshua, see Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, 197-237, 310-21; idem,
“The ‘Conquest’ of the South,” 255-64; for Judges 1, see idem, “The Configuring of Judi-
cial Preliminaries: Judges 1:1-2:5 and Its Dependence on the Book of Joshua,” JSOT 68
(1995): 75-92. It is ironic that the phrase béné yisraél occurs sixty-one times in the Book
of Judges (see D. Block, “‘Israel’—‘Sons of Israel’: A Study in Hebrew Eponymic Usage,”
SR 13.3 [1984]: 301-26). The final editor/writer of the Book of Judges clearly presents the
Israelites as perceiving themselves as a single family throughout the book.
117. Cf.,e.g., Josh. 15:63 # Judg. 1:8 # 1:21. See Younger, “Configuring of Judicial Pre-
liminaries,” 84 n. 27.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 201

Often the Book of Joshua is discredited because of supposed contra-

dictions with the archaeological record. Indeed, there seem to be irrec-
oncilable contradictions between the biblical account and the archaeo-
logical record (e.g., the issues Surrounding Jericho, Ai, and Gibeon).!!8
But this opinion concerning contradictions between Joshua and ar-
chaeology is usually based on two misconceptions.
First, it is based on a “literal,” surface reading of Joshua (both Al-
brightians and “revisionists” have read and do read the text of Joshua
this way). Thus the Book of Joshua is read to state that there were mas-
sive destructions by the Israelites as they “conquered” the land. When
the archaeological record does not bear this out, it is the Book of Joshua
that is wrong (when it is rather the interpretation that is wrong).
Second, it is based on strong or “hard” objectivism in archaeology
(i.e., archaeology without the biblical text can supply all the an-
swers).!!? By declaring that archaeology is more reliable than the He-
brew Bible for dealing with the origin and early history of Israel, many
archaeologists ignore the extent to which Syro-Palestinian archaeology
itself is infused with many subjective assumptions derived from vari-
ous, and sometimes self-contradictory, philosophical perspectives (in-
cluding in many instances assumptions based on the Bible itself).!*°
This over-optimism in archaeology with which detailed results are used
to construct global images may only deepen, rather then bridge, the gap
between archaeology and texts.!*!
Different types of events are more or less likely to be displayed in the
archaeological record. So, for example, Elizabeth Stone asserts:
“Changes in government, since their effects on the general population
is [sic] subtle, can rarely, if ever, be identified archaeologically, whereas
social and economic changes which radically affected the entire popu-
lation are more likely to leave their mark.”!?? Hence, in the course of an

118. Fora recent concise discussion of these, see R. S. Hess, Joshua: An Introduction
and Commentary, TOTC (Downers Grove, IIl., and Leicester: InterVarsity, 1996). Merling
has also addressed the role of the Book of Joshua in the archaeological discussions (Book
of Joshua, 106-273). For Jericho in particular, see B. G. Wood, “Did the Israelites Con-
quer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence,” BAR 16.2 (1990): 44-58; P.
Bienkowski, “Jericho Was Destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, Not the Late Bronze
Age,” BAR 16.5 (1990): 45-46, 69.
119. Dever’s pronouncements that archaeologists will write “the only competent his-
tories of ancient Palestine” (emphasis mine) is an example of this overconfidence in the
discipline. See Dever, “Identity of Early Israel,” 19. Note also Whitelam’s response, “Pro-
phetic Conflict in Israelite History,” 35.
120. Miller, “Is It Possible to Write a History of Israel?” 101.
121. J. N. Postgate, “Archaeology and Texts—Bridging the Gap,” ZA 80 (1990): 228-
40, esp. 239.
122. E. C. Stone, Nippur Neighborhoods, SAOC 44 (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1987),
Some
202 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

excavation, the association of a destruction in the archaeological

record is not necessarily an easy task for the archaeologist.
For a number of archaeologists there is only evidence of military ac-
tivity or “conquest” when there is significant evidence of the site’s de-
struction. This is problematic on at least three counts. First, many
open-field battles have been the decisive grounds upon which con-
quests have been achieved in war from the beginning of history until
the present. Second, complete or even partial destructions are not nec-
essary for the subjugation of a city. Third, the present nature of site ex-
cavation cannot always reveal the particulars of a city’s capture since
manual destructions are virtually impossible to identify and are often
not considered by archaeologists.!7+
While J. N. Postgate addresses the issues surrounding archaeology
and texts in Mesopotamian contexts, his perceptive insights apply very
much to the context of Palestinian/biblical archaeology.

The correlation of observation in the course of an excavation with a

known political event must involve a degree of assumption, and over-
hasty identification of “political” events by excavators has led to some
of the best known archaeological controversies—one need only think of
the sack of Troy, or the argument surrounding the destruction of the
Early Bronze palace at Tell Mardih, to realize the dangers to be avoided.
Identifying destructions is as risky as identifying races in the archaeo-
logical record, and this explains why many excavators have avoided
making the attempt. On the other hand, situations exist, such as the fall
of the Assyrian Empire, in which the relevance of the political event is
too obvious to be ignored, and few would question the correlation of the
destruction of the Nabu Temple at Nimrud and the smashing of the vas-
sal treaties in its throne-room with an enemy attack at this time. It is, of
course, where the archaeological evidence is less absolute and the event
less all-embracing that uncertainties may creep in, and here the need for
some paradigms is all too obvious. In each case, it is necessary to pro-
ceed carefully from both ends of the equation: to ask what the historical
evidence for the event is, and then to look at the archaeological data
equated with it.!74

A further difficulty is that population migrations are not always easy

to trace archaeologically, especially those of nomadic groups. The Hit-
tite historical narratives, correspondences, and treaties often mention

123. It is clear that at least on some occasions the Assyrians practiced manual de-
structions exclusive of fire. See, e.g., the report on Sargon’s conquest of the city of Ulhu
in his “Letter to the God” (see ARAB 2:87-88, §161; and W. Mayer, “Sargons Feldzug
gegen Urartu—714 v. Chr. Text und Ubersetzung,” MDOG 115 [1983]: 65-132, esp. 88-
93).
124. Postgate, “Archaeology and Texts,” 230-31.
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 203

peoples on the move and the need to prevent these movements. Yet little
is known about any of these movements.!?5
In addition, it is also important to recognize the great significance of
the migration process. The migration to the New World had a tremen-
dous impact on the history of the world. The recent migration of Rus-
sian Jews to Israel has had notable repercussions on the politics of the
Middle East. These events do not always find sufficient explanation in
the context of the Braudelian la longue durée.

Suggestions for a More Comprehensive Model

|. Recognize the Complexity of the Picture
That the Book of Joshua Paints
Two items are often overlooked in a reading of the Book of Joshua: the
use of hyperbole and the use of ideology and propaganda. Hyperbole
was a major feature of ancient Near Eastern history writing. A recog-
nition of its use can help eliminate misunderstandings of the biblical
accounts. The use of ideology and propaganda is also important (in
this case the hyperbole underscores the ideology and should caution
the reader not to be too literal in the interpretation of the text). A cog-
nizance of these items will enable the interpreter to read through the
text.
Another important component is the realization that the process of
occupation was complex, not simply a quick military conquest but a
long process of infiltration, fighting (including infighting), and trans-
formation and realignment. The Book of Joshua itself advocates such
an understanding of Israel’s rise (e.g., Josh. 11:18; 13:1), as does the
Book of Judges.
Finally, it is important to recognize the complexity of other biblical
materials (e.g., Judges 1). There is a danger in emphasizing one piece
of evidence over another. This has especially been done in the case of
Joshua 10 and Judges 1. Neither of these is more historically accurate
than the other. Both have impositional structures that require sophisti-
cated reading strategies.!7°

125. G. Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, ed. H. A. Hoffner Jr., SBLWAW 7 (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1996), 11-143.
126. Younger, “Configuring of Judicial Preliminaries,” 86-87. This would also apply
to Sara Japhet’s understanding of the Chronicler’s presentation in 1 Chron. 1-9 that Israel
was indigenous to Canaan. See her “Conquest and Settlement in Chronicles,” JBL 98
(1979): 205-18; idem, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical
Thought, Beitrage zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums 9
(Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1989).
204 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

2. Recognize the Complexity of the Picture

That the Archaeological Record Paints
It is important to remember the limitations of different archaeological
methods. The fallacy of assuming that the material culture has a logical
and necessary priority over the written evidence should be avoided. At
the same time, the written evidence needs to be interpreted through the
context of the archaeological evidence.!*’ Each must be interpreted in
its own context and allowed to inform the other. The particular weight
given to the written sources depends on a variety of factors, always
keeping in mind the ideological perspectives of the written materials.
Postgate’s suggestion to proceed carefully from both ends of the equa-
tion (i.e., to ask what the historical evidence for the event is, and then
to look at the archaeological data equated with it) seems to be funda-
mental in this instance.

3. Use Comparative Literary Analysis of Synchronic

Types to Uncover the Ways in Which the Ancient
Near Eastern Peoples Wrote Their Accounts
In the case of ancient conquest accounts, a comparative literary meth-
odology permits the historian to perceive that the conquest accounts in
Joshua are very similar to those of other ancient Near Eastern peoples.
This approach can help prevent improper generalizations about the
biblical texts.!*8 Such an approach is also helpful in the case of bound-
ary descriptions and town lists,'*? or in understanding the biblical nar-
rative concerning the building of the temple.!*°

127. The famous crux of the Siloam Tunnel inscription (i.e., the meaning of the term
zdh) may be solved by interpreting the word through the matrix of the archaeological and
geological evidence. See Younger, “The Siloam Tunnel Inscription—An Integrated Read-
ing,” UF 26 (1994): 543-56.
128. Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, 258-60.
129. R. S. Hess, “Late Bronze Age and Biblical Boundary Descriptions of the West
Semitic World,” in Ugarit and the Bible: Proceedings of the International Symposium on
Ugarit and the Bible, Manchester, September 1992, ed. G. Brooke, A. Curtis, and J. Healey,
Ugaritisch-biblische Literatur 11 (Miinster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1994), 123-38; idem, “A Typol-
ogy of West Semitic Place Name Lists with Special Reference to Joshua 13-21,” BA 59
(1996): 160-70; idem, “Asking Historical Questions of Joshua 13-19: Recent Discussion
concerning the Date of the Boundary Lists,” in Faith, Tradition, History: Old Testament
Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context, ed. A. R. Millard, J. K. Hoffmeier, and D. W.
Baker (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 191-205.
130. V. Hurowitz, J Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in
Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings, JSOTSup 115, JSOT/ASOR
Monographs 5 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992).
Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship 205

Conclusion
In light of these concerns, we must recognize that the rise of ancient
Israel was complex, not comprehensible in terms of simply one factor.
While looking at the process through Braudelian time scales is help-
ful, one should not slight the important political and individualistic
ingredients. It was a long process of infiltration, transformation, and
realignment.
The biblical text indicates the inclusion of different groups (e.g.,
Josh. 9; Judg. 4:11). In addition, the lack of conquest accounts for the
occupation of certain areas (what could be called “conquest lacunae”)
such as Shechem (Josh. 8:30-35; 24:1, 32) may attest to a peaceful infil-
tration of the area by the Israelites.
But Israel’s rise certainly involved military conquests (also including
infighting).'3! This complex process was the result (not in every in-
stance separable) of political, economic, religious, and environmental
circumstances.!** The collapses of the Egyptian empire and the
Canaanite city-state system and the Sea Peoples’ migration were impor-
tant factors. Drought may also have contributed. While Israel’s rise con-
tained some indigenous (both pastoral and sedentary) elements, there
were undoubtedly some extraneous elements too.

Conclusion
We should reject the view that the biblical account has no value in the
historical reconstruction of the period. We should also reject the view
that the biblical account is all that is sufficient for the process of histor-
ical reconstruction. The biblical account is highly selective—and there-
fore incomplete as a source for historical reconstruction. Moreover, it
requires much hard work at interpretation since it is highly structured
in its narration.!*? This feature has sometimes been mistaken as an ex-
cuse to disqualify the biblical account from consideration. But to do
this limits the reconstruction by not considering all the evidence (bi-
ased as it may be in its presentation).!*4 This would be like ignoring the

131. A. Mazar’s approach is helpful at this point. He suggests that “the conquest tra-
dition must be understood as a telescoped reflection of a complex historical process in
which some of the Canaanite city-states, weak and poor after three hundred years of
Egyptian domination, were replaced during the Iron Age I by a new national entity, Is-
rael” (Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 334).
132. On some of these factors see F. S. Frick, “Ecology, Agriculture, and Patterns of
Settlement,” in World of Ancient Israel, ed. Clements, 67-93.
133. This is why we should be open to various different readings of a text (and not
disqualify them a priori). Different perspectives open new vistas, although some readings
will be of greater value to the efforts of the historian than others.
134. Whybray has recently argued that the OT historical books do contain some reli-
able historical data and can be used as a source of facts upon which to build history. See
206 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship

Annals of Sargon in a reconstruction of the fall of Samaria because of

a perceived bias in his writings. All history writing (ancient or modern)
requires a de-biasing process in our reading. How successful we are in
that process may vary, but we are obligated to make the effort nonethe-
less. The biblical traditions—when read properly—do reveal a viable ac-
count, very much in the tradition of conquest accounts from the ancient
Near East as a whole.
Archaeologically, the material cultural remains are highly partial
and selective. This fact concerning the paucity of evidence means that
the archaeological evidence too is incomplete as a source for historical
reconstruction. The material cultural remains also require much hard
work at interpretation. Pottery has been known to be misread and mis-
interpreted.
Therefore, a methodology that considers all the evidence and draws
from all the data is a methodology that will inevitably produce better
reconstructions.!*° And it is to this end that archaeological and histor-
ical scholars should proceed.!*°

R. N. Whybray, “What Do We Know about Ancient Israel?” ExpTim 108 (1996): 71-74. See
also the remarks of J. G. McConville, “Faces of Exile in Old Testament Historiography,”
in After the Exile: Essays in Honour of Rex Mason, ed. J. Barton and D. J. Reimer (Macon,
Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996), 27-44.
135. G. A. Rendsburg’s recent synthesis offers some positive insights along these
lines: “The Early History of Israel,” in Crossing Boundaries and Linking Horizons: Studies
in Honor of Michael C. Astour on His 80th Birthday, ed. G. D. Young, M. W. Chavalas, and
R. E. Averbeck (Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1997), 433-53.
136. The following volume appeared too late for incorporation in this article: S.
Ahituv and E. D. Oren, eds., The Origin of Early Israel: Current Debate: Biblical, Historical,
and Archaeological Perspectives, Iren Levi-Sala Annual Seminar 1997; Beer Sheva 12
(Beersheba: Ben-Gurion, 1998).
 8
The Historical Study of the Monarchy:
Developments and Detours

Gary N. Knoppers

Among the periods that constitute Israelite history, the united and di-
vided monarchies have been the most intensively studied by modern
scholars. This brief survey, necessarily selective, focuses on how schol-
arly treatments of certain issues have developed or changed over the
past three decades. Where possible, the essay is also prospective, posing
topics that deserve reexamination or further research. Special attention
is given, first of all, to an important methodological shift in the study of
the monarchy: the increasing popularity, if not dominance, of archae-
ology and epigraphy. Then follows a study of other, more specific is-
sues: the existence of the united monarchy, the historical context of the
early divided kingdom, the impact of the Assyrian campaigns, and new
interpretations of the Babylonian exile.

The Question of Sources

Scrutiny of recent histories of the monarchy reveals a greater depen-
dence on archaeology and epigraphy and concomitantly a lesser depen-
dence on literary (biblical) texts as sources.! To be sure, the attempt to

1. There are, for instance, many methodological and theoretical differences between
the recent treatments of T. L.Thompson (Early History of the Israelite People: From the
Written and Archaeological Sources, SHANE 4 [Leiden: Brill, 1992], 306-7) and J. S. Hol-
laday (“The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah: Political and Economic Centralization in the
Iron IIA-B [ca. 1000-750 B.c.e.],” in The Archaeology ofSociety in the Holy Land, ed. T. E.
Levy [London: Leicester University Press, 1995], 368-74), but they agree on one thing: the
need to reconstruct the past only through recourse to the material remains.

207
208 The Historical Study ofthe Monarchy: Developments and Detours

relate archaeological and epigraphical finds to the history of Israel and

Judah was also a constituent feature of older treatments.” But if the ap-
peal to archaeology served to buttress histories of Israel, which were
written basically according to a biblical chronology, there is now a
trend to eschew recourse to biblical texts altogether. Since my own ap-
proach involves paying significant attention to the testimony of biblical
texts, I examine this trend at some length and defend the use of literary
materials to write history.
A number of factors have contributed to the growing dependence on
archaeology and epigraphy. First, an unprecedented amount of archae-
ological activity has taken place in Israel and Jordan during the past
quarter century. Hence, formulating a new history of the monarchy in-
evitably involves making sense of important archaeological and epi-
graphic data. Second, the application of new methodologies, such as
the “new” archaeology, provides unprecedented insight into ancient
Palestinian life—demography, ethnicity, housing, socioeconomic con-
ditions, dietary habits, and so forth. Since much ancient Israelite his-
tory was written with reference to the activities of YHWH and major
human leaders, such as kings, priests, and prophets, new anthropolog-
ical and archaeological approaches provide a fuller picture of the past
than was previously available.
But the keen interest in archaeological evidence has been accompa-
nied by a reassessment of biblical evidence. Ironically, this reassess-
ment has involved the coalescence of two quite unrelated develop-
ments. The surge of growth in the study of the Bible as literature has
called attention to the sophisticated compositional techniques em-
ployed by biblical authors.* This has been helpful in gaining a better

2. M. Noth, The History ofIsrael, trans. P. R. Ackroyd, 2d ed. (London: Black, 1960),
204-16; W. F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine (reprinted, Gloucester, Mass.: Smith,
1971), 118-28; J. Bright, A History of Israel, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981),
183-228; J. A. Soggin, “The Davidic-Solomonic Kingdom,” in Israelite and Judaean His-
tory, ed. J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SCM,
1977), 332-80; S. Herrmann, A History ofIsrael in Old Testament Times, trans. J. Bowden
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 131-86; A. Lemaire, “The United Monarchy,” in Ancient Is-
rael: A Short History from Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, ed. H. Shanks
(Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1988), 85-108; G. Ahlstrém, The History ofAncient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period
to Alexander's Conquest, JSOTSup 146 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 501-42.
3. See S, L. Dyson, “From New to New Age Archaeology: Archaeological Theory and
Classical Archaeology—A 1990s Perspective,” AJA 97 (1993): 195-206; S. Bunimovitz,
“How Mute Stones Speak: Interpreting What We Dig Up,” BAR 21.2 (1995): 58-67, 97;
and the essay by C. Carter in the present volume, chap. 15.
4. See the survey of V. P. Long, The Art of Biblical History, Foundations of Contempo-
rary Interpretation 5 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), and his essay in the present vol-
ume, chap. 6.
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 209

sense of what ancient Israelite writers were claiming or, just as impor-
tantly, not claiming in composing their works. But, in so doing, recent
studies have underscored that history writing is a form of literature. As
examples of ancient history writing, Samuel—Kings and Chronicles are
secondary witnesses to historical events. Many advocates of the new lit-
erary approach refrain from discussing the historical reliability of the
biblical books they study. Indeed, some are very careful to distinguish
their work from that of historical reconstruction.® Nevertheless, one ef-
fect of the focus on histories as works of art has been to distance these
narratives from the external events to which they refer.”
A development largely unrelated to the rise of the new literary criti-
cism has been the growing tendency in traditional historical-critical
circles to date more books (or parts thereof) to the exilic and postexilic
ages. Three decades ago many scholars interpreted the narrative units
they isolated within Samuel—the ark narrative (1 Sam. 4:1b—7:1;
2 Sam. 6),° the history of David’s rise (1 Sam. 16:14—2 Sam. 5),? and the
succession narrative (2 Sam. 9-20; 1 Kings 1-2)!°—as documents dat-
ing to the time of the united monarchy. The succession narrative, in
particular, has been viewed as one of the world’s first great works of his-
tory, an insightful and nuanced portrayal of court politics written soon
after the events it depicts, perhaps during the reign of Solomon.!! Other
scholars have come to question this dominant interpretation, viewing

5. The importance of this development has also been recently emphasized by I. Pro-
van, “Ideologies, Literary and Critical: Reflections on Recent Writing on the History of
Israel,” JBL 114 (1995): 585-606.
6. M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, ILBS (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1985), 24-26; D. M. Howard, An Introduction to the Old Testament Histori-
cal Books (Chicago: Moody, 1993), 23-58; Long, Art of Biblical History, 58-87.
7. Some literary studies do, of course, question the characterization of certain narra-
tives as historical. Note, e.g., the nomenclature “prose fiction,” used by R. Alter, The Art
of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 23-26.
8. E.g., P. D. Miller Jr. and J. J. M. Roberts, The Hand ofthe Lord: A Reassessment of
the “Ark Narrative” of 1 Samuel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); P. K.
McCarter, J Samuel, AB 8 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 23-26.
9. McCarter, J Samuel, 27-30, provides references.
10. Also called the court history of David; see L. Rost, The Succession to the Throne of
David, trans. M. D. Rutler and D. M. Gunn (Sheffield: Almond, 1982), 65-114; Noth, His-
tory, 205; P. K. McCarter, “Plots, True or False: The Succession Narrative as Court Apolo-
getic,” Int 35 (1981): 355-67; T. Ishida, “‘Solomon Who Is Greater Than David’: Solomon's
Succession in 1 Kings I-II in the Light of the Inscription of Kilamuwa, King of Y°DY-
Sanwal,” in Congress Volume: Salamanca, 1983, ed. J. A. Emerton, VTSup 36 (Leiden:
Brill, 1985), 145-53.
11. G. von Rad, “The Beginnings of Historical Writing in Ancient Israel,” in The Prob-
lem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1966), 205-21; B. Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and His-
tory (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).
210 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

these narratives as products of the late preexilic age, the exile, or even
the postexilic period.'? Revisionist treatments have not gone unchal-
lenged,'3 but the earlier consensus about the dating of materials in
Samuel no longer exists.
To take a second example, many scholars have taken the history of
the northern monarchy in 1 Kings 11 through 2 Kings 17 to contain a
great deal of useful information about preexilic conditions, even
though the final edition of Kings was acknowledged to stem from the
exile (2 Kings 25:27-30).'* Others have questioned this assessment and
date the primary edition of the Deuteronomistic History to the post-
exilic age.!> The shift in perspective is apparent in the recently pub-
lished two-volume history of Israelite religion by Rainer Albertz, which
devotes more space to the exile and the postexilic period than it does to
the preexilic period.'!® Reflecting recent trends, Albertz dates much of
the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets to the exilic and postexilic pe-
riods. The coverage given to later periods reflects, therefore, as much a
shift in dates assigned to legal and historical materials in the Bible as it
does a renewed appreciation of the literature traditionally attributed to
the postexilic era.
The reevaluation and redating of the biblical evidence has conse-
quences for historical reconstruction. The later the work, the greater
the distance between the writer and the events she or he depicts. Chro-

12. The succession narrative can serve as an example; see E. Wirthwein, Die
Erzdhlung von der Thronfolge Davids—theologische oder politische Geschichtsschreibung?
ThStud 115 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974); F. Langlamet, “Pour ou contre
Salomon? La rédaction prosalomonienne de I Rois, I-I,” RB 83 (1976): 321-79, 481-528;
J. Van Seters, In Search of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 277-91; J. A.
Soggin, “Prolegomena on the Approach to Historical Texts in the Hebrew Bible and the
Ancient Near East,” in Avraham Malamat Volume, ed. S. Ahituv and B. A. Levine, EJ 24
(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), 212-15.
13. See the essays by R. P. Gordon, “In Search of David: The David Tradition in Re-
cent Study,” 285-98; and A. Millard, “Story, History, and Theology,” 37-64, both of
which appear in Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near
Eastern Context, ed. A. Millard, J. Hoffmeier, and D. W. Baker (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1994). Also relevant is the study of B. Halpern, “The Construction of the
Davidic State: An Exercise in Historiography,” in The Origins of the Ancient Israelite
States, ed. V. Fritz and P. R. Davies, JsOTSup 228 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1996), 44-75.
14. For references, see G. N. Knoppers, Two Nations under God: The Deuteronomistic
History of Solomon and the Dual Monarchies, vol. 1, The Reign of Solomon and the Rise of
Jeroboam, HSM 52 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 17-56.
15. So, e.g., A. G. Auld, Kings without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story ofthe Bi-
ble’s Kings (Edinburgh: Clark, 1993).
16. R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, vol. 1, From
the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy; vol. 2, From the Exile to the Maccabees, trans.
J. Bowden, OTL (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994).
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours Pala

nological distance need not entail that a later writer will be less accu-
rate than an earlier writer. Otherwise, all modern historiography deal-
ing with the ancient past—separated by millennia from its subject
matter—would be hopeless. The notion that an author close to the
events inevitably writes a history superior to that of an author writing
centuries later reflects some naive assumptions about the nature of his-
tory writing. Nevertheless, in biblical criticism chronological distance
is commonly seen as an indication of unreliability.!” Adopting the view
that a literary work is late usually involves casting aspersions on its his-
torical veracity.'* Hence, even though new applications of historical-
critical research are quite different from various incarnations of the
new literary criticism, they have had a similar effect in casting doubt on
whether biblical texts can be used as reliable sources for historical re-
search.
After this survey of reasons for the present preoccupation with ar-
chaeology as well as recent developments in historical-critical study, it
may be appropriate to offer some comments. The disciplines of archae-
ology and epigraphy have added an invaluable dimension to the study
of the past that was barely available a century ago. Nevertheless, there
are drawbacks in predicating history solely upon these disciplines, be-
cause these scholarly pursuits have their own problems and limita-
tions.!? Archaeology may provide context and a sense of process by il-
lumining broad eras within Israelite and Judahite history, but
excavations rarely confirm or discredit discrete events. Nor have ar-
chaeologists attained such technical sophistication that ceramic assem-
blages can be dated to a particular generation. In dealing with exca-
vated sites, archaeologists can differ in their presuppositions,
questions, methods, dating of strata, and understanding of material
finds. Promoting an exclusively archaeological approach to guarantee
an objective, “scientific” approach to the recovery of the past is mis-
guided and belied by the profound divergence in assumptions, meth-
ods, and interpretations among the archaeologists themselves. My ar-
gument is not that archaeology should be defined by biblical studies but

17. In this respect, the position of G. Ahlstrém is unusual. He holds to a postexilic

date for Samuel—Kings, yet draws heavily on these works to write extremely detailed ac-
counts of the careers of Saul, David, and Solomon (History, 429-542).
18. Witness the way some scholars have treated Chronicles. The Chronicler’s History
presents many of its own historiographic challenges, but its testimony should not be
summarily dismissed. See S. Japhet, “The Historical Reliability of Chronicles,” JSOT 33
(1985): 83-107; G. N. Knoppers, “History and Historiography: The Royal Reforms,” in
The Chronicler as Historian, ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. L. McKenzie, JSOT-
Sup 238 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1997), 178-203.
19. A point emphasized by E. Yamauchi, “The Current State of Old Testament Histo-
riography,” in Faith, Tradition, and History, ed. Millard et al., 1-36.
212 The Historical Study ofthe Monarchy: Developments and Detours

that an active dialogue should exist between them.?? Comparing bibli-

cal claims with material evidence is admittedly a complicated matter.
Sophistication is needed in relating material remains to literary evi-
dence, but the two should be compared.
If the exclusive preference for archaeology in some recent treatments
of Israelite history is imbalanced, the dismissal of practically all the bib-
lical evidence as both late and unreliable is equally unwarranted. To be
sure, absolute certainty about the dates of composition for the various
writings that make up the Hebrew Scriptures is impossible. Aside from
the fragmentary pendant discovered a few years ago bearing a text sim-
ilar to Numbers 6:24—26, our earliest copies of biblical texts are the
Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint.?! Nevertheless, what is the likeli-
hood that the diverse poems, traditions, literary complexes, and books
that make up the Old Testament can all be attributed to the postexilic
period, or for that matter, to any one period? Such a stance evinces a
strange kind of positivism, an auspicious confidence that diverse, com-
plex texts are all late and have no value for historical reconstruction.
Aside from the formidable problem of language (the distinctive traits of
Late Biblical Hebrew), it seems improbable that much of the Pen-
tateuch, the Former Prophets, the Latter Prophets, the Psalms, the wis-
dom literature, and, of course, the rest of the Writings all stemmed
from postexilic Jerusalem. As a scholar who works with Persian period
materials, 1am happy to see more attention given to the postexilic era,
but this attention must be sustained, giving close study to the question
of Sitz im Leben. One needs to demonstrate how Yehud (postexilic
Judah) produced all of the Hebrew Scriptures.** The Persian period
must function as more than a dumping ground for texts scholars do not
think were written during the monarchy. In short, the various biblical
writings may have achieved their final and definitive form in the post-
exilic period, but it seems implausible that the Persian age witnessed
the very composition of all these books.”
Arguments for a diversity of preexilic, exilic, and postexilic dates for
biblical historical writings best fit the complexity of the evidence. To

20. See also W. G. Dever, “Archaeology, Texts, and History-Writing: Toward an Epis-
temology,” in Uncovering Ancient Stones: Essays in Memory of H. Neil Richardson, ed.
L. M. Hopfe (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 105-17.
21. G. Barkay observes that the relationship between the text on the pendant and its
biblical counterpart is complex: “The Priestly Benediction on Silver Plaques from Ketef
Hinnom in Jerusalem,” Tel Aviv 19 (1992): 139-92.
22. To my knowledge, only P. R. Davies has seriously attempted to do this: In Search
of “Ancient Israel,” JSOTSup 148 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 49-112.
23. Contra Thompson, Early History, 415-23. See further the essay by H. G. M. Wil-
liamson in the present volume, chap. 9.
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 213

begin with, there is a diachronic dimension to the relationship among

certain biblical texts that belies the thesis that they were all written by
different writers working in the same period. Space limitations do not
permit a discussion of all the relevant historical writings, but returning
to the texts mentioned above, I can give two examples. The copious con-
sideration given to the ark and its role within Israelite society in 1 and
2 Samuel contrasts with the subordination of the ark to the temple in
the Deuteronomistic presentation of the temple’s dedication (1 Kings
8).24 Comparison with an incontestably postexilic work, the Chroni-
cler’s History, also bears consideration. The Chronicler carefully draws
from a variety of earlier biblical writings, including Samuel and Kings,
to forge a highly stylized presentation of how the Jerusalem temple ful-
fills all previous Israelite cultic institutions.?° Even more so for the
Chronicler than for the Deuteronomist, the ark has become one of a
number of cultic symbols that are only of penultimate interest to the
primary interest in the temple.?° Comparison of the three narratives
dealing with the ark in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles suggests signifi-
cant chronological distance among them.
There are also positive arguments to be made for a preexilic dating of
the Deuteronomistic coverage of the northern kingdom. As Baruch
Halpern has observed with reference to the names and dates supplied
by extrabiblical inscriptions, the Deuteronomistic History accurately
records the names and relative dates of a variety of Israelite, Judahite,
and foreign kings.?” Hence, whatever dates one assigns to the material
in Kings, its value for historical reconstruction should be clear. In addi-
tion to the external controls afforded by epigraphy, one can also appeal
to internal evidence within the Deuteronomistic History. The extraordi-
nary detail the Deuteronomist devotes to the emergence, history, and

24. S. E. Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible: The Drama of Divine-Human Dia-
logue, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 80-88; G. N. Knoppers, “Prayer and Propa-
ganda: The Dedication of Solomon’s Temple and the Deuteronomist's Program,” CBQ 57
(1995): 229-54.
25. R. L. Braun, “Solomon, the Chosen Temple Builder: The Significance of 1 Chron-
icles, 22, 28, and 29 for the Theology of Chronicles,” JBL 95 (1976): 581-90; H. G. M.
Williamson, “The Accession of Solomon in the Books of Chronicles,” VT 26 (1976): 351-
61; P. Welten, “Lade—Tempel—Jerusalem: Zur Theologie der Chronikbiicher,” in Text-
gemdf: Aufsdtze und Beitrige zur Hermeneutik des Alten Testaments: Festschrift fiir Ernst
Wiirthwein, ed. A. Gunneweg and O. Kaiser (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1979), 169-83.
26. J. W. Wright, “The Legacy of David in Chronicles: The Narrative Function of
1 Chronicles 23-27,” JBL 110 (1991): 229-42.
27. B. Halpern, “Erasing History—The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel,” BibRev
11.6 (1995): 26-35, 47. See also idem, “The State of Israelite History,” in Reconsidering
Ancient Israel and Judah: Recent Studies in the Deuteronomistic History, ed. G. N. Knop-
pers and J. G. McConville, SBTS 8 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming).
214 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

decline of the northern monarchy seems to address predominately pre-

exilic issues.28 Conversely, the arguments that all of this material is
postexilic polemic, written either against the Samarians or as an object
lesson to Jews in Yehud, are not persuasive.”? The anti-Samarian argu-
ment does not explain why the Deuteronomist blames a Judean (Solo-
mon) for the division, commends the rise of a northerner (Jeroboam) to
power, and champions the formation of an independent Israelite
state.2°? Comparison with the work of a postexilic writer—the Chroni-
cler—is again pertinent. The Chronicler views both Jeroboam’s cult and
kingdom as seditious from their inception.*! The Chronicler’s historio-
graphic judgment is of considerable consequence, because it leads him
to omit the independent history of the northern kingdom except when
it affects Judah. The Chronicler’s stance makes sense in a postexilic con-
text but it contrasts with the concerns of the preexilic (Josianic) Deuter-
onomist, who likely writes when the impact of the Assyrian campaigns
against Israel and Judah were still sharply felt.** As for the narratives
about the northern realm in Kings functioning as a diatribe to postexilic
Jews, one has to ask why a postexilic Deuteronomist would write so ex-
tensively about the northern kingdom and so little about the southern
kingdom. An object lesson might warrant a few stories, but it seems im-
plausible that a postexilic Judean writer would add an immense amount
of material about the long-defunct northern monarchy—approximately
three quarters of the coverage within 1 Kings 12-2 Kings 17—for such
a purpose.
To summarize, there are both positive and negative arguments in
favor of positing a variety of dates for the composition of the historical
books within the Hebrew Scriptures. Moreover, even if one rejects an
early date for the composition of the primary edition of the Deuteron-
omistic History in favor of an exilic or even postexilic date, the chro-

28. G. N. Knoppers, Two Nations under God: The Deuteronomistic History of Solomon
and the Dual Monarchies, vol. 2, The Reign of Jeroboam, the Fall of Israel, and the Reign of
Josiah, HSM 53 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 229-54.
29. See, respectively, Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel”; Auld, Kings without Privi-
lege, 172.
30. See 1 Kings 11:1-14:20; LXX 3 Rgns. 12:24a-z; and Knoppers, Jwo Nations, 1:135—
223; 2:13-120.
31. G. N. Knoppers, “Rehoboam in Chronicles: Villain or Victim?” JBL 109 (1990):
423-40; idem, “‘Battling against Yahweh’: Israel’s War against Judah in 2 Chron. 13:2-
20,” RB 100 (1993): 511-32. For a different view, see H. G. M. Williamson, Israel in the
Books of Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 110-18.
32. B. Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century B.c.r.: Kingship
and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability,” in Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel, ed.
B. Halpern and D. W. Hobson, JSOTSup 124 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 11-107;
Knoppers, Zwo Nations, 2:112-20.
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 215

nological distance between the composition of this work and the

events it depicts does not constitute sufficient grounds to dismiss its
value for history. Advances in archaeology and epigraphy are welcome.
But the Deuteronomistic History remains indispensable for historical
reconstruction.

The Debate about the United Monarchy

Three decades ago scholars viewed the united monarchy as one of the
most secure periods for historical reconstruction. This rare scholarly
consensus was remarkable. Even though there were keen debates about
the ancestral age and the Mosaic age, virtually all modern historians
wrote histories of ancient Israel that included, if not commenced with,
the monarchy of David and Solomon.*? But this near unanimity of
opinion has disappeared. The issue is not simply a divergence of opin-
ion between so-called maximalists, who gave considerable credence to
biblical descriptions of the united monarchy, and so-called minimal-
ists, who were much more hesitant to do so. There are now scholars
who think that all traditional theories of the united kingdom are obso-
lete. According to revisionist thinkers, Saul, David, and Solomon are all
fictional, not historical, characters.*4 Indeed, the united monarchy it-
self is allegedly a construct of scribes writing during the Persian or Hel-
lenistic periods.*° The reasons for the scholarly reevaluation are many,
but three factors seem to stand out: new readings of the material evi-
dence, the reinterpretation of pertinent literary evidence, and the effect
of new socioeconomic studies.*° To grasp the force of revisionist treat-
ments, it will be useful to sketch the old consensus.
Past studies associated the kingdom of David, and especially that of
Solomon, with a number of specific changes in the material culture of

33. In the earlier work of J. A. Soggin, the united monarchy represented the threshold
from the past as fable to the past as history: “The Davidic-Solomonic Kingdom,” in [srael-
ite and Judaean History, ed. Miller and Hayes, 332-80; idem, A History ofIsrael: From the
Beginnings to the Bar Kochba Revolt, a.p. 135, trans. J. Bowden (London: SCM, 1984), 41-
85 (published in the U.S. as A History of Ancient Israel [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).
34. Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel,” 16-48, 69; M. M. Gelinas, “United Monar-
chy—Divided Monarchy: Fact or Fiction?” in The Pitcher Is Broken: Memorial Essays for
Gésta W. Ahlstrém, ed. S. W. Holloway and L. Handy, JSOTSup 190 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1995), 227-37; Thompson, Early History, 306-7, 415-23; T. L. Bolin,
“When the End Is the Beginning,” SJOT 10 (1996): 3-15; N. P. Lemche, “From Patronage
Society to Patronage Society,” in Origins of the Ancient Israelite States, 106-20.
35. They do not fit the nomenclature “minimalist,” because these scholars do not
think there is anything to minimize.
36. What follows is only a summary. For further details and references, see G. N.
Knoppers, “Vanishing Solomon: The Disappearance of the United Monarchy from Re-
cent Histories of Ancient Israel,” JBL 116 (1997): 19-44.
216 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

ancient Canaan. Historians also made a series of correlations between

the account of Solomon’s reign-in Kings and international develop-
ments in the ancient Near East. I begin with the connections made be-
tween biblical and archaeological evidence. Scholars have associated
Solomon’s building activities, which take up no small part of his
reign,*’” with the rise of monumental architecture in the tenth century
p.c.28 Excavations at three of the cities rebuilt by Solomon—Hazor,
Megiddo, and Gezer (1 Kings 9:15-17)—revealed that the defense sys-
tems at these sites seemed to exhibit nearly identical fortification pat-
terns. Yigael Yadin influentially claimed that each of these towns was
surrounded by casemate walls and included a six-chambered gateway
of similar measurements.*’ Scholars also pointed to a general pattern
of urbanization in the Iron Age—the rebuilding and expansion of old
towns and the establishment of new ones.?° Indeed, the construction
of numerous walled cities, public buildings, and fortifications is said
to be a characteristic feature of Iron II.*! The variety and layout of dif-
ferent types of towns—administrative-military centers, cities with both
residential and administrative or military quarters, and capitals—has
also been deemed significant, suggesting some degree of urban plan-
ning.** Scholars theorized that a state was responsible for both the
(re)construction of the cities and the presence of a variety of public

37. 1 Kings 5:27-7:51; 9:15-19, 24; 11:27; cf. 2 Chron. 3:1-17; 4:1-5:1; 8:1, 4-6, 11. In
1 Chron. 22-29 David devotes much of the latter part of his reign to preparing for Solo-
mon’s construction of the temple.
38. E.g., W. G. Dever, “Monumental Architecture in Ancient Israel in the Period of the
United Monarchy,” in Studies in the Period of David and Solomon, ed. T. Ishida (Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1982), 269-306; idem, “Archaeology and ‘the Age of Solomon’:
A Case Study in Archaeology and Historiography,” in The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at
the Turn ofthe Millennium, ed. L. K. Handy, SHANE 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 217-51; V.
Fritz, “Salomo,” MDOG 117 (1985): 47-67; G. Barkay, “The Iron Age II-III,” in The Ar-
chaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. A. Ben-Tor, trans. R. Greenberg (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1992), 305.
39. Y. Yadin, Hazor: The Head of All Those Kingdoms (Joshua 11:10), Schweich Lec-
tures, 1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 135-64.
40. J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1986), 209-11; A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000-586
B.C.E., ABRL (New York: Doubleday,1990), 387-89; V. Fritz, The City in Ancient Israel, Bib-
lical Seminar 29 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 76-77; idem, “Monarchy
and Re-urbanization: A New Look at Solomon’s Kingdom,” in Origins of the Ancient Isra-
elite States, 187-95.
41. E.g., V. Fritz, An Introduction to Biblical Archaeology, JSOTSup 172 (Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1994), 148-49; R. Reich, “Palaces and Residencies in the Iron Age,” in The
Architecture of Ancient Israel: From the Prehistoric to the Persian Periods, ed. A. Kempinski
and R. Reich (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1992), 202-22.
42. Y. Shiloh, “Elements in the Development of Town Planning in the Israelite City,”
IEJ 28 (1978): 36-51; Z. Herzog, “Administrative Structures in the Iron Age,” in Architec-
ture of Ancient Israel, 223-30.
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 217

buildings within them.*? Other evidence cited for the presence of a

state included the establishment of new fortresses** and a marked in-
crease in population.*> _
If the descriptions of Solomon’s building activity in Kings seemed to
correspond to the evidence provided by the material remains, the same
can be said for descriptions of Solomon’s diplomatic relations and epi-
graphic remains from this period. One such correlation was, of course,
the possibility of a strong regional Davidic-Solomonic state itself. The
decline of major states, such as Egypt, Assyria, and Hatti, made it possi-
ble for minor states to emerge or reassert themselves. Another correla-
tion made by scholars involves Israelite-Egyptian relations.4° For exam-
ple, Kenneth Kitchen attempted to corroborate the description of
Solomon’s marriage to a daughter of the pharaoh, demonstrating that
such diplomatic marriages between members of the Egyptian royal fam-
ily and the royal families of other states were more common than schol-
ars had previously recognized.*’ Kitchen argued that the Egyptian king
(probably Siamun) arranged this diplomatic marriage to pursue com-
mon martial and commercial interests over against the Philistines.*®
During the past decade the critical consensus about the united king-
dom has come apart. This significant turnabout has been propelled by
a reconsideration of the literary and the archaeological evidence as well
as by the application of new social scientific methods. How similar the
“Solomonic” six-chambered gates really are is now in dispute.?? The
discovery of six-chamber gates at Ashdod and Lachish, both of which
date to the end of the tenth century, has given rise to doubts about the
uniqueness of the state architecture found at Megiddo, Hazor, and
Gezer.*° Some scholars have come to question the tenth-century date of

43. Y. Aharoni, The Archaeology of the Land of Israel, ed. M. Aharoni, trans. A. F.
Rainey (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982), 210ff.; W. G. Dever, “Solomon and the Assyr-
ian Period ‘Palaces’ at Gezer,” JEJ 35 (1985): 217-30; Fritz, City, 117-20; Z. Herzog, “Set-
tlement and Fortification,” in Architecture of Ancient Israel, 250-61.
44. A. Mazar, “Iron Age Fortresses in the Judaean Hills,” PEQ 114 (1982): 87-109;
idem, Archaeology, 390-96; Ahlstrém, History, 524-26; Fritz, City, 77-93. These included
a network of so-called fortresses in the Negev; see R. Cohen, “The Iron Age Fortresses in
the Central Negev,” BASOR 236 (1980): 61-79.
45. Bright, History, 217.
46. 1 Kings 3:1; 5:1, 10; 8:51, 53, 65; 9:16, 24; 10:26-29; 11:1, 17-22, 40.
47. 1 Kings 3:1; 7:8; 9:16, 24; 11:1. K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in
Egypt (1100-650 z.c.) (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1973), 280-83; idem, “Egypt and East
Africa,” in Age of Solomon, 106-26.
48. Kitchen, Third Intermediate Period, 8, 280-82.
49. D. Milson, “The Design of the Royal Gates at Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer,” ZDPV
102 (1986): 87-92; Herzog, “Settlement and Fortification,” 265-69.
50. Holladay, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 384-85; Herzog, “Settlement and For-
tification,” 265-69.
218 The Historical Study ofthe Monarchy: Developments and Detours

relevant fortifications at Gezer, Hazor, and Megiddo.*! This has led to

a vigorous debate, because other scholars have challenged the pottery
analysis upon which such redating is partially based.°* The contempo-
rary excavators of Gezer and Hazor have sought to confirm the earlier
tenth-century dates.°* Nevertheless, the debate continues.*4
The debates about material evidence have included so-called for-
tresses in the Negev, the date, identity, and function of which have all
been thrown into question. Israel Finkelstein thinks that the distribu-
tion and construction of these sites indicates a “sedentarization” of in-
land desert people caused by economic prosperity.°° But Ze’ev Meshel
posits a coexistence of external (royal) and local (nomadic) initiatives
to explain the emergence of these sites.°° The issue is unsettled. The dis-
agreement is, however, itself telling. Scholars can agree on the impor-
tance of certain sites, but come to very different conclusions about what
this means for Israelite history.
The third factor complicating the study of the united monarchy is the
application of social scientific methodology. For example, recent ar-
chaeological surveys point to general population growth in the Iron
Age, but depict the eighth century, not the tenth, as the apex of this

51. A. Kempinski, Megiddo: A City-State and Royal Centre in North Israel, Materilien zur
allgemeinen und vergleichen Archaologie 40 (Munich: Beck, 1989), 98; G. J. Wightman,
“The Myth of Solomon,” BASOR 277-78 (1990): 5-22; D. Ussishkin, “Gate 1567 at Megiddo
and the Seal of Shema, Servant of Jeroboam,” in Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on
the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King, ed. M. D. Coogan et al. (Louisville:
Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 410-28; I. Finkelstein, “On Archaeological Methods and
Historical Considerations: Iron Age II and Samaria,” BASOR 277-78 (1990): 109-19; and
the response by W. G. Dever, “On Myths and Methods,” BASOR 277-78 (1990): 121-30.
52. L. E. Stager, “Shemer’s Estate,” BASOR 277-78 (1990): 93-107; R. Tappy, The Ar-
chaeology ofIsraelite Samaria, vol. 1, Early Iron Age through the Ninth Ceniury 3.c.6., HSS
44 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992).
53. R. W. Younker, “A Preliminary Report of the 1990 Season at Tel Gezer: Exeavations
at the Outer Wall and the Solomonic Gateway (July 2—August 10, 1990),” AUSS 29 (1991):
19-60; W. G. Dever, “Further Evidence on the Date of the Outer Wall at Gezer,” Near East
Archaeology Society Bulletin 38 (1993): 39-52. According to A. Ben-Tor, recent excavations
at Hazor have verified that the casemate wall and gate in question date to the tenth century:
“Tel Hazor, 1994,” IEJ 45 (1995): 65-68; idem, “Tel Hazor, 1995,” [EJ 46 (1996): 65-68.
54. I. Finkelstein contends that the renewed excavations at Tel Gezer actually support
his case that the fortification system in question dates to a later period: “Penelope's
Shroud Unravelled: Iron II Date of Gezer’s Outer Wall Established,” Tel Aviv 21 (1994):
276-82. See also his “Archaeology of the United Monarchy: An Alternative View,” Levant
28 (1996): 177-87; and the response by A. Mazar, “Iron Age Chronology: A Reply to I.
Finkelstein,” Levant 29 (1997): 157-67.
55. 1. Finkelstein, Living on the Fringe: The Architecture and History of the Negev, Sinai
and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Age, Monographs in Mediterranean Ar-
chaeology 6 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 104-29.
56. Z. Meshel, “The Architecture of the Israelite Fortresses in the Negev,” in Architec-
ture ofAncient Israel, 294-301.
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 219

growth.°’ M. Broshi and I. Finkelstein estimate the population of west-

ern Palestine to be about 150,000 in 1000 B.c., but around 400,000 in
750 B.c.°® The revised demographics have led to revisionist reconstruc-
tions of tenth-century history. Based on what they consider to be the
sparse population of the Judean highlands in the tenth and ninth cen-
turies, T. L. Thompson, E. A. Knauf, and M. M. Gelinas have ques-
tioned whether Judah could have had a state prior to the eighth or sev-
enth century s.c.°’ In Thompson’s view, Jerusalem became a city-state
for only limited periods in the late eighth and mid-seventh centuries,
after competing for centuries against other regional towns, such as He-
bron, Lachish, and Gezer.®® D. W. Jamieson-Drake doubts whether a
small Jerusalem could have sustained the scribal bureaucracy neces-
sary to produce a variety of major (biblical) texts prior to the eighth and
seventh centuries.®!
Revisionist reactions to the established consensus about the united
monarchy have themselves been subjected to critique. In his recent
study, J. S. Holladay emphasizes not only similarities between the ma-
terial culture at various sites, such as Hazor, Megiddo, Lachish, and
Gezer, but also the distribution of these sites and their importance for
trade.®* He argues that the construction of fortifications and public
buildings at these strategic sites can be explained only as a concerted
political action. Holladay also calls attention to the continuity in mon-
umental material culture from the tenth century to the ninth century,
an era in which the existence of an Israelite (northern) kingdom is not
denied. In his view, both the similarities and the continuity buttress the
case for the existence of a territorial state in the tenth century.
A case can also be made against Thompson’s model of regional but
competing towns. Material evidence from sites in which public struc-
tures take up a large part of the tel raises the question of whether these
were independent, self-sustaining residential towns. Indeed, Holladay

57. D. W. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah, SWBAS 9, JSOT-

Sup 109 (Sheffield: Almond, 1991), 48-80; I. Finkelstein, “Environmental Archaeology
and Social History: Demographic and Economic Aspects of the Monarchic Period,” in
Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990, ed. A. Biran and J. Aviram (Jerusalem: Israel Explora-
tion Society, 1993), 60-64.
58. M. Broshi and I. Finkelstein, “The Population of Palestine in Iron Age II,” BASOR
287 (1992): 50-53.
59. Thompson, Early History, 312; E. A. Knauf, “King Solomon's Copper Supply,” in
Phoenicia and the Bible, ed. E. Lipiriski, Studia Phoenicia 11, OLA 44 (Louvain: Depart-
ment Oriéntalistiesk, 1991), 180; Gelinas, “United Monarchy,” 230.
60. Early History, 290-92, 331-34.
61. Scribes and Schools, 76-80, 138-39.
62. Holladay, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 368-98.
63. Ibid., 371-72.
220 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

argues that the different types of urban sites evince a transformation

from a segmented society to a nation state. Finally, the evidence pro-
vided by the recently discovered Tel Dan inscription has some relevance
for the early monarchy. If the reading of bytdwd (line 9) as “house of
David” is well founded, as most scholars believe, this text points to the
historical existence of David as the founder of a dynasty.®° But even if
one does not accept the reading “house of David,” the stela, along with
the earlier ninth-century Mesha Stela, attests that states in ancient Pal-
estine could control territories far beyond the confines of their own
capitals.
The results of archaeological surveys are worthy of further discus-
sion, because they are capable of different explanations. The results of
these surface surveys caution against overextended claims about Is-
rael’s status in the tenth century, but they do not exclude Israel and
Judah from having states until the ninth and eighth-seventh centuries,
respectively. One should not confuse impoverishment of archaeological
remains with impoverishment of culture. Comparative analysis raises
questions whether historical conclusions drawn from archaeological
surveys by revisionists are too extreme. As the Amarna Letters attest,
Jerusalem was fully capable of producing documents already in the
Late Bronze Age. Assuming that the population of Jerusalem did not de-
crease substantially during the early Iron Age, there is no good reason
to believe that scribes under David and Solomon could not have written
texts as well. To take a second example, population estimates of ancient
Nuzi attribute some two thousand people to this city. But archaeologi-
cal excavations have revealed some 6,500 texts as being written at vari-
ous locations within this town. If one assumes, along with archaeolo-
gists, that the population of Jerusalem tripled or quadrupled by the late
eighth century, this need not entail that tenth-century Jerusalem lacked
the requisite resources to produce texts.°° If scribes in Nuzi produced
such a volume of texts, it is clearly conceivable that scribes in Iron II

64. Ibid., 372-78.

65. Another possible translation of bytdwd is “house of (the god) Dod.” See A. Biran
and J. Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” JEJ 43 (1993): 81-98; idem,
“The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment,” /EJ 45 (1995): 1-18; E. A. Knauf, A. de Pury,
and T. Romer, “*BaytDawid ou *BaytDéd?” BN 72 (1994): 60-69; B. Halpern, “The Stela
from Dan: Epigraphic and Historical Considerations,” BASOR 296 (1994): 63-80.
66. Population estimates of eighth-century Jerusalem vary considerably: 7,500 in
mid-century (Finkelstein, “Environmental Archaeology,” 58); 15,000 in the late eighth
century (A. Ofer, “Judah,” The Encyclopedia of Near Eastern Archaeology, ed. E. M. Meyers
et al. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], 253-57); an unspecified higher figure
(Barkay, “Iron Age,” 364-68). On the link between the Amarna Letters and Jerusalem, see
now N. Na’aman, “The Contribution of the Amarna Letters to the Debate on Jerusalem’s
Political Position in the 10th Century B.c.z.,” BASOR 304 (1996): 17-27.
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours en

Jerusalem could have authored literature as well. In short, the reason-

ing that Jerusalem was too small in the tenth and ninth centuries to har-
bor scribes and produce texts is unconvincing.
A third consideration bears on the matter of scribes, urban centers,
and the production of texts. The same surface surveys that point to rel-
atively low population estimates for the tenth century B.c. also point to
low figures for Persian period Yehud.°’ Yet this is precisely the time in
which revisionist studies locate the creation of virtually all biblical
texts. If the united monarchy never existed and Judah could not have
produced any texts before the eighth century, the same would have to
hold for sparsely populated Yehud. Finally, it bears noting that Broshi
and Finkelstein cite the same surface surveys employed by Jamieson-
Drake and Thompson to make the opposite point. They point to the re-
markable consistency of population growth from the tenth through the
mid-eighth century to argue that the establishment of a centralized
state was a critical condition for significant population increase.®8
Thus, whereas some scholars have cited surface surveys to deny the
early existence of Israelite and Judahite states, others have employed
the same evidence to argue that such states were necessary to induce
and sustain population growth and economic development.
As the previous discussion makes clear, studies of the united monar-
chy are in a state of flux. The Davidic-Solomonic kingdom has itself be-
come a site of conflicting opinions. In light of demographic consider-
ations, material remains, epigraphic testimony, and the complexity of
the biblical evidence, there is a need to reconsider a range of issues. Per-
haps current excavations underway at Hazor, Jezreel, Megiddo, and
other sites will clarify some of the disputes. In any case, the evidence
currently available does not warrant the disappearance of the united
kingdom from histories of ancient Israel. Revisionist treatments have
succeeded better in questioning certain aspects of the older scholarly
consensus than they have in substantiating their own proposals. In my
judgment, the pertinent issues are neither the existence of David and
Solomon nor the existence of their realm, but the nature, organization,
size, and clout of the state over which they presided. These issues merit
further study.°?

67. A. Ofer, “Judean Hills Survey,” NEAEHL 3 (1993): 814-16; C. E. Carter, “The Prov-
ince of Yehud in the Post-Exilic Period: Soundings in Site Distribution and Demography,”
in Second Temple Studies, vol. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period, ed. T. C.
Eskenazi and K. H. Richards, JsOTSup 175 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 106-45.
68. “Population of Palestine,” 55.
69. Note the range of opinions expressed by A. Millard, “Texts and Archaeology:
Weighing the Evidence: The Case for King Solomon,” PEQ 123 (1991): 19-27; idem,
“Solomon: Text and Archaeology,” PEQ 123 (1991): 117-18; idem, “King Solomon in His
Lage The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

The Early Dual Monarchies

Like the united monarchy, the period of the early divided monarchy has
been the subject of renewed debate. Three questions dominated earlier
discussions: (1) Why did the united kingdom fail? (2) Why did Solomon’s
successor, Rehoboam, take such a rigid negotiating position with the
northern leadership at the Shechem council (1 Kings 12:1-20)? and
(3) Why did the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak (Shoshengq) invade Canaan in
the early divided monarchy, considering that relations between Israel
and Egypt had been quite favorable during the united monarchy?
The most commonly cited reason for the sudden collapse of the
united kingdom has involved the origin and development of the Da-
vidic-Solomonic monarchy. The united kingdom was an aberration, a
centralized polity artificially imposed on fractious southern and north-
ern tribes either by the force of David’s personality (a personal union)
or by the weight of foreign policy considerations (Realunion).’° Such
an arrangement could survive, even thrive, in good conditions. But a
fragile alliance, whether originally driven by a charismatic personality
or by stark political realities, was bound to fray and rupture if condi-
tions deteriorated considerably. As historians have often observed, Sol-
omon’s pattern of fortifying strategic sites enabled him to consolidate
control over trade and commerce within Israel, but it also exacerbated
social tensions by placing great demands on his people.’! The claim of
Pocock about Greek history being an exercise in political ironies may
also hold true for Israel in the tenth century: “an intelligible story of
how men’s actions produce results other than those they intended.””?
The very policy designed to protect and enhance Israel’s position in the

Ancient Context,” in Age of Solomon, 30-53; J. M. Miller, “The Old Testament and Ar-
chaeology,” BA 50.1 (1987): 55-63; idem, “Solomon: International Potentate or Local
King?” PEQ 123 (1991): 28-31; idem, “Separating the Solomon of History from the Sol-
omon of Legend,” in Age of Solomon, 1-24; J. A. Dearman, Religion and Culture in Ancient
Israel (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrikson, 1992), 51-69; Knauf, “King Solomon's Copper Sup-
ply,” 180-84; idem, “Le roi est mort, vive le roi! A Biblical Argument for the Historicity of
Solomon,” in Age of Solomon, 81-95; H. M. Niemann, Herrschaft, Konigtum und Staat:
Skizzen zur soziokulturellen Entwicklung im monarchischen Israel, FAT 6 (Tubingen:
Mohr, 1993), 273-82.
70. For the former, see A. Alt, “The Formation of the Israelite State in Palestine,” in
Essays on Old Testament History and Religion, trans. R. A. Wilson (Garden City, N.Y.: Dou-
bleday, 1968), 171-237. For the latter, see A. Malamat, “A Political Look at the Kingdom
of David and Solomon and Its Relations with Egypt,” in Studies in the Period of David and
Solomon, 194.
71. Alt, “Formation,” 236-37; Herrmann, History of Israel, 190; Ahlstrém, History,
505-9, 543-48.
72. J.G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and His-
tory (New York: Atheneum, 1971; London: Methuen, 1972).
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 225

Levant rendered the monarchy vulnerable to internal dissension and

revolt.
If earlier scholars viewed the artificiality of the united monarchy as
a major reason for its fall, they blamed the incompetence or insensitiv-
ity of Rehoboam, Solomon’s hapless successor, as hastening its demise.
The unyielding negotiating stance Rehoboam took with respect to taxes
at the assembly of Shechem ensured that the disgruntled northern rep-
resentatives would reject the Davidic monarchy they had come to de-
spise. Whether Rehoboam’s negotiating stance was determined by his
father’s ill-conceived social policies, his political naiveté, or his inepti-
tude in following bad advice varies according to different ancient and
modern interpretations.’* But Rehoboam’s plight may have been more
complicated than having merely to manage northern dissatisfaction
with his father’s policies. A change in Egyptian fortunes and policies,
from the reign of Psusennes II (959-945 B.c.) to the ascent of Shishak (=
Shoshengq I; 945-924 B.c.), led to the resurgence of Egyptian power.
This may help to explain why Rehoboam was reluctant to give in to the
northern representatives at Shechem.’”4 He may have thought that such
concessions would only weaken his own position.
Scholars have pointed to the change in Egyptian regimes as the cat-
alyst for a critical reversal in Israelite-Egyptian relations. Shishak’s
rise to power, for example, has been cited to illumine the flight of Jer-
oboam.’° Whereas Siamun saw a strategic interest in an alignment
with Israel, Shishak wished to reassert Egyptian hegemony in
Canaan. Providing asylum to one of Solomon’s foes could have con-
tributed to the destabilization of Solomon’s regime (1 Kings 11:26-
40).’° The most famous indication of the change in Egyptian-Israelite
relations is, of course, the invasion of Shishak itself (1 Kings 14:25-
26; 2 Chron. 12:1-12). In this case, comparisons can be made with ev-
idence supplied by both epigraphic sources and archaeological exca-
vations. The fragmentary stela at Megiddo, the fragmentary temple in-
scription at Karnak, and the destruction of various sites near the end
of the tenth century have all been cited by modern scholars as being
essentially congruent with the notice of Shishak’s invasion in 1 Kings

73. 1 Kings 12:1-20; LXX 3 Rgns. 12:24a—z; 2 Chron. 10:1—17; 13:4-12. See J. C. Tre-
bolle Barrera, Salomon y Jerobodn: Historia de la recension y redaccién de I Reyes 2-12,
14, Institucién San Jeronimo 10 (Valencia: Investigacion Biblica, 1980), 82-241.
74. B. Halpern, “Sectionalism and Schism,” JBL 93 (1974): 519-32.
75. Kitchen, Third Intermediate Period, 293-94.
76. N. P. Lemche, A New History of Israelite Society, Biblical Seminar 5 (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1988), 142; D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient
Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 312-15.
224 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

14:25-26.’’ Here, it seemed, was an impressive convergence of-ar

chaeological, epigraphic, and literary evidence.
But in recent years this convergence of evidence has been questioned
by two new interpretations of Solomon’s relations to Egypt and the cir-
cumstances surrounding Shishak’s invasion. First, Giovanni Garbini
contends that Shishak invaded Canaan during the reign of Solomon
and not during the reign of Rehoboam.’® The biblical authors located
the Shishak invasion in the early history of Judah to avoid disparaging
Solomon’s exalted reputation. Second, Thompson cites the fragmen-
tary Karnak inscription to deny the existence of both Israel and Judah
in the tenth century.’? Because this text mentions only individual sites
and neither Judah nor Israel, it purportedly constitutes evidence
against the existence of these states.
One can discern complementary trends at work in the theories of
Garbini and Thompson. The biblical evidence is treated with consid-
erable historical suspicion, and the interpretation given to the remain-
ing evidence turns an older theory on its head. In the case of the Shi-
shak campaign, one is left with contradictory assessments of the same
archaeological and epigraphic remains. Ironically, the Shishak mate-
rial still constitutes crucial evidence for the reconstruction of tenth-
century history. But in one theory the Karnak relief corroborates
1 Kings 14:25-26, while in another theory the Karnak relief under-
mines it.
Are the new interpretations compelling? It does not appear so. The
new theories exhibit, in my judgment, some major flaws. To begin
with, Garbini’s thesis that the author of Kings misled his readers by lo-
cating the Shishak campaign in Rehoboam’s reign assumes that he
knew otherwise. Whatever one makes of the epigraphic evidence, this
reading of Kings carries little force. In his periodization of Solomon’s
reign (1 Kings 1-11) the Deuteronomist expends no small amount of
energy sullying Solomon’s reputation himself. The author castigates
Solomon for constructing numerous high places, worshiping at these

77. M. Noth, “Die Shoschenkliste,” ZDPV 61 (1938): 277-304; B. Mazar, “The Cam-
paign of Pharaoh Shishak to Palestine,” in Volume du Congrés: Strasbourg, 1956, VTSup
4 (Leiden: Brill, 1957), 57-66; S. Herrmann, “Operationen Pharao Schoschenks I. am
6stlichen Ephraim,” ZDPV 80 (1964): 55-79; Y. Aharoni, The Land ofthe Bible, trans. and
ed. A. F, Rainey, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979), 323-30; Kitchen, Third Inter-
mediate Period, 293-300, 432-41; N. Naaman, “Israel, Edom, and Moab in the Tenth Cen-
tury,” Tel Aviv 19 (1992): 71-93; A. Mazar, Archaeology, 397-98. For a somewhat different
view, see Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 312-15.
78. G. Garbini, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, trans. J. Bowden (London:
SCM; New York: Crossroad, 1988), 30-32.
79. Early History, 306-7. Thompson’s reconstruction has been followed by Davies (Jn
Search of “Ancient Israel,” 42-73) and Gelinas (“United Monarchy,” 230-33).
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 225

illicit sanctuaries, and worshiping other gods (11:1-13).8° The Deuter-

onomist’s careful presentation of Solomon’s decline associates these
sins with YHWH’'s inciting of Solomon’s enemies and a series of re-
volts that weaken his kingdom (11:14—40).8! The Deuteronomist is so
concerned to censure Solomon’s conduct that he, in fact, blames Sol-
omon for a catastrophe that occurs after his death—the division.
Surely, if the author believed that Shishak’s invasion occurred during
Solomon’s reign, it would have fit beautifully into his typology of Sol-
omon’s decline. Given the Deuteronomist’s trenchant criticism of Sol-
omon, the very fact that he locates this event in the context of Reho-
boam’s reign is important, but for the opposite reason Garbini
supposes. It reveals some historiographical restraint on the part of the
biblical writer.
Concerning the Shishak evidence, Thompson’s theory has encoun-
tered criticism from Diana Edelman. She claims that Thompson has
adopted an uncritical reading of the Karnak relief, confusing a tradi-
tionally phrased, propagandistic assertion of Egyptian hegemony over
Canaan with a straightforward litany of conquered sites.®? In this view,
the list of Shishak’s conquests obfuscates the political realities of the
lands affected by his invasion. The point that the Shishak relief should
be subjected to as much critical scrutiny as the biblical text is well
taken. Nevertheless, Edelman’s rejoinder allows for but does not prove
the existence of a united monarchy. The difference between the read-
ings of Thompson and Edelman suggests that the Karnak relief by itself
does not constitute decisive evidence for either case.
Perhaps one of the strongest arguments that can be made for the
older interpretation is its explanatory power in addressing different
kinds of evidence. It accounts for both the (re)construction of many
sites and the destruction of some of them (e.g., Megiddo). Similarly, the
continuity from tenth-century to ninth-century material culture in Is-
rael and Judah comports with a contentious but essentially peaceful
split between the northern and southern tribes. Finally, that Judah,

80. In the context of the Deuteronomistic History, the indictment is quite severe; see
Knoppers, Zwo Nations, 1:135-59. The Deuteronomist mentions the influence of Solo-
mon’s foreign wives, but he places primary blame for Solomon's decline on Solomon
himself. See S. J. D. Cohen, “Solomon and the Daughter of Pharaoh: Intermarriage,
Conversion, and the Impurity of Women,” JANES 16-17 (1984-85): 23-37; G. N. Knop-
pers, “Sex, Religion, and Politics: The Deuteronomist on Intermarriage,” HAR 14 (1994):
121-41.
81. Some of these, the Deuteronomist concedes, began earlier in Solomon’s reign
(1 Kings 11:15, 21, 23, 25). See further Knoppers, Two Nations, 1:162-68.
82. D. V. Edelman, “Solomon's Adversaries Hadad, Rezon, and Jeroboam: A Trio of
‘Bad Guy’ Characters Illustrating the Theology of Immediate Retribution,” in Pitcher Is
Broken, 188.
226 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

with the possible exception of a few sites (e.g., Gezer, Beth-horon,

Gibeon, Aijalon), was spared widespread destruction in Shishak’s cam-
paign resonates with the claim that Rehoboam delivered heavy tribute
to Shishak (1 Kings 14:25-26).83 To be sure, the older view is not with-
out difficulties. It does not explain, for example, why the Chronicler at-
tributes more destruction to Judahite cities than the Deuteronomist
does (2 Chron. 12:2-4).84 In spite of such problems, the older view still
represents the most compelling explanation of the literary (biblical), ar-
chaeological, and epigraphic evidence.

The Impact of the Assyrian Campaigns

Intensive study of biblical texts, Near Eastern inscriptions, and archae-
ology often leads to a better sense of what distinguishes different eras
in Israelite and Judahite history. In some instances (e.g., the united
monarchy), scholars from different disciplines may disagree about the
interpretation of critical evidence. In other instances, historians, epig-
raphers, or archaeologists may recognize the importance of a specific
era before biblical scholars do. An example of the latter is the eighth-
century history of Israel and Judah. In coming to terms with tumultu-
ous developments in the eighth century, biblical studies has some
catching up to do with archaeology and epigraphy. Indeed, the evidence
for growth in the early eighth century renders the evidence for subse-
quent devastation and deportation all the more striking.®°
Surface surveys reveal that the northern kingdom reached its peak in
population by the mid-eighth century.*® Israel’s king during most of
this time, Jeroboam II (793-753 B.c.), seems to have been adept politi-
cally. Ruling while Syria was in decline and Assyria in temporary de-
cline, he succeeded in expanding the frontiers of his state. Jeroboam II
apparently regained territory from Syria and controlled at least part of

83. Aharoni, Land, 323-26.

84. T. Willi thinks that the Chronicler has rewritten the Kings account of Shishak’s
campaign according to the model supplied by Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah (Die
Chronik als Auslegung, FRLANT 106 [Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972],
175):
85. D. Ussishkin’s dating of material remains at Lachish (stratum II) was critical,
because he dated this destruction layer to the time of Sennacherib’s invasion (The Con-
quest of Lachish by Sennacherib [Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1982]). Based on the
pottery assemblages associated with stratum III (late eighth century) and stratum II
(early sixth century), the remains from other sites were restudied and redated. Some of
the destruction layers formerly associated with the Babylonian campaigns have now
been associated with the earlier Assyrian campaigns. For an overview, see Barkay, “Iron
Age,” 328-29.
86. Broshi and Finkelstein, “Population of Palestine,” 48-51.
The Historical Study ofthe Monarchy: Developments and Detours il

Transjordan.*’ Some historians believe that the size of his kingdom ri-
valed that of the earlier Omrides.*®
The eighth century also began as a period of growth for Judah. Ar-
chaeological excavations and surveys disclose a large increase in the
number of towns and fortifications in the Judean hill country.®? Public
works projects included walls, water systems, and fortifications.?° The
most famous of these public works is the Siloam tunnel, which Kings
and Chronicles ascribe in different terms to Hezekiah.?! The discovery
of lmlk jar impressions, forty-four of which stem from the Jewish Quar-
ter alone, testifies to significant royal involvement in the administra-
tion of Jerusalem and Judah.”” To be sure, there is ongoing debate
about the precise purpose of these jars.”? But the two-winged sun and
four-winged scarab are most likely royal emblems. Hence, the existence
and diffusion of these impressions in the late eighth century, continu-
ing to some extent in the early seventh century, bear witness to the in-
fluence of a central administrative or military organization.”4
The impressive increase in the settlement of Judah included Jerusa-
lem itself.?° There is some debate whether Jerusalem’s population in-

87. 2 Kings 14:23-29; Amos 6:12-14; Miller and Hayes, History, 307-9.
88. E.g., S. Horn, “The Divided Monarchy,” in Ancient Israel, ed. Shanks, 127. On Is-
rael’s comparative might during the dynasty of Omri, see Barkay, “Iron Age,” 319-23.
89. Y. Shiloh, “Judah and Jerusalem in the Eighth—Sixth Centuries B.c.£.,” in Recent
Excavations in Israel: Studies in Iron Age Archaeology, ed. S. Gitin and W. G. Dever,
AASOR 49 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1989), 97-103.
90. A. Mazar, “Iron Age Fortresses,” 87-109; Y. Shiloh, “Underground Water Systems
in Eretz-Israel in the Iron Age,” in Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Mem-
ory of D. Glenn Rose, ed. L. G. Perdue, L. E. Toombs, and G. L. Johnson (Atlanta: John
Knox, 1987), 203-45; Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools, 81-106; Barkay, “Iron Age,”
332-34, 369.
91. 2 Kings 20:20; 2 Chron. 32:30. For the inscription commemorating the comple-
tion of this conduit, see KAJ, no. 189.
92. J. Rosenbaum, “Hezekiah’s Reform and Deuteronomistic Tradition,” HTR 72
(1979): 23-44; Ahlstrém, History, 697-701; S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles, OTL (Louisville:
Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 977-83; B. Halpern, “Sybil, or the Two Nations? Archa-
ism, Alienation, and the Elite Redefinition of Traditional Culture in Judah in the 8th—7th
Centuries B.c.£.,” in The Study of the Near East in the Twenty-First Century, ed. J. S. Cooper
and G. M. Schwartz (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 291-338.
93. N. Na’aman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” BASOR 261
(1986): 5-21; N. Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville: Nelson, 1983), 43-44; A. Mazar,
Archaeology, 455-57; Halpern, “Jerusalem,” 19-34.
94. The strongest biblical evidence for such administrative reorganization and con-
solidation of power comes from the Chronicler’s presentation of Judahite kings, includ-
ing Hezekiah (2 Chron. 29-32). Aside from the mention of Hezekiah’s water works in
Jerusalem, there is no indication in Kings of noncultic reforms among eighth-century
Judahite monarchs. See Knoppers, “History and Historiography,” 189-202.
95. A. Mazar, Archaeology, 438-62; Halpern, “Jerusalem,” 19-34; Jamieson-Drake,
Scribes and Schools, 48-73; Ofer, “Judean Hills Survey,” 814-15.
228 The Historical Study ofthe Monarchy: Developments and Detours

crease began in the eighth century or somewhat earlier in the ninth cen-
tury.°° In any case, one of the archaeological discoveries pointing to
Jerusalem’s expansion is the remains of a city wall, seven meters thick,
which Avigad dated to the late eighth century.”’ The discovery of both
this so-called Broad Wall and a variety of other structures and artifacts
gives new credence to the view that the settlement of Jerusalem ex-
panded to the Western Hill in the preexilic period. Kathleen Kenyon’s
excavations suggest that the expansion of Jerusalem continued on its
eastern slopes in the late monarchy.”®
It is against this background of growth, prosperity, and expansion in
the kingdoms of Israel and Judah that one can best understand the dev-
astating impact of the Assyrian western campaigns. One of these, the
invasion of Tiglath-pileser III (734 B.c.), resulted in the annexation of
much of Galilee and Gilead and reduced Israel to the status of a client
kingdom. Costly for both Israel and Judah was the Syro-Ephraimite
War, which left Israel weakened and Judah a vassal kingdom of As-
syria.”? The invasion of Shalmaneser V (723-722 B.c.) ended the king-
dom of Israel altogether and is said to have involved the deportation of
27,290 of its citizens.!
Most damaging for Judah was the invasion of Sennacherib in 701 B.c.,
which profoundly affected its material and social life.!°! Sennacherib’s
campaign inflicted ruin on many of Judah’s cities.!°? On this issue, his as-
sertion that he decimated “46 of his [Hezekiah’s] strong-walled cities, as
well as the small cities in the environs, which were without number,”!”

96. M. Broshi, “The Expansion of Jerusalem in the Reign of Hezekiah and Ma-
nasseh,” [EJ 24 (1974): 21-26; Broshi and Finkelstein, “Population of Palestine,” 51-54;
cf. Barkay, “Iron Age,” 364-68.
97. Isa. 22:9-11; Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem, 45-60; Y. Shiloh, “Jerusalem,” NE-
AEHL, 2:705-8.
98. K. M. Kenyon, Digging up Jerusalem (New York: Praeger, 1974), 129-65.
99. 2 Kings 16; Isa. 7:1-13; 2 Chron. 28. B. Oded discusses the costs involved of re-
ceiving Assyrian aid (damiqtu, favor), even to a loyal protégé (“Ahaz’s Appeal to Tiglath-
Pileser III in the Context of the Assyrian Policy of Expansion,” in Biblical Archaeology To-
day, 1990, 63-71).
100. ANET, 284; 2 Kings 17; 18:9-12. The degree to which Sargon II (721-705) was
also involved in the invasion or deportation need not detain us; see Soggin, History of Is-
rael and Judah, 233-36; B. Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian
Empire (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1979); B. Becking, The Fall of Samaria: An Histor-
ical and Archaeological Study, SHANE 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1992). On the introduction of As-
syrian material culture, see Barkay, “Iron Age,” 351-53.
101. F. J. Gongalves, L’expédition de Sennachérib en Palestine dans la littérature he-
braique ancienne, EBib, n.s., 7 (Paris: Lecoffre, 1986), 102-36; Miller and Hayes, History,
353-63.
102. Halpern, “Jerusalem,” 34-49; Ahlstrém, History, 665-707.
103. D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, OIP 2 (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1924), 32-34.
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 229

comports with the claim of 2 Kings 18:13 that “Sennacherib, king of As-
syria, came up against all of the fortified cities of Judah and captured
them.” The archaeological evidence points both to marked depopulation,
through either devastation or deportation, and to systematic destruction
of many Judahite towns and border fortresses.!° A. Ofer’s recent surface
surveys suggest, for example, that Sennacherib killed or exiled most of
the inhabitants of the Shephelah and about 50-70 percent of the inland
residents.'°> Because of the devastation and depopulation, S. Stohlmann
speaks of a “Judaean exile after 701 B.c.z.”!°6
The history of Judahite expansion is an important topic in its own
right, demonstrating, for example, that one does not have to look sim-
ply to the seventh century for evidence of Judahite state expansion. But,
for the purposes of this discussion, two other points need to be stressed.
First, it is still a commonplace in biblical studies to date biblical refer-
ences to exile to some point after the Babylonian exile. Such a stance
ignores the threat of exile in ancient Near Eastern treaties and pre-
sumes that the demise and exile of the northern kingdom failed to have
a major impact on those who lived in the southern kingdom.!” Even if
one conceded, for the sake of argument, that both of these consider-
ations were irrelevant, one would still be left with explaining the devas-
tation, death, and dislocation caused by Sennacherib’s invasion. One
does not have to wait until the Babylonian exile for an event that trig-
gered tremendous suffering, anguish, and upheaval in Judah. Given the
crisis caused by the Assyrian campaigns, one need not posit the Baby-
lonian exile as the occasion for the rise of radical approaches to the
practice of Israelite religion, such as centralization, monotheism, and
the elimination of all rival cults to the Jerusalem temple. The appear-
ance of these tenets in legal, historical, and prophetic texts is best un-
derstood as a preexilic phenomenon.!°° If such beliefs were simply an
exilic creation, this would not explain why people adopted them. It

104. On depopulation see Aharoni, Archaeology, 253-66; A. Mazar, Archaeology, 544—

47; Halpern, “Jerusalem,” 30-34. Sennacherib’s deportation figure is incredibly high:
200,150 (Luckenbill, Annals, 33). On destruction see Aharoni, Archaeology, 253-69; M.
Cogan and H. Tadmor, // Kings, AB 11 (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 223-51; A. Mazar,
Archaeology, 416-40; Ahlstrém, History, 707-16.
105. Broshi and Finkelstein, “Population of Palestine,” 55-56; Ofer, “Judah.”
106. S. Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B.c.,” in Scripture in Context IT: More
Essays on the Comparative Method, ed. W. W. Hallo, J. C. Moyer, and L. G. Perdue, PTMS
34 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 147-75.
107. M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon,
1972), 129-33.
108. Many scholars have at least recognized this to be so in the case of Deuteronomy;
see the various entries in Das Deuteronomium: Entstehung, Gestalt und Botschaft, ed. N.
Lohfink, BETL 68 (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1985).
230 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

seems more likely that to many people who survived the Babylonian ex-
ile, the events of 586 B.c. confirmed that earlier principles, however rad-
ical they appeared at the time, were on the mark.!°
I have maintained that the impact of the Assyrian campaigns de-
serves more attention from scholars in biblical studies. But this im-
pact should not be construed as simply negative. Although Israel fell
and Judah suffered tremendous devastation, Jerusalem survived the
Assyrian crisis. The endurance of Jerusalem and its Davidic king is a
major cause for rejoicing in the Deuteronomistic presentation of
Hezekiah’s reign, which concentrates on the crisis created by Sen-
nacherib’s foray into Judah.'!° The emphasis on Hezekiah’s continu-
ing trust in YHWH is apparent negatively in the Assyrian taunts
against Hezekiah and his God (e.g., 2 Kings 18:30-35) and positively
in Hezekiah’s prayers, which recall the prayers of David and Solomon
at other critical moments in the history of Jerusalem.'!! Considering
that by 701 B.c. the Jerusalem temple and the Davidic dynasty had al-
ready existed for centuries, it is not surprising that Judahite authors
discerned in the survival of Jerusalem a confirmation of the divine
promises to David and Jerusalem (19:34; 20:6). Following the failure
of other gods to deliver their peoples from the Assyrian onslaught,
YHWH’s deliverance of Jerusalem established a decisive difference
between YHWH and “no-gods,” the “human handiwork of wood and
stone” (19:18). The larger implications of this experience for historical
reconstruction should be clear. One need not look to the Babylonian
exile for a historical context in which theologies of YHWH’s perpetual
commitment to David and Zion might first arise.!!* The preexilic pe-
riod provides other, more compelling possibilities. In short, the eighth
and seventh centuries should be viewed as a pivotal era and, as such,
the matrix in which at least some of the biblical literature took
shape.!!9

109. Obviously, this verdict was not unanimous (Jer. 45:15-19).

110. 2 Kings 18:13-19:37. Some of the remaining materials (e.g., Hezekiah’s illness in
2 Kings 20:1-11) have been edited with a view to the Assyrian invasion. See G. N. Knop-
pers, “There Was None Like Him: Incomparability in the Books of Kings,” CBQ 54 (1992):
418-25.
111. 2 Sam. 7:18-29; 1 Kings 8:22-53; 2 Kings 19:15-19; 20:2-3. See further R. L.
Pratt, “Royal Prayer and the Chronicler’s Program” (diss., Harvard Divinity School,
1987).
112. Contra T. Veijola, Die ewige Dynastie: David und die Entstehung seiner Dynastie
nach der deuteronomistischen Darstellung, Annalae Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae B
193 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1975), 71-90.
113. Some scholars would locate the composition of some wisdom literature in this
era as well; see most recently J. Blenkinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellec-
tual Leadership in Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1995), 32-37.
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 231

Interpreting the Babylonian Exile

If modern scholars have only recently begun to appreciate the impor-
tance of the eighth century for coming to grips with a formative devel-
opment in the history of Judah, they have generally been consistent in
recognizing the importance of the Babylonian exiles of 598/597 and 586
B.C. Following a period of gradual but impressive recovery in the Judean
hills, the Judean desert, and the Negev during the seventh century, the
upheaval caused by the Babylonians created a new crisis in Judah: the
end of the Davidic kingdom, the destruction of the temple, the loss of
livelihood for the priesthood, the razing of Jerusalem, the deportation
of many people, and the death of others.!!4
There has also been surprising agreement about the causes of
Judah’s demise. Historians have portrayed Judah’s leadership in the
last quarter century of its existence as overwhelmed by international
developments, either unable or unwilling to make the difficult choices
that would be best for the long-term prospects of their people. More
specifically, scholars have referred to the geopolitical changes resulting
from the disintegration of the Assyrian Empire, ill-timed foreign policy
shifts, the negative effects of factionalism within Judah, how Judah’s
last kings were vulnerable to the whims of Egypt and Babylon or vic-
tims of failed alliances, and how the Davidic state was “sucked into the
maelstrom of international affairs.”!!>
Where one sees a strong divergence of opinion is over neither the fact
of the exile nor its underlying reasons, but paradoxically over the nature
of the exile itself. Scholars disagree about what the Babylonian destruc-
tions and deportations involved. Three decades ago there were basically
three positions. C. C. Torrey saw the exile as “a small and relatively in-
significant affair” involving a relatively small number of nobles.'!®
Jerusalem recovered quickly and was soon rebuilt. In Torrey’s view, the
accounts of the Babylonian captivity in Kings, Ezra, and Ezekiel are ex-
aggerated, if not historically spurious.
The views of W. F. Albright may be taken as representative of a sec-
ond position. Responding to Torrey, Albright stressed the havoc and

114. Miller and Hayes, History, 377-436; Finkelstein, “Environmental Archaeology,”

58-64; Ahlstrém, History, 733-803.
115. See, respectively, A. Malamat, “The Last Years of the Kingdom of Judah,” in Ar-
chaeology and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Perdue, Toombs, and Johnson, 287; Horn, “Di-
vided Monarchy,” 143-49; B. Oded, “Judah and the Exile” (trans. Y. Gitay), in Israelite and
Judaean History, 472-73; Ahlstrom, History, 7838-89; Soggin, History of Israel and Judah,
264; Miller and Hayes, History, 377.
116. C.C. Torrey, Ezra Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1910; reprinted,
New York: Ktav, 1970), 285; idem, The Chronicler's History of Israel (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1954).
252 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

devastation caused by the Babylonians. Based on the archaeological ev-

idence available to him, Albright depicted Jerusalem and Judah becom-
ing a kind of territorial tabula rasa.'!7 The despoliation, carnage, and
banishment were so severe that the traditional culture of Judah ceased
to exist, at least within the land. Albright recognized, however, that a
relatively small number of people survived the traumatic events of the
early sixth century.
The views of P. R. Ackroyd may be taken as representative of a third
position.!!8 Like Albright, Ackroyd stressed the gravity of the disaster.
But Ackroyd also pointed to issues involving the use of terminology,
such as “exile” and “restoration,” citing evidence that not all Judahites
were exiled and that some sacrifices continued at the temple altar (e.g.,
Jer. 41:4-5). More so than Albright, Ackroyd took an interest in those
who remained in the land following the assassination of Gedaliah
(2 Kings 25:22-26).
In recent years more radical views of the exile have appeared, draw-
ing upon older theories. Although he agrees with Albright on virtually
nothing else, Thompson has (unknowingly?) refashioned Albright’s
theory. Whereas Albright traced continuity between the exilic commu-
nity and its former existence in Judah, Thompson avers that the dislo-
cation and displacement caused by the Babylonian campaigns were so
pervasive that the national ethnicity of Judah, if this region ever
achieved such a thing, ceased to exist either in the land or among the
exiles.!!? For Thompson, the notion of a postexilic restoration is a pious
fiction designed to buttress immigrant claims to a new territory.
The concern of Torrey and Ackroyd to reconstruct the history of the
remaining community in the land has been given a radical new twist by
R. P. Carroll, who insists that “there was no serious change in social
conditions during the sixth century.”!?° Those biblical scholars who
embrace Albright’s position have allegedly adopted the biblical view of
the Babylonian invasions, deeming those who remained in the land as
insignificant and championing the elite who were cast out. In Carroll’s
view, the books of Leviticus, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Chroni-
cles, Ezra, and Nehemiah together constitute a “deportation literature,”
a production of the postexilic community designed to defend its exclu-
sivistic policies.'*! Carroll’s judgments are, therefore, both similar to

117. W. F. Albright, The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra (New York: Harper,
1963), 81-86, 110-11; idem, Archaeology, 140-42.
118. P. R. Ackroyd, Israel under Babylon and Persia, New Clarendon Bible (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1970), 1-25.
119. Thompson, Early History, 334, 415.
120. R. P. Carroll, “The Myth of the Empty Land,” Semeia 59 (1992): 79.
121. Ibid., 87-88. Carroll is, in fact, inclined to think that “much—in some sense per-
haps all—of the literature of the Hebrew Bible must be regarded as the documentation of
The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours 233

and different from those of Thompson. Both view the relevant biblical
literature as postexilic ideological constructs justifying the usurpation
of territory from the indigenous population. But whereas Thompson
posits complete discontinuity, Carroll, like Torrey, assumes a funda-
mental continuity between the preexilic, exilic, and postexilic commu-
nities in Judah.
From this brief synopsis of major scholarly positions, it is apparent
that historians hold strikingly different assumptions about the Babylo-
nian captivity. Recent discussions of the material remains are, how-
ever, of some help in evaluating the tenability of these theories. Archae-
ologists no longer think that the damage caused by the Babylonian
invasions was as pervasive as Albright believed. The early-sixth-century
destructions seem to have affected only Jerusalem and limited sur-
roundings. Occupation gaps exist at Lachish, Tell Beit Mirsim, and Tel
Batash, but there is continuity of occupation at Gibeon, Mizpah, and
Bethel.!*? Iron Age culture survives in Transjordan, the coastal strip,
the northern regions, and the Negev.!*? The territory of Benjamin was
largely spared destruction.!*+ Although Jerusalem seems to have suf-
fered tremendous damage, even here the destruction was not total.
Barkay’s excavations in the Hinnom Valley have yielded some burial ar-
tifacts from the sixth century, perhaps as late as 500 .c.!7° In summary,
there is evidence for the destructive effect of the Babylonian invasions
in Jerusalem and its surroundings and for continuity of occupation in
a number of other areas. Any historical reconstruction should do jus-
tice to both.
What of the biblical evidence? Is it as monolithic as some suppose?
It is certainly true that almost all of the relevant biblical books, with the
notable exception of Lamentations, follow a story line that proceeds
from the Babylonian destructions to the life of the exilic community in
Babylon. As a result, we know relatively little of the community that re-
mained behind after 582 B.c. But it does not follow from all of this that
the biblical books unilaterally favor the returnees. The account in

their [the returnees’] claims to the land and as a reflection of their ideology” (p. 85). See
also his commentary, Jeremiah, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox, 1986), 55-81.
122. The older overview by E. Stern is still useful: “Israel at the Close of the Monar-
chy: An Archaeological Survey,” BA 38 (1975): 26-54.
123. The continuity has led Barkay to argue that not 586 B.c. but 530-520 B.c. marks
the end of “Israelite” material culture, because only at this time does one see the emer-
gence of some features of Achaemenid material culture (“The Redefining of Archaeolog-
ical Periods: Does the Date 588/586 B.c.z. Indeed Mark the End of Iron Age Culture?” in
Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990, 106-12).
124. A. Mazar, Archaeology, 548-49.
125. G. Barkay, Ketef Hinnom: A Treasure Facing Jerusalem's Walls (Jerusalem: Israel
Museum, 1986).
234 The Historical Study of the Monarchy: Developments and Detours

2 Kings 24-25, for example, details the Babylonian exile of 598/597 B.c.,
the destruction associated with the Babylonian exile of 586, and the
evacuation to Egypt (582), ending with the amnesty given to Jehoiachin
in exile. Important theological motifs inform this presentation, for ex-
ample, the exodus back to Egypt (25:22-26).!7° Such an emphasis on di-
vine judgment upon all of Jerusalem and Judah can hardly be construed
as a mark of favor on the returnees. There is simply no mention of a re-
turn in Kings.!?’
Nor do the various biblical presentations speak with one voice. The
Chronicler draws on the Deuteronomistic presentation but offers his
own distinctive presentation of Judah’s demise. In S. Japhet’s view,
Chronicles mentions only one, apparently partial, exile (586 B.c.) and
lacks any discussion of major devastation to Judah (2 Chron. 36:17-
20).!28 Chronicles ends optimistically with the decree of Cyrus autho-
rizing a return to the land and the rebuilding of the temple.'*”? Whether
the Chronicler also posits uninterrupted settlement in the land, as
Japhet contends, is uncertain.!3° In my judgment, the Chronicler tries
to strike a balance between the plight of those left in the land and the
plight of those sent into exile. Whatever the case, Chronicles associates
less disarray with the Babylonian exile(s) than does Kings.
Cursory study of Kings and Chronicles suggests that each of the
major biblical writings dealing with exile needs to be studied on its own
terms. When due attention is given to distinctive contexts and points of
view, a more complex picture emerges. Such complication bears on the
larger subject of Judahite history in the early sixth century. Avoiding
grand generalizations about this era seems the better part of wisdom.
Given the evidence provided by Lamentations concerning the piety of
those who survived the Babylonian onslaught, stereotypes about pure
(i.e., the exiles) and impure (i.e., the survivors in Judah) miss the mark.
Moreover, it is quite unlikely that either the community left in Judah or

126. R. E. Friedman, “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr! and Dtr’,” in Traditions in Transfor-
mation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith: Essays Presented to Frank Moore Cross, Jr., ed. B.
Halpern and J. Levenson (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1981), 167-92; N. Na’aman,
“The Deuteronomist and Voluntary Servitude to Foreign Powers,” JSOT 65 (1995): 37-53.
127. That the book ends enigmatically has generated a variety of explanations. See
the overview of Howard, Introduction, 169-229.
128. S. Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought,
BEATAJ 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1989), 364-73.
129. My reference is to the end of Chronicles in its present form. Some scholars dis-
pute that 2 Chron. 36:23 was the original conclusion to the Chronicler’s work. See, e.g.,
W. Rudolph, Chronikbiicher, HAT 21 (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1955), 338; F. M. Cross, “A Recon-
struction of the Judean Restoration,” JBL 94 (1974): 4-18; H. G. M. Williamson, / and 2
Chronicles, NCB (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 412-19.
130. Japhet, Ideology, 373.
The Historical Study ofthe Monarchy: Developments and Detours Zo2

the community in exile stood still. There was undoubtedly development

in both.!?! Precisely by recognizing both continuity and change in the
communities of Judah and Babylon, one can begin to appreciate the
tensions one finds in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, when the two
communities came into contact once again.

Conclusions
In many respects, recent historical studies of the monarchy mirror
larger trends in the field of Old Testament studies. The last three de-
cades have seen developments in traditional disciplines as well as the
application of new, largely social scientific, disciplines. It would be mis-
leading to suggest that this increasing diversity is simply a great step
forward. The situation is more complex. If in earlier histories of the
monarchy there was the danger of relying exclusively on one kind of
methodology or one kind of evidence, there is now a danger of compart-
mentalization and fragmentation. Scholars trained in different human-
istic and social scientific disciplines focus on certain kinds of evidence
to the exclusion of others. More so than ever, there is a need for integra-
tion. Given the new methods and the different kinds of material and lit-
erary evidence, it would be a shame not to employ all available means
to illumine the history of ancient Israel and Judah.

131. J. Janssen, Juda in der Exilszeit, FRLANT 69 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1956), 39-54; Ackroyd, Israel, 34-161; Oded, “Judah and the Exile,” in [sraelite
and Judaean History, ed. Miller and Hayes, 476-80; R. W. Klein, Israel in Exile, OBT (Phil-
adelphia: Fortress, 1979), 1-22.
Exile and After: Historical Study

H. G. M. Williamson

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the postexilic pe-
riod of Israelite history and literature was relatively neglected. In the
period here under review, however, this situation has been radically
transformed so that now, as will shortly appear, this is one of the liveli-
est fields in the whole discipline of Old Testament study.! (For this rea-
son, the bulk of the following survey concentrates on this period,
though the exile receives some limited attention in a later section.) Be-
fore we consider the main historical topics that have received particular
attention, it is worth noting some of the major factors that have led to
this transformation and mentioning some of the principal publications
(frequently collaborative) to which it has given rise.

Factors Leading to Renewal of Interest

First, at the level of the history of religion, with its inevitable influence
on theology, there has been a marked reaction against the earlier view
(a relic of nineteenth-century scholarship) that the postexilic period
witnessed a sharp decline from the religious and ethical heights of the
preexilic prophets into a priestly, ritually dominated legalism. While
many factors have contributed to this reevaluation, its significance for

1. It is noteworthy, for instance, that the first two issues of a new journal devoted to
surveying the current state of biblical research both contain articles of direct relevance
to this field; see T. C. Eskenazi, “Current Perspectives on Ezra-Nehemiah and the Persian
Period,” CR:BS 1 (1993): 59-86; and E. M. Meyers, “Second Temple Studies in the Light
of Recent Archaeology: Part 1: The Persian and Hellenistic Periods,” CR:BS 2 (1994): 25—
42. Note too J. W. Kleinig, “Recent Research in Chronicles,” CR:BS 2 (1994): 43-76.

236
Exile and After: Historical Study Zo,

our purposes is that scholars have become more aware of the need to
study this period in its own right, including its history.
Second, there has been a noteworthy tendency to take this period
more seriously as the time when the Hebrew Scriptures were brought
close to their definitive form. In some extreme cases this involves set-
ting the very composition of much of the literature at this late date.
Even where this is not the case, newer critical methods that focus on the
value of the final form of the text rather than exclusively on what may
be hypothetically reconstructed of its “original” form mean that far
more attention than used to be the case is paid to the latest elements in
the literature and to the shape that the final editors have given both to
the individual books and to the more extensive collections that they
make up. The desire to understand better the social setting of this activ-
ity has undoubtedly been a stimulus to historical study.
Third, the archaeological profile of this period, which, like its literary
counterpart, had previously lain in the shadows, has achieved a sharper
focus. Because of the intrusive nature of later Hellenistic building tech-
niques on the one hand and the failure always to distinguish Iron Age
II (preexilic) from Iron Age II (Persian period) levels on the other, there
was a tendency for the material culture of the period to be squeezed out
of the interpretation of archaeological remains generally, but this has
now been largely corrected. At the same time, some few but significant
epigraphic discoveries have again focused attention on the need for
closer attention to their wider archaeological context.
Fourth, the Achaemenid period has come into greater prominence in
the study of the history of the ancient Near East in general as study of
Persian remains has allowed a more sympathetic appreciation of their
“side of the story,” which had previously been seen through the eyes of
the Greek historians alone. As part of this wider interest, the history of
Judah, which is better documented than that of many other regions,
has attracted the interest of scholars with other than specifically bibli-
cal interests.
Finally, the impact of the social scientific approach to history in
general has been brought to bear on this period with considerable
vigor in recent years in the hope that it may shed fresh light on largely
familiar data that have been repeatedly worked over in the past. Tra-
ditional historical methods have been thought largely to have reached
an impasse: the same problems and range of possible solutions tend to
be presented in the textbooks without any sense that real progress in
understanding is being achieved and with an occasionally expressed
frustration that, while more and more time is spent discussing such
minutiae as the order of the high priests, we know practically nothing
about the “real stuff” of history such as the economic and social con-
238 Exile and After: Historical Study

ditions that determined the lives of the bulk of the population.* We

have allowed our agenda to be set by the highly selective nature of the
concerns of the biblical authors rather than by those of professional
historians.

Principal Publications on This Period

These trends in research can all be illustrated by referring to some of
the more significant publications in recent years.? The Cambridge His-
tory series, for instance, has no less than three separate projects that are
all relevant to our topic. Most obvious, of course, is the first volume of
The Cambridge History of Judaism, which is largely devoted to the Per-
sian period, covering the history, archaeology, religion, and literature
of Judaism both in Judah and in the Diaspora.* From the Persian side,
The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 2, The Median and Achaemenian Pe-
riods,> gives a massive survey of the Persian Empire as a whole, much
of it directly relevant to Jewish affairs, while three separate volumes of
the second edition of The Cambridge Ancient History each has a chapter
or section covering the history of Judah in Persian times, as well as in-
cluding other relevant background information.®

2. See, for instance, K. W. Whitelam, “Recreating the History of Israel,” JSOT 35

(1986): 45-70.
3. Note that no evaluation is implied by the order in which they are listed here. Sev-
eral recent single-authored histories of the Achaemenid Empire now replace the rather
outdated work of A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1948), namely, J. M. Cook, The Persian Empire (London: Dent; New York:
Schocken, 1983); R. N. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (Munich: Beck, 1984); M. A.
Dandamaey, A Political History ofthe Achaemenid Empire, trans. W. J. Vogelsang (Leiden:
Brill, 1989); A. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 sc, 2 vols. (London and New
York: Routledge, 1995), 2:647-701; P. Briant, Histoire de l'empire perse: De Cyrus @ Alex-
andre (Paris: Fayard, 1996).
4. Ed. W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984). While I have expressed serious misgivings about the concept that lies behind this
project as a whole and about the manner in which it has been carried out, many of the
individual contributions are of great value; cf. my review, VT 35 (1985): 231-38.
5. Ed. I. Gershevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
6. I. Epheal, “Syria-Palestine under Achaemenid Rule,” CAH, vol. 4, Persia, Greece,
and the Western Mediterranean, c. 525 to 479 B.c., ed. J. Boardman et al., 2d ed. (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 139-64; H. Tadmor, “Judah,” CAH, vol. 6, The
Fourth Century z.c., ed. D. M. Lewis et al., 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 261-96. Tadmor explains the difference between the two contributions as
follows: “That chapter looked at Judah as a part of the Achaemenid empire; here we try
to consider its internal development during the period” (p. 261); see also T. C. Mitchell,
“The Babylonian Exile and the Restoration of the Jews in Palestine (586-c. 500 B.c.),”
CAH, vol. 3.2, The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East,
from the Eighth to Sixth Centuries p.c., ed. J. Boardman et al., 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991), 410-60.
Exile and After: Historical Study 239

Another collaborative project was the Achaemenid History Work-

shop, which met between 1981 and 1990 and whose deliberations have
now been published in eight volumes.’ While its focus was broad, some
of the specific topics treated directly affect the study of Persian period
Judah and are suggestive from a comparative point of view of the Per-
sian treatment of subject peoples in general.
Closer to the center of our topic is the Paris-based Association pour
la recherche sur la Syrie-Palestine a ]’époque perse, an international as-
sociation with a new journal, Transeuphraténe (first published in 1989),
which publishes not only the conference proceedings of the association
but also other research articles and bibliographical surveys. “Trans-
Euphrates” was the name of the Persian satrapy that included Judah,’
so that this is clearly of great relevance to our topic. Some of the meth-
ods and approaches of the association have been set out in J. Elayi and
J. Sapin, Nouveaux regards sur la Transeuphraténe.? They are extremely
critical both of the “men and movements” approach to history and to
the heavily textually based method that characterizes it, arguing in-
stead for the value of an interdisciplinary approach that combines the
expertise of a wide range of specialties. Biblical scholars will find that
the concerns that have usually dominated their work are put firmly in
their place! Despite this, many of the articles that have appeared in the
new journal deal with familiar issues, and the importance of seeing the
history of Judah within the context of its position alongside its neigh-
boring provinces within the Persian Empire (for which the evidence
has indeed frequently to be culled from a range of diverse and scattered
sources) is made clear.
A last cooperative venture deserving mention is the ongoing work of
the Society of Biblical Literature’s Sociology of the Second Temple
Consultation, part of whose deliberations has been published.!° Read-
ers will find here a stimulating mixture of new data, fresh hypotheses,
and critical evaluation, with “sociology” interpreted broadly, the whole
thus reflecting the consciously exploratory nature of this work in its
early stages.

7. Achaemenid History I-VIII, ed. H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg et al., 8 vols. (Leiden: Neder-

lands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1987-94).
8. See M. Heltzer, “A Recently Published Babylonian Tablet and the Province of Judah
after 516 B.c.E.,” Trans 5 (1992): 57-61, with references to the principal earlier literature;
but note especially in addition A. F. Rainey, “The Satrapy ‘beyond the River,” AJBA 1
(1969): 51-78.
9. Turnhout: Brepols, 1991.
10. Second Temple Studies, vol. 1, Persian Period, ed. P. R. Davies, JSOTSup 117 (Shef-
field: JSOT Press, 1991); see too the publication of a separate SBL symposium, Second
Temple Studies, vol. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period, ed. T. C. Eskenazi and
K. H. Richards, JSOTSup 175 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994).
240 Exile and After: Historical Study

Finally, the work of a few individual scholars deserves mention, for

alongside the continuing enterprise of research, which comes to expres-
sion in articles, monographs, commentaries, and reference works,
there have been some noteworthy attempts at overall synthesis. E.
Stern’s updated and translated dissertation on the archaeology of the
period is widely recognized as a magisterial contribution, correcting
many of the misconceptions of earlier writers, and establishing a firm
framework into which newer discoveries can be fitted.!! L. L. Grabbe
has written an extremely valuable textbook on the history of the Jews in
the second temple period that sets out and evaluates the major primary
sources of whatever sort, discusses particular topics, and then presents
a synthesis of the whole.!? Data and interpretation are thus clearly dis-
tinguished (something that not all textbooks achieve), so that the work
should be of service for students of whatever critical persuasion. Last,
the second volume of R. Albertz’s history of Israelite religion is devoted
to the exilic and postexilic periods.!* Taking full account of more recent
sociological approaches to this subject, it marks a major advance on its
predecessors while remaining very much the interpretation of an indi-
vidual scholar.

Approach and Method

As this survey indicates, there is considerable uncertainty at the present
time concerning what a historian of the exilic and Persian periods of
Judah should be attempting to do. Some of the more recent approaches
have bluntly rejected traditional concerns, which concentrate on a tex-
tually based reconstruction of the course of political events, focused on
prominent people and movements of thought, with external evidence
from archaeology and other sources used only for background, illustra-
tion, and correction. They have urged instead that more attention

11. The Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period 538-332 B.c.
(Warminster: Aris & Phillips; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1982); see too H.
Weippert, Paldstina in vorhellenistischer Zeit (Munich: Beck, 1988), 682-718.
12. Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, 2 vols. (London: SCM; Minneapolis: Fortress,
1992). The Persian period is treated in 1:27-145. Other important textbooks include J. M.
Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (London: SCM; Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1986); and G. W. Ahlstrém, The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeo-
lithic Period to Alexander's Conquest, with a contribution by G. O. Rollefson, ed. D. Edel-
man, JSOTSup 146 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). Note too E. M. Yamauchi, Persia and
the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990); and J. L. Berquist, Judaism in Persia’s Shadow: A
Social and Historical Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).
13. A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, vol. 2, From the Exile to
the Maccabees, trans. J. Bowden, OTL (London: SCM; Louisville: Westminster/John
Knox, 1994; German original, 1992).
Exile and After: Historical Study 241

should be paid to such issues as the economic base and organization of

the province's life, the social structure of the population and its pattern
of settlement, and the impact of wider imperial concerns on local af-
fairs. There is a tendency, therefore, to read the texts with suspicion, be-
lieving that they hide these wider, and ultimately more significant, con-
cerns beneath a veneer created by the desire to present the course of
events within a familiar and locally acceptable pattern.
This dichotomy is unfortunate. First, since we are dealing with a pe-
riod that by the standards of modern historical writing is poorly served
with source material of any kind, it is churlish to ignore or undervalue
any potential source of information. Second, it is methodologically
mistaken to drive a wedge between individuals and society at large. On
the one hand, particular individuals may serve as a catalyst for signifi-
cant change in any sphere, while on the other hand those individuals
are more often than not the product of their society; neither, therefore,
can be satisfactorily understood without the other. Third, while one
must recognize that there are more varieties of history than the political
(which may include the religious), the latter remains a legitimate con-
cern of the historian, for whom chronology and the critical evaluation
of written sources remains the best hope of achieving progress. If this
means careful examination of lists of high priests, for instance, then
that task should not be shunned. Equally, however, one should ac-
knowledge that that type of research inevitably allows its agenda to be
set by the vagaries of what happens to have been preserved for us. It
therefore remains a healthy exercise to ask questions that are not ex-
plicitly set by the written sources and to test whether models and hy-
potheses based on sometimes quite other societies and scenarios may
not cast fresh light on what still remains opaque in familiar texts. In
other words, there seems to be no room for the luxury of an ideological
rejection of any single approach. What is needed is a sober eclecticism,
which necessarily involves the historian in a measure of reliance on the
work of specialists in related disciplines. As much recent work has
shown, the historical enterprise in this as in many other periods cannot
but be a collaborative venture. That this may lead to unsettling chal-
lenges from either party is only to be expected."
At this point, therefore, and especially for those who are primarily
students of the Bible, it is imperative to come to terms with the nature
of the written source material at our disposal. For the exilic period,
there is no narrative text of a historical nature whatever. Attention here

14. For an example that seeks to reflect on such challenges, see K. D. Tollefson and
H. G. M. Williamson, “Nehemiah as Cultural Revitalization: An Anthropological Perspec-
tive,” JSOT 56 (1992): 41-68.
242 Exile and After: Historical Study

must naturally focus, therefore, on the postexilic period as recorded in

the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Although other books,'° and indeed
material from outside the Bible altogether, furnish some scraps of in-
formation, no other source even begins to provide a consecutive narra-
tive of events in Judah of the Persian period in the manner of Ezra and
Nehemiah.
Closer examination soon shows, however, that even these primary
sources are less straightforward in this regard than might at first appear.
These two books cover a period of well over one hundred years'® (even
assuming an early date for Ezra), and yet the events that they describe
relate to only a handful of years, scattered unevenly throughout the pe-
riod. As I have sought to emphasize more than once elsewhere,!’ these
few isolated events cannot be associated in the normal cause-and-effect
continuum that is of the essence of historical writing. Quite legitimately
from their point of view, the authors of this material see continuity in
terms of God’s direction of the course of the postexilic restoration, so
that, for instance, “After these things” can serve to bridge a gap of more
than fifty years at Ezra 7:1. In terms of the divine economy, that is fine:
Ezra’s mission was the next significant step in God’s plan. To say the
least, however, it leaves an awkward gap for anyone seeking to give a his-
torical account of the period, whether political, social, economic, or
other. If we do not have material with which to fill in this or other such
gaps, then it is better to admit the fact and concede that we are simply
not in a position to write a history of this period in any normal sense. As
we Shall see, we can make some progress toward that goal, but it is better
to be honest about the limitations of what is available to us as historians
and not to present an account as though it were a seamless narrative. A
broader and more general account is perhaps more realistic and attain-
able, and it leaves the theologian and student of literature free to analyze
these books more explicitly on their own terms.
The other, and more encouraging, side of this particular coin is that
we have in these books what in my opinion are firsthand accounts of

15. Several biblical books were certainly written during this period, such as Isaiah
56-66, Joel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and Chronicles (probably also Ruth and Jonah),
whereas many, if not most, of the remainder would have been edited and brought close
to their final form at this time. There is thus much potential here for indirect historical
information, particularly about religious and social beliefs and customs; cf. Berquist, Ju-
daism in Persia's Shadow. To exploit this material requires a great deal of prior critical
analysis, however, and even then much remains inevitably hypothetical. Constraints of
space unfortunately preclude attention to these important matters here.
16. Two hundred, in fact, if the Jaddua of Neh. 12:11 is correctly identified as the high
priest at the time of Alexander the Great.
17. See H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, WBC (Waco: Word, 1985), xlviii-xlix et
passim; idem, Ezra and Nehemiah, OT Guides (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 79-81.
Exile and After: Historical Study 243

the greatest historical value for the few events that they do describe. If
this is correct, then two important consequences follow. First, they give
us certain fixed points to which any broader account must do full jus-
tice. Second, and equally important, they provide a minimum of secure
data by which to test models and hypotheses that are applied to this pe-
riod of history; it would not be adequate to appeal to what we do not
know as a justification for giving historical speculation free reign. This
opinion has remained controversial throughout the period under re-
view, however, and so deserves fuller discussion. Since the material re-
lating to Ezra and Nehemiah themselves is treated later on, I here con-
centrate on some of the sources apparently included in Ezra 1-6.
At the start of our period, the consensus of opinion (insofar as there
was one) favored the authenticity of the various Aramaic letters in Ezra
4-6'8 and the inventory of returned temple vessels in Ezra 1:9-11. The
list of those who returned from Babylon in Ezra 2 was also agreed to be
archival, though its date and unity have always been debated. Greatest
uncertainty surrounded the authenticity of the Hebrew form of the
edict of Cyrus in Ezra 1:2-4, earlier general skepticism having been only
partly deflected by E. Bickerman.!”
Three new or strengthened arguments have been added to bolster
this consensus about the Aramaic letters. First, during the 1970s a num-
ber of detailed studies of the form and style of Aramaic letters that have
been preserved from elsewhere in the Persian Empire were under-

18. This followed especially the earlier studies of E. Meyer, Die Entstehung des Juden-
tums: Eine historische Untersuchung (Halle: Niemeyer, 1896); H. H. Schaeder, Esra der
Schreiber, BHT 5 (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1930); and R. de Vaux, “Les décrets de Cyrus et de Da-
rius sur la reconstruction du temple,” RB 46 (1937): 29-57. The last-named work is avail-
able in English as, “The Decrees of Cyrus and Darius on the Rebuilding of the Temple,”
in The Bible and the Ancient Near East, trans. D. McHugh (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1971; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 63-96.
19. E. Bickerman, “The Edict of Cyrus in Ezra 1,” in Studies in Jewish and Christian
History, AGJU 9.1 (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 72-108. The important study of A. Kuhrt, “The
Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy,” JSOT 25 (1983): 83-97, should be
noted at this point. (See too P.-R. Berger, “Der Kyros-Zylinder mit dem Zusatzfragment
BIN II Nr. 32 und die akkadischen Personennamen im Danielbuch,” ZA 64 [1975]: 192-
234.) In contrast with some exaggerated claims for the extent to which the Cyrus Cylinder
authenticates the decrees of Cyrus and Darius in Ezra, she shows that it is composed in
accordance with traditional Mesopotamian royal building texts, that it relates exclusively
to the fortunes of Babylon and—by extension—to the Babylonian pantheon, and that it
does not speak of the restoration of destroyed cult centers (the translation in ANET, 316,
is misleading on this point). There is thus no reference to a general return of displaced
people, so that the parallel with the biblical text, though valuable as far as it goes, is not
as close as has sometimes been claimed, nor are Cyrus’s policies as unprecedented as is
often supposed. While the cylinder is thus compatible with a positive evaluation of the
biblical evidence, the latter should be determined on other, primarily internal, grounds
in the first instance.
244 Exile and After: Historical Study

taken.2° With one qualification to be noted below, the forms of letters

in Ezra conform well to these conventions, and L. V. Hensley has made
the important point that Greek letter-writing practices were quite dif-
ferent, making the suggestion of later fabrication less likely.!
Second, I have myself tried to demonstrate in a detailed study that a
number of peculiar features in these chapters can be most naturally ex-
plained on the assumption that a later editor was working on the basis
of the actual letters themselves.’* For instance, some of the information
and awkward transitions in the text (e.g., at 4:6-11; 6:3-6) give evidence
of the editor working into his account material from the subscript, sum-
mary, and address as well as from the body itself of the letters, implying
that he had a copy of the document itself to hand. Again, much of the
surrounding narrative (apart from what could be deduced from such
obvious alternative sources as Haggai and Zech. 1-8) is written up di-
rectly out of the wording of the letters themselves, suggesting that they
were indeed his primary source rather than a literary embellishment to
an alternative account, whether fictitious or real. Finally, it is notewor-
thy that the course of the narrative is almost wholly determined by what
is included in these documents and so does not include material that we
might otherwise have expected him to describe, such as the return jour-
ney from Babylon or the course of the rebuilding of the second tem-
ple.?? This gives the impression of a historian working responsibly with
his sources and not fabricating an account that outstripped the evi-
dence at his disposal.

20. See P. S. Alexander, “Remarks on Aramaic Epistolography in the Persian Period,”

JSS 23 (1978): 155-70; J. D. Whitehead, “Some Distinctive Features of the Language of
the Aramaic Arsames Correspondence,” JNES 37 (1978): 119-40; P.-E. Dion, “Les types
épistolaires hébréo-araméens jusqu’au temps de Bar-Kokhbah,” RB 96 (1979): 544-79;
J. A. Fitzmyer, “Aramaic Epistolography,” in A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Es-
says, SBLMS 25 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1979), 183-204. A new edition of the
relevant texts has now appeared to supersede earlier collections: B. Porten and A.
Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, vol. 1, Letters (Jerusalem:
Hebrew University Department of the History of the Jewish People, 1986). There is also
a handy collection available in J. M. Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters,
SBLWAW 4 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994).
21. Hensley, “The Official Persian Documents in the Book of Ezra” (diss., University
of Liverpool, 1977). ;
22. “The Composition of Ezra i-vi,” JTS, n.s., 34 (1983): 1-30; see also Williamson,
Ezra, Nehemiah, ad loc. General support, but including much criticism of detail, comes
from B. Halpern, “A Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1-6: Achronological Narrative
and Dual Chronology in Israelite Historiography,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpret-
ers, ed. W. H. Propp, B. Halpern, and D. N. Freedman (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1990), 81-142.
23. This may explain what R. P. Carroll finds to be a suspicious gap in our knowledge;
cf. “So What Do We Know about the Temple? The Temple in the Prophets,” in Second
Temple Studies, 2:34-51.
Exile and After: Historical Study 245

Third, by means of a comprehensive survey, P. Frei has reinforced

the older argument that often official Achaemenid edicts responded to
requests from local officials and used the same technical language of
the request in framing their response.** The use of “Jewish” phraseol-
ogy in some of these documents is therefore no necessary objection to
their authenticity.*>
While most commentators on the biblical books have remained with
the earlier consensus on the basis of such arguments, not all have been
persuaded. Alongside some who in general terms simply cannot bring
themselves to accept that anything is as it seems to be, a few have tried
to argue that confidence in the authenticity of these documents is un-
warranted. Grabbe, for instance, reports having had his mind changed
on this matter by Gunneweg’s commentary.”° His chief complaint is
that defenders of authenticity have generally contented themselves with
replying to objections (i.e., the third argument mentioned above),
which is a circular and unfalsifiable position. What is needed, he urges,
is a fresh examination from first principles that does not start out with
a positive presupposition. Furthermore, even if one accepts that the
documents are basically authentic, they may have been reworked by
Jewish scribes,*’ and since even small changes can completely alter the
tone and tenor of a text, this means that they are of little historical value.
In reply, while one must concede that proof of the sort that Grabbe
and others seem to require is unattainable (but then so too is the re-
verse), he has not, perhaps, taken adequately into account (and cer-
tainly has not attempted to answer) the various points made above that
positively favor the view that an editor was working directly from orig-
inal documents. The answering of objections to this view is not, of
course, intended as a positive argument, as Grabbe rightly insists, but
it retains its importance in showing that apparently Jewish elements
are not an insuperable problem against a position that is initially sup-

24. P. Frei, “Zentralgewalt und Lokalsautonomie im Achaémenidenreich,” in P. Frei

and K. Koch, Reichsidee und Reichsorganisation im Perserreich, OBO 55 (Freiburg: Uni-
versitatsverlag; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984), 8-43. Frei has repeated his
argument, but also attracted several critical responses, in the first issue of the new journal
Zeitschrift fiir Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte (1995).
25. Ihave attempted elsewhere to show in addition that some aspects of these letters
to which exception has been taken on such grounds can be seen to fit well with what we
know of Achaemenid policy generally from the Elamite texts from Persepolis; see “Ezra
and Nehemiah in the Light of the Texts from Persepolis,” BBR 1 (1991): 41-61.
26. L. L. Grabbe, “Reconstructing History from the Book of Ezra,” in Second Temple
Studies, 1:98-106; cf. idem, Judaism, 30-36; A. H. J. Gunneweg, Esra, KAT 19.1 (Giiters-
loh: Mohn, 1985).
27. Grabbe cites J. Blenkinsopp, Ezra—Nehemiah, OTL (London: SCM; Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1988), 119-23, 126-27, as a representative of this mediating position.
246 Exile and After: Historical Study

ported on independent and positive grounds. In my opinion, therefore,

the argument in favor of the authenticity of these documents remains
overwhelmingly more probable.

The Constitutional Status of Judah

I turn next to what is, perhaps, the most fundamental historical topic
confronting the student of the postexilic period: the constitutional sta-
tus of the province of Judah and of the Jewish community within it.
During the period under review, these two issues have become sepa-
rated because of the suggestion that within the political province there
was a separate entity that has come to be known as the Biirger-Tempel-
Gemeinde, or “Citizen-Temple Community.”
Throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century, under-
standing of the status of Judah within the Persian period was colored by
an influential essay by A. Alt, in which he had argued that until Ne-
hemiah’s time Judah had been administered as part of the province of
Samaria.*® Only with Nehemiah was it constituted as a separate prov-
ince, and it was this that provoked so much opposition from Sanballat
and his allies. Already in 1971 M. Smith had written a vigorous refuta-
tion of this view, but several authors since have continued to defend it.?
During the past twenty years, new epigraphical data have come to
light that have caused the majority of scholars to reconsider some of the
literary evidence that Alt had sought to explain away and so to reject his
view. Inevitably, the arguments are too detailed and complex to be pre-
sented here in full,*° but the principal points may be listed. (1) A hoard
of bullae and seals published by Avigad in 1976 most probably refers to
a governor of the province of Yehud in the late sixth century B.c. (i.e.,

28. A. Alt, “Die Rolle Samarias bei der Entstehung des Judentums,” in Festschrift
Otto Procksch zum 60. Geburtstag (Leipzig: Deichert and Hinrichs, 1934), 5-28; re-
printed in idem, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 2 (Munich: Beck,
1953), 316-37.
29. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 193-201; cf. esp. E. Stern, “Seal-Impressions in
the Achaemenid Style in the Province of Judah,” BASOR 202 (1971): 6-16; idem, Material
Culture, 209-13, modified in “The Persian Empire and the Political and Social History of
Palestine in the Persian Period,” CHJ, 1:70-87 (esp. 72 and 82-83); F. C. Fensham, “Mé-
dina in Ezra and Nehemiah,” VT 25 (1975): 795-97; S. E. McEvenue, “The Political Struc-
ture in Judah from Cyrus to Nehemiah,” CBQ 43 (1981): 353-64.
30. See, e.g., H. G. M. Williamson, “The Governors of Judah under the Persians,” Tyn-
Bul 39 (1988): 59-82; A. Lemaire, “Populations et territoires de la Palestine a l’époque
perse,” Trans 3 (1990): 31-74, For a full collection of all inscriptions from this region in
the Persian period, see too Lemaire’s extremely valuable surveys: “Les inscriptions pales-
tiniennes d’époque perse: un bilan provisoire,” Trans 1 (1989): 87-105, with an update in
Trans 4 (1991): 113-18.
Exile and After: Historical Study 247

well before Nehemiah).*! (2) The references to Sheshbazzar (Ezra 5:14)

and Zerubbabel (Hag. 1:1, 14) as governor should therefore also be
taken at face value. (3) Nehemiah’s reference to “the governors who
were before me” (Neh. 5:15) makes best sense in context if he is refer-
ring to those who held the same position as he did himself. (4) The cor-
respondence in Ezra 4:7-23 clearly presupposes that Judah enjoyed a
measure of autonomy; if Judah had been under Samarian rule, there
would have been no need for officials from there to act in the manner
here described. (Similarly, in Ezra 5 we should have expected Tattenai
to approach the Samarian officials, not the Jews directly.) (5) There is
a complete lack of direct evidence either for Judah’s incorporation into
Samaria after the fall of Jerusalem*’ or for a radical change in consti-
tutional status at the time of Nehemiah.
The names of eight or nine governors of Judah are now known to
us: Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah from the biblical
sources, Elnathan, Yeh‘ezer, and Ahzai from bullae and seals,??
Bagohi from the Elephantine papyri, and Yehizqiyah from coins.*4 To
these we should probably add “Yohanan the priest,” mentioned on a
coin of the fourth century B.c.*° This coin raises interesting constitu-
tional questions that cannot yet be definitively answered. Since it is of
an identical type to that of Yehizqiyah, it seems probable that Yoha-

31. N. Avigad, Bullae and Seals from a Post-Exilic Judean Archive, Qedem 4 (Jerusa-
lem: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1976). The date is deduced from paleo-
graphical evidence and the likely identification of “Shelomith the *7t [wife/official?] of
Elnathan the governor” with the Shelomith of 1 Chron. 3:19 (postexilic Davidic family;
the rarity of women named either in genealogies or on seals, both of which could be ex-
plained if she held some official position, suggests this identification); cf. A.Lemaire’s re-
view of Avigad, Bullae and Seals in Syria 54 (1977): 129-31; E. M. Meyers, “The Shelomith
Seal and the Judean Restoration: Some Additional Considerations,” EJ 18 (1985): 33*—-
38*: idem, “The Persian Period and the Judean Restoration: From Zerubbabel to Ne-
hemiah,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. P. D.
Miller et al. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 509-21. Some other governors are named on
seal impressions from Ramat Rahel, but it remains controversial whether any should be
dated before Nehemiah.
32. See esp. K. G. Hoglund, Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and
the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah, SBLDS 125 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 84-85.
33. Cf. Avigad, Bullae and Seals, 5-7, 11-13; Y. Aharoni, Excavations at Ramat Rahel:
Seasons 1959 and 1960 (Rome: University of Rome, Centro di Studi Semitici, 1962), 28;
idem, Excavations at Ramat Rahel: Seasons 1961 and 1962 (Rome: University of Rome,
Centro di Studi Semitici, 1964), 19, 43.
34. See L. Y. Rahmani, “Silver Coins of the Fourth Century B.c. from Tel Gamma,” JEJ
21 (1971): 158-60; L. Mildenberg, “Y°hid-Miinzen,” in Weippert, Paldstina, 719-28.
35. See D. Barag, “A Silver Coin of Yohanan the High Priest and the Coinage of Judea
in the Fourth Century s.c.,” INJ 9 (1986-87): 4-21. Less certainly, add too the “Jaddua” of
another coin published by A. Spaer, “Jaddua the High Priest?” JNJ 9 (1986-87): 1-3; but
cf. n. 83 below.
248 Exile and After: Historical Study

nan held the same office, that is, governor (pela). But does “the priest”
mean the high priest? Does this indicate that by this time the office of
high priest and governor had merged? Was he simply given authority
at some time of grave crisis or transition? All these speculations have
been advanced (and see further below), but our ignorance of the true
answer serves as a useful reminder that we know practically nothing
about the history of Judah during the whole of the last century of Per-
sian rule.
The other major topic relating to the constitution of Judah was out-
lined in a series of articles in the 1970s by the Latvian scholar J. P.
Weinberg. Although these were at first rather overlooked by biblical
scholars, the increasing interest in an approach to our topic by way of
the social sciences has brought them to belated prominence, and this
will doubtless be furthered by the recent publication of an English
translation of a selection of the most important of these articles.*°
There are signs that a number of scholars are appealing to Weinberg’s
theory as a basis for their research in related areas, so that careful con-
sideration is imperative.
The essence of Weinberg’s theory is that a distinction should be
drawn between the imperial province of Judah (initially Samaria) and
the Jewish community that lived within it and that was granted a priv-
ileged status by the Persians as a citizen-temple community, a type of
organization for which it is thought there were analogies elsewhere in
the empire. In the first part of the period, this community, with the tem-
ple as its social and economic center, was a minority of only some 20
percent of the population of Judah, living in three isolated enclaves in
the coastal area, Jerusalem and its environs, and the southern part of
the Jordan Valley. Although this was only an emerging form of the cit-
izen-temple community proper, it was already favored by Cyrus with

36. J. P. Weinberg, The Citizen-Temple Community, trans. D. L. Smith-Christopher,

JSOTSup 151 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992). This collection includes a new
essay, “The Postexilic Citizen-Temple Community: Theory and Reality,” 127-38, in which
Weinberg summarizes and updates his position, as well as responding to some early crit-
icisms. It may be noted that Smith provides a useful introduction, in which he locates
Weinberg’s research within the broader context of Soviet ancient historiography. For
Smith’s own use of Weinberg’s work, see D. L. Smith, The Religion of the Landless: The So-
cial Context of the Babylonian Exile (Bloomington, Ind.: Meyer-Stone, 1989), 106-26.
Other early responses include H. Kreissig, “Eine beachtenswerte Theorie zur Organisa-
tion altvorderorientalischer Tempelgemeinden im Achamenidenreich: Zu J. P. Weinbergs
‘Burger-Tempel Gemeinde’ in Juda,” Klio 66 (1984): 35-39; and, more positively, P.-E.
Dion, “The Civic-and-Temple Community of Persian Period Judaea: Neglected Insights
from Eastern Europe,” JNES 50 (1991): 281-87. More recently, see, e.g., J. Blenkinsopp,
“Temple and Society in Achaemenid Judah,” in Second Temple Studies, 1:22-53; P. R. Bed-
ford, “On Models and Texts,” in ibid., 154-62; and R. A. Horsley, “Empire, Temple and
Community—but no Bourgeoisie!” in ibid., 163-74.
Exile and After: Historical Study 249

permission to return from Babylon and to rebuild the temple because

of his desire to secure a loyal element in the population of the province
as part of his strategic plans for the conquest of Egypt. However, after
458 B.c., Weinberg’s date for Ezra’s mission, the community increased
to about 70 percent of the population, it was accorded substantial pow-
ers of internal administrative control, and its members were granted
tax exemption by Artaxerxes I. Later on, as the community became an
ever larger proportion of the population of Judah, the high priest came
also to hold the role of civil governor. This was a personal union only,
however, a full merger not coming about until the Hellenistic period.
An important element in this reconstruction is the social and eco-
nomic structure of the community. Weinberg stresses the degree of dis-
ruption caused by the Babylonian exile, and he finds that by the time of
the return the Jews had organized themselves into quasi-agnatic groups
known as “the fathers’ house” (bét abét). Linking back to the ideology
of earlier Israel, these “fathers’ houses” controlled the community’s
land as inalienable property, dividing it into smaller parcels for the use
of the separate constituent families. This resulted in a noteworthy de-
gree of social homogeneity.
An important consequence of the theory is that most of what we read
in the biblical texts is the history of this community, not of the politi-
cally wider province of Judah. Its leaders, such as Zerubbabel and Ne-
hemiah, were not governors as usually understood, but officially desig-
nated leaders of the citizen-temple community alone. It would
therefore be a mistake to interpret their role and policies as though they
affected the province as a whole within the satrapy of Trans-Euphrates.
There are clearly far-reaching implications here for our understanding
of the history of Judah throughout the Persian period.
Because of the complexity of the issues involved and the fact that
they affect our interpretation of so many of the postexilic historical
texts, I have examined them in a separate study,?” of which only the
chief points can be summarized here. First, Weinberg lays great em-
phasis on the results of his statistical analysis of the demographic pro-
file of postexilic Judah, in which he finds that the Jews were only an in-
creasing minority of the population. There are several problems here,
however. Without any argument, he asserts that the list in Ezra 2/
Nehemiah 7 of those who returned “at the first” (Neh. 7:5) provides a
profile of the emerging citizen-temple community in 458 B.c., the time
of Ezra. While some scholars date this list to the time of Nehemiah,

37. “Judah and the Jews,” in Studies in Persian History: Essays in Memory of David M.
Lewis, ed. M. Brosius and A. Kuhrt (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten,
1998), 145-63.
250 Exile and After: Historical Study

most continue to see it as a reflection of the composition of the commu-

nity at the time of the rebuilding of the temple in 520-515 B.c.** More-
over, its apparent combination*? of those who had returned from exile
(grouped by family association) with those who had remained in the
land (grouped by place of residence) suggests that the list gives a
broader representation of the population of Judah at that time than
Weinberg suggests.
This conclusion is supported by two further important consider-
ations. On the one hand, Weinberg continues to follow Alt’s proposal
that Judah was not an independent province before Nehemiah, but only
part of Samaria. If that were right, then it would be legitimate to ask
about the constitutional status of a minority Jewish element, but we
have seen that this theory should almost certainly be abandoned. On
the other hand, Weinberg’s statistics about the population of Judah
should be radically revised in the light of recent research. His approach
was in any case highly speculative: he arrived at a figure of more than
200,000 inhabitants of Judah by a process of comparison with his esti-
mate of the preexilic population, the number of those deported, and so
on. This was already contentious, since no account was taken of the se-
vere reduction in the size of Judah*® or of the possible impact of the
Babylonian conquest even on those who remained. In consequence, fig-
ures as small as a mere 10 percent of Weinberg’s figure had been pro-
posed. Most recently, however, this whole issue has been put on a
firmer scientific basis by the detailed research of C. E. Carter,*! who
has been able to make use of recent surface surveys of Judah and Ben-
jamin as well as to benefit by the methodological advances of the so-
called new archaeology in the process of population estimates. The re-
sults of his study are that “the population of Yehud ranges from a low
of 11,000 in the late-sixth/early-fifth centuries B.c.£. to a high of 17,000
in the late-fifth/early-fourth centuries B.c.£.”*7 Part of the explanation
for this much lower figure is that Carter excludes the relatively fertile

38. With good reason, in my opinion; see Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 28-32. Cf. K.
Galling, “Die Liste der aus dem Exil Heimgekehrten,” in Studien zur Geschichte Israels im
persischen Zeitalter (Tubingen: Mohr, 1964), 89-108. The most recent to date it to Ne-
hemiah’s time is Blenkinsopp, Ezra—Nehemiah, 83.
39. Cf. S. Japhet, “People and Land in the Restoration Period,” in Das Land Israel in
biblischer Zeit, ed. G. Strecker (Géttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 103-25.
40. On the debate about the borders of postexilic Judah, see the summaries of re-
search in Lemaire, “Populations et territoires,” 36-45; and C. E. Carter, “The Province of
Yehud in the Post-Exilic Period: Soundings in Site Distribution and Demography,” in Sec-
ond Temple Studies, 2:106-45, esp. 108-13.
41. Carter, “Province of Yehud.” Part of this article is based on Carter's Ph.D. disser-
tation (Duke University, 1991), which I have not been able to consult.
42. Ibid., 108.
Exile and After: Historical Study P|

region of the Ono Valley in the Shephelah (Lod, Hadid, and Ono),
which the literary sources suggest was part of the province at this
time.*? Even if we make allowances for this, it is clear that Weinberg’s
estimate is too high. When this is coupled with the other points made
above, it becomes apparent that the total Jewish community comprised
a far greater proportion of the population of Judah as a whole, so that
it is questionable whether we should contemplate any separate consti-
tutional arrangement for them.
Second, Weinberg draws what I regard as illegitimate consequences
about the nature of Ezra’s mission. His suggestion that the whole of the
Jewish community was exempted from tax at this time seems to be
flatly contradicted by Nehemiah 5:4, and is in any case based on an im-
probable exegesis of Ezra 7:24, a verse that is most naturally under-
stood as granting exemption only to the cultic officials (not the laity),
in line with Achaemenid practice in some other cases.*4 Furthermore,
the suggestion that Nehemiah was not the civil provincial governor ac-
cords neither with the scope of his activities, nor with his dealings as an
equal with the governors of neighboring provinces, such as Sanballat of
Samaria, nor with the implication of Nehemiah 5:14-18 that Ne-
hemiah’s jurisdiction was the same as that of his predecessors whose
activities are described in terms of civil authority. In view of Ne-
hemiah’s role, and the complete silence of our sources about some al-
ternative authority, there seems to be no room left for a separate admin-
istrative level in the province at that time.
Finally, the temple in Jerusalem does not seem to have played the
central economic role that it did in the societies with which Weinberg
compares it. Indeed, the evidence of Haggai, and later of Malachi and
of Nehemiah 10 and 13, is that the temple was constantly neglected. Of
course, it was an important ideological symbol for the community, not
only in Judah but increasingly in the Diaspora, but so far as we know it
owned no land and did not exercise any form of control over title to
property by way of membership of its community.*°
We may conclude, therefore, that there was a considerably closer
overlap between the Jewish community and the Persian province of
Judah in terms of both population and administration than the citizen-

43. The matter has continued to be debated throughout the period of this survey;
see most recently J. Sapin, “Sur le statut politique du secteur de Ono a l’époque perse,”
in Lectio Difficilior Probabilior? Mélanges offerts a Francoise Smyth-Florentin, ed. T.
Romer (Heidelberg: Wissenschaftliche-theologische Seminar, 1991), 31-44 (not avail-
able to me).
44. Cf. Williamson, “Ezra and Nehemiah in the Light of the Texts from Persepolis,”
50-54. I have discussed the exegesis of Ezra 7:24 more fully in “Judah and the Jews.”
45. See Bedford, “On Models and Texts,” 156-57.
252 Exile and After: Historical Study

temple community model suggests, and nowhere is there evidence that

the Jewish community was treated differently from others who may
have lived within the province. The special consideration given to the
temple by the Achaemenid kings is to be differently explained, and it re-
mained heavily circumscribed.

Particular Topics
The Exilic Period
So far, this survey has concentrated on broad historical topics that af-
fect the very nature of the Judean community during most of the period
under review. They set the framework, as it were, for the discussion of
particular topics and events. In turning now to these, we shall find,
somewhat disconcertingly, that frequently there is little progress to re-
port. The problems addressed are familiar from earlier periods of re-
search, and basically the same answers are reformulated. Where this is
so, I make little more than passing reference to them, in order to be able
to concentrate on areas where fresh proposals have been made.
As far as the period of the exile itself is concerned, the picture has
changed little in recent years.*© In the almost complete absence of tex-
tual sources, we have only archaeological evidence to guide us, and here
the picture continues to be consolidated of widespread destruction of
major towns in Judah to the south of Jerusalem (e.g., Lachish, Azekah,
Ramat Rahel, Arad), but of greater continuity (or re-establishment) of
habitation to the north, in the territory of Benjamin (Bethel, Gibeon,
Tell el-Fal, and Mizpah, the probable site of Babylonian administra-
tion).*’ The situation at Jerusalem itself is less clear. It was certainly de-
stroyed following its capture, and it is not certain how soon after settle-

46. For a useful earlier survey, see, e.g., B. Oded, “Judah and the Exile,” in /sraelite
and Judaean History, ed. J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller, OTL (London: SCM; Philadel-
phia: Westminster, 1977), 435-88; and cf. H. M. Barstad, “On the History and Archae-
ology of Judah during the Exilic Period: A Reminder,” OLP 19 (1988): 25-36, now ex-
panded into a brief monograph, The Myth of the Empty Law (Oslo: Scandinavian
University Press, 1996). Within the limits of the present chapter, it is not possible to
deal with the history of the Jews in exile or in the Dispersion, for which see the valuable
essays by M. Dandamayev, E. J. Bickerman, E. Bresciani, and B. Porten in CHJ, 1:326-
400; see too the stimulating suggestions about the exiles’ mechanisms for survival in
Smith, Religion of the Landless. G. N. Knoppers also discusses the exile in chap. 8 of
the present volume.
47. Cf. S. S. Weinberg, Post-Exilic Palestine: An Archaeological Report (Jerusalem: Is-
rael Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1969); A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the
Bible, 10,000-586 B.c.z. (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 458-60, 548; G. Barkay, “The Iron
Age II-III,” in The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. A. Ben-Tor (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1992), 302-73, esp. 372-73.
Exile and After: Historical Study Zo

ment resumed, though there is evidence that some sort of a cult was
continued on the ruined temple site.*8
Nor has there been much progress on determining the social struc-
ture and economic life of those who remained in the land. It is gener-
ally agreed that it was the urban elite who, by and large, were exiled
to Babylon, but whether the land was radically redistributed among
the remaining rural classes as part of the Babylonian imperial policy
or whether they simply moved opportunistically into the vacated es-
tates remains uncertain. Judging by the situation in the Persian pe-
riod, at least, it would appear that the southern part of Judah was in-
filtrated and settled by Edomites, though even here it is possible to
exaggerate.??
In contrast with the proposal of Alt that Judah was subsumed into
the province of Samaria by the Babylonians, the possibility is now
more widely canvassed that they followed their normal practice else-
where of maintaining the geopolitical status quo, a possibility rein-
forced by the fact that, unlike the Assyrians, they did not introduce a
new foreign elite into the land. This has allowed several recent writers
to speculate that Judah continued to be ruled as a vassal kingdom, and
that the Davidic monarchy did not come to as abrupt an end as has
normally been supposed.”° As is well known, the much earlier bilingual
inscription from Tell Fekherye shows that someone titled “governor”
by the imperial power could legitimately be styled “king” by the local
population,>*! and a similar state of affairs characterized a number of
the western states (e.g., the various Phoenician cities, Cypress, and Ci-
licia) during the Persian period itself. Might the same have applied to
Gedaliah in Babylonian Judah°? and perhaps even to Zerubbabel and
Elnathan (the husband of the probably Davidic Shelomith) in the early

48. Cf. Jer. 41:5; Zech. 7:1-7. It is likely that some elements from this exilic liturgy
have survived, for instance in the Book of Lamentations and in certain Psalms; I have
suggested a similar setting for Nehemiah 9 and Isa. 63:7-64:12; cf. H. G. M. Williamson,
“Structure and Historiography in Nehemiah 9,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Con-
gress of Jewish Studies: Panel Sessions: Bible Studies and Ancient Near East, ed. D. Assaf
(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 117-31; and idem, “Isaiah 63,7-64,11: Exilic Lament or Post-
Exilic Protest?” ZAW 102 (1990): 48-58.
49. Cf. J. R. Bartlett, Edom and the Edomites, JSOTSup 77 (Sheffield: Sheffield Aca-
demic Press, 1989), 147-61.
50. See P. Sacchi, “Vesilio e la fine della monarchia Davidica,” Henoch 11 (1989): 131-
48: F. Bianchi, “Le réle de Zorobabel et de la dynastie davidique en Judée du VI* siécle au
Il® siécle av. J.-C.,” Trans 7 (1994): 153-65.
51. Cf. A. Abou-Assaf et al., La statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue
assyro-araméenne (Paris: Editions recherche sur les civilisations, 1982), esp. 62 and
111-12.
52. Cf. P. R. Ackroyd, The Chronicler in His Age, JSOTSup 101 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1991), 91-92; Miller and Hayes, History, 421-24.
254 Exile and After: Historical Study

Persian period?> If so, did this situation persist throughout the exile?
Does such a view help with the interpretation of the passages about
Zerubbabel in Haggai and Zechariah? Unless further texts are discov-
ered, such possibilities are likely to remain in the realm of tantalizing
speculation.

The Persian Period

The early years of Persian rule in Judah also throw up a crop of particu-
lar issues that again can be said to have been only recycled in the period
under review. The authenticity of the primary sources, on which there
has been some progress, was discussed above, as was the issue of Judah’s
constitutional status. The identity of Sheshbazzar remains uncertain,
though the view that he was the same as the Shenazzar of 1 Chronicles
3:18, so making him another Davidic descendant, now looks increas-
ingly unlikely.°* Some continue to think that the editor of Ezra identified
him with Zerubbabel, a view at least as old as Josephus,>° though again
this is historically improbable, if Ezra 5:14 is to be believed. Similarly,
the date of Zerubbabel’s return to Jerusalem remains contentious. Ezra
3 seems to imply that he came during the reign of Cyrus, although his
status alongside Sheshbazzar is then unexplained. As has long been no-
ticed, however, his activities as there described seem to fit better the
slightly later period of the first years of Darius, and most scholars there-
fore date his return then. In my commentary I suggested a compromise,
based on a closer analysis of the nature of the composition in this chap-
ter as a whole.°® If 4:4—5 is understood as a “summary notation,” which
recapitulates the preceding unit rather than describes a new develop-
ment, it suggests that the altar building in 3:1-6 should be separated
chronologically from the start of the temple building in 3:7-4:3, so that
the former could be assigned to Cyrus’s reign and the latter to Darius’s.

53. Cf. A. Lemaire, “Zorobabel et la Judée 4 la lumiére de I’épigraphie (fin du VI® S.

av. J.-C.),” RB 103 (1996): 48-57. Lemaire also observes that one of Avigad’s bullae reads
yhwd/hnnh, and so wonders wheter Zerubbabel was first succeeded by his son Hana-
niah (1 Chron. 3:19).
54. See P.-R. Berger, “Zu den Namen 782UW und WS,” ZAW 83 (1971): 98-100; P.-E.
Dion, “TS2WW and "71200,” ZAW 95 (1983): 111-12. In my view, his title “prince of Judah”
in Ezra 1:8 is to be explained on the basis of the author's “second exodus” typology, so
that it gives us no historical information as to his identity; cf. Williamson, Ezra, Ne-
hemiah, 17-19.
55. E.g., M. Saebg, “The Relation of Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel—Reconsidered,”
SEA 54 (1989): 168-77; J. Lust, “The Identification of Zerubbabel with Sheshbassar,” ETL
63 (1987): 90-95.
56. Ezra, Nehemiah, 43-45.
Exile and After: Historical Study pdshe)

This proposal has not found favor, however,’ so that we seem to be little
further forward.
In view of my earlier rejection of the citizen-temple community the-
ory, it becomes necessaryto reconsider the issue of the state of relations
between those who returned from Babylon and those who remained in
the land. Several factors have been considered of late to suggest that
these were not perhaps as strained at first as has often been thought.
Textual evidence includes the apparent association of both groups in the
list of Ezra 2, which probably comes from the time of the building of the
temple,°* the incorporation of exilic liturgies into the religious heritage
of the community at large, and the complete lack of any sign of such dis-
cord in such contemporary texts as Haggai and Zechariah 1-8.°? To this
may be added some reflections of K. Hoglund on the subject of land
rights at this time, often thought to be the chief source of conflict be-
tween the two communities. Summarizing the results of archaeological
surveys of the region, he has shown that, in contrast with the neighbor-
ing territories, Judah saw a marked increase in the number of settle-
ments at the start of the Persian period and that some 65 percent of the
total number of settlements had not been occupied during the Iron II pe-
riod. He explains this as part of an imperial domain policy of ruraliza-
tion, which would have affected the local population as much as those
who returned, and concludes that “there would be no land claims by any
group rooted in the notion of familial or tribal possession. The presump-
tion of a class struggle between exiles and ‘remainees’ over land rights does
not fit the evidence of the pattern of these Persian period villages.”°°
How, then, does one explain the textual evidence for discord in Ezra
1-6? This is where the importance of a source- and redaction-critical
study becomes apparent.®! Ezra 4:1-3 is part of the later redactor’s com-
position, but there is evidence that it is based on authentic source ma-
terial.°* The paragraph clearly speaks of inhabitants of the old northern

57. See, e.g., Halpern, “Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1-6.” Halpern’s conclu-
sions are comparable with those of the earlier valuable study of S. Japhet, “Sheshbazzar
and Zerubbabel—against the Background of the Historical and Religious Tendencies of
Ezra—Nehemiah,” ZAW 94 (1982): 66-98.
58. See Japhet, “Temple and Land.”
59. See H. G. M. Williamson, “Concept of Israel in Transition,” in The World of Ancient
Israel: Sociological, Anthropological, and Political Perspectives, ed. R. E. Clements (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 141-61; B. Schramm, The Opponents of Third
Isaiah: Reconstructing the Cultic History of the Restoration, JSOTSup 193 (Sheffield: Shef-
field Academic Press, 1995), 62-64.
60. K. Hoglund, “The Achaemenid Context,” in Second Temple Studies, 1:54-72.
61. See Williamson, “Composition of Ezra i-vi,” 1-30; see also idem, Ezra, Nehemiah,
ad loc.; Halpern, “Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1-6,” 81-142.
62. See Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 49-50.
256 Exile and After: Historical Study

kingdom of Israel, now the province of Samaria, approaching the tem-

ple builders and being rebuffed. Writing as much as two centuries later,
and following a long history of disputes between the provincial officials,
our redactor understandably labels this group “the enemies of Judah
and Benjamin” (Ezra 4:1), and subsequently refers to them as ‘am
h@ares, “the people of the land.” (Note that, in contrast, the contempo-
rary prophets Haggai and Zechariah still use this term for members of
the Judean community, closer to preexilic usage [cf. Hag. 2:4; Zech.
7:5].)°3 This fact must determine our interpretation of his use of the
same term in Ezra 3:3, which is equally certainly part of the redactor’s
composition and for which there is less evidence of an underlying
source. The phrase is there used in the plural, “the peoples of the land”
preventing the immediate building of the temple by intimidation. This,
then, is part of a later rationale for the delay in temple building (external
opposition; contrast the very different explanation in Haggai), and gives
no evidence of a serious internal split within Judah at the time.
The next phase for which we have written evidence relates to the
work of Ezra and Nehemiah. Here, of course, the most notorious his-
torical problem concerns their chronological order. During the period
under review there has been a greater tendency to favor the traditional
order, as implied by the biblical text,°* though a late date for Ezra (398
B.c., in the seventh year of Artaxerxes IT) still has some support.®> The
intermediate date for Ezra (428 B.c.) has been dropped from consider-
ation altogether. Here again, very little new evidence has been brought
to bear in recent years, and as the arguments have frequently been re-
hearsed elsewhere there seems little point in traversing the same
ground again here.®
A major task for the historian to settle concerns the authenticity of
the primary sources. So far as Nehemiah is concerned, scholars have

63. Cf. A. H. J. Gunneweg, “87 0Y—A Semantic Revolution,” ZAW 95 (1983): 437-40.
64. So, for instance, all the major commentaries from this period: e.g., Blenkinsopp,
Clines, Fensham, Gunneweg, Kidner, Williamson, Yamauchi.
65. See Miller and Hayes, History, 468-69; Ahlstrom, History, 862-88; and, most re-
cently, A. Lemaire, “La fin de la premiére période perse en Egypte et la chronologie
judéenne vers 400 av. J.-C.,” Trans 9 (1995): 51-61.
66. See, e.g., E.M. Yamauchi, “The Reverse Order of Ezra/Nehemiah Reconsidered,”
Themelios 5 (1980): 7-13; Grabbe, Judaism, 88-93, who makes the correct observation
that if the Ezra material is largely unhistorical, then much of the debate loses its force. I
have presented a similar survey with comments and conclusions in Ezra and Nehemiah,
55-69. The attempts to link Ezra’s mission with the Achaemenid desire for a loyal Judah
in the face of disturbances in the west, whether caused by Egypt, Greece, or general un-
rest, can be used to support either main date, and so cancel each other out. Contrast O.
Margalith, “The Political Role of Ezra as Persian Governor,” ZAW 98 (1986): 110-12 (but
note that there is no evidence that Ezra was sent to Jerusalem as governor).
Exile and After: Historical Study PAW |

generally accepted that the first-person material in the Book of Ne-

hemiah can be traced back to his own account of his activity, thus mak-
ing it a source of the first importance.
This confidence has recently been slightly modified in two directions.
First, D. J. A. Clines has underlined the extent to which a detailed liter-
ary analysis (“a narrative told by a narrator who is also the author”) can
lead to a radical questioning of many of the apparently historical details
of the text.°’ This is an instructive and highly entertaining piece, which
certainly serves at the least as a forceful reminder that Nehemiah had
axes of his own to grind in writing, and that allowances must be made
for this in interpretation. This does not, however, make the whole a
work of historical fiction, nor does Clines claim that it does.°? Indeed, as
I have independently argued elsewhere, everything that Nehemiah
claims to have accomplished finds in the Book of Nehemiah itself a par-
allel, third-person source in which the same accomplishments are
achieved by the community as a whole, acting under priestly direction.©?
This observation serves both to support the general historical drift of the
narrative and to underscore Nehemiah’s own bias from a different di-
rection. Second, and rather more radically, Hoglund has followed Es-
kenazi in an analysis of this same switch from first- to third-person nar-
rative to suggest that this is “not an indication of the utilization of a
distinct source,” but rather “a deliberate literary device by the narrator
to involve the reader in the unfolding drama of events.” Hoglund does
not think that the accounts were not based on sources, only that we can-
not use the present text to reconstruct a first-person account by Ne-
hemiah.”° This conclusion seems improbable to me,’! but even if it were
justified it would still not remove Nehemiah from the realm of history.
In the case of Ezra, things are less straightforward, and opinions
have continued to be sharply divided. G. Garbini has revived the theory

67. D. J. A. Clines, “The Nehemiah Memoir: The Perils of Autobiography,” in What

Does Eve Do to Help? and Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament, JSOTSup 94
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 124-64.
68. Indeed, he concludes his essay by maintaining that the intention of his analysis
has been “to show that a strict regard to the literariness of the document and to the role
of the reader in the processing of the document is inevitably profitable for the historian”
(emphasis mine).
69. H. G. M. Williamson, “Post-Exilic Historiography,” in The Future of Biblical Stud-
ies: The Hebrew Scriptures, ed. R. E. Friedman and H. G. M. Williamson, Semeia Studies
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 189-207, esp. 192-98; idem, Ezra, Nehemiah, xxxii-xxxiii.
70. Hoglund, Achaemenid Imperial Administration, 46; following T. C. Eskenazi, In an
Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra~Nehemiah, SBLMS 36 (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1988), 129-35. Recently, J. Becker has even gone so far as to suggest that the work is sim-
ply a fabrication by the Chronicler; cf. Der Ich-Bericht des Nehemiabuches als chronis-
tische Gestaltung, FB 87 (Wurzburg: Echter Verlag, 1998).
71. See Tollefson and Williamson, “Nehemiah as Cultural Revitalization,” 41-68.
258 Exile and After: Historical Study

that Ezra never existed at all.”* Grabbe believes that he did but that we
can know effectively nothing about him or his work because of the lack
of authentic source material.’* Gunneweg thinks that the edict of Arta-
xerxes (Ezra 7:12-26, the most important source relating to Ezra) is not
authentic but that it nevertheless reflects some reasonably well-estab-
lished aspects of Persian policy toward local cults.’* Many others con-
tinue to uphold to varying degrees the authenticity both of the edict and
of the wider “Ezra Memoir” (Ezra 7-10; Neh. 8).
Since a full discussion of this topic would far outstrip the confines
of the present chapter, I can here give only a summary of some points
that seem to support a relatively conservative conclusion and that
have not, apparently, been overturned by the recent more critical sug-
gestions. (1) Older arguments from style (i.e., that the author of the
Ezra material is indistinguishable from the Chronicler) do not stand
up in the light of more recent research. Most of the similarities that
have been observed are no more than characteristics of late biblical
Hebrew generally, so that it is the differences that are more signifi-
cant. (2) The relationship between the edict of Artaxerxes and the rest
of the Ezra account is noteworthy. Some aspects of the edict, such as
leading a return of volunteers from Babylon and the transportation of
gifts, are recounted with studied care and with precise detail of proce-
dure that could well be based:on the incorporation of preexisting doc-
uments (e.g., 8:1-14, 24-30, 33-34). Others, however, receive not a
hint of being carried out (esp. 7:25-26). It is thus difficult to believe
that the report is a “midrash” on the edict;’° if either the narrative had
been based solely on the text of the edict, or indeed, if both had been
written by the narrator from scratch, we should have expected a better
fit. (3) Coupled with this are a number of points of detail, such as
place-names (8:15, 17), an inventory (8:26-27), curious local color
(10:9, 13), and an unexpected hitch in the preparations for the journey
(8:15ff.), that are clearly not based on the edict but that also have no
apparent origin other than historical memory. Furthermore, if those
many scholars are right who believe that Nehemiah 8 originally be-

72. G. Garbini, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, trans. J. Bowden (London:
SCM; New York: Crossroad, 1988), 151-69.
73. L. L. Grabbe, “What Was Ezra’s Mission?” in Second Temple Studies, 2:286-99
(this essay also includes a useful survey of proposals about the purpose of Ezra’s mis-
sion); cf. idem, Judaism, 94-98.
74. Esra, 129-43.
75. So, e.g., W. T. in der Smitten, Esra: Quellen, Uberlieferung und Geschichte, SSN 15
(Assen: Van Gorcum, 1973), ultimately following M. Noth, Uberlieferungsgeschichtliche
Studien, vol. 1 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1943), 145-48 (in English translation as: The Chronicler’s
History, trans. H. G. M. Williamson, JSOTSup 50 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1987], 62-65).
Exile and After: Historical Study 259

longed between Ezra 8 and 9, then clearly the editor must have been
working with antecedent source material when he moved it for theo-
logical reasons to its present position. (4) The switches between third-
and first-person narrative are most naturally explained as due to an
editor partially rewriting an earlier first-person account. In particular,
I have argued elsewhere that this has resulted in certain tensions in the
present form of the introductory paragraph (7:1—10) that give evidence
of this process, and that alternative explanations for this feature of the
text are not convincing.’°
Despite all that has been asserted to the contrary since, therefore, I
remain of the opinion that the Ezra material is best understood as being
based on a first-person report by Ezra on the first year of his work (once
Nehemiah 8 is seen as having come originally from between Ezra 8 and
9, all the dates fit naturally in sequence into a twelve-month period), in
which he sought to demonstrate that he had made a good (but not com-
plete) start on carrying out the terms of his commission.’’ When due al-
lowance is made for the editorial activity already referred to, it follows
that this source can reasonably be used for historical purposes.
With regard to the historical interpretation of the missions of Ezra
and Nehemiah, by far the most stimulating new proposal in recent
years has come from Hoglund.’® He seeks to set them in the wider con-
text of Persian imperial policy in the mid-fifth century in a far more in-
tegrated manner than the usual approaches, which think only in terms
of seeking to reward or to gain the loyalty of the province during or fol-
lowing the troubled period of the Megabyzos revolt. Indeed, his exami-
nation of Greek historical sources leads him (controversially) to deny
that there ever was such a revolt. Instead, he argues that the real threat
to the empire at this time came from Greek support for the Egyptian re-
volt, an intervention that meant that the incident developed effectively
into a struggle for control of the whole of the eastern Mediterranean,
including the Levantine coast. This severe challenge to Persian hege-
mony in the region led to a change in military and administrative poli-
cies, aimed at tightening imperial control. The primary archaeological
evidence for this he finds in “the widely dispersed remains of a distinc-
tive form of fortress, unique to the mid-fifth century,” located at highly
visible sites overlooking communication routes. Since they would have
been manned by imperial garrisons, they may be seen as “the indelible

76. See Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 89-91 and 145-49.

77. The terms of the edict itself are not as impossible as some have supposed; cf. Wil-
liamson, “Ezra and Nehemiah in the Light of the Texts from Persepolis”; and idem, Ezra,
Nehemiah, 97-105.
78. Achaemenid Imperial Administration, and, more briefly, “Achaemenid Context.”
260 Exile and After: Historical Study

fingerprint of the hand of the Achaemenid empire tightening its grip on

local affairs in the Levant.””?
Nehemiah’s role fits neatly into this picture. The refortification of
Jerusalem (not only walls, but also a fortress [2:8] with a commander
[7:2]) is quite uncharacteristic of urban centers at this time, and so must
indicate some radical shift in policy (contrast the situation in Ezra 4:7-
23, earlier in Artaxerxes’ reign), namely, that Jerusalem now became a
defensive center as part of this policy of militarization. Nehemiah’s eco-
nomic reforms in chapter 5 also fit with this picture. Since imperial gar-
risons had to be supported by the local population, the new policy
would have put a considerable strain on the fragile economy of the re-
gion. Nehemiah’s reform was thus intended to alleviate the situation, so
enabling the community as a whole to meet its increased obligations.
It is noteworthy that the problem of mixed marriages is treated by
both Nehemiah and Ezra, which suggests to Hoglund that it too should
be seen as an outworking of their role as imperial officials and not be
related to independent or internal sectarian concerns, as is usually sup-
posed. This leads him to a reconsideration of Ezra’s mission as well.
Here he advances two suggestions in particular. First, the evidence for
a reorganization of the legal system is interpreted as a further device for
tightening control between the imperial center and a subject territory
at a time when that relationship was being developed; once again, the
threat posed to the Levant by Greek intervention is seen as adequate
motivation for this. Second, the issue of marriage is shown to have im-
plications for land tenure. If the Judean community held their land as
a dependent population (since all conquered territory was ultimately
regarded as imperial domain), it would be intelligible that a redefini-
tion of community membership might be necessary at a time when the
degree of control over each section of the population was particularly
sensitive.
In advancing his proposals, Hoglund is not unaware that the texts as
we now have them are written for other, more overtly theological pur-
poses; he does not suggest that these imperial motivations can be read
off from the surface of the accounts. His point, however, is that to make
historical sense of them demands that they be set in a context wider
than was necessary for the biblical authors themselves. This in itself is
reasonable, and his attempt to present a coherent interpretation that
takes account of the often diverse activities of the reformers is laudable.
Clearly, a full evaluation will take more time than has yet been avail-
able. How reliable, for instance, is his dating of the distinctive style of
fortress to the short period to which he assigns them, bearing in mind

79. Achaemenid Imperial Administration, 243.

Exile and After: Historical Study 261

in particular the difficulties in dating the founding (rather than the

abandonment) of single-period sites? To what extent does his under-
standing of Achaemenid treatment of subject peoples fit with what is
known from elsewhere, such as Babylon? How will classical scholars
respond to his dismissive treatment of Ctesias and his account of the
Megabyzos revolt? And how convincing is his treatment of the issue of
mixed marriages in particular? The attempt to see this as part of “an ef-
fort to compel loyalty to the imperial system by tying the community’s
self-interest to the goals of the empire” seems to require further sup-
port.®° Clearly, therefore, Hoglund has opened up many avenues for
further exploration both in regard to the texts at our disposal and in
terms of wider imperial strategies, which are the subject of the accumu-
lation of a mass of disparate detail. Meanwhile, whatever may be
thought of Nehemiah’s mission, we should note that there continue to
be those who would favor a more traditional portrayal of Ezra’s con-
cerns as focused more parochially on the Jewish law and cult.®!
As I have already indicated, our knowledge of the history of Judah in
the fourth century B.c. is practically nonexistent. The main problem is
that, in the absence of any continuous narrative, we have no framework
into which to fit such pieces of isolated information as we currently
possess. The result is that even so fundamental an issue as dating the
material is disputed.
This may best be illustrated by one of the few written texts that relate
to this period: the much later account of Josephus in his Jewish Antiq-
uities. In particular, he includes a story of how the high priest Joannes
murdered his brother Jesus in the temple and how in consequence a
Persian official named Bagoses imposed a tax on the daily sacrifices
(11.7.1 §§297-301). In 1977 I first sought to demonstrate that, on the
basis of Josephus’s established editorial procedures elsewhere that are
also in evidence here, this story must have been based on an earlier
source that was likely to be reliable. Second, Josephus’s own dating was
shown to be untrustworthy, because he was unaware of the true length
of Achaemenid rule and so shortened it by as much as two generations:
Artaxerxes II and II and Darius II and III were thus conflated. On the

80. Ibid., 244. It should be noted in passing that what is usually regarded as the very
strict policy on mixed marriages pursued by Ezra and Nehemiah was not shared by all
the members of the community, as the more open stance of the Chronicler in the follow-
ing century indicates. Other books, such as Ruth and Jonah, may further show that, as is
to be expected, the whole question of the relationship between the Jews and their neigh-
bors was probably a lively topic of debate throughout the Persian period.
81. Cf. J. Blenkinsopp, “The Mission of Udjahorresnet and Those of Ezra and Ne-
hemiah,” JBL 106 (1987): 409-21; Williamson, “Concept of Israel in Transition”; idem,
Ezra and Nehemiah, 69-76.
262 Exile and After: Historical Study

evidence from the source itself as isolated, I therefore suggested that, as

many earlier scholars had thought, the story should be dated to the
reign of Artaxerxes III, Bagoses being identified with the Bagoas, a Per-
sian general known from classical sources.’? Support for this conclu-
sion has been thought to come from the coin of “Yohanan the priest,”
which D. Barag dates to the mid-fourth century, since it is said to dem-
onstrate that there was a high priest of that name (= Greek Joannes) at
that time.*>
While the argument for Josephus’s use of a source and for the fact
that he was himself chronologically confused about the last century of
Persian rule has been widely accepted, the specific dating proposed for
this incident has not. On the basis of one of the Elephantine papyri,
which shows that in 408 s.c. (during the reign of Artaxerxes II) there
was a high priest Johanan and a governor named Bagohi in Jerusalem,
several recent studies have sought to uphold a late-fifth-century date for
the incident, which had established itself as the most popular date dur-
ing the middle part of the twentieth century.*4
It is not necessary to reopen the debate in the present context. The
important point to appreciate is that, while we almost certainly have
reliable information about a particular incident, there can be no cer-
tainty about when to date it. As all the scholars mentioned agree, both
proposed dates are possible, and the difference in opinion is largely a
matter of weighing probabilities. For the historian this is frustrating.
If we could be sure of the date, we might be able to go on to speculate
on a number of important issues, such as the political role of the high
priest, the possible divisions of opinion in Jerusalem on contemporary

82. See H. G. M. Williamson, “The Historical Value of Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities XI

297-301,” JTS, n.s., 28 (1977): 49-66.
83. Barag, “Silver Coin”; see too idem, “Some Notes on a Silver Coin of Yohanan the
High Priest,” BA 48 (1985): 166-68; idem, “Bagoas and the Coinage of Judea,” in Proceed-
ings of the XIth International Numismatic Congress, vol. 1, ed. T. Hackens and G. Mou-
charte (Louvaine-la-Neuve: Association Professeur Marcel Hoc, 1993), 261-65. Barag as-
sociates the incident with the supposed Judean involvement in the Tennes rebellion, for
which he had previously argued independently; cf. “The Effects of the Tennes Rebellion
on Palestine,” BASOR 183 (1966);.6-12. The evidence for this is questionable, however,
and has not generally been followed. One should note too that Barag’s dating of the coin
is questioned by a few scholars, e.g., J. W. Betlyon, “The Provincial Government of Per
sian Period Judah and the Yehud Coins,” JBL 105 (1986): 633-42.
84. The papyrus is no. 30 in A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.c. (Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1923), 108-19. See D. R. Schwartz, “On Some Papyri and Josephus’
Sources and Chronology for the Persian Period,” JS/ 21 (1990): 175-99; J. C. VanderKam,
“Jewish High Priests of the Persian Period: Is the List Complete?” in Priesthood and Cult
in Ancient Israel, ed. G. A. Anderson and S. M. Olyan, JSOTSup 125 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1991), 67-91; L. L. Grabbe, “Who Was the Bagoses of Josephus (Ant.
11.7.1 §§297-301)?” Trans 5 (1992): 49-55.
Exile and After: Historical Study 263

policies, and so on. But in the absence of further evidence, this would
be unwise.
The other major point of discussion during this period has been an
assessment of the impact of the discovery of the Aramaic papyri from
Wadi ed-Daliyeh in 1962. Already in the years immediately following
their discovery, F. Cross, who was entrusted with their publication, had
made known the basic historical facts that could be gathered from them
and had used these to construct some further-ranging hypotheses that
related to the history of Judah as well as Samaria, to which they primar-
ily belong. Then at the start of the period here under review he offered
an overall synthesis of the results.®° The papyri attest the governorship
of a Sanballat later than Nehemiah’s rival and also of his two sons,
ys‘yhw or yd‘yhw** and Hananiah. Already, of course, the Elephantine
papyri had indicated that Sanballat I was succeeded by his son Delaiah.
It therefore appears both that there was a “dynastic” element to the gov-
ernorship of Samaria at this time, and that the family may have prac-
ticed papponymy (the naming of a child after his grandfather: the two
Sanballats). In view of this, the previously otherwise unattested office
of yet another Sanballat at the end of the Persian period, referred to by
Josephus (Ant. 11.7.2 §§302-3), becomes plausible. Cross’s recon-
structed list may not be complete, however, as there are coins of a cer-
tain Jeroboam, who also could have been a governor.®’ From this basis,
Cross went on to suggest that the list of Jerusalem high priests (cf. Neh.
12:10-11) might also be defective, for if papponymy was practiced here
as well, some names could have been lost by haplography. Further, he
suggested that another detail of Josephus’s account could be authentic,
namely, the stories of the expulsion from Jerusalem of Manasseh,
brother of the high priest Jaddua, because of his marriage to a daughter
of Sanballat, and Sanballat’s subsequent building of a temple for him
on Gerizim at about the time of Alexander the Great (Ant. 11.8.2 §§306-—
12). This would therefore furnish us with important information about
the founding of the Samaritan cult.

85. F. M. Cross, “A Reconstruction of the Judean Restoration,” JBL 94 (1975): 4-18.

While the official final publication of these papyri is still awaited, Cross has provided a
preliminary publication of the two best preserved of them in “Samaria Papyrus 1: An Ar-
amaic Slave Conveyance of 335 B.c.£. found in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh,” EI 18 (1985): 7*-
17*; and “A Report of the Samaria Papyri,” in Congress Volume: Jerusalem, 1986, ed. J. A.
Emerton, VTSup 40 (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 17-26.
86. The name is damaged, and so the precise reconstruction is hypothetical; never-
theless, Lemaire (“Populations et territoires,” 44-45 n. 67, and 66 n. 209) wonders
whether the recently published Jaddua coin (Spaer, “Jaddua the High Priest?”) might not
refer to him rather than to a Jerusalem high priest.
87. See Y. Meshorer and S. Oedar, The Coinage of Samaria in the Fourth Century B.c.
(Los Angeles: Numismatic Fine Arts International, 1991), coins 23-27; cf. pp. 14 and 49.
264 Exile and After: Historical Study

After gaining some initial favor, Cross’s theory has come in for con-
siderable criticism.®® There is, as we have seen, some numismatic sup-
port for a high priest Johanan at about the period Cross postulates, but
beyond that there are a number of inconsistencies in the detail of his
proposals, and in particular there is still much to be said for the older
view that the story in Josephus is a variant of the similar account in Ne-
hemiah 13:28. Once again, we see how, in the absence of a firm chrono-
logical framework of events, it is all too easy to allow “floating” inci-
dents to be misplaced and for our historical account to be skewed in
consequence.
There is one further observation about this closing century of Persian
rule that future discoveries may help to fill out. As the number of official
seals, bullae, and coins has increased, it has become apparent that
toward the end of the period there was shift away from the use of Ara-
maic script and language in favor of Hebrew.*? It is tempting to see ev-
idence here for a resurgence of religious and nationalist interest and to
link this with the possible evidence we have seen for a greater involve-
ment of the priestly class in the civil government of the province. Other
data might be added to this, such as the probable radical reorganization
of the priesthood as a whole at this time,”° the general unrest in the
western part of the empire, and so on. In view of the fate already noted
of other speculative hypotheses concerning this period, however, pru-
dence suggests that we would do better to await further hard evidence.

Conclusion
In sum, one may conclude that during the period here under review,
very little progress on historical reconstruction has been made on the
basis of study of the biblical texts themselves (this does not, of course,
refer to textual, literary, or theological study, where a more positive tale
could be told). Most of the options had all been canvassed long before,
and they have merely been rearranged and re-presented. Such advances
as have been made have been seen to come almost entirely either from
new archaeological and epigraphical data, or from setting the biblical

88. See Schwartz, “On Some Papyri”; VanderKam, “Jewish High Priests”; Grabbe,
“Who Was the Bagoses?”; G. Widengren, “The Persian Period,” in Israelite and Judaean
History, ed. Hayes and Miller, 489-538, esp. 506-9; H. G. M. Williamson, “Sanballat,”
ABD, 5:973-75; idem, Ezra, Nehemiah, 399-401; and L. L. Grabbe, “Josephus and the Re-
construction of the Judean Restoration,” JBL 106 (1987): 231-46.
89. See Lemaire, “Inscriptions”; J. Naveh and J. C. Greenfield, “Hebrew and Aramaic
in the Persian Period,” CHJ, 1:115-29; Barag, “Silver Coin,” 17-19.
90. Cf. H. G. M. Williamson, “The Origins of the Twenty-Four Priestly Courses,” in
Studies in the Historical Books ofthe Old Testament, ed. J. A. Emerton, VTSup 30 (Leiden:
Brill, 1979), 251-68.
Exile and After: Historical Study 265

narratives more effectively into their wider background in the Achae-

menid Empire, understanding of which has progressed rapidly. It may
be doubted whether all the historical questions that the biblical texts
raise will approach a solution on this basis in the future, but the hope
may certainly be expressed that some will and, perhaps more impor-
tantly, that our understanding of what we think we already know will be
refined as developing historical light is shed on this familiar material.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

David W. Baker

Since knowledge in biblical studies is increasing exponentially, as it is

in every field of knowledge, a survey of the discipline must follow some
organizing principle in order to make sense. This encounter with the Is-
raelite prophets and their world can do no less, so to bring some sem-
blance of order to the vast amount of literature dealing with them that
has appeared over the past three decades,! I use a variant of a model de-

1. Among several recent surveys, see W. McKane, “Prophecy and the Prophetic Liter-
ature,” in Tradition and Interpretation: Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament
Study, ed. G. W. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 163-88; R. P. Gordon, “A Story of
Two Paradigm Shifts,” in The Place Is Too Small for Us: The Israelite Prophets in Recent
Scholarship, ed. R. P. Gordon, SBTS 5 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 3-26;
L. L. Grabbe, Prophets, Priests, Diviners, and Sages in Ancient Israel: A Socio-Historical
Study of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press Interna-
tional, 1995), 66-118; and essays by P. D. Miller Jr, “The World and Message of the
Prophets,” 97-112; M. A. Sweeney, “Formation and Forms in Prophetic Literature,” 113-
26; and K. P. Darr, “Literary Perspectives on Prophetic Literature,” 127-43, in Old Testa-
ment Interpretation: Past, Present, and Future: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker, ed. J. L.
Mays, D. L. Petersen, and K. H. Richards (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995). For extensive bib-
liographies, see H. O. Thompson, The Book ofDaniel: An Annotated Bibliography, Books
of the Bible 1 (New York: Garland, 1993); idem, The Book of Jeremiah: An Annotated Bib-
liography, ATLA Bibliography Series 41 (Lanham, Pa., and London: Scarecrow, 1996);
idem, The Book of Amos: An Annotated Bibliography, ATLA Bibliography Series 42 (Lan-
ham, Pa., and London: Scarecrow, 1997); the relevant sections in Elenchus Bibliographi-
cus Biblicus of Biblica (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute), which finished with volume
65 covering 1984 and was replaced by Elenchus of Biblica (Rome: Pontifical Biblical In-
stitute, 1988—) starting with 1985 publications; and W. G. Hupper, An Index to English Pe-
riodical Literature on the Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, ATLA Bibliog-
raphy Series 21 ([Philadelphia]: American Theological Library Association; Metuchen,
N.J.: Scarecrow, 1987-).

266
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 26h

veloped by David L. Petersen.” He divides the field of prophetic study

into two, “Prophetic Identity,” discussing models and general issues,
and “Prophetic Literature,” discussing methods of study. I propose to
organize this study under four-‘main headings that follow a chronolog-
ical progression. The first, “Precomposition,” explores the person of the
prophet and his background, including his definition and role in the
historical and social setting. “Composition” and “Transmission” look at
the prophets’ formulation of their message and its subsequent use and
development. Finally, “Application” briefly highlights a growing trend
in exploring the use of Old Testament texts in contemporary preaching
and teaching.
Scholars have looked at each of these issues, asking the following
questions:

Precomposition
¢ Who were the prophets?
¢ Where did the prophets fit in their society?
¢ How did the prophets understand who they were?
e¢With whom do the prophets compare, both in their own time and
in recent periods?
¢ Where do the prophets fit in time and place?

Composition
¢ How did the prophets speak?
e What kinds of messages did they give?

Transmission
e How did the prophetic messages move from speech to text?
e How did others use their words?
¢ Can we recover their words?

Application
¢ What are the theological interests of the prophets?
e What relevance do the prophets have for us today?

As can be readily seen, the boundaries between these elements are

somewhat fluid, some areas crossing into more than one section. As
long as the categories are not understood as exclusive, the model should
serve a heuristic function.

2. D.L. Petersen, “Introduction: Ways of Thinking about Israel’s Prophets,” in Proph-

ecy in Israel, ed. D. L. Petersen, IRT 10 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 1-21.
3h Uiloxtell 2.
268 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

Precomposition
Who Were the Prophets, and Where Did They Fit in Their Society?
The very definition of prophecy, and the identification of a prophet,
have reached a new intensity of discussion in recent years.* Rather than
simply looking at a biblical reading of what prophets were, as found, for
example, in Deuteronomy 18 or 2 Kings 17:13, recent study has been in-
formed by sociological readings of the text that have built on previous
work by such thinkers as Max Weber. Scholarship has sought to place
the prophetic person and role within a wider social context.® This in-
volves locating prophets by noting the role they played in society in re-
lation to other institutions, such as the monarchy and the priesthood.
Biblically, the prophets saw their authority deriving from a call by
God, being his messengers’ or servants (Josh. 1:1-2; 2 Kings 14:25,

4. B. Vawter, “Were the Prophets Nabi?s?” Bib 66 (1985): 206-20; Petersen, “Introduc-
tion”; M. Weippert, “Aspekte israelitischer Prophetie im Lichte verwandter Erscheinung
des Alten Orients,” in Ad bene et fideliter seminandum, Festgabe fiir Karlheinz Deller zum
21. February 1987, ed. G. Mauer and U. Magen, AOAT 220 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988), 287-319; Gordon, “Story,” 3-26; J. Blen-
kinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel, Li-
brary of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1995), 115-19.
5. M. Weber, Ancient Judaism, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale (Glen-
coe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952); idem, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans.
A. M. Henderson and T. Parsons, ed. T. Parsons (New York: Free Press, 1964); idem, On
Charisma and Institution Building, ed. S. Eisenstadt (Chicago and London: University of
London Press, 1968); idem, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth and C. Witlich, trans. E.
Fischoff et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). See D. L. Petersen, “Max
Weber and the Sociological Study of Ancient Israel,” in Religious Change and Continuity,
ed. H. Johnson (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1979), 117-49; B. Lang, “Max Weber und Is-
raels Propheten,” Zeitschrift fiir Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 36 (1984): 156-65. See
the useful collection regarding this field, including an excerpt from Weber, in C. E. Carter
and C. L. Meyers, eds., Community, Identity, and Ideology: Social-Scientific Approaches to
the Hebrew Bible, SBTS 6 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996).
6. R.R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980);
idem, Sociological Approaches to the Old Testament, Guides to Biblical Scholarship, OT Se-
ries (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), partially reprinted in Place Is Too Small, ed. Gordon,
332-44; Gordon, “Story,” 21-22; R. P. Carroll, “Prophecy and Society,” in The World of An-
cient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological, and Political Perspectives, ed. R. E. Clements
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 203; Grabbe, Prophets, Priests, 66-118.
7. For one who does see a prophet receiving authority through inspiration, see B.
Uffenheimer, “Prophecy, Ecstasy and Sympathy,” in Congress Volume: Jerusalem, 1986,
ed. J. A. Emerton, VTSup 40 (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 257-69: “The living experience of di-
vine grace was so compelling that man felt the obligation to become a messenger to the
cultic congregation and to his fellow man in general.” See also R. E. Clements, “Introduc-
tion: The Interpretation of Old Testament Prophecy, 1965-1995,” in Old Testament Proph-
ecy: From Oracles to Canon (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1996), 1-19: P. D. Miller
Jr., “The World and Message of the Prophets: Biblical Prophecy in Its Context,” in Old Tes-
tament Interpretation, ed. Mays, Petersen, and Richards, 101.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 269

etc.). From a sociological perspective, most of that authority derived

from society itself as the audience of the message.’ One could say that
the prophets would be the servants of society. This newer, sociological
approach highlights the importance of the recipients of the message in
recognizing the messenger as a prophet, grounding his or her identity
upon that recognition. It often does not take into account any concept,
whether actual or self-delusional, of divine call, which, from a biblical
perspective, is more foundational than societal recognition for estab-
lishing one as a prophet.?
Those in society could well have also recognized prophets as author-
itative if they saw parallels with another authoritative figure from the
past, Moses. He was recognized as both authoritative lawgiver and pro-
totypical prophet (Deut. 18:15—22; 34:10-12). Scholars have noted lin-
guistic, structural, and thematic links between Moses on the one hand
and Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel on the other.!° Some scholars do see
an early, preexilic existence of ones called, either at that period or later,
“prophets,”!! while others see the title, if not the function, as a post-

8. B. O. Long, “Prophetic Authority as Social Reality,” in Canon and Authority: Essays

on Old Testament Religion and Theology, ed. B. O. Long and G. W. Coats (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1977), 3-20; idem, “Social Dimensions of Prophetic Conflict,” Semeia 21 (1982):
31-43; G. M. Tucker, “Prophecy and the Prophetic Literature,” in The Hebrew Bible and
Its Modern Interpreters, ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press,
1985), 325-68. Cf. T. W. Overholt, “The Ghost Dance of 1890 and the Nature of the Pro-
phetic Process,” Ethnohistory 21 (1974): 37-63; idem, “Jeremiah and the Nature of the
Prophetic Process,” in Scripture in History and Theology: Essays in Honor of J. Coert Ry-
laardsam, ed. A. L. Merrill and T. W. Overholt, PTMS 17 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1977),
129-50; idem, “Commanding the Prophets: Amos and the Problem of Prophetic Author-
ity,” CBQ 41 (1979): 517-32.
9. Gordon points out that the prophets’ self-awareness was more important to them
than societal acceptance, since they carried out their calling even if not accepted by their
audience (“Story,” 22). There is a debate whether the prophets were aware of their iden-
tity (R. P. Gordon, “Where Have All the Prophets Gone? The ‘Disappearing’ Prophet
against the Background of Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy,” BBR 5 [1995]: 67-86) or not
(A. G. Auld, “Prophets through the Looking Glass: Between the Writings and Moses,”
JSOT 27 [1983]: 3-23).
10. M. O'Kane, “Isaiah: A Prophet in the Footsteps of Moses,” JSOT 69 (1996): 29-51;
C. R. Seitz, “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah,” ZAW 101 (1989):
3-27; J. D. Levenson, Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40-48, HSM 10
(Cambridge, Mass.: Scholars Press, 1976); H. McKeating, “Ezekiel the ‘Prophet Like
Moses,’” JSOT 61 (1994): 97-109.
11. V. W. Rabe, “Origin of Prophecy,” BASOR 221 (1976): 125-28; Vawter, “Were the
Prophets Nabi?s?”; T. W. Overholt, “Prophecy in History: The Social Reality of Intermedi-
ation,” JSOT 48 (1990): 3-29; H. M. Barstad, “No Prophets? Recent Developments in Bib-
lical Prophetic Research and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy,” JSOT 57 (1993): 39-60; B.
Peckham, History and Prophecy: The Development of Late Judean Literary Traditions,
ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 554; Gordon, “Where Have All the Prophets Gone?”
57-86.
270 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

exilic innovation.!? This prophetic association with Moses highlights

one of the roles of the prophet as applying f6rd to the life of the people,
calling them to return to the covenant that forged them into a nation.!?
This attempt to change the people’s behavior is done by what would be
termed “preaching” today,'* persuading through the gamut of rhetorical
devices (see below under “How Did the Prophets Speak?”). The necessity
for constant repetitions of the prophetic cry for repentance and return to
the covenant, at times by several messengers addressing a single genera-
tion, and at other times by prophets challenging subsequent generations,
would indicate that these men and women! were not, on the whole, rec-
ognized by their audience as actual, authoritative messengers from God.
Presumably, if society had so recognized them, their message would have
been more efficacious. In other words, if prophets are defined by soci-
ety’s recognition of them and their function as noticeably affecting the
life and behavior of that society, one would question whether prophets
actually existed in ancient Israel, since practical impact was negligible as
evidenced by the lack of meaningful, sustained response to their mes-
sage. That most of those in Israelite society appear not to have recognized
prophetic authority as having any practical effect on how they lived leads
one to question the sociological emphasis on the role society played in
recognizing and legitimizing prophetic authority. The prophets regarded
their divine commissioning as providing their authority, an authority
that was independent of the response of the people to whom they spoke.
Some have suggested that the authority of the prophet altered over
time. In the earlier, classical period, they were deliverers of the in-
spired, oral word from God, while later they were somewhat replaced
by inspired interpreters of a previously received word. As W. M.
Schniedewind would have it, they changed from “interpreters of histor-
ical events” to “inspired text interpreter[s].”!°

12. Auld, “Prophets through the Looking Glass”; R. P. Carroll, “Poets Not Prophets: A
Response to ‘Prophets through the Looking Glass,’” JSOT 27 (1983): 25-31; idem, “In-
venting the Prophets,” Jrish Biblical Studies 10 (1988): 24-36.
13. R. E. Clements, Prophecy and Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), 55-57, 85;
Miller, “World and Message of the Prophets.”
14. G. V. Smith, An Introduction to the Hebrew Prophets: The Prophets as Preachers
(Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994).
15. While all the Israelite writing prophets were male, female prophets were also ac-
tive in Israel. See, e.g., J. Jarick, “The Seven (?) Prophetesses of the Old Testament,” Lu-
theran Theological Journal 28 (1994): 116-21.
16. W. M. Schniedewind, The Word of God in Transition: From Prophet to Exegete in
the Second Temple Period, JSOTSup 197 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), spe-
cifically 236, 241. See a similar development of the role of the scribe in D. W. Baker,
“Scribes as Transmitters of Tradition,” in Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament His-
toriography in Its Near Eastern Context, ed. A. R. Millard, J. K. Hoffmeier, and D. W. Baker
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 65-78.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy Zi1

Prophets have long been felt to play a particular social function in re-
lation to the religious cult in Israel.'7 A spectrum of opinion has been
expressed. Some see a cultic tie with most of the prophets, their liveli-
hood deriving from their service to the temple.'® Others eschew any
prophet-cult tie whatsoever, though R. P. Gordon sees the latter strict
bifurcation as now being on the wane.!° A close look at the biblical evi-
dence would suggest that this strict polarization, like most such, cannot
be taken to an extreme, since there is internal biblical evidence for dif-
fering relationships for each of the prophets with the official cult, rang-
ing from participant to strong critic. There would also have been a mu-
tual influence, with the prophets having their religious upbringing in
the context of the official cult, but also needing at times to provide a
cautionary voice against some of its practices.”°

With Whom Do the Prophets Compare from

Their Own Time Period and Geographical Region?
If, as Klaus Koch has suggested, Israelite prophecy is part of an “inter-
national movement,”*! insight should be available from Israel’s neigh-
bors. Other ancient Near Eastern societies do show prophetic phenom-
ena similar to those recorded in the Old Testament.’* These societies
include the Semitic-speaking societies in Mesopotamia that were tem-
porally and spatially proximate to Israel.?? Texts discovered to date

17. G. W. Ahlstrém, Joel and the Temple Cult of Jerusalem, VTSup 21 (Leiden: Brill,
1971); A. R. Johnson, The Cultic Prophet and Israel's Psalmody (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 1979); W. H. Bellinger, Psalmody and Prophecy, JSOTSup 27 (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1984), 78-82. See McKane, “Prophecy and the Prophetic Literature,” 183; G. M.
Tucker, “Prophecy and the Prophetic Literature,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern In-
terpreters, ed. Knight and Tucker, 325-68; and Gordon, “Story,” 9-12.
18. See, e.g., S. Mowinckel, “Psalms and Wisdom,” in Wisdom in Israel and the Ancient
Near East, ed. M. Noth and D. W. Thomas, VTSup 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 306; and dis-
cussion and references in Wilson, Prophecy and Society, 8-10.
19. Gordon, “Story,” 12. See also Grabbe, Prophets, Priests, 112-13.
20. J. Jeremias, Kultprophetie und Geschichtsverktindigung in der spiten Konigszeit Is-
raels, WMANT 35 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970).
21. K. Koch, The Prophets, vol. 1, The Assyrian Period, trans. M. Kohl (London: SCM,
1982; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 12.
22. H. Ringgren, “Prophecy in the Ancient Near East,” in Israel's Prophetic Tradition:
Essays in Honour of Peter R. Ackroyd, ed. R. J. Coggins, A. Phillips, and M. A. Knibb
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 1-11.
23. Actual prophetic texts are discussed below. Divination was one of the common
means of determining the will of the deity in Mesopotamia, as well as elsewhere in the
ancient Near East, and in this way has some links with prophecy. See J. Vervant, Divina-
tion et Rationalité (Paris: Seuil, 1974); J. Lust, “On Wizards and Prophets,” in Studies on
Prophecy: A Collection of Twelve Papers, VTSup 26 (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 133-42; J. Wright,
“Did Amos Inspect Livers?” ABR 23 (1975): 3-11; I. Starr, The Ritual of the Diviner, Bib-
liotheca Mesopotamica 12 (Malibu: Undena, 1983), dealing mainly with divination in
Da, Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

come mainly from two historical periods, the earlier, Old Babylonian
(eighteenth century B.c.) texts from Mari** and those more recently dis-
covered at Ischali,2> and the later, Neo-Assyrian texts (seventh century
B.c.).2° Unlike the biblical texts themselves, which are fixed and few in

Mesopotamia; H. W. F. Saggs, The Encounter with the Divine in Mesopotamia and Israel
(London: Athlone, 1978); M. Dietrich, Deutungen der Zukunft in Briefen, Orakeln und
Omina, vol. 2.1 of Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments, ed. O. Kaiser et al. (Giiters-
loh: Mohn, 1986); M. D. Ellis, “Observations on Mesopotamian Oracles and Prophetic
Texts: Literary and Historiographic Considerations,” JCS 41 (1989): 127-86; I. Starr,
Queries to the Sun God: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria, State Archives of As-
syria 4 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1990); F. H. Cryer, Divination in Ancient
Israel and Its Near Eastern Environment: A Socio-Historical Investigation, JSOTSup 142
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994); V. A. Hurowitz, “Eli's Adjuration of Samuel (1 Samuel iii
17-18) in the Light of a ‘Diviner’s Protocol’ from Mari (AEM I/1,1),” VT 44 (1994): 483-
97; A. Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria, Studies in the History
and Culture of the Ancient Near East 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
24. See F. Ellermeier, Prophetie in Mari und Israel, Theologische und orientalistische
Arbeiten 1 (Herzberg: Jungfer, 1968); S. D. Walters, “Prophecy in Mari and Israel,” JBL
89 (1970): 78-81; J. F. Ross, “Prophecy in Hamath, Israel, and Mari,” HTR 63 (1970): 1-
28; H. B. Huffmon, “The Origins of Prophecy,” in Magnalia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God:
Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of G. Ernest Wright, ed. F. M. Cross, W. E.
Lemke, and P. D. Miller Jr. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), 171-86; E. Noort, Unter-
suchungen zum Gottesbescheid in Mari: Die ‘Mari-prophetie’ in der alttestamentlichen For-
schung, AOAT 202 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Ver-
lag, 1977); M. Weinfeld, “Ancient Near Eastern Patterns in Prophetic Literature,” VT 27
(1977): 178-95; H. B. Schmékel, “Mesopotamian Texts, Introduction,” in Near Eastern
Religious Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. W. Beyerlin, trans. J. Bowden, OTL (Phil-
adelphia: Westminster; London: SCM, 1978), 68-73; Wilson, Prophecy and Society, 98—
110; J.-M. Durand, Archives épistolaires de Mari, 1/1, ARM 26 (Paris: Editions recherche
sur les civilisations, 1988), esp. his introduction to this important collection of newly
published texts, 377-412, 455-63; M. Weippert, “Aspekte israelitischer Prophetie im
Lichte verwandter Erscheinung des Alten Orients,” in Ad bene et fideliter seminandum,
287-319; A. Malamat, Mari and the Early Israelite Experience (Oxford and New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1989), 79-96 and 125-44 are excerpted in Place Is Too Small, ed.
Gordon, 50-73; R. P. Gordon, “From Mari to Moses: Prophecy at Mari and in Ancient Is-
rael,” in Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honour of R. N. Whybray
on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. H. A.McKay and D. J. A. Clines, JSOTSup 162 (Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1993), 63-79; A. Schart, “Combining Prophetic Oracles in Mari Letters and
Jeremiah 36,” JANES 23 (1995): 75-93.
25. M.D. Ellis, “The Goddess Kititum Speaks to King Ibalpiel: Oracle Texts from Ish-
chali,” MARI 5 (1987): 235-56; cf. Grabbe, Prophets, Priests, 90-91.
26. A. K. Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts, Toronto Semitic Texts and
Studies 3 (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1975); S. Parpola, Letters
from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, AOAT 5.2 (Kevelaer:
Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1983); M. Weippert, “As-
syrische Prophetien der Zeit Asarhaddons und Assurbanipals,” in Assyrian Royal Inscrip-
tions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis, ed. F. M. Fales, Oriens
Antiqui Collectio 17 (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1981), 71-104; Weippert, “Aspekte is-
raelitischer Prophetie”; Ellis, “Observations”; S. Parpola and K. Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian
Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, State Archives of Assyria 2 (Helsinki: Helsinki University
Press, 1988); A. Livingstone, Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea, State Archives of
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy AHS

number, these extrabiblical texts are increasing in discovery and publi-

cation all of the time, so the potential to shed increasing light on proph-
ecy is great.
The Mari texts are in the form of letters that report revelations re-
ceived and provide insight into the various personnel, both professional
and lay, acting as divine intermediaries.”’ The Ischali texts are few and
fragmentary but indicate that the practice of intermediation was not re-
stricted to Mari in this period. The activities of intermediaries in this
early period seem to be more marginal to the regular societal practices,
since confirmation of the revelation is often sought by other means
such as divination or a confirmatory oath.?8
The Assyrian prophetic texts include collections of revelations, as
well as individual texts. Intermediaries are at times, but not always,
given titles, one of which (mafifiti, ecstatic) was also found at Mari.??
While similarities of practice have been found in these more distant ar-
eas, etymological cognates of the Israelite term nabi?, “prophet,” have
been found at Mari,*° and much more recently at the geographically
closer, thirteenth-century site of Emar (Meskene) in northern Syria.*!
These cognates with the biblical term indicate that prophecy as con-
nected with the nab?’ could have originated in the west.**

Assyria 3 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1989); M. Nissinen, “Die Relevanz der neu-
assyrischen Prophetie fiir die alttestamentliche Forschung,” in Mesopotamica, Ugaritica,
Biblica: Festschrift ftir Kurt Bergerhof zur Vollendung seines 70. Lebensjahres am 7. Mai,
1992, ed. M. Dietrich and O. Loretz, AOAT 232 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993), 217-58. Summary also in H. B. Huffmon, “Prophecy,
Ancient Near Eastern,” ABD, 5:480-81.
27. See the helpful summaries in Huffmon, “Prophecy, Ancient Near Eastern,” ABD,
5:478-79.
28. W. L. Moran, “New Evidence from Mari on the History of Prophecy,” Bib 50
(1969): 15-56; S. Dalley, C. B. F. Walker, and J. D. Hawkins, Old Babylonian Texts from Tel
al-Rimmah (London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1976), 64-65 on text 65.
29. J. S. Holladay, “Assyrian Statecraft and the Prophets of Israel,” HTR 63 (1970):
29-51 (reprinted in Prophecy in Israel, ed. Petersen, 122-43); Wilson, Prophecy and Soci-
ety, 111-19; F. R. Magdalene, “Ancient Near Eastern Treaty-Curses and the Ultimate
Texts of Terror: A Study of the Language of Divine Sexual Abuse in the Prophetic Cor-
pus,” in A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets, ed. A. Brenner, Feminist Compan-
ion to the Bible 8 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 326-52; Grabbe, Prophets,
Priests, 93-94.
30. Durand, Archives épistolaires de Mari, 444; see 377-79 for a discussion; D. E.
Fleming, “The Etymological Origins of the Hebrew ndbi?: The One Who Invokes God,”
CBQ 55 (1993): 217-24. :
31. D. Arnaud, Recherches au pays d'Astata: Emar, 3 vols. (Paris: Editions recherche
sur les civilisations, 1985-87), 353, 360, 375, 377, 385-86, 403; Fleming, “Etymological
Origins,” 220; idem, “Nabai and Munabbiatu: Two New Syrian Religious Personnel,” JAOS
113 (1993): 175-83.
32. Gordon, “Story,” 20.
274 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

Even closer to Israel geographically and linguistically is the seventh-

century Aramaic Balaam document from Deir “Alla in Jordan.*? Speak-
ing of “Balaam, son of Beor,” it indicates a knowledge of the biblical
character of that name in the geographical area of his activities as re-
corded in the Old Testament text (Num. 22-24). This earliest extant
Canaanite prophetic text does not exactly parallel the biblical accounts,
but it is useful in studying the redactional transmission of prophetic
material,** a matter to which we return below.
The Egyptian story of Wen-Amun describes the hero’s encounter
with ecstatic activity among the Phoenicians.*° The biblical account
also records ecstatic activity in this geographical area (1 Kings 18), but
there have been no native texts to provide firsthand information.
As for Israel’s non-Semitic neighbor, Egypt has not yielded close par-
allels to Israelite prophecy. Divination was widely practiced (see Gen.
44:1-5), but divine speech was not a source of revelation.*® Asia Minor
does have evidence of “divine speaking” in a list of sources of messages
from the gods compiled by the Hittite king Mursilis II (fourteenth cen-
tury B.C.)2-
A suggested prophetic function as covenant mediator (cf. Deut.
18:15-19)*§ has been offered support by linking it with treaties from
second-millennium Mesopotamia,*’ though the rise in interest in first-
millennium prophecy has usurped some of the argument. While specif-
ically covenantal references might not be found in some prophetic texts,
scholars suggest that a literary form called the “covenant lawsuit” (e.g.,
Isa. 1; Amos 3:9-15) recalls a national covenant of which the prophets
were aware and to which they were calling the people to return.*° This

33. See chap. 2 of the present volume under “Deir ‘Alla Texts” and chap. 3 under “The
Balaam Texts from Deir ‘Alla” for bibliography concerning this inscription.
34. Petersen, “Introduction,” 6.
35. ANET, 26; A. Cody, “The Phoenician Ecstatic Wenamin: A Professional Oracular
Medium,” JEA 65 (1979): 99-106.
36. Huffmon, “Prophecy, Ancient Near Eastern,” ABD, 5:481; Grabbe, Prophets,
Priests, 86-87.
37. C. Kihne, “C. Hittite Texts, II. Prayers, 6: The So-Called Second Plague Prayer of
Mursilis II,” in Near Eastern Religious Texts, ed. Beyerlin, 169-74; R. Lebrun, Hynes et
Priéres Hittites (Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre de l’histoire des religions, 1980). See Weippert,
“Aspekte israelitischer Prophetie,” 287-319; and Huffmon, “Prophecy, Ancient Near East-
ern,” ABD, 5:477-78.
38. Wilson, Prophecy and Society, 158-59; D. L. Petersen, The Roles of Israel's Proph-
ets, JSOTSup 17 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 83-84.
39. See D. J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant: A Study in Form in the Ancient Oriental
Documents and in the Old Testament, 2d ed., AnBib 21A (Rome: Biblical Institute Press,
1981).
40. E.g., M. O. Boyle, “The Covenant Lawsuit of the Prophet Amos III 1-IV 13,” VT 21
(1971): 338-62; A. Schoors, I Am God Your Saviour: A Form-Critical Study of the Main
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 275

legal setting cannot be demonstrated in every case, so it must still be

treated as tentative.*!

With Whom Do the Prophets Compare from More Recent

Times and More Geographically Distant Regions?
A recent innovation in attempting to determine the role of prophet is
the use of cultural anthropology, particularly to find parallels between
biblical prophets and those in more modern societies who perform
somewhat the same functions.** Robert Wilson was a pioneer in this
area, especially looking at African societies, with Thomas Overholt
finding similarities with North American Indian “prophets.”4? Wilson
paid particular attention to the claim that ecstasy or a trance state was
characteristic of all prophecy, including that of Israel, a position held
by some in the past.4+ He understands this purportedly stereotypical

Genres in Is. xl-lv, VTSup 24 (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 176-89; K. Nielsen, Yahweh as Prose-
cutor and Judge: An Investigation of the Prophetic Lawsuit (Rib-Pattern), JSOTSup 9
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1979); idem, “Das Bild des Gerichts (rib-Pattern) in Jes. I-XII:
Eine Analyse der Beziehung zwischen Bildsprache und dem Anliegen der Verkiindi-
gung,” VT 29 (1979): 309-24; S. Niditch, “The Composition of Isaiah 1,” Bib 61 (1980):
509-29; M. de Roche, “Yahweh's Rib against Israel: A Reassessment of the So-Called ‘Pro-
phetic Lawsuit’ in the Preexilic Prophets,” JBL 102 (1983): 563-74; J. T. Willis, “The First
Pericope in the Book of Isaiah,” VT 34 (1984): 63-77; D. R. Daniels, “Is There a ‘Prophetic
Lawsuit’ Genre?” ZAW 99 (1987): 339-60; M. Dijkstra, “Lawsuit, Debate, and Wisdom
Discourse in Second Isaiah,” in Studies in the Book ofIsaiah: Festschrift Willem A. M. Beu-
ken, ed. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne, BETL 132 (Louvain: Leuven University Press and
Peeters, 1997), 251-71.
41. R. R. Wilson, “Form-Critical Investigation of the Prophetic Literature: The
Present Situation,” in One Hundred Ninth Annual Meeting, Chicago, 8-11 November, 1973,
ed. G. MacRae (Cambridge, Mass.: Society of Biblical Literature, 1973), 1:118.
42. For an introduction to and examples of this approach, see Community, Identity,
and Ideology, ed. Carter and Meyers, and the essay by Carter in the present volume,
chap. 15.
43. Wilson, Prophecy and Society, esp. chap. 2; idem, Sociological Approaches; see also
M. P. Adogbo, “A Comparative Analysis of Prophecy in Biblical and African Traditions,”
Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 88 (1994): 15-20. Overholt, “The Ghost Dance of
1890”; idem, “Prophecy: The Problem of Cross-Cultural Comparison,” Semeia 21 (1982):
55-78 (reprinted in Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament, ed. B. Lang, IRT 8
[Philadelphia: Fortress; London: SPCK, 1985], 60-82); idem, Prophecy in Cross-Cultural
Perspective: A Sourcebook for Biblical Researchers, SBLSBS 17 (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1986); idem, Cultural Anthropology and the Old Testament, Guides to Biblical Literature,
OT Series (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996).
44. E.g., G. Hélscher, Die Propheten (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1914). For recent discussion
of the issue see S. B. Parker, “Possession Trance and Prophecy in Pre-Exilic Israel,” VT 28
(1978): 271-85; Wilson, Prophecy and Society, 3-8; Petersen, Roles of Israel's Prophets; G.
André, “Ecstatic Prophecy in the Old Testament,” in Religious Ecstasy, ed. N. G. Holm
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1982), 187-200; Uffenheimer, “Prophecy, Ecstasy, and
Sympathy,” 257-58; P. Michaelsen, “Ecstacy and Possession in Ancient Israel: A Review
of Some Recent Contributions,” SJOT 2 (1989): 28-54; Grabbe, Prophets, Priests, 108-11.
276 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

psychological mode for prophecy as being only for some societies, not
universal. For Israel, the presentation of the message through stereo-
typical forms of prophetic speech is at least as important as the psychol-
ogy of the recipient, and not all prophets were ecstatics.*°
This important distinction was shown by Wilson to hold also in the
linguistic realm. Hebrew has one verb for “prophesy” (nb?), which oc-
curs in two verbal stems, the niphal and the hitpael. He finds the
former to designate prophetic speech, and the latter, societally char-
acteristic prophetic behavior. The importance of this distinction can
be seen in the life of Saul, whose ecstatic activity (hitpael) led those
who saw him to ask if he also was a prophet (1 Sam. 10:11-12), even
though he was technically not one, since he had no prophetic message
(niphal).*°
Numerous scholars have urged caution upon practitioners of the
comparative anthropology method, since the existence of evidence
solely in written form presents problems. There is no direct evidence,
but only secondary sources that themselves interpret the primary
data.*’ There needs to be great caution in proposing that observations
from societies that are greatly separated from each other in both
space and time are anything more than suggestive. Practices in a con-
temporary, modern society could lead to investigation of the exist-
ence of similar phenomena in an earlier society, but they cannot be
used to prescribe that the practices must have the same meaning in
both. One must firmly establish the existence of interplay between
two cultures in order to make a case for anything other than chance
or cultural universals explaining similarities of practice. While poten-
tially illuminating, such proposed parallels must be treated as sugges-
tive, not definitive.

45. Wilson, Prophecy and Society, 87. Other studies on ecstasy and the prophetic ex-
perience have been done by Parker, “Possession Trance”; Rabe, “Origin of Prophecy,”
125-26; R. R. Wilson, “Prophecy and Ecstacy: A Reexamination,” JBL 79 (1978): 321-
37; J. R. Porter, “The Origins of Prophecy in Israel,” in /srael'’s Prophetic Tradition, ed.
Coggins et al., 21-22; H. W. Wolff, “Prophet und Institution im Alten Testament,” in
Charisma und Institution, ed. T. Rendtorff (Giitersloh: Mohn, 1985), 87-101; A. D. H.
Mayes, “Prophecy and Society in Israel,” in Of Prophets’ Visions, ed. McKay and Clines,
31-35.
46. Wilson, Prophecy and Society, 182-83; see Long, “Prophetic Authority,” who also
sees authority as deriving from actions, not just words.
47. W.J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New York and Lon-
don: Methuen, 1982); J. S. Kselman, “The Social World of the Israelite Prophets: A Re-
view Article,” RelSRev 11.2 (1985): 120-29; W. J. Ong, “Writing Is a Technology That Re-
structures Thought,” in The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, ed. G. Baumann,
Wolfson College Lectures 1985 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986); J. Goody, The Logic of Writing
and the Organization ofSociety (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1986); Carroll, “Prophecy and Society.”
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy Py |

Where Do the Prophets Fit in Their Historical

and Geographical Time and Place?
Israelite prophets, as intermediaries between Israel’s God and the peo-
ple, were called upon to address contextual needs and shortcomings. As
with all temporally contextual, or “occasional,” literature, discovering
the precise historical context of books and individual prophecies is nec-
essary to adequately understand the message.
Brian Peckham has undertaken a recent massive attempt at historical
contextualization.*® He correlates the composition of the Pentateuch
with that of the former and latter prophets as he “pursues the order and
discovers the relationship of their writings, uncovers their sources . . .
and articulates the cumulative and progressive contribution of the
works to an ongoing, developing tradition.”?? The work proposes the in-
terconnectedness between the prophetic, historical, and pentateuchal
sources from the foundational Yahwistic epic chronologically up to the
Chronicler and Malachi. Peckham provides a fascinating attempt at in-
tegration and synthesis, and will be a touchstone for future research, but
his results, while ingenious, are subjective from the outset.
The past quarter century has seen a convulsion in the foundations of
some of the “assured results of biblical scholarship,” not least being the
question of the composition of the Pentateuch.°? Even Peckham’s work
mirrors this in his ordering of the putative sources not according to the
“established” order of JEDP, but rather as JPED. Other proposed dates
of composition and redaction are also subjective, as is expected for an-
cient documents with no clear internal evidence for the exact processes
and dates of composition and transmission. While understandable in
dealing with ancient literature, this results in a product that, while in-
triguing, can be considered only a suggestion rather than proof.
Other more limited studies seek to set prophetic events in their his-
torical contexts. The plethora of new commentaries usually have this as
one of their goals, as do essays on individual prophets and passages.”!

48. Peckham, History and Prophecy. See also D. N. Freedman, The Unity of the Hebrew
Bible (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991).
49. Peckham, History and Prophecy, vii.
50. See chap. 5 of the present volume for an overview.
51. E.g., K. N. Schoville, “A Note on the Oracles of Amos against Gaza, Tyre, and
Edom,” in Studies on Prophecy, 55-63; A. Vanel, “Tabe’él en Is. VI 6 et le roi Tubail de
Tyr,” in Studies on Prophecy, 17-24; and other contributions to the volume; D. L. Chris-
tensen, “The Acrostic of Nahum Once Again: A Prosodic Analysis of Nahum 1,1-10,” ZAW
99 (1987): 17-30; F. J. Goncalves, L’expédition de Sennachérib en Palestine dans la littéra-
ture hébraique ancienne, Publications de |'Institut Orientaliste de Louvain 34 (Louvain-
la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain, Institut Orientaliste, 1986); M. A. Sweeney,
Isaiah 1-4 and the Post-Exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition, BZAW 171 (Berlin:
278 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

Physical artifacts have recently started to come into their own as

being able to throw light on prophetic texts. The background from
which the prophet was speaking as well as that into which his message
was sent can be potentially illuminated by the archaeology of a society.
Pride of place in this archaeological area of study goes to a recent ency-
clopedia that presents the breadth of Near Eastern archaeology, though
it does not systematically cover the prophetic material per se.°? The
most comprehensive synthetic study of this field has been undertaken
by Philip King in exploring archaeology’s contributions to the under-
standing of Amos, Hosea, and Micah, as well as of Jeremiah.>? Other
studies have looked at more limited text portions, such as the relation-
ship of Isaiah 5:8-10 to Assyrian urban archaeology, the campaign(s)
of Sennacherib as it impinges on the biblical accounts,» the archaeol-
ogy of Ezekiel 13,°° the geography of Amos,”’ the religious views of the
period of Hosea 1:2 as reflected in the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions,>®
the place of child sacrifice in Israel and its environment (Mic. 6:7),>?

de Gruyter, 1988); J. R. Lundbom, The Early Career of the Prophet Jeremiah (Lewiston,
N.Y.: Mellen Biblical Press, 1993); C. R. Seitz, “Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib:
A Reassessment,” JSOT 58 (1993): 47-57; W. McKane, “Worship of the Queen of Heaven
(Jer. 44),” in “Wer ist wie Du, HERR, unter den Gottern?” Studien zur Theologie und Religi-
onsgeschichte ftir Otto Kaiser zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. I. Kottsieper (Géttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 318-24; P. L. Redditt, “Nehemiah’s First Mission and the Date
of Zechariah 9-14,” CBQ 56 (1994): 664-78; M. A. Sweeney, “Sargon’s Threat against Je-
rusalem in Isaiah 10,27-32,” Bib 75 (1994): 457-70; P. L. Redditt, “Daniel 11 and the So-
ciohistorical Setting of the Book of Daniel,” CBQ 60 (1998): 463-74.
52. E. M. Meyers, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, 5 vols.
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
53. P. J. King, Amos, Hosea, Micah: An Archaeological Commentary (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1988); idem, Jeremiah: An Archaeological Companion (Louisville: Westmin-
ster/John Knox, 1993); idem, “Jeremiah’s Polemic against Idols—What Archaeology Can
Teach Us,” BibRev 10.6 (1994): 22-29.
54. F.E. Dobberahn, “Jesaja verklagt die Mérder an der menschlichen Gemeinschaft:
Ein exegetischer Versuch zum ‘Erkenntnistheoretischen Privilege’ der Armen Latein-
amerikas,” EvT 54 (1994): 400-412.
55. Gongalves, L'expédition de Sennachérib.
56. G. I. Davies, “An Archaeological Commentary on Ezekiel 13,” in Scripture and
Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bible‘and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King, ed. M. D.
Coogan, J. C. Exum, and L. E. Stager (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 108-25.
57, J. A. Burger, “Amos: A Historical-Geographical View,” JSem 4 (1992): 130-50; E. F.
Campbell, “Archeological Reflections on Amos's Targets,” in Scripture and Other Artifacts,
130-50.
58. W. Boshoff, “Sexual Encounters of a Different Kind: Hosea 1:2 as Foreplay to the
Message of the Book of Hosea,” Religion and Theology 1 (1994): 329-39. See the discus-
sion by Arnold in the present volume, chap. 14.
59. L. E. Stager, “The Rite of Child Sacrifice at Carthage: Papers of a Symposium,” in
New Light on Ancient Carthage, ed. J. G. Pedley (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1980), 1-11.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 279

religious iconography, and the Book of Daniel.°!

Three specific archaeological topics related to the prophets have
generated special interest. The mrzh is mentioned in Jeremiah 16:5 and
Amos 6:7. Based on texts from Ugarit (thirteenth century B.c.) and from
Palmyra in Syria (second-fourth centuries A.p.), it appears that this is
a funerary celebration in which wine and oil played a major part.®* Sug-
gestions of its appearance even earlier at Ebla await further confirma-
tion.® A recent suggestion has seen the festivities even in texts where
they are not mentioned by name, such as the debauchery of Isaiah
28126:4
More controversial is the discovery at Tell Dan of a ninth-century Ar-
amaic inscription that apparently includes a reference to “the house of

60. O. Keel and C. Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel,
trans. T. H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998).
61. A. Merling, “Daniel y la Arqueologia,” Theologika 8.1 (1993): 2-43; P. Coxon, “An-
other Look at Nebuchadnezzar's Madness,” in The Book of Daniel in the Light ofNew Find-
ings, ed. A. S. van der Woude, BETL 106 (Louvain: Leuven University Press and Peeters,
1993), 211-22. Several other topics involving archaeology and the prophetic texts are dis-
cussed in Scripture and Other Artifacts, ed. Coogan et al.
62. A. Negev, “Nabatean Inscriptions,” JEJ 13 (1963): 113-16; P. D. Miller Jr., “The
Mrzh Text,” in The Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets, ed. L. R. Fisher, AnOr 48 (Rome: Pon-
tifical Biblical Institute, 1971), 37-48; M. Dahood, “Additional Notes on the Mrzh Text,”
in ibid., 51-54; J. Braslavi, “Jeremiah 16:5; Amos 6:7,” Beth Migra 48 (1971): 5-13 (in He-
brew); M. Pope, “A Divine Banquet at Ugarit,” in The Use of the Old Testament in the New
and Other Essays: Studies in Honor of William Franklin Stinespring, ed. J. M. Efird
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1972), 170-203; J. Greenfield, “The Marzéah as a Social
Institution,” Acta Antiqua 22 (1974): 451-55; T. L. Fenton, “The Claremont ‘Mrzh’ Tablet:
Its Text and Meaning,” UF 9 (1977): 71-76; B. Halpern, “Landlord-Tenant Dispute at
Ugarit?” Maarav 2 (1979): 121-40; B. Margalit, “The Ugaritic Feast of the Drunken Gods:
Another Look at RS 24.258 (KTU 1.114),” Maarav 2 (1980): 98-105; R. E. Friedman, “The
Mrzh Tablet from Ugarit,” Maarav 2 (1980): 187-206; M. Pope, “The Cult of the Dead at
Ugarit,” in Ugarit in Retrospect: Fifty Years of Ugarit and Ugaritic, ed. G. Young (Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1981), 159-79; J. Teixidor, “Le Thiase de Belastor et de Beelsha-
men d’aprés une inscription récemment découverte a Palmyre,” CRAIBL (1981): 306-14;
M. Dietrich and O. Loretz, “Der Vertrag eines Mrzh-Klubs in Ugarit: Zum Verstandnis von
KTU 3.9,” UF 14 (1982): 71-76; H. M. Barstad, The Religious Polemics of Amos: Studies in
the Preaching of Amos 2,7B-8; 4, 1-13; 5, 1-27; 6,4-7; 8,14, VTSup 34 (Leiden: Brill, 1984);
King, Amos, Hosea, Micah, 137-61; idem, “The Marzeah Amos Denounces—Using Ar-
chaeology to Interpret a Biblical Text,” BAR 14.4 (1988): 34-44. For further bibliography
and discussion, see, e.g., F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos: A New Translation
with Notes and Commentary, AB 24A (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 566-68; and S. M.
Paul, Amos, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 210-12.
63. G. Pettinato, Testi Amministrativi Della Biblioteca L2769: Materiali Epigrapici di
Ebla (Naples: University of Naples, 1980); M. Dahood, “The Minor Prophets and Ebla,”
in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Cele-
bration of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. C. L. Meyers and M. O'Connor (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1983), 54.
64. B. A. Asen, “The Garlands of Ephraim: Isaiah 28.1-6 and the Marzéah,” JSOT 71
(1996): 73-87, which has extensive bibliography on the festival.
280 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

David” (bytdwd; cf. the prophecy of 2 Sam. 7:5, 7, 11, 13, 27), with some
seeing a parallel with the “tent of David” that will be restored, according
to Amos 9:11.65 Being the earliest extrabiblical mention of the name of
David, the text is extremely important for history, and responses to its
discovery have run the gamut from positing it a forgery,°° claiming a
misreading of the key terms,*’ or suggesting that it comes from a cen-
tury or two later,°’ on the one hand, to accepting it as being authentic,
on the other.®? In support of an earlier reading of the name David is a
suggested rereading of the Moabite Stone.’”°
Less controverted finds have been those of seals and bullae that bear
the names of figures from the Book of Jeremiah, including Gemariah,
son of Shaphan (36:10-12),’! Jerahmeel, the king’s son (36:26),’* and
others, including Baruch, son of Neriah, the scribe of Jeremiah (32:12;
43:1-7). It is suggested that one even bears Baruch’s visible fingerprint.”

Composition
How Did the Prophets Speak?
As preachers, the prophets endeavored to persuade their audience to
turn from their disobedience and follow God. The classical discipline of
rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech, was first articulated among the

65. P.R. Davies, “Bytdwd and Swkt Dwyd: A Comparison,” JSOT 64 (1994): 23-24. Cf.
A. Biran and J. Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” JEJ 43 (1993): 81-98.
66. F. H. Cryer, “On the Recently-Discovered ‘House of David’ Inscription,” SJOT 8
(1994): 3-20, esp. 14-15.
67. Ibid., 17 and n. 34; P. R. Davies, “‘House of David’ Built on Sand,” BAR 20.4
(1994): 54-55; E. A. Knauf, A. de Pury, and T. Romer, “*BaytDawid ou *BaytDéd?” BN 72
(1994): 60-69, reading dwd as an epithet (“beloved”) of a god.
68. Cryer, “On the Recently-Discovered ‘House of David’ Inscription,” 9, 12; N. P.
Lemche and T. L. Thompson, “Did Biran Kill David? The Bible in the Light of Archaeol-
ogy,” JSOT 64 (1994): 5, who not only date the text from the eighth century but also re-
interpret dwd to be an epithet of Yahweh.
69. [H. Shanks], “‘David’ Found at Dan,” BAR 20.2 (1994): 26-39; A. Rainey, “The
‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” BAR 20.6 (1994): 47; D. N.
Freedman and J. C. Geoghegan, “‘House of David’ Is There,” BAR 21.2 (1994): 78-79; B.
Halpern, “Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel,” BibRev 11.6
(1995): 26-35; here Halpern sees the denial of the historicity of the inscription as a cal-
culated attempt to minimalize the ability to write any history of the period of the OT.
70. A. Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20.3 (1994):
30-37.
71. N. Avigad, Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Jeremiah (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration
Society, 1986); King, Jeremiah, 94-95.
72. King, Jeremiah, 95-97.
73. H. Shanks, “Jeremiah’s Scribe and Confidant Speaks from a Hoard of Clay Bullae,”
BAR 13.5 (1987): 58-68; T. Schneider, “Six Biblical Signatures,” BAR 17.4 (1991): 26-33;
King, Jeremiah, 95; H. Shanks, “Fingerprint of Jeremiah’s Scribe,” BAR 22.2 (1996): 36-38.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 281

Greeks by Aristotle.’* Though rhetoric is not a biblical concept, Ye-

hoshua Gitay was able to use insights gleaned from classical rhetoric to
elucidate the prophets, especially Isaiah,’> and the approach can be
fruitful for the rest of the prophetic corpus as well. It seeks to place the
message into its context by asking what the situation was that was being
addressed, how the prophets wished their audience to respond to the
message, and which persuasive techniques they used. Their words were
purposeful, in contrast to the empty eloquence of some later Sophists.”°
Most of the prophetic texts are poetic, and numerous scholars have
explored them in studies of Hebrew poetry in general,’ or in more lim-
ited studies of some of their poetic features such as prosody (the He-
brew metric system),’® wordplay,’? sound play such as alliteration or

74. Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric, trans. H. E. Butler, LCL (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1926). See Quintilian, The Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler, 4
vols., LCL (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921). For a summary discus-
sion of the discipline, see B. Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A
Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1-2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 39-48, 55-
61 (for bibliography).
75. Y. Gitay, Prophecy and Persuasion: A Study of Isaiah 40-48, Forum Theologicae
Linguisticae 14 (Bonn: Linguistica Biblica, 1981); idem, “Isaiah and His Audience,”
Prooftexts 3 (1983): 223-30; idem, “Reflections on the Study of the Prophetic Discourse,”
VT 33 (1983): 207-21; idem, Isaiah and His Audience: The Structure and Meaning ofIsaiah
1—12, SSN 30 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1991); idem, “Rhetorical Criticism,” in Zo Each Its
Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application, ed. S. R.
Haynes and S. L. McKenzie (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 135-49.
76. Witherington, Conflict and Community, 43-65. See 1 Cor. 2:1.
77. T. Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry: A Grammatical Approach to the Stylistic
Study, StPohl: Series Maior 7 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1978); M. O’Connor,
Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1980); P. van der Lugt, Stro-
fische Structuren in de Bibels-Hebreeuwse Poézie (Kampen: Kok, 1980); J. L. Kugel, The
Idea of Biblical Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); S. A. Geller, “Theory and
Method in the Study of Biblical Poetry,” JOR 73 (1982): 65-77; S. A. Geller, E. L. Green-
stein, and A. Berlin, A Sense of Text: The Art of Language in the Study of Biblical Literature,
JORSup 1982 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983); R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry
(New York: Basic Books, 1985); A. Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1985); W. G. E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A
Guide to Its Techniques, 2d ed., JSOTSup 26 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986;
reprinted 1995); D. J. A. Clines, “The Parallelism of Greater Precision,” in Directions in
Biblical Hebrew Poetry, ed. E. Follis, JsSOTSup 40 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 77-100;
J. T. Willis, “Alternation (ABA’B’) Parallelism in the Old Testament Psalms and Prophetic
Literature,” in ibid., 49-76.
78. D. L. Christensen, “The Acrostic of Nahum Reconsidered,” ZAW 87 (1975): 5;
D. K. Stuart, Studies in Early Hebrew Meter, HSM 13 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press,
1976); J. M. Vincent, Studien zur literarischen Eigenart und zur geistigen Heimat von Je-
saja, Kap 40-55, Beitrage zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie 5 (Frankfurt am Main,
Berne, and Las Vegas: Lang, 1977); K. Kiesow, Exodustexte im Jesajabuch: Literarkritische
und motivgeschichtliche Analysen, OBO 24 (Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitatsverlag,
1979); J. P. Fokkelman, “Stylistic Analysis of Isaiah 40:1-11” in Remembering All the Way,
OTS 21 (1981): 68-90; W. R. Garr, “The Oinah: A Study of Poetic Meter, Syntax and Style,”
282 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

assonance,®? or structure.®! The broader field of textlinguistics (dis-

course analysis) has also provided insight into understanding written
and oral texts. It recognizes that meaning resides in larger textual ele-
ments than simply the words and sentences that have been the domain
of morphological and syntactic study, the major areas of grammatical
analysis until recently. It analyzes the structure and meaning of ele-
ments on the text or story level.8? The methodology has been fruitful in
looking at aspects of prophetic structure,®* though much room remains

ZAW 95 (1983): 54-75; O. Loretz, Der Prolog Des Jesaja Buches (1,1—2,5), Ugaritologische
und kolometrische Studien zum Jesaja-Buch 1 (Altenberg: CIS-Verlag, 1984); Chris-
tensen, “The Acrostic of Nahum Once Again”; F. I. Andersen, “The Poetic Properties of
Poetic Discourse in the Book of Micah,” in Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics, ed.
R. D. Bergen (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1994), 520-28.
79. D. L. Christensen, “Anticipatory Paranomasia in Jonah 3:7-8 and Genesis 37:2,”
RB 90 (1983): 261-63; A. J. Petrotta, Lex Ludens: Wordplay in the Book of Micah, Ameri-
can University Studies VII/105 (New York: Lang, 1991); K. Holter, “A Note on *20/7’2U in
Isa. 52,2,” ZAW 104 (1992): 106-7; B. T. Arnold, “Wordplay and Narrative Techniques in
Daniel 5 and 6,” JBL 112 (1993): 479-85; S. Bahar, “Two Forms of the Root Nwp in Isaiah
x 32,” VT 43 (1993): 403-5; K. Holter, “The Wordplay on 98 (‘God’) in Isaiah 45,20-21,”
SJOT 7 (1993): 88-98; W. A. M. Beuken, “What Does the Vision Hold: Teachers or One
Teacher? Punning Repetition in Isaiah 30:20,” HeyJ 36 (1995): 451-66.
80. J. P. van der Westhuizen, “Assonance in Biblical and Babylonian Hymns of
Praise,” Semitics 7 (1980): 81-101; L. Boadt, “Intentional Alliteration in Second Isaiah,”
CBQ 45 (1983): 353-63.
81. L. Boadt, “Isaiah 41:8-13: Notes on Poetic Structure and Style,” CBQ 35 (1973):
6; A. R. Ceresko, “The Function of Chiasmus in Hebrew Poetry,” CBQ 40 (1978): 1-10;
J. S. Kselman, “Design and Structure in Hebrew Poetry,” in SBLSP 1980, ed. P. Achte-
meier (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980), 1-16; H. V. Parunak, “Oral Typesetting: Some
Uses of Biblical Structure,” Bib 62 (1981): 153-68; J. KraSovec, “Merism—Polar Expres-
sion in Biblical Hebrew,” Bib 64 (1983): 231-39; H. V. Parunak, “Transitional Techniques
in the Bible,” JBL 102 (1983): 525-48; S. Segert, “Poetic Structures in the Hebrew Sec-
tions of the Book of Daniel,” in Solving Riddles and Untying Knots: Biblical, Epigraphic,
and Semitic Studies in Honor ofJonas C. Greenfield, ed. Z. Zevit et al. (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1995), 261-75. This type of study is not restricted to poetry; cf. M. Rosen-
baum, Word-Order Variation in Isaiah 40-55: A Functional Perspective, SSN 35 (Assen:
Van Gorcum, 1997), noting especially his helpful bibliography, 235-56.
82. For an introduction to the field not only in biblical studies but also more widely
in textual study, see P. Cotterell and M. Turner, Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity; London: SPCK, 1989).
83. T. J. Finley and G. Payton,.“A Discourse Analysis of Isaiah 7-12,” JTT 6 (1993):
317-35; E. R. Clendenen, “Old Testament Prophecy as Hortatory Text: Examples from
Malachi,” JTT 6 (1993): 336-53; R. E. Longacre and S. J. J. Hwang, “A Textlinguistic Ap-
proach to the Biblical Hebrew Narrative of Jonah,” in Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Lin-
guistics, ed. Bergen, 336-58; H. V. Parunak, “Some Discourse Functions of Prophetic
Quotation Formulas in Jeremiah,” in ibid., 489-519; D. J. Clark, “Vision and Oracle in
Zechariah 1-6,” in ibid., 529-60; D. M. Carr, “Isaiah 40:1-11 in the Context of the Macro-
structure of Second Isaiah,” in Discourse Analysis of Biblical Literature: What It Is and
What It Offers, ed. W. R. Bodine, SBL Semeia Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 51—
74; D. J. Holbrook, “Narrowing Down Haggai: Examining Style in Light of Discourse and
Content,” JTT 7 (1995): 1-12; U. Simon, Reading Prophetic Narratives, trans. L. J.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 283

for further study of other prophetic texts and of increasingly larger text
portions.
Syntax itself has also been an ongoing interest of scholars of He-
brew literature, not least the Prophets. New tools are being used in this
analysis, including statistical and other work using the power of the
computer.**4
Going in the reverse order of text size, scholars have sought to under-
stand the meaning of the prophetic message by utilizing lexicography,
the study of lexical forms, that is, words.®° Word use and linguistics are
also used in attempts to date the composition of prophetic texts®° and
to find their geographical source through the study of dialectology.8”
Since the prophets were preachers, the original form of most of their
messages was most likely oral. The question arises whether we have any
material actually written by a prophet himself. At one extreme, some
deny actual writing of any prophetic material to the prophets them-
selves, all messages being orally delivered.*® If they were uttered in an
ecstatic state, this would necessarily be the case. Others argue that the

Schramm, Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1997), who analyzes narratives concerning prophets from the historical books.
84. E.g., E. Talstra and A. L. H. M. van Wieringen, eds., A Prophet on the Screen: Com-
puterized Description of Isaianic Texts, Applicatio 9 (Amsterdam: VU University Press,
1992).
85. Most commentaries spend much of their effort on the lexical, morphological, or
syntactic levels. Pride of place would go most probably to the commentaries of F. I.
Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Hosea: A New Translation with Introduction and Commen-
tary, AB 24 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980); Andersen and Freedman, Amos. Indi-
vidual lexical studies also abound, e.g., T. N. D. Mettinger, “The Elimination of a Crux? A
Syntactic and Semantic Study of Isaiah xl 18-20,” in Studies on Prophecy; 77-83; M. A.
Sweeney, “On 2m°S6¢ in Isaiah 8.6,” in Among the Prophets: Language, Image, and Struc-
ture in the Prophetic Writings, ed. P. R. Davies and D. J. A. Clines, JSOTSup 144 (Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1993), 42-54; J. T. Willis, “The ‘Repentance’ of God in the Books of Samuel,
Jeremiah, and Jonah,” HBT 16 (1994): 156-75.
86. A. Hurvitz, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship between the Priestly Source and
the Book of Ezekiel: A New Approach to an Old Problem, Cahiers de la Revue biblique 20
(Paris: Gabalda, 1982); M. F. Rooker, “Dating Isaiah 40-66: What Does the Linguistic Ev-
idence Say?” WTJ 58 (1996): 303-12.
87. W.R. Garr, Dialectical Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.c.£. (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); I. Young, Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew, FAT 5
(Tiibingen: Mohr, 1993).
88. J.J. Schmitt, “Prophecy, Preexilic Hebrew,” ABD, 5:488. See further on the oral vs.
literary discussion: W. Zimmerli, “Vom Prophetenwort zum Prophetenbuch,” TLZ 104
(1979): 481-96 (translated by A. Kostenberger as “From Prophetic Word to Prophetic
Book,” in Place Is Too Small, ed. Gordon, 419-42); F. E. Deist, “The Prophets: Are We
Heading for a Paradigm Shift?” in Prophet und Prophetenbuch: Festschrift ftir Otto Kaiser
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. V. Fritz, K.-F. Pohlmann, and H.-C. Schmitt, BZAW 185 (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1989), 8 (reprinted in Place Is Too Small, ed. Gordon, 589); Grabbe, Prophets,
Priests, 105-7.
284 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

prophetic documents that we have are substantially from the hand of

the named prophet.®? The import of the question lies with the proximity
that the present text has to the original prophetic message. What is orig-
inal and what is secondary, having been supplemented or altered over
a period of transmission? This area of “tradition history” is itself
fraught with problems, since it often, though not necessarily, suggests
that temporal proximity guarantees truth while lengthy transmission
calls it into question.

What Kinds of Messages Did the Prophets Give?

Form criticism, the study of literary types or genres, continues to be an
important aspect of prophetic study, as it has since the pioneering work
of Hermann Gunkel.?? German scholars such as Koch and Westermann
have played major roles in this discussion of the forms of prophetic
speech,?! though critique and interaction have not been lacking.??
Numerous scholars have sought to find formal parallels with ancient
Near Eastern texts (see above), while others look at the text itself for in-
sight. Here there is much overlap with other sections of this review,
since form-critical Sitz im Leben is closely tied to the role of the prophet
in society.
Paul Copeland raises an interesting question: The greatest issue at
stake in prophetic studies is not “What did God say through the proph-
ets?” but “What does it mean for a prophet to claim that God had spo-
ken to him at all?”*? This question brings together many of the threads
already noticed previously, such as definition and role. This raises the

89. E.g., Paul, Amos, 6.

90. For useful summaries of Gunkel’s contributions, see Gordon, “Story,” 12-14, and
J. H. Hayes, An Introduction to Old Testament Study (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), 122-54,
273-77.
91. C. Westermann, Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech, trans. H. C. White (Philadel-
phia: Westminster, 1967); idem, Sprache und Struktur der Prophetie Deuterojesajas, CThM
11 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1981); idem, “Zur Erforschung und zum Verstandnis der prophet-
ischen Heilsworte,” ZAW 98 (1986): 1-13; idem, Prophetic Oracles of Salvation in the Old
Testament, trans. K. Crim (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991). For a brief study of
Westermann, see B. T. Arnold, “Forms of Prophetic Speech in the Old Testament: A Sum-
mary of Claus Westermann’s Contributions,” ATJ 27 (1995): 30-40. See also K. Koch,
Amos: Untersucht mit den Methoden einer Strukturalen Formgeschichte, AOAT 30 (Keve-
laer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1976); idem, The
Prophets, 2 vols., trans. M. Kohl (London: SCM, 1982; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983-84).
92. Wilson, “Form-Critical Investigation”; W. E. March, “Prophecy,” in Old Testament
Form Criticism, ed. J. H. Hayes, TUMSR 2 (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1974),
251-66; see G. M. Tucker, “Prophetic Speech,” Jnt 32 (1978): 31-45; idem, “Prophecy and
the Prophetic Literature”; M. A. Sweeney, “Formation and Form in Prophetic Literature,”
in Old Testament Interpretation, ed. Mays, Petersen, and Richards, 113-26.
93. P. E. Copeland, “A Guide to the Study of the Prophets,” Themelios 10.1 (1984): 8.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 26a

discussion to a different level, where source and context go beyond bor-

rowing to inspiration. The level of authority differs if one sees prophecy
as simply literature on the one hand or as revelation on the other.” Is
the prophet just insightful,?° or is he inspired? Increasing importance
has been placed on the theological aspects of the prophets’ message, in-
cluding the ethical aspects.”°
An important literary form that the prophets used to express their
message was metaphor. The study of metaphor has become a major
area of interest for scholars. God and various of his attributes and rela-
tionships are naturally expressed in metaphorical terms, since the
Wholly Other must be so described in order to make some cognitive
connection with the mortal.?’ While other metaphors have also re-

94. A. Brenner, “On ‘Jeremiah’ and the Poetics of (Prophetic?) Pornography,” in A.

Brenner and F. van Dijk-Hemmes, On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the He-
brew Bible, Biblical Interpretation Series 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 177; R. E. Clements, Old
Testament Prophecy: From Oracles to Canon (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1996), 13.
95. R. R. Deutsch, “Why Did the Hebrew Prophets Speak?” South-East Asia Journal
of Theology 18 (1977): 26-36; Deist, “Prophets,” 15 (reprinted in Place Is Too Small, ed.
Gordon, 596); B. W. Anderson, “The Role of the Messiah,” BibRev 11.5 (1995): 19, 48.
96. Gordon, “Story,” 22; J. Barton, “Natural Law and Poetic Justice in the Old Testa-
ment,” JTS, n.s., 30 (1979): 1-14; C. Stuhlmueller, “Deutero-Isaiah: Major Transitions in
the Prophet's Theology and in Contemporary Scholarship,” CBQ 42 (1980): 1-29; E. W.
Davies, Prophecy and Ethics: Isaiah and the Ethical Traditions of Israel, JSOTSup 16 (Shef-
field: JSOT Press, 1981); H. W. Wolff, Confrontations with Prophets: Discovering the Old
Testament’s New and Contemporary Significance (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); W. S.
Prinsloo, The Theology of the Book of Joel, BZAW 163 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1985); Wester-
mann, “Zur Erforschung und zum Verstandnis”; W. Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination:
Prophetic Voices in Exile (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); idem, Hope within History (At-
lanta: John Knox, 1987); idem, Jo Pluck Up, to Tear Down: A Commentary of the Book of
Jeremiah 1-25, ITC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988); idem, Zo Build, to Plant: A Com-
mentary of the Book of Jeremiah 26-52, ITC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991); M. D. Car-
roll, Contexts for Amos: Prophetic Poetics in Latin American Perspective, JSOTSup 132
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992); B. A. Levine, “An Essay on Prophetic Attitudes toward
Temple and Cult in Biblical Israel,” in Minhah le-Nahum: Biblical and Other Studies Pre-
sented to Nahum M. Sarna in Honour of His 70th Birthday, ed. M. Brettler and M. Fish-
bane, JSOTSup 154 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 202-25; J. G. McConville, Judgement
and Promise: An Interpretation of the Book of Jeremiah (Leicester: Apollos; Winona Lake,
Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1993); R. R. Marrs, “The Prophetic Faith: A Call to Ethics and Com-
munity,” ResQ 36 (1994): 304-15; H. G. M. Williamson, “Isaiah and the Wise,” in Wisdom
in Ancient Israel, ed. J. Day, R. P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1995), 133-41.
97. M. I. Gruber, “The Motherhood of God in Second Isaiah,” RB 90 (1983): 351-59;
C. E. Armerding, “Images for Today: Word from the Prophets,” in Studies in Old Testa-
ment Theology, ed. R. L. Hubbard (Dallas, London, and Vancouver: Word, 1992), 167-86;
J. D. W. Watts, “Images of Yahweh: God in the Prophets,” in ibid., 135-47; J. F. A. Sawyer,
“Radical Images of Yahweh in Isaiah 63,” in Among the Prophets, ed. Davies and Clines,
72-82: K. P. Darr, “Two Unifying Female Images in the Book of Isaiah,” in Uncovering An-
cient Stones: Essays in Memory of H. Neil Richardson, ed. L. M. Hopfe (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1994), 17-30; J. T. Willis, “‘I Am Your God’ and ‘You Are My People’ in
286 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

ceived attention,?® marriage and sexuality have been of special inter-

est.2? Particular concern of late has been directed toward the brutaliz-
ing metaphors of rape and degradation, with suggestions that they
border on, or cross the border into, pornography.!°

Hosea and Jeremiah,” ResQ 36 (1994): 291-303; J. A. O’Brien, “Judah as Wife and Hus-
band: Deconstructing Gender in Malachi,” JBL 115 (1996): 241-50; B. Seifert, Metapho-
rische Reden von Gott im Hoseabuch, FRLANT 166 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1996); S. D. Moore, “Gigantic God: Yahweh's Body,” JSOT 70 (1996): 87-115.
98. C. Hardmeier, Texttheorie und biblische Exegese: Zur rhetorischen Funktion der
Trauermetaphorik in der Prophetie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1978); P. A. Porter, Metaphors and
Monsters: A Literary-Critical Study of Daniel 7 and 8, ConBOT 20 (Lund: Gleerup, 1983);
K. Nielsen, There Is Hope fora Tree: The Tree as Metaphor in Isaiah, JSOTSup 65 (Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1985); E. Follis, “The Holy City as Daughter,” in Directions in Biblical Hebrew
Poetry, ed. Follis, 173-84; U. Worschech, “Der Assyrisch-Babylonische L6wenmensch
und der ‘Menschliche’ Lowe aus Daniel 7,4,” in Ad bene et fideliter seminandum; ed. Mauer
and Magen, 322-33; M. L. Barré, “Of Lions and Birds: A Note on Isaiah 31.4-5,” in Among
the Prophets, ed. Davies and Clines, 55-59; J. P. Heil, “Ezekiel 34 and the Narrative Strat-
egy of the Shepherd and Sheep Metaphor in Matthew,” CBQ 55 (1993): 37-41; G. Eidevall,
“Lions and Birds in Literature: Some Notes on Isaiah 31 and Hosea 11,” SJOT 7 (1993):
78-87; R. Johnson, “Hosea 4-10: Pictures at an Exhibition,” SWJT 36 (1993): 20-26; J. B.
Geyer, “Ezekiel 27 and the Cosmic Ship,” in Among the Prophets, ed. Davies and Clines,
105-26; C. Maier, “Jerusalem als Ehebrecherin in Ezechiel 16: Zur Verwendung und
Funktion einer biblischen Metaphor,” in Feministische Hermeneutik und Erstes Testa-
ment: Analysen und Interpretationen, ed. H. Jahnow (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994), 85-
105; P. Marinkovic, “What Does Zechariah 1-8 Tell Us about the Temple?” in Second Tem-
ple Studies, vol. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period, ed. T. C. Eskenazi and
K. H. Richards, JSOTSup (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 88-103; M. G. Swanepoel, “So-
lutions to the Crux Interpretum of Hosea 6:2,” OTE 7 (1994): 39-59.
99. M. DeRoche, “Israel's ‘Two Evils’ in Jeremiah II 13,” VT 31 (1981): 369-71; H. Balz-
Cochois, Gomer: Der Héhenkult Israels im Selbstverstdéndnis der Volksfrémmigkeit: Unter-
suchungen zu Hosea 4, 1—5,7, Europaische Hochschulschriften 23.191 (Frankfurt: Lang,
1982); D. J. Clark, “Sex-Related Imagery in the Prophets,” BT 33 (1982): 409-13; G. Hall,
“Origin of the Marriage Metaphor,” HS 23 (1982): 169-71; P. A. Kruger, “Israel, the Harlot
(Hos. 2.4-9),” JNSL 11 (1983): 107-16; H. Ringgren, “The Marriage Motif in Israelite Re-
ligion,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. P. D. Miller
Jr., P. D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 421-28; N. Stienstra,
YHWH Is the Husband of His People: Analysis of a Biblical Metaphor with Special Reference
to Translation (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1993); M. A. Zipor, “‘Scenes from a Marriage’—Ac-
cording to Jeremiah,” JSOT 65 (1995): 83-91; O’Brien, “Judah as Wife and Husband”;
R. C. Ortlund Jr., Whoredom: God's Unfaithful Wife in Biblical Theology, New Studies in
Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).
100. Clark, “Sex-Related Imagery in the Prophets”; S. McFague, Metaphorical Theol-
ogy (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982); G. F. Ellwood, “Rape and Judgment,” Daughters of
Sarah 11 (1985): 9-13; R. J. Weems, “Gomer: Victim of Violence or Victim of Metaphor?”
Semeia 47 (1989): 87-102; N. Graetz, “The Haftarah Tradition and the Metaphoric Bat-
tering of Hosea’s Wife,” Conservative Judaism 45 (1992): 29-42; A. Brenner, “On Jeremiah
and the Poetic of (Prophetic?) Pornography,” European Judaism 26.2 (1993): 9-14; F. van
Dijk-Hemmes, “The Metaphorization of Woman in Prophetic Speech: An Analysis of
Ezekiel 23,” in On Gendering Texts, 167-76; Maier, “Jerusalem als Ehebrecherin”:
Magdalene, “Ancient Near Eastern Treaty Curses”; R. J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage,
Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); A. A. Keefe,
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 287

While today’s climate of “political correctness” leads some to ques-

tion the validity of such metaphors since they degrade women, we must
be aware that this is exactly the reaction that the author seems to be try-
ing to convey. If we react in disgust and horror to the degradation meta-
phorically heaped upon women in the Prophets, the prophets them-
selves would have had a similar response. They were trying to raise the
level of disgust in the readers to such an extent that they would ask,
“How can you write this kind of pornography?” The prophet could then
respond by asking: “This metaphorical expression illustrates the feeling
that God has toward you, his people, when you brutalize others or pros-
titute yourself. Isn’t God’s disgust even beyond your own at the porno-
graphic behavior in which you are actively involved?” Renita Weems
does raise the important question of how scholarly work on such texts
addresses practical, even pastoral, concerns raised by these texts.!9!
Can academic study and human practice in real life remain distinct,
and should they? (See the section below titled “Application: What Use
Are the Prophets for Us Today?”)

Transmission: How Did the Prophets Use Scripture, and What

Were Subsequent Uses of the Prophets’ Original Messages?
Redaction criticism—or the study of the process of compilation, editing,
and composition from existing sources, whether written or oral—has
been a flourishing field during the period under consideration. At times
it is difficult to distinguish it from form criticism,!®? since prophetic
messages were often a secondary application of another, original form
used in other than prophetic contexts.!°* Discussions of smaller passages
or entire books have appeared in commentaries and other forms.!™

“The Female Body, the Body Politic and the Land: A Sociopolitical Reading of Hosea 1—
2,” in A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets, ed. Brenner, 70-100; R. P. Carroll, “De-
sire Under the Terebinths: On Pornographic Representation in the Prophets—A Re-
sponse,” in ibid., 275-307; A. Brenner, “Pornoprophetics Revisited: Some Additional Re-
flections,” JSOT 70 (1996): 63-86. See P. Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings
of Biblical Narratives, OBT (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).
101. Weems, Battered Love, 8.
102. M. A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39: With an Introduction to Prophetic Literature, FOTL
16 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 13.
103. Tucker, “Prophecy and the Prophetic Literature,” 338.
104. Examples are too abundant to list them all. Some are: J. Vermeylen, Du prophéte
Isaie a Vapocalyptique: Isaie i-xxxv, miroir d'un demi-millénaire d'expérience religieuse en
Israél, 2 vols., EBib (Paris: Gabalda, 1977); B. S. Childs, “The Canonical Shape of the Pro-
phetic Literature,” Int 32 (1978): 46-55 (reprinted in Place Is Too Small, ed. Gordon, 513-
22); A. Laato, “History and Ideology in the Old Testament Prophetic Books,” SJOT 8
(1994): 267-97; J. Jeremias, “‘Zwei Jahre vor dem Erdbeben’ (Am 1,1),” in Altes Testament
Forschung und Wirkung: Festschrift fiir Henning Graf Reventlow, ed. P. Mommer and W.
288 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

Prophets were wont to reapply previous messages, much as contem-

porary preachers reapply a received tradition to a contemporary situa-
tion. Aspects of the Pentateuch were a productive source of applicable
tradition,!°> but other passages were also fruitful for this area of study

Thiel (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1994), 15-31; B. M. Zapff, Schriftgelehrte Prophetie—Jes

13 und die Komposition des Jesajabuches: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Redaktions-
geschichte des Jesajabuches (Wirtburg: Echter Verlag, 1995); idem, Redaktionsgeschicht-
liche Studien zum Michabuch im Kontext des Dodekapropheton, BZAW 256 (Berlin and
New York: de Gruyter, 1997); C. C. Broyles and C. A. Evans, eds., Writing and Reading the
Scroll ofIsaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition, VTSup 70 (Leiden: Brill, 1997).
105. Creation theology: S. Gillingham, “‘Der die Morgenréte zur Finsternis Macht’ Gott
und Schépfung im Amosbuch,” EvT 53 (1993): 109-23; J. G. Janzen, “On the Moral Nature
of God’s Power: Yahweh and the Sea in Job and Deutero-Isaiah,” CBQ 56 (1994): 458-78.
Eden: J. Barr, “‘Thou Art the Cherub’: Ezekiel 28.14 and the Post-Ezekiel Understand-
ing of Genesis 2-3,” in Priests, Prophets, and Scribes: Essays on the Formation and Heritage
of Second Temple Judaism in Honour of Joseph Blenkinsopp, ed. E. Ulrich et al., JSOTSup
149 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 213-23.
Tower of Babel: M. Hilton, “Babel Reversed—Daniel Chapter 5,” JSOT 66 (1995): 99-
112.
The patriarchs: C. Jeremias, “Die Erzvater in der Verkitindigung der Propheten,” in
Beitrdge zur alttestamentlichen Theologie: Festschrift fiir Walther Zimmerli zum 70. Ge-
burtstag, ed. H. Donner, R. Hanhart, and R. Smend (Géttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1977), 206-22; H. F. van Rooy, “The Names Israel, Ephraim, and Jacob in the
Book of Hosea,” OTE 5 (1993): 135-49.
The exodus: B. W. Anderson, “Exodus and Covenant in Second Isaiah and Prophetic
Tradition,” in Magnalia Dei, ed. Cross, Lemke, and Miller, 339-60; Kiesow, Exodustexte
im Jesajabuch; Tucker, “Prophecy and the Prophetic Literature”; G. C. i Oprinell, “La
Relectura de l'Exode a Ezequiel i Deuteroisaies” [The rereading of the exodus in Ezekiel
and Deutero-Isaiah], in Tradicio i traducci6 de la Paraula: Miscellania Guiu Camps, ed. F.
Raurell et al., Scripta et Documenta 47 (Montserrat: Associacié Biblica de Catalunya,
Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1993), 61-80; A. R. Ceresko, “The Rhetorical
Strategy of the Fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13-53:12): Poetry and the Exodus-New
Exodus,” CBQ 56 (1994): 42-55; C. Patton, “‘I Myself Gave Them Laws That Were Not
Good’: Ezekiel 20 and the Exodus Traditions,” JSOT 69 (1996): 73-90.
Covenant laws and theology: E. C. Lucas, “Covenant, Treaty and Prophecy,” Themelios
8.1 (1982): 19-23; Clements, Prophecy and Tradition, 8-23; R. B. Chisholm Jr., “The ‘Ev-
erlasting Covenant’ and the ‘City of Chaos’: Intentional Ambiguity and Irony in Isaiah 24,”
Criswell Theological Review 6 (1993): 237-53; A. van der Kooij, “The Concept of Covenant
(Berit) in the Book of Daniel,” in Book of Daniel, ed. van der Woude, 495-501; O. H. Steck,
“Der Gottesknecht als ‘Bund’ und ‘Licht’: Beobachtungen im Zweiten Jesaja,” ZTK 90
(1993): 117-34; S. Ausin, “La Tradicion de la Alianza en Oseas,” in Biblia Exegesis y Cul-
tura: Estudios en Honor del José Maria Casciaro, ed. G. Aranda, Collecion Teologica 83
(Pamplona: Eunsa, 1994), 127-46.
Moses: G. S. Ogden, “Moses and Cyrus: Literary Affinities between the Priestly Pre-
sentation of Moses in Exodus vi and the Cyrus Song of Isaiah xliv 24—xlv 13,” VT 28
(1978): 195-203; O'Kane, “Isaiah”; Seitz, “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape
of Jeremiah,” 3-27; Levenson, Theology of the Program; McKeating, “Ezekiel the ‘Prophet
Like Moses,’” 97-109.
Cult: S. L. Cook, “Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44,” JBL 114 (1995): 193-208;
A. Johnston, “A Prophetic Vision of an Alternative Community: A Reading of Isaiah 40-
55,” in Uncovering Ancient Stones, 31-40.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 289

known as “inner-biblical exegesis,” or the reuse of earlier biblical texts,

including some earlier prophetic oracles.!°°
This reuse of earlier texts is one of the ways the composition of Isaiah
has been explained. The debate over Isaianic composition has waxed
and waned since the twelfth century, ranging from those seeing the
book as completely an eighth-century B.c. composition by a single au-
thor, to those who see multiple authors from even centuries later.!°7
Several scholars investigating the compositional history of the book
have suggested that the constituent parts were written with knowledge
of, and in the light of, previously existing oracles. In other words, Deu-
tero-Isaiah used Isaiah of Jerusalem as a basis for his own oracles, and
was not prophesying in ignorance of them, with a later redactor only
uniting what were originally disparate, unrelated elements. There
could thus be said to be a real “unity” in Isaianic composition, though

106. I. Willi-Plein, Vorformen der Schriftexegese Innerhalb des Alten Testaments, BLAW
123 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971); J. Jensen, The Use of Téra by Isaiah: His Debate with the
Wisdom Tradition, CBQMS 3 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1973); J.
Day, “A Case of Inner Scriptural Interpretation: The Dependence of Isaiah XXVI.13-
XXVII.11 on Hosea XIII.4—XTV.10 (Eng. 9) and Its Relevance to Some Theories of the Re-
daction of the ‘Isaiah Apocalypse,” JTS, n.s., 31 (1980): 309-19; M. Fishbane, Biblical In-
terpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985); W. Kaiser Jr., “Inner Biblical Ex-
egesis as a Model for Bridging the ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ Gap: Hosea 12,1-6,” JETS 28 (1985):
33-46; T. Naumann, Hoseas Erben: Strukturen der Nachinterpretationen im Buch Hosea,
BWANT 7/11 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1991); J. T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, “The Intertextual
Relationship between Isaiah 65,25 and Isaiah 11,6-9,” in The Scriptures and the Scrolls:
Studies in Honour of A. S. van der Woude on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. F.
Garcia Martinez, A. Hilhost, and A. S. Labuschagne, VTSup 49 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 31-
42; Cook, “Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44”; J. Lust, “Ezekiel Salutes Isaiah:
Ezekiel 20,32-44,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah, ed. van Ruiten and Vervenne, 367-82;
J. T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, “‘His Master's Voice?’ The Supposed Influence of the Book of
Isaiah in the Book of Habakkuk,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah, 397-411, and other
studies in ibid. by O. H. Steck, “Der neue Himmel und die neue Erde: Beobachtungen zur
Rezeption von Gen 1-3 in Jes 65,16b-25,” 349-65; J. C. Bastiaens, “The Language of Suf-
fering in Job 16-19 and in the Suffering Servant Passages of Deutero-Isaiah,” 421-32; and
M. Vervenne, “The phraseology of ‘Knowing YHWH in the Hebrew Bible,” 467-92; essays
on Isaiah and its own internal intertextuality, as well as relations with Lamentations, Jer-
emiah, and Psalms in C. R. Seitz, Word without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theo-
logical Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). An excellent commentary where this
area of study is usefully highlighted is A. E. Hill, Malachi, AB 25D (New York: Doubleday,
1998), esp. appendix C, 401-12.
107. For a recent survey of some of the discussion, with helpful bibliography for ref-
erence to earlier writings, see H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-
Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 1-18. See also
idem, “First and Last in Isaiah,” in Of Prophets’ Visions, ed. McKay and Clines, 95-108;
P. A. Smith, Rhetoric and Redaction in Trito-Isaiah: The Structure, Growth and Authorship
of Isaiah 56-66, VTSup 62 (Leiden: Brill, 1995); B. M. Zapff, Schriftgelehrte Prophetie—
Jesaja 13 und die Komposition des Jesajabuches: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Redakti-
onsgeschichte des Jesajabuches, FB 74 (Wiirzburg: Echter Verlag, 1995).
290 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

not that of a single, eighth-century prophet, as some conservatives ar-

gue.!°8 Others look for structural unity, with themes, theology, or lin-
euistic parallels tying the book together in its extant form.!”
Discussion and exploration of an actual, extant text such as the
present Book of Isaiah seems to be a useful advance from a simple ato-
mistic approach with textual subdivision into purported sources, leav-
ing an eviscerated text that is not attested in any documentary sources.
This at least allows discussion of an objectively identifiable textual unit.
In one case at least, the units under discussion expand even beyond
the boundaries of a single work. A recent area of study has been the re-
dactional history of the “Twelve,” which assumes that the Minor Proph-
ets were a unified group during some stage of the redactional process.!!°
Text criticism seeks to go as far back into the transmission tradition
as possible, but in fact occupies the watershed between oral transmis-
sion and redaction on the one hand, when there might have been some
fluidity in the tradition, and its enscripturation, or more fixed written

108. R. E. Clements, “Beyond Tradition History: Deutero-Isaianic Development of

First Isaiah’s Themes,” JSOT 31 (1985): 95-113; R. Albertz, “Das Deuterojesaja-Buch als
Fortschreibung der Jesaja-Prophetie,” in Die hebrdische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nach-
geschichte: Festschrift fiir Rolf Rendtorff
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. E. Blum, C. Macholz, and
E. W. Stegemann (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990), 241-56. For a recent,
detailed discussion of the issue, see Williamson, Book Called Isaiah.
109. R. Lack, La symbolique du livre d'Tsaie: Essai sur l'image littéraire comme élément
de structuration, AnBib 59 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1973); W. L. Holladay, Isa-
iah: Scroll of a Prophetic Heritage (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), unity of theme but
not authorship; J. D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, WBC (Waco: Word, 1985), xxvii-xxxiv, who
sees it as a unity from the fifth century; J. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39,
NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 17-23; C. A. Evans, “On the Unity and Parallel
Structure of Isaiah,” VT 38 (1988): 129-47; Sweeney, Isaiah 1-4, 21-24; W. A. M. Beuken,
“Isaiah Chapters lxv-—Ixvi: Trito-Isaiah and the Closure of the Book of Isaiah,” in Congress
Volume: Leuven, 1989, ed. J. A.Emerton, VTSup 43 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 204-21;A. J. To-
masino, “Isaiah 1.1-2.4 and 63-66, and the Composition of the Isaianic Corpus,” JSOT
57 (1993): 81-98; J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy ofIsaiah: An Introduction and Commentary
(Downers Grove, Ill., and Leicester: InterVarsity, 1993), 13-33. For critique, see D. M.
Carr, “Reaching for Unity in Isaiah,” JSOT 57 (1993): 61-80.
110. P.R. House, The Unity of the Twelve, JSOTSup 77 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990);
T. Collins, The Mantle of Elijah: The Redaction Criticism of the Prophetical Books, Biblical
Seminar 29 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); J. D. Nogalski, Literary Precursors to the Book
of the Twelve, BZAW 217 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993); idem, Redactional Processes in the
Book of the Twelve, BZAW 218 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993); idem, “The Redactional Shaping
of Nahum 1 for the Book of the Twelve,” in Among the Prophets, ed. Davies and Clines,
193-202; B. A. Jones, The Formation of the Book of the Twelve: A Study in Text and Canon,
SBLDS 149 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). See also, e.g., S.J. De Vries, From Old Reve-
lation to New: A Tradition-Historical and Redaction-Critical Study of Temporal Transitions
in Prophetic Prediction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), who looks at redactional tech-
niques identifiable across the prophetic spectrum; and A. Schart, Die Entstehung des
Zwolfprophetenbuchs: Neubearbeitungen von Amos im Rahmen schrifteniibergreifender
Redaktionsprozesse, BZAW 260 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1998).
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 291

form on the other. Jeremiah has been the subject of the most text-criti-
cal interest, due to the great differences among the various textual wit-
nesses.'!! Other prophets have also been the focus of text-critical inves-
tigation in the more technical commentaries as well as separate articles
and monographs.!!?

111. E. Tov, The Septuagint Translation of Jeremiah and Baruch: A Discussion of an

Early Revision of the LXX of Jeremiah 29-52 and Baruch 1:1-3:8, HSM 8 (Missoula, Mont.:
Scholars Press, 1976); idem, “Some Aspects of the Textual and Literary History of the
Book of Jeremiah,” in Le Livre de Jérémie: Le propheéte et son milieu, les oracles et leur
transmission, ed. P.-M. Bogaert, BETL 54 (Louvain: Leuven University Press and Peeters,
1981), 145-67; P.-M. Bogaert, “Les mécanismes rédactionnels en Jér. 10,1-16 (LXX et
TM) et la signification des suppléments,” in ibid., 222-38; S. Soderlund, The Greek Text of
Jeremiah: A Revised Hypothesis, JSOTSup 47 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985); P.-M. Bogaert,
“Urtext, texte court et relecture: Jérémie xxxiii 14-26 TM et ses préparations,” in Congress
Volume: Leuven, 1989, 236-47; J. Lust, “Messianism and the Greek Version of Jeremiah,”
in VII Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Leu-
ven, 1989, ed. C. E. Cox, SBLSCS 31 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 87-122; H.-J. Stipp,
Jeremia im Parteinstreit: Studien zur Textentwicklung von Jer 26, 36-43 und 45 als Beitrag
zur Geschichte Jeremias, seines Buches und juddischer Partein im 6. Jahrhundert,
Athenaéum Monografien, Theologie, BBB 82 (Frankfurt am Main: Hain, 1992); J. Ribera,
“De la traduccié a la interpretacié: El Targum de Jeremies (Tg Jr) i les versions primaries:
La Septuaginta (LXX), la Pesitta (P) ila Vulgata,” in Tradici6 i traduccié de la Paraula, ed.
Raurell, 297-304; B. Becking, “Jeremiah’s Book of Consolation: A Textual Comparison:
Notes on the Masoretic Text and the Old Greek Version of Jeremiah xxx—xxxi,” VT 44
(1994): 145-69; J. Lust, “The Diverse Text Forms of Jeremiah and History Writing with
Jer. 33 as a Test Case,” JNSL 20 (1994): 31-48; H.-J. Stipp, Das masoretische und alexan-
drinische Sondergut des Jeremiabuches: Textgeschichtlicher Rang, Eigenarten, Triebkréfte,
OBO 136 (Fribourg, Switzerland: Editions universitaires; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1994).
112. N. L. Tidwell, “My Servant Jacob, Is. xlii 1,” in Studies on Prophecy, 84-91;
M. J. D. Servet, Minhat Sai de Y. S. de Norzi: Profetas Menores: Traduccion y Anotacion
Critica, Textos y estudios Cardenal Cisneros 40 (Madrid: Instituto de Filologia del CSIC,
Departamento de Filologia Biblica y de Oriente Antiguo, 1987); D. Barthélemy, Critique
textuelle de l’Ancien Testament, vol. 3, Ezéchiel, Daniel et les 12 Prophétes, OBO 50.3 (Fri-
bourg, Switzerland: Editions universitaires; Géttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992);
K. J. Cathcart, “Daniel, Especially the Additions, and Chester Beatty-Cologne Papyrus
967,” PIBA 15 (1992): 37-41; S. P. Carbone and G. Rizzi, I libro di Osea, Secondo II Testo
Ebraico Masoretico, Secondo la Traduzione Greca Detta Dei Settanta, Secondo la Parafrasi
Aramaica del Targum (Bologna: Edizioni dehoniane, 1992); E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the
Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress; Assen and Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1992); S. P.
Carbone and G. Rizzi, Il libro di Amos: Lettura Ebraica, Greca e Aramaica (Bologna: Edi-
zioni dehoniane, 1993); T. Hieke, “Der Anfang des Buches Nahum I: Die Frage Des Text-
verlaufs in der jetztigen Gestalt: Ein antihetische Prinzip,” BN 68 (1993): 13-17; R. Gry-
sonand J.-M. Auwers, “histoire du texte Latin d’Isaie au miroir du cantique d’Ezechias,”
RTL 24 (1993): 325-44; H.-F. Richter, “Daniel 4,7-14: Beobachtungen und Erwagungen,”
in Book of Daniel, ed. van der Woude, 244-48; D. Dimant, “The Seventy Weeks Chronol-
ogy (Dan 9,24-27) in the Light of New Qumranic Texts,” in ibid., 57-76; M. J. D. Servet,
Minhat Sai de Y. S. de Norzi: Isdias: Traduccién y Anotacion Critica, Textos y estudios
Cardenal Cisneros 54 (Madrid: Instituto de Filologia del CSIC, Departamento de
Filologia Biblica y de Oriente Antiguo, 1993); R. A. Taylor, The Peshitta of Daniel, Mono-
graphs of the Peshitta Institute 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1994); T. M. Meadowcroft, Aramaic
292 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

Application: What Use Are the Prophets for Us Today?

Commentaries have at times addressed the area of practical application
in the course of their textual interpretation.'!> Of late this interest has
also spread to the academy, with Walter Brueggemann playing an im-
portant role. His work, along with that of other writers, has applied the
prophetic text across the spectrum of theological disciplines, including
evangelism, pastoral theology, Christian education, and preaching.'!*
While knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a valid aspect of a liberal
education, practical use must also be indicated, especially in this period
of more restricted financial resources for academia. Since much bibli-
cal research is undertaken under the auspices of religiously endowed
institutions, relevance of that research for teaching or preaching is
often expected.
Liberation theologians have applied the message of the Prophets to
the socioeconomic and political spheres for years.'!> The mainline and
evangelical wings of the church have also joined in the endeavor.!!®

Daniel and Greek Daniel: A Literary Comparison, JSOTSup 198 (Sheffield: Sheffield Aca-
demic Press, 1995); Jones, Formation of the Book of the Twelve; A. van der Kooij, “Zum
Verhaltnis von Textkritik und Literarkritik: Uberlegungen anhand einiger Beispiele,” in
Congress Volume: Cambridge, 1995, ed. J. A.Emerton, VTSup 66 (Leiden: Brill, 1997),
185-202.
113. Several series are primarily interested in the “then” of the text, mainly looking at
understanding it in its original setting only (e.g., Hermeneia [Fortress] and International
Critical Commentary [T. & T. Clark]). Several relatively recent commentary series have
contemporary practical and theological application as a primary purpose. These include
The Bible Speaks Today (InterVarsity), Interpretation (Westminster/John Knox), Interna-
tional Theological Commentary (Eerdmans/Handsel), Knox Preaching Guides (West-
minster/John Knox), and Westminster Bible Companion (Westminster/John Knox). An-
other series that shares this goal is in preparation: The NIV Application Commentary
Series (Zondervan).
114. W. Brueggemann, Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism (Nashville: Abingdon,
1993); idem, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978); idem, The Creative
Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 40-66. In
many of his writings, he addresses proclamation of the prophetic message, but see par-
ticularly idem, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 1989). See also E. Achtemeier, Preaching from the Old Testament (Louisville: West-
minster/John Knox, 1989); idem, Preaching from the Minor Prophets (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1998); Seitz, Word without End, esp. 194-228; Weems, Battered Love.
115. Deist, “Prophets,” 10 (reprinted in Place Is Too Small, ed. Gordon, 592); Carroll,
Contexts for Amos; J. S. Croatto, “La Propuesta Querigmatica del Segundo Isafas,” RevB
56 (1994): 65-76; Dobberahn, “Jesaja Verklagt”; M. D. Carroll, “The Prophetic Text and
the Literature of Dissent in Latin America: Amos, Garcia Marquez, and Cabrera Infante
Dismantle Militarism,” BibInt 4 (1996): 76-100.
116. G. M. Tucker, “The Role of the Prophets and the Role of the Church,” Quarterly
Review 1 (1981): 5-22; Clements, Old Testament Prophecy; C. R. Seitz, ed., Reading and
Preaching the Book ofIsaiah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 13-22, 105-26.
Israelite Prophets and Prophecy 293

Wealth and poverty, or economic problems, as addressed in the Proph-

ets has been one of the topics of special interest, especially, although
not exclusively, among Marxists such as Norman K. Gottwald.!!7 This
is fitting since economic oppression is important to so many of the
prophets, as it is an all too real part of the lives of many today.
Feminists have also studied the Prophets from their perspective,
often providing insight missed or misconstrued by other readers, such
as the important roles played by women and the disadvantages that
they had to face in everyday life and in their service for their God.!!8

117. B. Lang, “The Social Organization of Peasant Poverty in Biblical Israel,” JSOT
24 (1982): 47-63; M. Silver, Prophets and Markets: The Political Economy of Ancient Is-
rael (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff, 1983); B. J. Malina, “Interpreting the Bible with Anthro-
pology: The Question of Rich and Poor,” Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture 21
(1986): 148-59; M. E. Polley, “Social Justice and the Just King,” in Amos and the Davidic
Empire: A Socio-Historical Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 112-38;
N. K. Gottwald, “The Biblical Prophetic Critique of Political Economy: Its Ground and
Import,” in God and Capitalism: A Prophetic Critique of Market Economy, ed. J. M.
Thomas and V. Visick (Madison: A-R Editions, 1991), 11-29; idem, The Hebrew Bible in
Its Social World and in Ours, SBL Semeia Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 349-
64; idem, “Social Class and Ideology in Isaiah 40-55: An Eagletonian Reading,” Semeia
59 (1992): 43-57; C. A.Newsom, “Response to Norman K. Gottwald, ‘Social Class and
Ideology in Isaiah 40-55,’” ibid., 73-78; J. Millbank, “‘I Will Gasp and Pant’: Deutero-
Isaiah and the Birth of the Suffering Subject: A Response to Norman Gottwald’s ‘Social
Class and Ideology in Isaiah 40-55,’” ibid., 59-72; M. Silver, “Prophets and Markets Re-
visited,” in Social Justice in the Ancient World, ed. K. D. Irani and M. Silver (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood, 1995), 179-98; W. Schottroff, “‘Unrechtmassige Fesseln auftun,
Jochstricke lésen’ Jesaja 58,1-2, ein Textbeispiel zum Thema ‘Bibel und Okonomie,’”
BibInt 5 (1997): 263-78.
118. E.g., P. Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, OBT (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1978); Balz-Cochois, Gomer; idem, “Gomer oder die Macht der Astarte: Versuch einer
feministischen Interpretation von Hos. 1-4,” EvT 42 (1982): 37-65; Trible, Texts of Terror;
H. S. Straumann, “Gott als Mutter in Hosea 11,” Theologische Quartalschrift 166 (1986):
119-34; M.-T. Wacker, “Frau-Sexus-Macht: Ein feministische Relecture des Hosea-
buches,” in Der Gott der Manner und die Frauen, ed. M.-T. Wacker, Theologie zur Zeit 2
(Disseldorf: Patmos, 1987), 101-25; M. J. W. Leith, “Verse and Reverse: The Transforma-
tion of the Woman of Israel in Hosea 1-3,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed.
P. L. Day (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 95-108; M.-T. Wacker, “God as Mother? On the
Meaning of a Biblical God-Symbol for Feminist Theology,” Concilium 206 (1989): 103—
11;K. P. Darr, “Ezekiel’s Justifications of God: Teaching Troubling Texts,” JSOT 55 (1992):
97-117; C. A. Newsom and S. H. Ringe, eds., The Women’s Bible Commentary (Louisville:
Westminster; London: SPCK, 1992); I. Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist
Approach (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); J. C. Exum, Fragmented
Women: Feminist (Sub) Versions of Biblical Narratives, JsOTSup 163 (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1993); R. Tornkvist, “The Use and Abuse of Female Sexual Imagery in the Book of
Hosea: A Feminist Critical Approach to Hos 1-3” (Ph.D. diss., Uppsala University, 1994);
Brenner, ed., A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets; Y. Sherwood, The Prostitute
and the Prophet: Hosea’s Marriage in Literary-Theoretical Perspective, JsOTSup 212, Gen-
der, Culture, Theory 2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), esp. 254-322; M.-T.
Wacker, Figurationen des Weiblichen im Hosea-Buch, Herders Biblische Studien 8
(Freiberg: Herder, 1996).
294 Israelite Prophets and Prophecy

Conclusion
In summary, prophetic studies, like the proverbial bride, brings things
old, new, and borrowed. Ideas and methods initiated by earlier genera-
tions of scholars have been expanded and refined, while new informa-
tion, often based on newly discovered texts or artifacts, has added to
our understanding of who the prophets were and what they were about.
Borrowing methods from cultural anthropology and literary studies
has also shone helpful light on the person and product of the prophet
in ways that would not have been possible using only the traditional
methods of biblical studies. While the corpus of biblical prophetic liter-
ature is fixed and well defined, methods for its study neither are nor
should be so unchanging. While not all questions or approaches will
produce compelling answers or useful results, any means that might
advance understanding should be explored and encouraged.
Wisdom Literature

Bruce K. Waltke and David Diewert

All scholars take the term wisdom literature, when applied to the Old
Testament/Hebrew Scriptures, to refer to the books of Job, Proverbs,
and Ecclesiastes, together with certain psalms (e.g., Ps. 37, 49) and
some books of the Apocrypha, notably Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sirach) and
the Wisdom of Solomon.! Some scholars have applied the term to other
books, but no consensus of opinion exists on these other possibilities.”

The introduction to wisdom literature and the sections on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes
were written by Bruce K. Waltke; the section on Job by David Diewert.
1. The two best introductions to wisdom literature are D. Kidner, An Introduction to
Wisdom Literature: The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes (Downers Grove, Ill.,
and Leicester: InterVarsity, 1985), and S. Weeks, Early Israelite Wisdom (Oxford: Claren-
don, 1994). The best anthology on the topic is Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour
of J.A. Emerton, ed. J. Day, R. P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1995 [hereafter W/AT]). Three anthologies written largely within
the restraints of historical criticism are: Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom: Selected, with
a Prolegomenon, ed. J. L. Crenshaw, Library of Biblical Studies (New York: Ktav, 1976
[hereafter SAIW]); Israelite Wisdom: Theological and Literary Essays in Honor of Samuel
Terrien, ed. J. G.Gammie et al. (New York: Scholars Press, 1978); The Sage in Israel and
the Ancient Near East, ed. J.G. Gammie and L. G. Perdue (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 1990). A popular introduction to this literature is D. Bergant, What Are They Say-
ing about Wisdom Literature? (New York: Paulist, 1984). For a history of the wisdom tra-
dition, see D. F Morgan, Wisdom in the Old Testament Traditions (Atlanta: John Knox,
1981). For a focus on individual wisdom books see J. L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wis-
dom: An Introduction (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981); and R. E. Murphy, The Tree of Life: An
Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, ABRL (New York and London: Doubleday,
1990; 2d ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).
2. For the debated influence of the wisdom tradition on other parts of the OT, see J. A.
Emerton, “Wisdom,” in Tradition and Interpretation: Essays by Members of the Society for
Old Testament Study, ed. G. W. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 221; R. P. Gordon,
“N House Divided: Wisdom in Old Testament Narrative Traditions,” in WIA, 94-105; J. A.

295
296 Wisdom Literature

This essay reviews the past few decades of research regarding the defi-
nition of wisdom literature and selected topics vis-a-vis the three Old
Testament books.

Definition of Wisdom Literature

The precise nature and setting of the Old Testament wisdom litera-
ture is debated. According to R. N. Whybray, “J. Meinhold in 1908
published what seems to have been the first study entirely devoted to
the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.”* Wisdom literature is
often said to be humanistic, international, nonhistorical, and eudae-
monistic, but as James Crenshaw notes, “each term has required
qualification.”*
In addition to their distinctive vocabulary, Whybray finds that “the
wisdom books are distinctive in that they are primarily concerned
with man and his world, and in particular with the potentiality and
limitations of the individual.”> Walter Brueggemann takes this a step
further and claims that the wisdom corpus announces the joyous news
that God trusts people to steer their own lives, and Crenshaw asserts
that the distinctive belief about Israelite wisdom was “in the suffi-
ciency of human virtue to achieve well-being in this life, apart from di-
vine assistance.”° These two claims, however, can hardly be reconciled
with the corpus itself. Proverbs 3:7 warns against being wise in one’s
own eyes (i.e., autonomous), and 3:6 calls for trust (bth) in the Lord
instead. Commenting on bth, Alfred Jepsen says: “Most of all, man
must not have confidence in himself. He must not trust in his own
strength (... Prov 21:22), ... or in himself, for ‘he who trusts in his
own mind is a fool’ (Prov 28:26; [cf. 14:12; 16:25; passim]).”” P. J. Nel

Soggin, “Amos and Wisdom,” in WIAI, 119-23; A. A. Macintosh, “Hosea in the Wisdom
Tradition: Dependence and Independence,” in WIAI, 124-32; H. G. M. Williamson, “Isa-
iah and the Wise,” in W/JAI, 133-41; W. McKane, “Jeremiah and the Wise,” in WIAIJ, 142-
52; B. A. Mastin, “Wisdom and Daniel,” in WIA, 161-69.
3. R. N. Whybray: The Book of Proverbs: A Survey of Modern Study, History of Biblical
Interpretation 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2; J. Meinhold, Die Weisheit Israels in Spruch, Sage
und Dichtung (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1908).
4. J. L. Crenshaw, “The Wisdom Literature,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern In-
terpreters, ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker (Philadelphia: Fortress; Chico, Calif.: Schol-
ars Press, 1985), 369.
5. R. N. Whybray, “The Social World of the Wisdom Writers,” in The World of Ancient
Israel, ed. R. E. Clements (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
227; on vocabulary see idem, The Intellectual Tradition in the Old Testament, BZAW 135
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974), 71-155.
6. W. A. Brueggemann, In Man We Trust (Richmond: John Knox, 1972), 20-22, 26;
Crenshaw, “Wisdom Literature,” 373.
7. A. Jepsen, “MWA batach,” TDOT, 2:91.
Wisdom Literature 297

argued that wisdom’s ethos “does not result from the goodness of man or
the superior functions of human reason.”* Because of humanity’s limita-
tions, the righteous commit their ways to the Lord for success (16:1-3).
Piloting his own life under the sun, Qohelet found death better than life
(Eccles. 4:2), and Job found no resolution to his questions of suffering
and to the question of “why be righteous.”? Job’s angst was relieved only
when the Lord answered him out of the chaotic whirlwind (Job 38:1).
The international character of wisdom, especially its connection
with Egyptian instruction literature, has been established since
E. A. W. Budge published what came to be known as The Teaching of
Amenemope.'° But Israel's wisdom uniquely lays down the fear of the
Lord as the foundation for acquiring wisdom (Prov. 1:7; 9:18; Job 28:28;
cf. Eccles. 12:13-14), and it is this concept, as Nel argues,!! that repre-
sents the central religious principle in the wisdom literature. Besides,
since Israel’s laws, hymns, and other types of literature also show con-
nections with the ancient Near Eastern literatures, this connection can-
not be a distinctive mark of wisdom literature.
Regarding the nonhistorical nature of wisdom literature, Roland
Murphy says: “The most striking characteristic of this literature is the
absence of what one normally considers as typically Israelite and Jew-
ish. There is no mention of the promises to the patriarchs, the Exodus
and Moses, the covenant and Sinai, the promise to David (2 Sam. 7),
and so forth.”!? This is largely so, yet Solomon, as king of Israel (Prov.
1:1), looked at humanity and his world through the lens of Israel’s cov-
enants and drew the conclusion that one could enter the world of wis-
dom only through the fear of the Lord (1:7). In contrast to Qohelet and
Job’s three friends, who spoke mostly of “God” (élohim), the title for
God in his transcendence, Proverbs speaks of “the Lorn” (yhwh), the
title of Israel’s immanent God who entered into covenant with them.
William McKane, Ernst Wiirthwein, and Walter Zimmerli think the
older Israelite wisdom was utilitarian and eudaemonistic, rather than
religious, but I contended already in 1979 that no distinction can be
made between secular/profane and religious/pious in any ancient Near
East literature.!? In 1987 F. M. Wilson appraised critically the distinc-

8. P. J. Nel, The Structure and Ethos of the Wisdom Admonitions in Proverbs, BLZAW
158 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1982), 127.
9. J. G. Janzen, Job, Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985), 3.
10. E. A. W. Budge, Facsimiles of Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, 2d
series (London: British Museum, 1923), plates I-XIV.
11. Nel, Structure and Ethos, 127.
12. Murphy, Tree of Life, 1.
13. W. McKane, Prophets and Wise Men, SBT 1/44 (Naperville, Ill.: Allenson; London:
SCM, 1965); idem, Proverbs: A New Approach, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster; London:
SCM, 1970); E. Wiirthwein, Die Weisheit Agyptens und das Alte Testament, Schriften der
298 Wisdom Literature

tion between older, profane wisdom and younger, Yahwistic wisdom,

and today the distinction is widely rejected.'* Even R. N. Whybray, who
formerly made this distinction, later said, “there is no awareness of the
modern distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ [in Proverbs].”!>
With regard to the claim that the Book of Proverbs bases its morality on
eudaemonism (i.e., a system of ethics of doing good to obtain pleasure),
let it be noted that the wisdom corpus qualifies eudaemonism in the
same way the rest of the Old Testament does (cf. Lev. 26 and Deut. 27—
28): happiness depends on faith in God to uphold justice. Moreover, in
order that the wise may not be seduced into confounding morality with
pleasure, the Lord often allows them to suffer for the sake of righteous-
ness and thereby works patience, hope, trust, and other virtues into
their character before he upholds his moral order, which includes jus-
tice (see under “Theology” below).
Klaus Koch, Hartmut Gese, and H. H. Schmid have developed the
notion that basic to wisdom is a search for “order,” a deed-destiny
nexus.!° On the basis of these studies and the conviction that the
Egyptian figure of Maat had been adapted to both the Israelite situa-
tion and the personification of Woman Wisdom in Proverbs 1:20-33
and chapter 8, Gerhard von Rad contends that God implanted wis-
dom (i.e., the world order of law and justice) in the creation itself, and
that this primordial revelation woos people to trust this immanent
revelation.'’ Daniel Estes essentially agrees but emphasizes that the

Philipps-Universitat Marburg 6 (Marburg: Elwert, 1960); reprinted in Wort und Existenz:

Studien zum Alten Testament (Géttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 197-216;
translated as “Egyptian Wisdom and the Old Testament,” trans. B. W. Kovacs, in SAIW,
113-33; W. Zimmerli, “Zur Struktur der alttestamentlichen Weisheit,” ZAW 10 (1933):
177-204; translated as “Concerning the Structure of Old Testament Wisdom,” trans.
B. W. Kovacs and reprinted in SAJW, 175-207; B. K. Waltke, “The Book of Proverbs and
Old Testament Theology,” BSac 136 (1979): 302-17.
14. F. M. Wilson, “Sacred and Profane? The Yahwistic Redaction of Proverbs Recon-
sidered,” in The Listening Heart: Essays in Wisdom and the Psalms in Honour of R. E. Mur-
phy, ed. K. G. Hoglund et al., JSOTSup 58 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987),
313-34; see Weeks, Early Israelite Wisdom, 57-73.
15. R. N. Whybray, Wisdom in Proverbs: The Concept of Wisdom in Proverbs 1-9, SBT
1/45 (Naperville, Ill.: Allenson; London: SCM, 1965), 72-104; cf. idem, Proverbs, NCB
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London? Marshall Pickering, 1994), 4.
16. K. Koch, “Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im Alten Testament?” ZTK 52 (1955): 1-
42; H. Gese, “Lehre und Wirklichkeit in der alten Weisheit,” in Um des Prinzip der Vergel-
tung in Religion und Recht des Alten Testaments (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchge-
sellschaft, 1972), 213-35; idem, Essays in Biblical Theology, trans. K. Crim (Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1981); H. H. Schmid, Gerechtigkeit als Weltordnung: Hintergrund und Ge-
schichte des alttestamentlichen Gerechtigkeitabgriffes, BHT 40 (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1968).
For their distinctive views see Emerton, “Wisdom,” 215-19.
17. G. von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, trans. J. D. Martin (Nashville: Abingdon; London:
SCM, 1972), 191; see also 144-76.
Wisdom Literature 299

natural world is under Yahweh’s sovereignty and that life is also in-
scrutable.!8
But Woman Wisdom who cries for a hearing in Proverbs 1:20-33 and
chapter 8 is a personification of the father’s revealed wisdom, not of
wisdom in creation. Derek Kidner notes that Woman Wisdom’s teach-
ing offers precisely the same benefits to the son as the father’s (cf. 6:23-
24 and 7:4).'? Moreover, her summons to the son to listen to her (8:32)
matches the father’s (7:24). The father’s wisdom, personified as Woman
Wisdom, is the Lord’s revelation found in the parental sayings, not ina
natural theology (cf. 2:1-6), and the conception of the yirtat Yahweh,
“the fear of the Lord,” as Nel argues, “does not allow one to interpret
wisdom as natural theology.”*° Carol Newsom explains the distribution
between the call of personified wisdom to humanity and the father’s:
“Where the father is the authoritative voice in the family, Hokmot [per-
sonified wisdom] is the corresponding public voice (‘in the streets,’ ‘in
the public squares’ . . .).”*!
According to Murphy, the thesis that biblical wisdom issues from the
effort to discover order is held by so many scholars that it seems to be
one of the “assured results.” But he himself has misgivings about this
approach to Israelite wisdom.” E. F. Huwiler complains against the
notion of a fated order: “In its extreme form, the deed-consequence
syndrome removes the deity from activity in the world. According to
this view, the consequence follows the deed of itself, and Yahweh,
whose power is limited, is directly involved merely as a midwife or a
chemical catalyst, although indirectly involved as creator, who set into
motion the deed-consequence syndrome.”?? Many sayings assert the
deed-destiny nexus, but they do not presuppose divine inactivity. Len-
nart Bostrom argues that the Israelite wisdom tradition cannot prop-
erly be described as secular.**

18. D. J. Estes, Hear, My Son: Teaching and Learning in Proverbs 1-9, New Studies in
Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 19-39. See also my forthcoming re-
view of this book in JBL.
19. Kidner, Introduction, 23.
20. Nel, Structure and Ethos, 127.
21. C. A. Newsom, “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of
Proverbs 1-9,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. P. L. Day (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 1989), 146.
22. R. E. Murphy, “Wisdom—Theses and Hypotheses,” in Israelite Wisdom, 34-35.
23. E. F. Huwiler, “Control of Reality in Israelite Wisdom” (Ph.D. diss., Duke Univer-
sity, 1988), 64. E. Wiirthwein states that in wisdom God's “power is limited to taking care
that [the order] retains its validity by means of proper retribution. Hence, Yahweh be-
comes a calculable God,” who is “entirely different” from the God of the covenant (“Egyp-
tian Wisdom and the Old Testament,” in SAW, 122).
24. L. Béstrom, The God of the Sages: The Portrayal of God in the Book of Proverbs,
ConBOT 29 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1990).
300 Wisdom Literature

According to Kidner, wisdom is distinctive for its tone, its speakers,

and its appeal: “The blunt ‘Thou shalt’ or ‘shalt not’ of the Law, and the
urgent ‘Thus saith the Lord’ of the Prophets, are joined now by the cooler
comments of the teacher. . .. Where the bulk of the Old Testament calls
us simply to obey and to believe, this part of it... summons us to think
hard as well as humbly.”*° These features too need qualification.
To be sure, the tone of wisdom differs, yet the father bluntly com-
mands the son “listen!” (1:8), “do not yield” (1:10), and so forth, and rep-
resents his sayings as fora, “law,” and “commandments,” miswot (1:3;
3:1; passim), the same terms used for the law of Moses. Moreover, his
appeal is just as urgent as those of Moses and the prophets: it is a matter
of life and death. Woman Wisdom “raises her voice” (2:20), an expres-
sion that denotes a fervent and emotional situation (e.g., deep human
distress, Gen. 45:2; Jer. 22:20), threat (Ps. 46:7; 68:34), roaring (Amos
1:2; 3:4; Job 2:11); and the father instructs the son to call back to wis-
dom in the same way (Prov. 2:3).
Israel’s wise men were teachers, not lawgivers and prophets, but, as
Kidner would agree, they speak with as much authority. They too claim
inspiration (2:6), and their counsel (€s@) is a matter of a decree, not ad-
vice to be evaluated.*° Moreover, as Christa Kayatz notes, Woman Wis-
dom speaks as a prophet in 1:20-33.77
Wisdom indeed appeals to the mind, but to know wisdom is more a
matter of a loving heart (i.e., a person’s center for both physical and
emotional-intellectual-moral activities)?® than of a cold intellect (cf.
Prov. 1522; 3:12: 4:65 Solace: 9-0", 1 2°15 13228 15:9" T 721g a oe
importantly, the Book of Proverbs calls for childlike faith in the Lord,
who upholds the righteous order of justice he has begotten (8:22-31).
As is well known, Qohelet found wickedness in the place of justice (Ec-
cles. 3:16), and Job discerned no moral order (9:22).
In my opinion, Old Testament wisdom literature differs from other
literary types by its distinctive inspiration (cf. Heb. 1:1).2? Whereas God
appeared to Moses in theophany and to the prophets in visions/audi-
tions (cf. Num. 12:6-8), Israel’s wise men and women observed God’s

25. Kidner, Introduction, 11.

26. See B. K. Waltke, “The Authority of Proverbs: An Exposition of Proverbs 1:2-6,”
Presbyterion 13 (1987): 65-78; idem, “Lady Wisdom as Mediatrix: An Exposition of Prov-
erbs 1:20-33,” Presbyterion 14 (1988): 1-15.
27. C. Kayatz, Studien zu Proverbien 1-9: Eine form- und motivgeschichtliche Untersu-
chung unter Einbeziehung dgyptischen Vergleichsmaterials, WMANT 22 (Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1966), 119-22.
28. B. K. Waltke, “Heart,” Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. W. A. Elwell
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 331-32.
29. B. K. Waltke, “Proverbs, Theology of,” NIDOTTE, 4:1079.
Wisdom Literature 301

creation and coined their cogent reflections upon it. One observes the
sage at work in Proverbs 24:30-34. His laboratory is the sluggard’s field
(vv. 30-31): “I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson
from what I saw” (v. 32). Whereupon he either coins or cites a proverb:
“A little sleep ... and poverty will come on you like a vagabond and
scarcity like an armed man” (vv. 33-34). Qohelet begins his essay by ob-
serving the cycles of creation (Eccles. 1:3—-11) and finds it all “a chasing
after wind”/“a vexation of spirit,” probably a deliberate double enten-
dre, of which the sages were fond. He continued his quest for wisdom
by reflecting on his experiences under the sun. Job based his religio-
social reflections largely on his experienced misery, and found no reso-
lution to his perplexity until the Lord made him see the chaos bounded
by the cosmos within the creation (Job 38-41).
Their theology, however, is not natural theology. They view creation
through the lens of Israel’s covenant faith. Solomon and King Lemuel’s
mother never take that lens away. Qohelet and Job temporarily remove
it but eventually replace it, and Agur confesses that apart from Moses
and David, whom he quotes in Proverbs 30:5-6, he could find no wis-
dom (30:1-4). Nevertheless, although their inspiration differs, they
claim to be inspired and to possess canonical authority (cf. Prov. 1:1;
22 le :)22:4/—2122 9:1:.30:5-6° Eccles; 12:9-.13: Job 42:19):

Proverbs
To give the reader a sense of the concerns in academic research on the
Book of Proverbs, I have chosen to focus on its origin and background,
poetics, and theology.*°

Origin and Background

The Book of Proverbs attributes its authorship to Solomon (1:1; 10:1),
“proverbs of Solomon copied by the men of Hezekiah” (25:1), Agur
(30:1), and King Lemuel (31:1).3! The ascription of chapters 1-24 to
Solomon agrees with the Deuteronomist’s claim that Solomon com-
posed 3,000 proverbs (1 Kings 4:32 [5:12 MT]). But academic research
during the past century has largely rejected this biblical claim and re-
gards Solomon instead as “a figurehead to which the ascription of wis-
dom could be attached.”?* Crenshaw observes that “as the wealthiest

30. A helpful introduction to academic research in Proverbs is Whybray, Book of

Proverbs.
31. I defend the historical credibility of these superscriptions in “Proverbs, Theology
of,” 1080-86.
32. R. E. Clements, Wisdom in Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Pater-
noster, 1992), 19.
302 Wisdom Literature

king in Israel’s memory, Solomon must naturally have invited thoughts

associating him with extraordinary wisdom,” and R. E. Clements
thinks the Deuteronomist made it up to create as good an image of a
questionable Solomon as possible.*? But Crenshaw confesses that “a
satisfactory explanation has not surfaced for the prominence of Solo-
mon’s name.”34 André Lemaire argues that “the portrayal of Solomon’s
reign and of his wisdom such as appears in | Kings iii-xi seems gener-
ally to conform with the royal near eastern ideology of the start of the
first millennium B.c.”*°
Old Testament scholars who are unwilling to accept Solomonic au-
thorship situate the Proverbs in time and social setting by form criticism
alone,*° which entails employing the literature of the ancient Near East.

International Background
Prior to Budge’s publication of The Teaching of Amenemope, scholars
often regarded Proverbs as under some influence of Greek philosophy
and as a product of a very late stage in Israel’s theological development.
In 1933 Johannes Fichtner laid the foundation for future research by
comparing in an exemplary way the wisdom literature of Israel with
that of the ancient Near East.*’ Scholars have now universally aban-
doned a Hellenistic background in favor of the context of the ancient
Near East from the time of Israel’s monarchy and earlier. I have argued
that this match inferentially supports the biblical claim of Solomon’s
authorship.*®
Proverb collections existed in Egypt from the Old Kingdom (2686-
2160 B.c.) right through to the Late Dynastic Period and Hellenistic
rule (500-300 B.c.);3? Ebla (ca. 2400 s.c.);4° Sumer (ca. 1700 B.c.);*!
Mesopotamia from the Kassite period (1500-1200 B.c.) and Middle

33. J. L. Crenshaw, “Proverbs,” ABD, 5:514; R. E. Clements, “Solomon and the Origins
of Wisdom in Israel,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 15 (1988): 23-36.
34. Crenshaw, “Proverbs,” 513.
35. A. Lemaire, “Wisdom in Solomonic Historiography” (trans. H. G. M. William-
son), in WIJAT, 106-18.
36. A helpful analysis of wisdom’s forms is R. E. Murphy, Wisdom Literature: Job,
Proverbs, Ruth, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, FOTL 13 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1981).
37. J. Fichtner, Die altorientalische Weisheit in ihrer israelitisch-judischen Auspraégung,
BZAW 62 (Giessen: Topelmann, 1933).
38. See B. K. Waltke, “The Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature,” BSac
136 (1979): 221-38.
39. See now J. D. Ray, “Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” in WIAI, 17-29.
40. G. Pettinato, The Archives of Ebla: An Empire Inscribed in Clay (Garden City, N-Y.:
Doubleday, 1981), 47, 238.
41. E. 1. Gordon, Sumerian Proverbs: Glimpses of Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopota-
mia (New York: Greenwood, 1968), 24-152.
Wisdom Literature 303

Assyrian times;*? and Aramaic (704-669 B.c.).43 In addition a few iso-

lated proverbs or proverb-like sayings have been discovered at Mari
and in the Amarna Letters (1350 B.c.).44
The most striking similarities exist between Proverbs and the Egyp-
tian collections,*> especially Amenemope, which scholars agree dates to
the late Twenty-first Dynasty (ca. 1070-945 B.c., roughly contemporary
with Solomon),*° but the nature of the relationship between the two
texts is disputed. Whybray presents a comprehensive review of that de-
bate, and Paul Overland has most recently added to it by noting the
structural similarity between the two texts.4” But the precise connec-
tion of Amenemope to the so-called Thirty Sayings of the Wise is dis-
puted. Glendon Bryce best represents a more positive critical evalua-
tion of their relationship, and John Ruffle, A. Niccacci (with whom
Whybray agrees), and Currid represent the negative.*®
Paul Humbert years ago pointed out the analogies of the content of
Proverbs with the Egyptian collections.*? Christa Kayatz has noted the

42. W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature, 3d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975;

reprinted, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 92, 97, 222. For the Babylonian wis-
dom literature connected to Job and Qohelet, see idem, “Some New Babylonian Wisdom
Literature,” in WIAIJ, 30-42.
43. J. M. Lindenberger, “The Aramaic Proverbs of Ahigar” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins
University, 1974); idem, The Aramaic Proverbs of Ahiqar, JHNES (Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 1983); J. C. Greenfield, “The Wisdom of Ahigar,” in WIAJ, 43-52.
44. See, respectively, A. Marzal, Gleanings from the Wisdom of Mari, StPohl 11 (Rome:
Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1976); W. F. Albright, “Some Canaanite-Phoenician Sources
of Hebrew Wisdom,” in Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East, Presented to H. H.
Rowley, ed. M. Noth and D. W. Thomas, VTSup 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 1-15.
45. J. Day (“Foreign Semitic Influence on the Wisdom of Israel and Its Appropriation
in the Book of Proverbs,” in WIJAI, 55-79) attempts to correct some claims for Egyptian
influence on the Book of Proverbs and emphasizes that “Israel's wisdom, including the
book of Proverbs, was indebted to foreign Semitic influence in addition to the Egyptian
influence” (70).
46. J. D. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 209.
47. Whybray, Book of Proverbs, 6-14; P. Overland, “Structure in The Wisdom of Ame-
nemope and Proverbs,” in “Go to the Land I Will Show You”: Studies in Honor of Dwight
W. Young, ed. J. E. Coleson and V. H. Matthews (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996),
275-91.
48. G.E. Bryce, A Legacy of Wisdom: The Egyptian Contribution to the Wisdom of Israel
(Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses,
1979); J. Ruffle, “The Teaching of Amenemope and Its Connection with the Book of Prov-
erbs,” TynBul 28 (1977): 29-68; A. Niccacci, “Proverbi 22.17-23.11,” SBFLA 29 (1949): 42—
72, summarized by R. N. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, JSOTSup
168 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 132-47; see Whybray, “The Structure and Composition
of Proverbs 22:17-24:22,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in
Honour of Michael D. Goulder, ed. S. E. Porter et al., Biblical Interpretation 8 (Leiden:
Brill, 1994), 83-96.
49. P. Humbert, Recherches sur les sources égyptiennes de la littérature sapientiale d’Is-
raél (Neuchatel: Secrétariat de l’Université, 1929).
304 Wisdom Literature

similarities in forms and motifs with reference to Proverbs 1-9, leading

her to press for the preexilic date of this collection.°? Having demon-
strated that the structure of Proverbs 1-24 conforms remarkably with
the structure of certain Egyptian collections precisely from the time of
Solomon, Kenneth Kitchen concludes that the most probable date of
chapters 1-24 “is entirely compatible with that of the named author in
the title of the work, i.e., king Solomon, ofc. 950 Bc.”*! Al Wolters dated
the last work (31:10-31) to the Hellenistic period because of the pres-
ence of s6piyyd in 31:27 (a wordplay on the Greek word sophia), but al-
lows that an earlier date, before Alexander, is possible? H. C. Washing-
ton documents, “During the two centuries before 332 B.c. Palestine had
seen a heavy influx of Greek culture.”°? However, Claire Gottlieb thinks
the pun is closer to Egyptian sb3yt, “instruction.”*4

Linguistic Evidence
Many critical interpreters now think that 1:1-9:18 and chapters 30
and 31 are postexilic in origin and that the other subcollections are
preexilic.°°> Washington, however, argues that these distinctions are

50. Kayatz, Studien zu Proverbien 1-9.

51. K. A. Kitchen, “Proverbs and Wisdom Books of the Ancient Near East: The Fac-
tual History of a Literary Form,” TynBul 28 (1977): 69-114 (quotation on 99); Kitchen’s
remarkable essay has just as remarkably been overlooked or ignored by later essayists
(Whybray, Book of Proverbs, 14, mentions Kitchen’s article only in connection with his
agreement with Ruffle!) and most commentators, e.g., D. Cox, Proverbs with an Introduc-
tion to Sapiential Books, Old Testament Message (Wilmington: Glazier, 1982); R. L. Alden,
Proverbs: A Commentary on an Ancient Book of Timeless Advice (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1983); K. T. Aitken, Proverbs, DSB—OT (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986) (to be fair, this
work lacks a bibliography); O. Pléger, Spriiche Salomos (Proverbia), BKAT (Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984); D. A. Hubbard, Proverbs, Communicator’s Bible (Dal-
las: Word, 1989); K. Farmer, Who Knows What Is Good? A Commentary on the Books of
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, TC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Edinburgh: Handsel, 1991); A.
Meinhold, Die Spriiche, Ziircher Bibelkommentare (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1991);
Whybray, Proverbs; R. C. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 5
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), 19-264. Notable exceptions are A. P. Ross, “Proverbs,” EBC,
vol. 5 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 883-1134; and D. A. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesi-
astes, Song of Songs, NAC (Nashville: Broadman, 1993).
52. A. Wolters, “Sdpiyya (Prov 31:27) as Hymnic Participle and Play on Sophia,” JBL
104 (1985): 577-87; idem, “Proverbs xxxi 10-31 as Heroic Hymn: A Form-Critical Analy-
sis,” VT 38 (1988): 457; see G. Rendsburg, “Bilingual Wordplay in the Bible,” VT 38
(1988): 354.
53. H.C. Washington, “Wealth and Poverty in the Instruction of Amenemope and the
Hebrew Proverbs: A Comparative Case Study in the Social Location and Function” (Ph.D.
diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1992), 185-86.
54. C. Gottlieb, “The Words of the Exceedingly Wise: Proverbs 30-31,” in The Biblical
Canon in Comparative Perspective, ed. K. L. Younger Jr., W. W. Hallo, and B. F. Batto,
Scripture in Context 4, ANETS 11 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1991), 290.
55. N. Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction (Philadelphia: For-
tress, 1985).
Wisdom Literature 305

not as secure as is usually assumed. Basing his view on Claudia

Camp’s treatment of the question, he contends that Proverbs, though
having undergone a centuries-long process of formation, much of it
impossible to reconstruct, underwent “a unitary editing, transform-
ing the diverse materials of the book into a recognizable product of
the Restoration community.”°° He appeals to the book’s lexical inven-
tory to suggest a composition time after the end of the Judean monar-
chy, but fails to deal with Kitchen’s arguments.°’ He himself confesses
that “it is precarious to date biblical books on the basis of their vocab-
ulary alone,” and “none of these words singly constitutes conclusive
evidence.”>8
In favor of an early date for Proverbs, W. F. Albright contended that
“Proverbs teems with. . . Canaanitisms,” and M. Dahood and W. A. van
der Weiden made extensive use of Ugaritic (ca. 1400 B.c.) in their phil-
ological studies on Proverbs.>*?

Setting
On the questionable assumption that sages express their sociological
milieu in their gnomic sayings, interpreters have searched for such ev-
idence, but Whybray (citing Murphy) notes that the precise life setting
of these sayings eludes us, calling into question the legitimacy of this
approach alone for literary criticism.®° Crenshaw is skeptical of the
ability of form-critical analyses to establish the social setting of wisdom
literature and, in any case, looks to a number of settings: family, court,
school.°!
Von Rad has proposed that a new scribal class in Israel produced
such works as Proverbs during a so-called Solomonic Enlightenment

56. Washington, “Wealth and Poverty,” 178; C. Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the
Book of Proverbs, BLS 11 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), 233. He does not agree with her
change of position in which she opts for a Hellenistic date for the book’s final redaction
in “What’s So Strange about the Strange Woman?” in The Bible and the Politics of Exege-
sis: Essays in Honor of Norman K. Gottwald on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. D. Jobling et
al. (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1991), 303.
57. Kitchen, “Proverbs and Wisdom Books.”
58. Washington, “Wealth and Poverty,” 180, 182.
59. Albright, “Some Canaanite-Phoenician Sources,” 9; M. J. Dahood, Proverbs and
Northwest Semitic Philology, Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici 113 (Rome: Biblical Insti-
tute Press, 1963); W. A. van der Weiden, Le Livre des Proverbes: Notes philologiques, BibOr
23 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1970).
60. See Whybray, “Social World,” 18-29; idem, Book of Proverbs, 18-33; B. W. Kovacs,
“Is There a Class-Ethic in Proverbs?” in Essays in Old Testament Ethics, ed. J. L. Cren-
shaw and J. T. Willis (New York: Ktav, 1974), 171-89; idem, “Sociological-Structural Con-
straints upon Wisdom: The Spatial and Temporal Matrix of Proverbs 15:28-22:16” (Ph.D.
diss., Vanderbilt University, 1978).
61. J. L. Crenshaw, “Prolegomenon,” in SAIW, 20.
306 Wisdom Literature

due to Solomon’s inspirational contacts with Egypt.®? Brueggemann

credits David for beginning this enlightenment.®* Udo Skladny places
three collections in the early monarchy: Proverbs 10-15; 28-29; and
16:1-22:16.°4 He interprets the last as an instruction for royal officials,
Bryce reaches a similar conclusion for Proverbs 25, Raymond Van
Leeuwen for chapters 25-27, and Bruce Malchow for chapters 28-29.>
B. W. Kovacs thinks Proverbs 10-29 were the work of government offi-
cials.® J. K. Wiles notes that kings sponsored wisdom, and wisdom un-
dergirded kings.*’ Weeks denies the court setting, but Michael V. Fox
indirectly answers him by noting that “the sayings in question speak not
only about kings and courtiers, but fo and for them.”*S
Others prefer a folk setting to a royal setting. R. B. Y. Scott distin-
guishes between folk and academic sayings in Proverbs.°° Murphy at-
tributes the greater number of sayings to ordinary social intercourse.”°
Skladny thinks chapters 25-27 were addressed to a more agricultural
sector of society.’! Whybray argues that Solomonic collections encap-
sulated the traditional lore of Israelite small farmers, and subsequently
were formed into larger groups for a pedagogical purpose.’* Fontaine
looks to Old Testament narrative to establish the function of proverbs
in ordinary life.’* Claus Westermann locates the bulk of chapters 10-29

62. G. von Rad, “The Beginnings of Historical Writing in Ancient Israel,” in The Prod-
lem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken (New York:
McGraw-Hill; Edinburgh and London: Oliver & Boyd, 1966), 166-204; so also E. W.
Heaton, Solomon's New Men: The Emergence of Ancient Israel as a National State (New
York: Pica; London: Thames and Hudson, 1974). For a critique of this hypothesis, see
R. N. Whybray, “Wisdom Literature in the Reigns of David and Solomon,” in Shadies in
the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays, ed. T. Ishida (Winona Lake, Ind:
Eisenbrauns; Tokyo: Yamakawa-Shuppansha, 1982), 13-26.
63. Brueggemann, Jn Man We Trust, 64-67.
64. U. Skladny, Die altesten Spruchsammilungen in Israel (Gdttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1962), 25-46.
65. G. E. Bryce, “Another Wisdom-Book’ in Proverbs,” JBL 91 (1972): 145-57; R. C.
Van Leeuwen, Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25-27, SBLDS 9 (Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1988); B. V. Malchow, “A Manual for Future Monarchs,” CBQ 47 (1985): 238-45.
66. Kovacs, “Is There a Class-Ethic,” 187.
67. J. K. Wiles, “Wisdom and Kingship in Israel,” Asia Jowmal of Theology 1 (1987):
55-70.
68. Weeks, Early Israelite Wisdom, 1-56; M. V. Fox, “The Social Location of the Book
of Proverbs,” in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran, ed. M. V. Fox
et al. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 227-39 (quotation on 235).
69. R. B. Y. Scott, The Way of Wisdom in the Old Testament (New York: Macmillan:
London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971), esp. 63.
70. R. E. Murphy, “Assumptions and Problems in Old Testament Wisdom Research,”
CBQ 29 (1967): 106.
71. Skladny, Die altesten Spruchsammlungen, 43.
72. Whybray, The Composition of Proverbs, 62.
73. C. R. Fontaine, Traditional Sayings in the Old Testament: A Contextual Study, BLS
5 (Sheffield: Almond, 1982), 72-138.
Wisdom Literature 307

among the simple folk in the small agrarian village at a preliterate stage
of culture.’* Whybray, however, thinks the references to drunkenness
in association with gluttony and to consorting with immoral women in
Proverbs “may be an indication of an urban setting.””°
Some recent scholarship tends to refine the folk setting to a preliter-
ate society. Westermann, André Barucgq, F. W. Golka, and Laurent Naré
suggest a preliterate origin of the material in Proverbs, especially chap-
ters 10-29, by comparing its short sayings with the aphoristic material
of modern nonliterate peoples, especially in Africa.” Whybray thinks
“this new material marks the beginning of a new era in Proverbs study
comparable with that which began with the publication of Amenemope
more than seventy years ago,” but Fox cautions: “We should be wary
about drawing conclusions from African parallels.””7
Others find the origins of wisdom in law. Berend Gemser concludes
that the proverbial wisdom in legal form might be very ancient.’® J.-P.
Audet and Erhard Gerstenberger think the admonitions in Proverbs
and in Israel’s law derived from specific codes of behavior used in Is-
rael’s patriarchal, premonarchical society (Sippenweisheit).’? Joseph
Blenkinsopp similarly thinks wisdom and law derived to some extent
from a common origin.®° H. W. Wolff supports the theory of Sippen-
weisheit for Amos, and J. W. Whedbee for Isaiah.°! Wolfgang Richter
speaks instead of “group ethos” (Gruppenethos) for the development of

74. C. Westermann, “Weisheit im Sprichwort,” Schalom: Studien zu Glaube und Ge-

schichte Israels: Alfred Jepsen zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. K.-H. Bernhardt, Arbeiten zur The-
ologie 46 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1971), 149-61.
75. R.N. Whybray, Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs, JsOTSup 99 (Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1990), 90.
76. C. Westermann, Roots of Wisdom: The Oldest Proverbs of Israel and Other Peoples,
trans. J. D. Charles (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1995); A. Barucq, “Proverbes
(Livre des),” DBSup 8 (1972), cols. 1395-476; F. W. Golka, The Leopard’s Spots: Biblical
and African Wisdom in Proverbs (Edinburgh: Clark, 1993), which incorporates his earlier
essays; L. Naré, Proverbes salomoniens et proverbes mossi: Etude comparative a partir
d’une nouvelle analyse de Pr 25-29 (Frankfurt and Berne: Lang, 1986).
77. Whybray, Book of Proverbs, 33; Fox, “Social Location,” 239.
78. B. Gemser, “The Importance of the Motive Clause in Old Testament Law,” in Con-
gress Volume: Copenhagen, 1953, VTSup 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1953), 50-66.
79. J.-P. Audet, “Origines comparées de la double tradition de la loi et de la sagesse
dans le proche-orient ancien,” International Congress of Orientalists 1 (1964), 352-57; E.
Gerstenberger, Wesen und Herkunft des “apodiktischen Rechts,” WMANT 20 (Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1965), 110ff.
80. J. Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament: The Ordering of Life in Is-
rael and Early Judaism, Oxford Bible Series (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983), 9-10, 74-129.
81. H. W. Wolff, Amos, the Prophet: The Man and His Background, trans. F. R. McCur-
ley, ed. J. Reumann (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973); J. W. Whedbee, Isaiah and Wisdom
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), 80-110; cf. Morgan, Wisdom in the Old Testament Traditions.
308 Wisdom Literature

laws that were then taken over by the wisdom schools.®” Nel argues,
however, that the admonition form cannot establish setting, that a dis-
tinction between law and the codification of the law must be main-
tained in order to determine the relationship between law and wisdom,
and that the identification of law and wisdom can be explained from
the inherent identity in ethos and content of both.*
As noted above, Richter proposes a second setting for original wis-
dom thinking: the school. By analogy from scribal schools in Egypt, Paul
Volz pictures in Israel both spiritual schools for religious formation and
scribal schools for training scribes.** H.-J. Hermisson locates the origin
of the sayings of Proverbs in schools connected with the royal court,
which trained the elite for the royal bureaucracy.®° N. Shupak defends a
school setting from equivalent terms found in the writings associated
with Egyptian schools, and W. Magass from metaphoric images in Prov-
erbs.8© Bernhard Lang, and especially Lemaire, contend for the exist-
ence of schools in ancient Israel from archaeological evidence.®’ Davies
weighs in on the side of those who think schools of some sort existed in
ancient Israel, but Weeks finds the evidence for schools so weak that
their existence should not be presumed, and Fox, sometimes using the
same data as Davies, denies that proverbs were taught in schools.*®
Others look to a home-school setting, at least for some parts of Prov-
erbs. Crenshaw argues for a home setting; Whybray and Fox argue
against most commentators, who assume that “father” means “teacher”
in wisdom literature; and Murphy says, “the home may be regarded as
perhaps the original site of wisdom teaching, before and after such
teaching became professionalized among the sages.”*®
In my opinion, the many references to the father, and especially
those to the mother, addressing the child throughout the book (1:8;

82. W. Richter, Recht und Ethos: Versuch einer Ortung des weisheitlichen Mahn-
spruches, SANT 15 (Munich: Késel, 1966).
83. Nel, Structure and Ethos, 127.
84. P. Volz, Hiob and Weisheit, 2d ed., Die Schriften des Alte Testaments (Géttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1921), 103.
85. H.-J. Hermisson, Studien zur israelitischen Spruchweisheit, WMANT 28 (Neu-
kirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968).
86. N. Shupak, “‘The Sitz im Leben’ of Proverbs in the Light of a Comparison of Bib-
lical and Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” RB 94 (1987): 98-119; W. Magass, “Die Rezep-
tionsgeschichte der Proverbien,” LB 57 (1985): 61-80.
87. B. Lang, “Schule und Unterricht im alten Israel,” in La Sagesse de l’Ancien Testa-
ment, ed. M. Gilbert, BETL 51 (Gembloux: Duculot; Louvain: Leuven University Press,
1979), 186-201; A. Lemaire, “Sagesse et écoles,” VT 34 (1984): 270-81.
88. G. I. Davies, “Were There Schools in Ancient Israel?” in WIAJ, 199-211; Weeks,
Early Israelite Wisdom, 132-56; Fox, “Social Location.”
89. J. L. Crenshaw, “Education in Ancient Israel,” JBL 104 (1985): 601-15; Whybray,
Intellectual Tradition, 41-43; Fox, “Social Location,” 230-32; Murphy, Tree of Life, 4.
Wisdom Literature 309

10:1; etc.), as well as to the grandfather in 4:1-9 and to King Lemuel’s

mother in 31:1, suggest that Solomon intended to transmit his wisdom
to Israel through the home even as Moses disseminated the law through
Israel’s parents (cf. Deut. 6:7—9). Fox finds a strong analogy to the an-
cient wisdom instructions in the medieval Jewish ethical testament:
“Ethical testaments are instructions written by men in their maturity
for the religious-ethical guidance of their sons and, sometimes, daugh-
ters. (These texts are, in fact, descendants of ancient Wisdom Litera-
ture, since they use Proverbs as a model.) .. . The father addresses his
son (or sons) and through him speaks to a larger reading audience.”””
If so, the Israelite situation is precisely the same as that attested in the
Egyptian instructional literature.

Poetics and Structure

In this survey of the history of the study, I lean heavily on Knut Heim
even as he cheerfully followed the outline of the survey by Ruth Scor-
hits Sty,
Survey of Scholarship Denying the Existence of Structure
McKane argues “that there is, for the most part, no context in the
sentence literature” (i.e., Prov. 10:1-22:16 and chaps. 25-29).”* This
conviction is part and parcel of his questionable program to rearrange
the proverbs according to their historical development. According to
him, the proverbs evolved from (A) those that were profane for the ed-
ucation of the individual, to (B) those that served the community, to (C)
those that expressed “a moralism derived from Yahwistic piety.”?* For
example, in his view, the word pair “righteous/wicked” belong to cate-
gory C, and the word pair “wise/fool” belong to category A.
In his commentary on the Proverbs, R. B. Y. Scott recognizes some
intentional arrangements (e.g., 16:1—7).?4 In a later essay on the reli-
gious and secular contents of Proverbs, he understands 10:1-22:16 asa
haphazard collection of “variegated material without contextual con-
nections.”?°

90. Fox, “Social Location,” 232.

91. K. M. Heim, “Structure and Context in Proverbs 10:1—22:16” (Ph.D. diss., Univer-
sity of Liverpool, 1996), 5-53; R. Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung, BZAW 232 (Ber-
lin and New York: de Gruyter, 1995).
92. McKane, Proverbs, 10; cf. 413-15.
93. Ibid., 11.
94. R. B. Y. Scott, Proverbs; Ecclesiastes, AB 18 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1965), 17.
95. R.B. Y. Scott, “Wise and Foolish, Righteous and Wicked,” in Studies in the Reli-
gion of Ancient Israel, ed. J. L. Crenshaw, VTSup 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 147.
310 Wisdom Literature

Westermann has reacted against efforts to find conscious arrange-

ments.° His approach is governed by the form-critical conviction that
the shorter sentence literature of 10:1-22:16, in contrast to the instruc-
tion literature of 1:1-9:18, was early. Since he stresses that the primary
Sitz im Leben of a proverb is its oral use, he denies the possibility that
authors composed sayings for a written context. Although he cannot
deny a relationship between some sayings in the secondary collection
of the sayings,’’ his concern is with their alleged oral origin.
Proverb-Performance Context
Observing that proverbs are often contradictory (e.g., “Haste makes
waste,” but “He who hesitates is lost”), B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett men-
tions the following factors operating in sayings according to the “prov-
erb-performance” school of thought.

— Proverbs express relative, not absolute, truth.

NS Life context determines a proverb’s meaning and “truth.”
3. A proverb that fits semantically may not be socially appropriate
in terms of what the participants in the situation wish to ac-
complish.
4. A person tends to select a proverb on the basis of what the life
situation requires.
5. Situations can be evaluated in more than one way.”®

Carole Fontaine also prefers to speak of “proverb performance mean-

ing” rather than “simple proverb meaning.”’? According to her, one uses
proverbs in social contexts to evaluate past actions or to affect future be-
havior.!° The collectors of proverbs failed to understand the need to give
full contextual data about the situation in which the saying is used.!®!
Claudia Camp developed Fontaine’s treatment of “performance con-
texts.”!° She called for “the literary de-contextualizing of proverbs”

96. C. Westermann, review of R. Van Leeuwen’s Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25—
27 in ZAW 102 (1990): 165-67.
97. C. Westermann, Forschungsgeschichte zur Weisheitsliteratur 1950-1990 (Stutt-
gart: Calwer, 1991), 35-36.
98. B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Toward a Theory of Proverb Meaning,” Proverbium 22
(1973): 823, cited by C. R. Fontaine, Traditional Sayings in the Old Testament, BLS 5 (Shef-
field: Almond, 1982), 50. Fontaine defines “proverb performance” as referring to a situa-
tion in which “a certain stimulus (usually human behavior) . . . has elicited the applica-
tion of the proverb to the situation” (Traditional Sayings, 182).
99. C. Fontaine, “Proverb Performance in the Hebrew Bible,” JSOT 32 (1985): 95.
100. Ibid., 96.
101. Ibid., 97.
102. Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine, 165-78.
Wisdom Literature 311

from their “dead” collections. She also contends that the personifica-
tion of wisdom as a female figure in the frame of the book recontextu-
alized the individual proverbs into a new unity.!"
Survey of Scholarship Affirming a Context for
the Individual Sayings in Proverbs 10:1—22:16
Educational Sayings. According to K. Heim,!° “the most detailed
earlier theories about ‘educational’ sayings were developed in the com-
mentaries of Heinrich Ewald and Franz Delitzsch.!°° Some of De-
litzsch’s suggestions were taken up by C. H. Toy and D. G. Wildeboer,
the latter being used by Hermisson.”!°° For the most part, however,
larger contexts created by Delitzsch’s suggested groupings were ig-
nored in the interpretation of the isolated proverbs.
Paronomasia and Catchwords. Gustav Bostrém connects the sequen-
tial sayings in the Book of Proverbs by aural links, such as consonance,
assonance, and alliteration.'®” But he is not interested in the arrange-
ment of proverbs to create meaningfully rich contexts. S. C. Perry con-
firms Bostrém’s work by a computer-based study of paronomasia in
collection II (Prov. 10:1-22:16).!°° He denies that these sound plays be-
tween the successive proverbs provided a context that enriched the in-
terpretation of individual sayings. Jutta Krispenz-Pichler identifies
groupings in collections II (10:1-22:16) and V (chaps. 25-29) based on
the repetition of phonemes, catchwords, and alliteration.!°? She tends
to neglect other structuring devices, but she recognizes groupings
based on semantic content.
Theological Reinterpretation. In his earlier works, Whybray accepted
McKane’s distinction between earlier secular materials and later theo-
logical sayings.!!° He argued that the latter are found at strategically im-
portant places and reinterpret their immediate context. Magne Saebg

103. Ibid., 209-15.

104. Heim, “Structure and Context,” 16.
105. H. Ewald, Die Dichter des Alten Bundes, vol. 2, Die Salomonischen Schriften, 2d
ed. (G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1867); F. Delitzsch, Salomonisches Spruch-
buch (Leipzig: Doerffling & Franke, 1873).
106. C. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, 2d ed., ICC
(Edinburgh: Clark, 1904), 311; D. G. Wildeboer, Die Spriiche, KHCAT 15 (Freiburg: Mohr,
1897), 31, 39; Hermisson, Studien, 176.
107. G. Bostrém, Paronomasi I den dldre hebreiska Maschallitteraturen, LUA 23.8
(Lund: Gleerup; Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1928), 112-15.
108. S. C. Perry, “Structural Patterns in Proverbs 10:1-22:16” (Ph.D. diss., University
of Texas, 1987).
109. J. Krispenz, Spruchkompositionen im Buch Proverbia (Frankfurt: Lang, 1989), 37.
110. R. N. Whybray, “Yahweh-Sayings and Their Contexts in Proverbs 10,1-22,16,” in
La Sagesse de l’Ancien Testament, ed. Gilbert, 153-65.
Syl Wisdom Literature

also came to the conclusion that Yahweh sayings provide a context for
the surrounding sayings that shape their meaning theologically.'!!
Repetitions. Daniel Snell provides a comprehensive study of variant
repetitions in the Book of Proverbs that often reach across its different
collections.!!? But, he is not primarily interested in the contextual ar-
rangements of sayings; indeed, he does not even entertain the notion
that authors consciously employed variants to create contexts. His
main interest is to determine a relative chronology of the different col-
lections, but the results of this approach prove inconclusive. Scoralick
mainly uses variant repetitions along with poetics—excluding seman-
tics—as structural devices to find compositional arrangements in
Proverbs 10-15.!!4
Semantic Significance. In 1962 Skladny set the stage for most subse-
quent discussion regarding the question of the arrangement of these
proverbs into contexts.!'4 By using analyses of form, content, and
style, and by employing statistics to quantify his findings, Skladny fur-
ther delineated smaller subcollections: A (chaps. 10-15), B (16:1-
22:16), C (chaps. 25-27), and D (chaps. 28-29). This analysis conforms
in part with the obvious editorial notices of the book’s structure in
10:1; 22:17; 25:1; 30:1. Scott, McKane, and Westermann deny there is
a context in the defined literary units sentence literature.'!> Hermisson
carries Skladny’s analysis a step further, however, by trying to discern
thematic and poetic unities in collection A.''® By using certain meth-
ods of French structuralism, Bryce shows that 25:2-27 constitutes a lit-
erary unit.!!” B. W. Kovacs finds collection B, which he begins at
15:28, as the embodiment of a consistent worldview.!!® Whybray
shows that an editor deliberately chose the place of the Yahweh say-
ings in 10:1-22:16.'!° By using structuralism, poetics, and semantics,
Van Leeuwen convincingly demonstrates that the proverbs in collec-
tion C are arranged into larger literary compositions.!7° Malchow pro-
poses that collection D is an intricately arranged collection serving as

111. M. Saebg, “From Collections to Book,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Con-
gress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986), 99-106.
112. D.C. Snell, Twice-Told Proverbs and the Composition of the Book of Proverbs (Wi-
nona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1993).
113. Scoralick, Einzelspruch, 3-5, 160f., passim.
114. Skladny, Die altesten Spruchsammlungen.
115. Scott, Proverbs, 14, 17, passim; McKane, Proverbs, 10, passim; Westermann,
“Weisheit im Sprichwort,” 73-85.
116. Hermisson, Studien.
117. Bryce, “Another Wisdom-‘Book’ in Proverbs,” 145-57.
118. Kovacs, “Sociological-Structural Constraints.”
119. Whybray, “Yahweh-Sayings and Their Contexts.”
120. Van Leeuwen, Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25-27.
Wisdom Literature Se

“A Manual for Future Monarchs.”!! By quantifying thematic, verbal,

and lexical links in “Solomonic materials,” Weeks paradoxically draws
the conclusions that there were subunits in these collections but that
they are not meaning-rich contexts.!*? I have argued for the unity of
15:30-16:15.'73 The recent commentaries by Pléger, Meinhold, Gar-
rett, Whybray, and Van Leeuwen interpret individual proverbs within
larger literary units. Meinhold and Van Leeuwen succeed best in this
enterprise, though there is still much work to be done.
Numerical Coherence. A numerical system may also give the collec-
tions coherence. Paul Skehan refines the work of P. Behnke, who ob-
served that “the proverbs of Solomon” (mislé sélomoh; 10:1—22:16) con-
tain 375 single-line proverbs, a figure that is equivalent to the sum of
the numerical values of the consonants of the name s/mh, and that the
140 verse lines (as opposed to sayings) in chapters 25-29, ascribed to
Hezekiah (25:1), comport in a similar way with the numerical value of
that name.!*4 Skehan continues the approach by noting, among other
numerical features, that the sum of the numerical value of the names in
1:1 is 930, which is remarkably close to the 934 lines of the present
MT.!?> Murphy finds the network of these equivalences “too striking to
be coincidental.”
!°

Theology
I have already touched on some aspects of the book’s theology in the dis-
cussion of wisdom’s distinctives.'*’ Because of the restrictions of space,

121. Malchow, “Manual for Future Monarchs,” 238-45.

122. Weeks, Early Israelite Wisdom, 20-40.
123. B. K. Waltke, “The Dance between God and Humanity,” in Doing Theology for the
People of God: Studies in Honor of J. I. Packer, ed. D. Lewis and A. McGrath (Downers
Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996), 87-104; idem, “Proverbs 10:1-16: A Coherent Collection?”
in Reading and Hearing the Word: Essays in Honor of John Stek, ed. A. Leder (Grand Rap-
ids: Calvin Theological Seminary and CRC Publications, 1998), 161-80; idem, “Old Tes-
tament Interpretation Issues for Big Idea Preaching: Problematic Sources, Poetics, and
Preaching the Old Testament, An Exposition of Proverbs 26:1-12,” in The Big Idea ofBib-
lical Preaching: Connecting the Bible to People, ed. K. Willhite and S. M. Gibson (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1998), 41-52.
124. P. Behnke, “Spr. 10,1. 25,2,” ZAW 16 (1896): 122; P. Skehan, Studies in Ancient
Israelite Poetry and Wisdom, CBQMS 1 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association,
1971), 43-45. This summarizes the results of a series of earlier studies.
125. Skehan, Studies, 25.
126. Murphy, Wisdom Literature, 50.
127. The best theology is Bostrom, God of the Sages. D. Estes, Hear My Son, New Stud-
ies in Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), presents an excellent systematic
statement of the pedagogical theory that underlies Prov. 1-9. See also Waltke, “Proverbs
and Old Testament Theology”; Clements, Wisdom in Theology, which needs to be ap-
praised critically; R. N. Whybray, Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs, JSOTSup 99
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990); select studies in idem, Book ofProverbs; and R. L. Schultz,
314 Wisdom Literature

I here merely emphasize that the “fear of the Lord” is the goal and restric-
tion of wisdom and nuances the book’s doctrine of retribution.'”°
Many academics represent Proverb’s doctrine as overly simplistic
and mechanistic, whether mediated by the Lord or in some other way.
Clements claims: “it is asserted by the proponents of wisdom, seem-
ingly with bland over-confidence, that wrongdoing always gets its
deserts and that the wicked come to a deservedly bad end.”!”? Unstated
here is a correlative, common assumption that “life” in this book refers
to physical life before the grave, and that “death” refers to a premature
physical death. This ideal state of affairs of the so-called older, didactic
wisdom, it is further argued, is contradicted by the younger reflective
wisdom of Qohelet and Job. For example, von Rad says that “the whole
of old wisdom has become increasingly entangled in a single false doc-
trine”; Williams says that Qohelet often uses “gnomic forms to contra-
dict traditional wisdom”; and Crenshaw says: “Once the sages acknowl-
edged exceptions, their entire scheme became problematic.”!*°
But neither assumption (i.e., a simplistic, mechanistic theory of ret-
ribution or that “life” refers to physical life) comports well with the
book’s theology. By the “better than” proverbs (e.g., 16:8) and the many
proverbs that assume the prosperity of the wicked (e.g., 10:2), Van
Leeuwen documents that the book, whose epigrammatic sayings indi-
vidually, by their nature, cannot express the whole truth, do not repre-
sent a tidy calculus of retribution.'*! Moreover, Graeme Goldsworthy
argues that “life” is a relationship with God and that death is a disrup-
tion of that relationship; I argue on the basis of Egyptian analogy, the
argument of the book, and exegesis of individual verses (e.g., 12:28;
14:32) that this life outlasts physical death in communion with God.!°2
Von Rad reaches the same conclusion for Psalm 49.!%5 Instructively, the

“Unity or Diversity in Wisdom Theology? A Canonical and Covenantal Perspective,” Tyn-

Bul 48.2 (1997): 271-306.
128. See B. K. Waltke, “Fear of the Lord,” JCBRF 128 (1992): 12-16.
129. Clements, “Wisdom and Old Testament Theology,” in WIAI, 279.
130. Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 233; J. G. Williams, Those Who Ponder Proverbs: Aph-
oristic Thinking and Biblical Literature, BLS 2 (Sheffield: Almond, 1981), 53; J. L. Cren-
shaw, “Poverty and Punishment in the Book of Proverbs,” Quarterly Review for Ministry
9 (1989): 30-43.
131. R. C. Van Leeuwen, “Wealth and Poverty: System and Contradiction in Prov-
erbs,” HS 33 (1992): 25-36.
132. G. Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom: Israel Wisdom Literature in the Christian
Life (Carslisle: Paternoster, 1987); B. K. Waltke, “Does Proverbs Promise Too Much?”
AUSS 34 (1996): 319-36. See also V. Cottini, La vita futura nel libro dei Proverbi: Contri-
buto alla storia dell’ esegesi, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Analecta 20 (Jerusalem:
Franciscan Printing Press, 1984).
133. Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 204.
Wisdom Literature SS)

RSV Originally sided with the LXX rendering of Proverbs 12:28: “the
ways ... [lead] to death [el-mdwer],” but the nrsv sides with the MT,
which the niv renders “along that path is immortality.”!*4 Similarly, I
originally sided with the LXX in 14:32: “But a righteous man in his in-
tegrity [btmw] finds a refuge,” but after more research I agree with the
MT: “But a righteous person is one who seeks a refuge [in the Lord] in
his death [bmtw].”!*> J. A. Gladson says the sayings teaching retribu-
tion embody a “dogmatism,” since the future is inaccessible to verifica-
tion, but Van Leeuwen contends they did not arise from a dogmatic de-
sire to suppress reality but from the conviction that God loves
righteousness and hates wickedness.!%°

Ecclesiastes
With regard to the “black sheep” of the canon, I review the research on
its authorship, unity, and message.

Author and Date

The question of the book’s authorship entails questions regarding its
unity and message. Raymond Dillard and Tremper Longman III note:
“Two voices may be heard within the Book of Ecclesiastes, Qohelet’s
and the unnamed wisdom teacher who introduces the book in the pro-
logue [1:1] and evaluates Qohelet [the speaker in 1:2—9:8 apart from
7:27] in the epilogue. Qohelet is a doubter and skeptic; the unnamed
speaker in the frame is orthodox and the source of the positive teaching
of the book.”!3” They defend their view by appeal to the similar struc-
ture in Job. Michael Eaton argued earlier, however, that it is “absurd”
to think that an editor would issue a book that he fundamentally dis-
agrees with.!*8
Who, however, is Qohelet, whose name means “Gatherer” (of people?
of sayings? of both?)? The traditional view is that it is a nom de plume

134. See J. F. A. Sawyer, “The Role of Jewish Studies in Biblical Semantics,” in Scripta
Singa Vocis: Studies about Scripts, Scriptures, Scribes, and Languages in the Near East, Pre-
sented to J. H. Hospers, ed. H. Vanstiphout et al. (Groningen: Forsten, 1986), 204-5.
135. B. K. Waltke, “Old Testament Textual Criticism,” in Foundations for Biblical In-
terpretation: A Complete Library of Tools and Resources, ed. D. S. Dockery et al. (Nashville:
Broadman & Holman, 1994); idem, “Textual Criticism of the Old Testament and Its Re-
lation to Exegesis and Theology,” NIDOTTE, 1:51.
136. J. A. Gladson, “Retributive Paradoxes in Proverbs 10-29” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt
University), 237-56; Van Leeuwen, Context and Meaning.
137. R. B. Dillard and T. Longman III, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 253.
138. M.A. Eaton, Ecclesiastes: An Introduction and Commentary, TOTC 16 (Downers
Grove, Ill., and Leicester: InterVarsity, 1983), 41.
316 Wisdom Literature

for Solomon.!3? Eaton modifies this: “It is what Solomon would have
said had he addressed himself to the subject of pessimism.”!*° Accord-
ing to most scholars, the language is postexilic, between classical He-
brew and Mishnaic Hebrew. Seow assigns it to the Persian period."*!
D. C. Fredericks contends that the language could be preexilic and cer-
tainly not later than exilic, but Fox critiques his minimalist position.'*
The usual explanation for Qohelet’s representation of himself as Sol-
omon is that it paved the way for the book’s approval as Scripture. But
Crenshaw notes that this explanation “overlooks the fact that a similar
device failed to gain acceptance into the canon for Wisdom of Solomon
and for the Odes of Solomon.”!*? E. J. Young argues that Qohelet rep-
resents himself as the ideal embodiment of wisdom, and D. McCartney
and C. Clayton defend Qohelet: “this is quite different than the assertion
that pseudepigrapha are a recognized genre and therefore could occur
in the Bible. Pseudepigrapha actually claim to be written by a particular
author and hence are deliberate misinformation.”!*4
Longman has argued that this anonymous book belongs to a genre
labeled “royal fictional autobiography,” a well-attested genre in an-
cient Near Eastern literatures.'*> His thesis goes a long way in explain-
ing the book’s Solomon-like appearance without being by Solomon.
In his commentary, Longman describes the genre as “framed wisdom
autobiography.” !*°

Unity
Apart from the obvious distinction between the epilogist who wrote the
frame and Qohelet whom he cites (see above), Graham Ogden says: “it
would be correct to say that most modern scholars now accept that Qo-

139. W.C. Kaiser, Ecclesiastes: Total Life (Chicago: Moody, 1979), 25-29; R. S. Ricker and
R. Pitkin, Soulsearch: Hope for Twenty-First Century Living from Ecclesiastes, rev. ed., Bible
Commentary for Laymen (Ventura: Regal, 1985); Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 254-66.
140. Eaton, Ecclesiastes, 23.
141. C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary,
AB 18C (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 20. :
142. D.C. Fredericks, Qoheleth’s Language: Reevaluating Its Nature and Date, ANETS
3 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1988), 262; M. V. Fox, Qoheleth and His Contradictions, BLS
18, JSOTSup 71 (Sheffield: Almond, 1989), 154 n. la.
143. J. L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SCM,
1987), 52.
144. E. J. Young, Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964),
348; D. McCartney and C. Clayton, Let the Reader Understand: A Guide to Interpreting and
Applying the Bible (Wheaton: Victor, 1994), 325 n. 67.
145. T. Longman HI, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 1991), 122-28.
146. T. Longman HI, The Book of Ecclesiastes, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1998), 17.
Wisdom Literature S17

heleth (1:2-12:8) is the work of one sage.”!47 According to J. A. Loader,

the book presents a masterly arranged series of “polar structures” with-
out one contradiction.'*8 G. A. Wright argues inferentially for its unity
by noting that there are 111 verses in the first half of the book, three
times the numerical value of hebel, “vapor,” which is 37, and 222 verses
in the entire book or six times its numerical value.!*? He had earlier di-
vided the book into halves on the basis of conceptual differences regard-
ing the significance of hebel: in the first half a chasing after wind, and
in the second, questions or denials of humanity’s ability to find anything
certain “under the sun.”!>° Kathleen Farmer essentially agrees with his
conceptual division: “Chapters 1-6 concentrate on the question of ‘what
is good’ and chs. 7-12 explore the question of human knowing.”!*!

Teaching
Crenshaw thinks Qohelet represents a loss of faith, and that a second
epilogue (12:12-18) was added “to remove the sting from Qoheleth’s
skepticism.”!>* Frank Zimmermann feels he was neurotic.!°? Loader
thinks the patterns of polar tensions in the book led to the conclusion
that all is hebel.!°4 Similarly to Dillard and Longman, Fox finds that the
epilogist distanced himself from affirming the truth of Qohelet, and that
a final author, a third, allows the reader to choose between them.!>°
Gerald Sheppard regards the conclusion to fear God as borrowed from
Sirach 43:27 to present a second thematizing of the book, overlaying the
first that all is hebel (1:2; 12:8).!°° Kidner allows as a second option that
the book presents an agonizing debate by Qohelet between skepticism
and faith, with the latter winning out.!°’ His first choice, however, is
that it presents a searching criticism of secularism and a positive assess-
ment of faith. This is also the view of numerous other scholars.!°° In my

147. G. Ogden, Qoheleth, Readings (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 11.

148. J. Loader, Polar Structures in the Book of Qoheleth, BZAW 152 (Berlin and New
York: de Gruyter, 1979), 133.
149. G. A. Wright, “The Riddle of the Sphinx Revisited,” CBQ 42 (1980): 38-51.
150. G. A. Wright, “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” CBQ 30 (1968): 313-34.
151. Farmer, Who Knows What Is Good? 151.
152. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes.
153. F. Zimmermann, The Inner World of Qoheleth (New York: Ktav, 1973).
154. Loader, Polar Structures.
155. M. V. Fox, “Frame-Narrative and Composition in the Book of Qohelet,” HUCA 48
(1977): 83-106.
156. G. T. Sheppard, Wisdom as a Hermeneutical Construct: A Study in the Sapiential-
izing of the Old Testament, BZAW 151 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1980), 125-27.
157. Kidner, Introduction, 90-94.
158. R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1969); G. S. Hendry, “Ecclesiastes,” in New Bible Commentary, ed. D. Guthrie and J. A.
Motyer, 3d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970); Ricker and Pitkin, Soulsearch; J. S.
318 Wisdom Literature

opinion, that view can stand only if it is qualified not as a polemic

against skepticism but as the search of an honest doubter. Georges Ber-
nanos drew the conclusion: “In order to be prepared to hope in what
does not deceive, we must first lose hope in everything that deceives.”!°?

Job
I will focus on three areas in particular that have received considerable
impetus in the past three decades: textual work on the Book of Job, re-
search into its past interpretation, and contemporary literary ap-
proaches to the reading of Job. These diverse fields will, I hope, give the
reader a sense of the breadth of concerns that are brought to bear on
this remarkable book of the Bible.!®°

Textual and Philological Research

The Hebrew text of Job has always presented a challenge to interpret-
ers. Its difficult syntax and the presence of numerous hapax legomena
have sent commentators searching outside the Hebrew language for
clues to meaning. This search has typically moved in two directions:
along the path of comparative Semitic philology and along the path of
the early versions.
In the case of comparative philological research on Job, significant
work had been undertaken prior to the period of our focus. The early
commentaries of Eduard Dhorme and of S. R. Driver and G. B. Gray de-
voted considerable space to philological concerns, and many brief arti-
cles appeared on the numerous problematic texts of Job.'®! In addition,

Wright, “The Interpretation of Ecclesiastes,” in Classical Evangelical Essays, ed. W. Kaiser

(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973), 133-50; idem, “Ecclesiastes,” EBC, 5:144-46; Murphy, Ec-
clesiastes; Eaton, Ecclesiastes, 48; idem, “Ecclesiastes,” New Bible Commentary: 21st Cen-
tury Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al. (Leicester and Downers Grove, IIl.: InterVarsity, 1994),
609-10; Ogden, Qoheleth; R. N. Whybray, Ecclesiastes, NCB (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans;
London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1989); Farmer, Who Knows What Is Good?; Garrett,
Proverbs.
159. Cited by J. Ellul, Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1990), 47.
160. Three recent anthologies of Joban studies provide a helpful way into the range
of issues involved: The Book of Job, ed. W. A. M. Beuken, BETL 114 (Louvain: Leuven
University Press and Peeters, 1994); The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book
of Job, ed. L. G. Perdue and W. C. Gilpin (Nashville: Abingdon, 1992); Sitting with Job: Se-
lected Studies on the Book of Job, ed. R. B. Zuck (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992). See also
N. N. Glatzer, The Dimensions ofJob: A Study and Selected Readings (New York:
Schocken, 1969).
161. E. Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. H. Knight (London: Nelson,
1967; orig. French edition, Le livre de Job [Paris: Lecoffre, 1926]); S. R. Driver and G. B.
Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book ofJob, ICC (Edinburgh: Clark,
Wisdom Literature 319

theories positing an Aramaic or Arabic base were proposed, though

without much acceptance.!®? Mitchell Dahood explored the signifi-
cance of Ugaritic for the Hebrew text of Job in a dozen publications,!©
which led to a number of full-blown studies in this area, beginning with
Anton C. M. Blommerde’s Northwest Semitic Grammar and Job. While
some studies touched on a number of selected texts, others concen-
trated on a block of material that posed particularly severe textual and
philological problems (e.g., Job’s final soliloquy, chaps. 29-31).!®4 More
recently, the first volume of a multivolume philological commentary on
Job has appeared, focusing on Northwest Semitic.!®
In the area of the early versions, our period has witnessed the pub-
lication of a number of significant works, from critical editions of ver-
sional texts to specific studies on these ancient translations. The Sep-
tuagint (LXX) has long been of particular interest to students of Job
due to its idiosyncratic character. The Old Greek (OG) version is ap-
proximately one-sixth shorter than the Hebrew (as preserved in the
MT) and at the same time contains some distinct, lengthy additions
(the speech of Job’s wife [2:9] and a concluding section providing back-
ground information on the characters of the story [42:17]). Thanks to
the efforts of Origen, however, the portions not represented in this
rather paraphrastic OG version were supplied, mainly from a transla-
tion known as “Theodotion.” The result is a Greek text of Job with
mixed textual character.
Prior to our period of focus, studies by Gillis Gerleman, Donald
Gard, and Harry Orlinsky, among others, sought to elucidate the signif-

1921); G. A. Barton, “Some Text-Critical Notes on Job,” JBL 42 (1923): 29-32; G.R.
Driver, “Problems in Job,” AJSL 52 (1935-36): 160-70; idem, “Problems in the Hebrew
Text of Job,” in Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East, ed. Noth and Thomas, 72-—
93; E. F. Sutcliffe, “Notes on Job, Textual and Exegetical,” Bib 30 (1949): 66-90; F. Zim-
merman, “Notes on Some Difficult Old Testament Passage [sic],” JBL 55 (1936): 303-8.
162. See, respectively, N. H. Tur-Sinai (H. Torczyner), The Book of Job: A New Com-
mentary, rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1967); A. Guillaume, Studies in the Book of
Job, ALUOS 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1968).
163. M. Dahood, “Some Northwest Semitic Words in Job,” Bib 38 (1957): 307-20;
idem, “Northwest Semitic Philology and Job,” in The Bible in Current Catholic Thought,
ed. J. L. McKenzie, St. Mary's Theology Studies 1 (New York: Herder & Herder, 1962), 55—
74: idem, “Hebrew-Ugaritic Lexicography,” Bib 44-53 (1963-72): [10 installments];
A.C. M. Blommerde, Northwest Semitic Grammar and Job, BibOr 22 (Rome: Pontifical
Biblical Institute, 1969).
164. See, respectively, e.g., L. L.Grabbe, Comparative Philology and the Text of Job: A
Study in Methodology, SBLDS 34 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977); A. R. Ceresko,
Job 29-31 in the Light of Northwest Semitic, BibOr 36 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press,
1980).
165. W.L. Michel, Job in the Light of Northwest Semitic, vol. 1, BibOr 42 (Rome: Bib-
lical Institute Press, 1987).
320 Wisdom Literature

icance of the LXX for establishing the textual base of Job.'® In the past
three decades, work on the LXX has continued, though in some ways
there has been a shift of emphasis and orientation. The OG version of
Job is valued not only for its contribution to the textual question of the
Hebrew Vorlage of Job, but also for its own sake, as an early reading and
interpretation of the book. Explorations of the translation technique of
the OG translator of Job have been carried out by Homer Heater and
others, some concentrating on certain portions of the book,!® and oth-
ers exploring the relationship between the OG Job and other Jewish
Hellenistic literature.'!®8 Of considerable significance in LXX Joban
studies has been the publication of a critical edition of the Greek Job by
Joseph Ziegler.!®’ Ziegler’s efforts to sort out the OG text and the
Hexaplaric supplements have been recently fine-tuned by P. J. Gentry,
who has carefully examined in a full-length study the non-OG material
in the Greek Job, identifying the extent of this material, examining its
translational character, and defining its textual affiliation.!”° All in all,
the Greek version of Job continues to be a source of serious scholarly
attention.
The past three decades have also witnessed the publication of the Ar-
amaic Targum of Job found in cave 11 at Qumran (11OQTgJob). Not only
is this document the earliest example of a written targum (Aramaic
translation), it was also the main material evidence of the existence of
the Book of Job at Qumran. It consists of one large roll, 27 large frag-

166. G. Gerleman, Studies in the Septuagint, vol. 1, The Book of Job, LUA 43.2-3
(Lund: Gleerup, 1947); D. H. Gard, The Exegetical Method of the Greek Translator of the
Book of Job, JBL Monograph Series 8 (Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature, 1952);
H. M. Orlinsky, “Studies in the Septuagint of the Book of Job,” HUCA 28 (1957): 53-74;
29 (1958): 229-71; 30 (1959): 153-67; 32 (1961): 239-68; 33 (1962): 119-51; 35 (1964): 57—
78; 36 (1965): 37-47.
167. H. Heater, A Septuagint Translation Technique in the Book of Job, CBQMS 11
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1982); C. E. Cox, “Job's Concluding So-
liloquy: Chs 29-31,” in VII Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and
Cognate Studies, Leuven, 1989, ed. C. E. Cox, SBLSCS 31 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991),
325-39; idem, “The Wrath of God Has Come to Me: Job's First Speech according to the
Septuagint,” SR 16 (1987): 195-204; J. Cook, “Aspects of Wisdom in the Texts of Job
(Chapter 28)—Vorlage(n) and/or Translator(s)?” OTE 5 (1992): 26-45; N. F. Marcos, “The
Septuagint Reading of the Book of Job,” in Book of Job, ed. Beuken, 251-66.
168. J. G. Gammie, “The Septuagint of Job: Its Poetic Style and Relationship to the
Septuagint of Proverbs,” CBQ 49 (1987): 14-31; B. Schaller, “Das Testament Hiobs und
die Septuaginta-Ubersetzung des Buches Hiob,” Bib 61 (1980): 377-406.
169. J. Ziegler, ed., Job, vol. 11.4 of Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum (Géttin-
gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982). For a detailed review of this critical edition, see A.
Pietersma, review of Job. Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum, by Joseph Ziegler,
JBL 104 (1985): 305-11.
170. P.J. Gentry, The Asterisked Materials in the Greek Job, SBLSCS 38 (Atlanta: Schol-
ars Press, 1995).
Wisdom Literature 82

ments, and a number of smaller fragments, which together contain por-

tions of chapters 17-42. The text ends at 42:11, and it is uncertain
whether 42:12-17 were missing from its Hebrew Vorlage. Over against
the MT, it exhibits some additions and some omissions, and at places a
degree of paraphrasing, including the tendency to telescope parallel
words into a single expression. On linguistic grounds, it can be dated to
the second century B.c. In the years following the appearance of the edi-
tio princeps,'’! a number of studies were carried out on the Qumran
targum that helped to clarify its relation to the MT and other early ver-
sions of Job.!7
Two other versions that have received recent attention are the stan-
dard Aramaic Targum of Job and the Syriac Peshitta. David Stec edited
a critical edition of the Targum of Job with a useful introduction and
notes, and Mangan has added a few studies on this translation.!73 The
Peshitta Institute published its fascicle of Job in 1982, and Heidi Szpek
has since produced a helpful study of this Syriac translation.!”4
These early translations of Job are valuable not only because of their
contribution to questions of a text-critical nature, but also because they
represent early commentaries on the book. Since every translation is an
interpretation, these versions preserve the insights of early readers of
Job, and so belong to the long history of its interpretation.

171. J. van der Ploeg and A. van der Woude, Le Targum de Job de la grotte XI de Qum-
ran, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Leiden: Brill, 1971).
172. M. Sokoloff, The Targum to Job from Qumran Cave XI, Bar-Ilan Studies in Near
Eastern Languages and Culture (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University, 1974); H.
Ringgren, “Some Observations on the Qumran Targum of Job,” ASTI 4.11 (1977-78):
119-26; J. A. Fitzmyer, “Some Observations on the Targum of Job from Qumran Cave
11,” CBO 36 (1974): 503-24; J. Gray, “The Massoretic Text of the Book of Job, the Tar-
gum and the Septuagint Version in the Light of the Qumran Targum (11QtargJob),”
ZAW 86 (1974): 331-50; B. Jongeling, “The Job Targum from Qumran Cave 11,” Folia
Orientalia 15 (1974): 181-96; S. Kaufmann, “The Job Targum from Qumran,” JAOS 93
(1973): 317-27; F. J. Morrow, “11QTargum Job and the Masoretic Text,” RevQ 8 (1973):
253-56.
173. D. M. Stec, The Text of the Targum of Job: An Introduction and Critical Edition,
AGJU 20 (Leiden: Brill, 1994); C. Mangan, “Some Similarities between Targum Job and
Targum Qohelet,” in The Aramaic Bible: Targums in Their Historical Context, ed. D. R. G.
Beattie and M. J. McNamara, JSOTSup 166 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 349-53; idem,
“The Interpretation of Job in the Targums,” in Book of Job, ed. Beuken, 267-80. See also
W. E. Aufrecht, “A Bibliography of Job Targumim,” Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate
Studies, Supplement 3 (1987): 1-13.
174. L. G. Rignell, Job, part 2.1a of The Old Testament in Syriac according to the
Peshitta Version (Leiden: Brill, 1982); H. M. Szpek, Translation Technique in the Peshitta
to Job: A Model for Evaluating a Text with Documentation from the Peshitta to Job, SBLDS
137 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992). See also M. Weitzman, “Hebrew and Syriac Texts of
the Book of Job,” in Congress Volume: Cambridge, 1995, ed. J. A. Emerton, VTSup 66
(Leiden: Brill, 1997), 381-99.
322 Wisdom Literature

Study of Past Interpretation

A second area of recent research on Job has been the investigation of
past interpretations of the book from both the Christian and Jewish
traditions. For the Christian tradition, Susan Schreiner has given par-
ticular attention to Gregory’s Moralia in Job, a series of lectures given
by Gregory in the late sixth century; to Thomas Aquinas’s Expositio
super Iob ad litteram, a commentary on Job composed in the second
half of the thirteenth century; and to Calvin’s 159 Sermons on Job,
which he preached between February 1554 and March 1555.'7° Gre-
gory, whose lectures were highly influential throughout the Middle
Ages, approached the Book of Job primarily at the moral and allegor-
ical levels of reading, stressing the importance of suffering as an op-
portunity for spiritual ascent. Aquinas, influenced by Maimonides, in-
terpreted the story of Job more literally, concentrating primarily on
the questions of evil and divine providence.!’° Calvin’s sermons, un-
like those of his predecessors, were directed to the layperson at a time
of social upheaval. His literal reading of Job “demonstrated the spiri-
tual temptation, anguish, and faith evident during those times when
history appears disordered and God’s rule cannot be discerned. On
the basis of Job’s story, Calvin directed his congregation to a God
whom they could trust despite the deepest darkness and the most
awful divine silences.”!”” Moving closer to the present, J. Lamb has re-
cently explored the ways in which Job was read in the eighteenth cen-
tury by people such as W. Warburton, R. Lowth, R. Blackmore, and
others.!78
Studies of rabbinic and medieval Jewish interpretations of Job have
also been undertaken recently. The rabbinic discussion focused mostly
on the question of Job’s ethnic status and his piety, while rarely touch-

175. S.E. Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? Calvin's Exegesis ofJob from Me-
dieval and Modern Perspectives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); see also
idem, “Why Do the Wicked Live? Job and David in Calvin's Sermons on Job,” in Voice
from the Whirlwind, ed. Perdue and Gilpin, 129-43; idem, “‘Through a Mirror Dimly’:
Calvin’s Sermons on Job,” CTJ 21 (1986): 175-92; idem, “‘Where Shall Wisdom Be
Found?’: Gregory’s Interpretation of Job,” ABR 39 (1988): 321-421. For treatment of a
commentary on Job by Didymus the Blind (a.p. 313-398), see H. G. Reventlow, “Hiob
der Mann: Ein altkirchliches Ideal bei Didymus dem Blinden,” in Text and Theology:
Studies in Honour of Prof. Dr. Theol. Magne Saebo, ed. K. A. Tangberg (Oslo: Verbum,
1994), 213-27.
176. For an English translation of Aquinas’s commentary on Job, see Thomas
Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence,
trans. A. Damico, Classics in Religious Studies 7 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).
177. Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? 7.
178. J. Lamb, The Rhetoric ofSuffering: Reading the Book of Job in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury (New York: Oxford; Oxford: Clarendon, 1995).
Wisdom Literature 325

ing on the larger issues of the book.!’? Saadiah Gaon (tenth century)
and Maimonides (twelfth century) gave considerable attention to Job
from a philosophical perspective.!®° The latter, in book 3 of his Guide
for the Perplexed, maintained that the central concern of the book was
divine providence. His reading of Job, in which he brought together Ar-
istotelian metaphysics and a traditional understanding of Jewish reli-
gious tradition, had a significant influence on Thomas Aquinas as well
as later Jewish interpreters. From the more philological and exegetical
tradition, Moses Kimhi (twelfth century) wrote a commentary on Job
in which he discussed lexical and grammatical problems, followed by a
somewhat paraphrastic interpretation.'®! In another study of Jewish
readings of Job, Oliver Leaman looks at the themes of evil and suffering
in various Jewish philosophers from Philo to Martin Buber using Job
as the place where these issues arise most poignantly.!®?
These studies in the past interpretation of Job are important since
they set into historical perspective the modern attempts to read the
Book of Job. Indeed, Schreiner brings her study of various past inter-
pretations of Job to a close by looking at some modern critical/exegeti-
cal, psychoanalytical, and literary readings, maintaining that a sense of
the past gives us a perspective on the present, with its own context and
historical contingency.!*?

Literary Approaches to the Book of Job

A third area of recent research on Job has been the development of a
number of interpretive strategies that are grounded primarily in literary
theories and perspectives. Prior to the 1970s, a predominant concern in
the interpretation of Job was to determine the way in which the book
developed, what parts of the present composition were primary and
which were secondarily added. The relationship between the prose

179. J. R. Baskin, “Rabbinic Interpretations of Job,” in Voice from the Whirlwind, ed.
Perdue and Gilpin, 101-10; J. Weinberg, “Job Versus Abraham: The Quest for the Perfect
God-Fearer in Rabbinic Tradition,” in Book of Job, ed. Beuken, 281-96.
180. L. E. Goodman, The Book of Theodicy: Translation and Commentary on the Book
of Job by Saadiah Ben Joseph Al-Fayyumi, Yale Judaica Series 25 (New Haven and Lon-
don: Yale University Press, 1988); Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? 55-90; M. D.
Yaffe, “Providence in Medieval Aristotelianism: Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas
on the Book of Job,” in Voice from the Whirlwind, ed. Perdue and Gilpin, 111-28.
181. M. Kimhi, Commentary on the Book of Job, ed. H. Basser and B. D. Walfish,
South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 64 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992). Ac-
cording to the editors, some eighty commentaries on Job have survived from the Middle
Ages and approximately half of these are anonymous (xi).
182. O. Leaman, Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge Studies in Reli-
gious Traditions 6 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
183. Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? 156-90.
324 Wisdom Literature

frame (prologue and epilogue) and the poetic core (the various
speeches), arguments for and against the primary or secondary nature
of the wisdom poem in chapter 28, the Elihu speeches and the second
divine speech, and the problematic arrangement of the third cycle
(chaps. 22-27) were all matters of serious debate. While these continue
to be explored, the past three decades have witnessed a movement away
from diachronic issues to focus on the present state of the text, with the
application of various literary methods of analysis. This focus on the
text itself—its rhetorical and poetic features, various modes of dis-
course, use of literary genres, and compositional coherence—has been
a marked feature of the past few decades of Joban study.
Rhetorical and poetic analysis seeks to map out the structural coher-
ence of poetic discourse. Concentrating on the elements of linguistic
and thematic correspondence across small poetic units (bicola and tri-
cola) and larger stanzas or strophes (consisting of a series of bicola or
tricola), it attempts to distinguish the various compositional blocks that
together constitute the poetic speeches. This formal analysis, which is
heavily based on linguistic features (lexical, morphological, and syntac-
tic), serves to demarcate the rhetorical units of speech and thus charts
the basic structure and movement of the argument. Work in this area
has been carried out above all by Pieter van der Lugt and Edwin Web-
ster, and the commentaries of Habel and Clines have demonstrated
considerable sensitivity to this kind of literary concern.'*+ Two recent
studies of more specific texts employing a similar focus on rhetorical
and formal analysis have appeared as well.!®>
Poetic analysis, however, is restricted in its applicability to the
speeches in Job; it is not appropriate for the prose frame. The prologue
and epilogue have thus been examined on the basis of close reading and
narrative theory. Here focus is given to elements of plot structure, char-
acterization, direct speech, and narrator’s point of view.'8* Others have

184. P. van der Lugt, Rhetorical Criticism and the Poetry of the Book of Job, OTS 32
(Leiden: Brill, 1995); idem, “Stanza-Structure and Word Repetition in Job 3-14,” JSOT
40 (1988): 3-38; E. C. Webster, “Strophic Patterns in Job 3-28,” JSOT 26 (1983): 33-60;
idem, “Strophic Patterns in Job 29-42,” JSOT 30 (1984): 95-109; N. C. Habel, The Book
of Job, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SCM, 1985); D. J. A. Clines, Job /-20,
WBC 17 (Dallas: Word, 1989).
185. J. E. Course, Speech and Response: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Introductions to
the Speeches of the Book of Job (Chaps. 4-24), CBQMS 25 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
Biblical Association, 1994); D. W. Cotter, A Study ofJob 4-5 in the Light of Contemporary
Literary Theory, SBLDS 124 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992). The latter consists of a poetic
analysis of this initial speech of Eliphaz based on the formalist approach derived from
Roman Jakobson.
186. N. C. Habel, “The Narrative Art of Job: Applying the Principles of Robert Alter,”
JSOT 27 (1983): 101-11; A. Brenner, “Job the Pious? The Characterization of Job in the
Wisdom Literature 325

applied elements of narrative theory to the book as a whole, seeing it as

fundamentally a story with an extended dialogue.!8? Cheney has ana-
lyzed the narrative frame and the macro- and microstructural features
of the speeches in order to assess the way in which the characterization
of the participants is actualized.!*8
Narrative and poetic modes of discourse, as present in the prose
frame and the speech core, distinguish these phases of the book and, in
the view of many, represent two different moments in the editorial pro-
cess. Either the speeches were spliced into the preexisting narrative
story, or the legend of Job was added to tone down the speeches. In ei-
ther case, the disjunction between the frame and the core is apparent,
on both stylistic and thematic grounds. The Job of the prologue and the
Job of the speeches appear to be two different characters. Recent liter-
ary readings of the book, however, have carefully explored the linkage
between the prologue and the initial speeches, and have viewed the dis-
parate Job figures as a single unified character.'*? This kind of analysis
strengthens the literary integrity of the book and suggests that the
frame and the core have been masterfully composed as a coherent lit-
erary work.
But what kind of composition is it? The issue of literary genre con-
tinues to be discussed, with a few new developments. Westermann
maintains that Job is a dramatized lament with disputational
speeches.!?° Others view Job as a dramatic tragedy or comedy.!”! Still
others consider the book as a whole to be sui generis, a unique literary
creation of the wisdom tradition that made use of a variety of literary
forms: didactic narrative, lament, disputation, legal forms, and so

Narrative Framework of the Book,” JSOT 43 (1989): 37-52; M. J. Oosthuizen, “Divine In-
security and Joban Heroism: A Reading of the Narrative Framework of Job,” OTE 4
(1991): 295-315; M. Weiss, The Story of Job’s Beginning (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983);
D. J. A. Clines, “False Naivety in the Prologue to Job,” HAR 9 (1985): 127-36; A. Cooper,
“Reading and Misreading the Prologue to Job,” JSOT 46 (1990): 67-79.
187. A. Cooper, “Narrative Theory and the Book of Job,” SR 11 (1982): 35-44.
188. M. Cheney, Dust, Wind, and Agony: Character, Speech, and Genre in Job, ConBOT
36 (Stockholm: Almavist & Wiksell, 1994).
189. R. D. Moore, “The Integrity of Job,” CBO 45 (1983): 17-31; R. W. E. Forrest, “The
Two Faces of Job: Imagery and Integrity in the Prologue,” in Ascribe to the Lord: Biblical
and Other Studies in Memory ofPeter C. Craigie, ed. L. Eslinger and G. Taylor, JsSOTSup
67 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), 385-98; Y. Hoffman, “The Relation between the Pro-
logue and the Speech-Cycles in Job: A Reconsideration,” VT 31 (1981): 160-70; W. Vogels,
“Job's Empty Pious Slogans,” in Book of Job, ed. Beuken, 369-76.
190. C. Westermann, The Structure of the Book of Job, trans. C. A. Muenchow (Phila-
delphia: Fortress, 1981).
191. W.J. Urbrock, “Job as Drama: Tragedy or Comedy?” CurTM 8 (1981): 35-40; and
the series of essays in R. Polzin and D. Robertson, eds., Studies in the Book of Job, Semeia
TASH:
326 Wisdom Literature

on.!92 Cheney has argued that the present arrangement of Job formally
constitutes a type of frame tale (the wisdom tension) that has ancient
Near Eastern parallels. In this kind of literature a mythological or leg-
endary narrative frame surrounds an extended dialogical core consist-
ing of a disputational contest. The closing part of the frame is a judg-
ment scene in which the winner of the dispute is announced.!”? The
formal correspondence is striking, though not strictly parallel, and the
generic structure does not disqualify the use of other forms in the book.
One of the literary features of Job that has been given higher profile
in recent research has been the notable presence of irony, satire, and
parody. Here attention is on the misuse of form, the deliberate under-
mining of conventional theological and moral convictions through an
ironic use of form, content, and context.!°* For example, Job 7:17-18
parodies the sentiment of Psalm 8, turning a hymnic expression of
praise and wonder into a protest of divine hostility. Katharine Dell has
argued that the whole book is best understood as a parody that ex-
presses skepticism (suspending of belief) toward traditional wisdom
categories.!?° Bruce Zuckerman also perceives the significance of par-
ody in the “original” core of Job, but the ironic voice of protest was si-
lenced by the addition of contrapuntal material.'*°
Newer literary methods of reading have been applied to Job recently
as well. Clines attempts a deconstructive reading of Job to show how
the book undermines the philosophy it asserts, in terms of the notions
of retribution and suffering.!?’ David Penchansky reads Job in a socio-
logical vein, arguing that the literary tensions in the book reflect ideo-
logical struggles within a cultural context.!°8 One volume of the Semeia

192. L. G, Perdue, Wisdom in Revolt: Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job, BLS
29, JSOTSup 112 (Sheffield: Almond, 1991). For a discussion of genre classifications for
Job, see Murphy, Wisdom Literature, 13-45; K. J. Dell, The Book of Job as Sceptical Liter-
ature, BZAW 197 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1991), 57-107.
193. Cheney, Dust, Wind, and Agony.
194. P.-E. Dion, “Formulaic Language in the Book of Job: International Background
and Ironical Distortions,” SR 16 (1987): 187-93; Y. Hoffman, “Irony in the Book of Job,”
Imm 17 (1983-84): 7-21; J. C. Holbert, “‘The Skies Will Uncover His Iniquity’: Satire in
the Second Speech of Zophar (Job xx),” VT 31 (1981): 171-79; J. G. Williams, ““You Have
Not Spoken Truth of Me’: Mystery and Irony in Job,” ZAW 83 (1971): 231-55; E. M. Good,
Trony in the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SPCK, 1965); 2d ed., BLS
3 (Sheffield: Almond, 1981).
195. Dell, Book of Job as Sceptical Literature, 213-17.
196. B. Zuckerman, Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
197. D. J. A. Clines, “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” in What Does Eve Do to Help?
and Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament, JSOTSup 94 (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1990), 106-23.
198. D. Penchansky, The Betrayal of God: Ideological Conflict in Job, Literary Currents
in Biblical Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990); see also C. A. New-
Wisdom Literature 327

series was dedicated to the application of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical

approach to Job, particularly the divine speech in chapter 38.!9? Femi-
nist reading has been applied to Job minimally,” though we shall see
what the future holds in this regard. A fine reading of Job “from below”
is that of Gustavo Gutiérrez, who sees in Job the struggle of the poor of
Latin America who, in the midst of innocent suffering, must learn to
speak to and about God.”2!
In the light of the prominence of literary approaches to the Book of
Job, I must mention one striking anomaly. David Wolfers, a physician
who has spent the last twenty years of his life studying the Book of Job,
reads Job as a historical allegory in which Job represents Judah in the
late eighth-early seventh century B.c. after the invasion of Sennacherib
and the Assyrians that devastated much of Judah?” The underlying
thrust of the book is to aid the transition from Yahweh as the parochial,
covenant God of Judah to Yahweh as the universal God, to whom love
and devotion are still required. Wolfers is critical of the academic guild
for, among other things, its faulty translations of the Hebrew text and
its failure to read the book as a single piece. While it is unlikely that his
views will gain wide acceptance, they provide a helpful counterpoint to
the conventional lines of understanding.

Conclusion
I have not been able to touch on many, many issues here concerning
Joban studies. Being a masterful literary creation, the Book of Job will
continue to elicit commentary and readerly engagement on all kinds
of fronts and by a variety of interpreters, from those wrestling with
linguistic and textual difficulties to those who live and work with the
innocent suffering poor. Job is not an easy text from any standpoint,
leaving the reader challenged, if not overwhelmed, by the questions it
raises and by its refusal to answer them outright. At the end of the day,
every reading of the Book of Job comes up short, failing to vanquish
the text in a final interpretation. We, like Job, are confronted power-

som, “Cultural Politics and the Reading of Job,” BibInt 1 (1993): 119-38; D. J. A. Clines,
“Why Is There a Book of Job and What Does It Do to You If You Read It?” in Book of Job,
ed. Beuken, 1-20. In this article, Clines employs materialist and psychoanalytical criti-
cism to suggest the social and economic circumstances implied by the text and then
probes the way these affect how readers hear the text.
199. J. D. Crossan, ed., The Book of Job and Ricoeur's Hermeneutics, Semeia 19 (1981).
200. G. West, “Hearing Job’s Wife: Towards a Feminist Reading of Job,” OTE 4 (1991):
107-31; D. Bergant, “Might Job Have Been a Feminist?” TBT 28 (1990): 336-41.
201. G. Gutiérrez, On Job: On God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, trans. M. J.
O’Connell (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1987).
202. D. Wolfers, Deep Things out of Darkness: The Book of Job: Essays and a New En-
glish Translation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995).
328 Wisdom Literature

fully by our own finitude, and stand back from our efforts to under-
stand it, even reeling from its powerful and enigmatic nature. Some-
how, despite all the words written about the Book of Job, the silence
of limited human understanding in a perplexing universe remains.
And so it should be.
 fee
Recent Trends in Psalms Study

David M. Howard Jr.

Psalms studies at the end of the twentieth century are very different
from what they were in 1970. There has been a paradigm shift in bib-
lical studies, whereby texts are now read as texts, that is, as literary en-
tities and canonical wholes. This is manifested in Psalms studies in
several ways, the most important of which is the attention to the
Psalter as a book, as a coherent whole. It is also manifested in many
literary and structural approaches. A paradigm shift has also taken
place in studies of Hebrew poetry, where linguistic analysis, most es-
pecially based on syntax, now occupies an important—if not domi-
nant—position.
As its title suggests, this essay surveys the trends in Psalms studies
since 1970, but more particularly since the mid-1980s. Constraints of
space do not allow for adequate discussion of the hundreds of books
and thousands of articles produced in this period. Unfortunately, Iam
also unable to deal with the many works on the popular level, many of
which are first-rate works produced by scholars that are important in
their own right to the life of the church and the synagogue. What I high-
light, however, are the prevailing trends in the scholarly discussion of
the Psalms.
I begin by reviewing past overviews of Psalms studies, in order to es-
tablish a context for the period since 1970, and then consider develop-
ments in five categories: (1) the composition and message of the
Psalter, (2) Hebrew poetry, (3) hermeneutics, (4) form criticism, and
(5) the Psalms in the context of the ancient Near East. It is in these five
areas—and especially the first three—that we find the most activity and
change in Psalms studies today.

329
330 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

Past Overviews

For many years, the Book of Psalms occupied a marginal place in bib-
lical studies. The major emphases in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries were on historical-critical approaches (dominated by the
search for hypothetical sources behind—and radical reconstructions
of—the text), and on reconstructions of Israel’s history and the history
of its religion. In the first two volumes on the state of Old Testament
scholarship commissioned by the Society for Old Testament Study
(SOTS), there were no essays on any canonical corpus (e.g., Pen-
tateuch, Prophets, Psalms), but rather articles on Hebrew religion, his-
tory, and psychology (The People and the Book), or on the literature, his-
tory, religion, theology, and archaeology of Israel (Record and
Revelation).! However, the Psalms played almost no part in any of the
essays in any case. Two more recent surveys that neglect the Psalms for
the most part are The Old Testament in Modern Research and The Bible
in Modern Scholarship.2 Commentaries on the Psalms in this period re-
flect the concerns mentioned here.*
Beginning in the 1920s, however, with the work of Hermann Gunkel
and that of his student, Sigmund Mowinckel, the focus in Psalms stud-
ies shifted dramatically, and the discipline gained influence in the
larger field of biblical studies. Gunkel was a towering figure in Old Tes-
tament studies who cast his shadow on the entire century. As the father
of Old Testament form criticism, he gave us the categories of psalms
with which we are now so familiar, such as individual laments, com-
munal praises (hymns), royal and wisdom psalms. His focus was on
the literary forms (i.e., genres) of individual psalms, and he paid atten-

1. A. S. Peake, ed., The People and the Book (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925); H. W. Robin-
son, ed., Record and Revelation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1938).
2. J. P. Hyatt, ed., The Bible in Modern Scholarship (Nashville: Abingdon, 1965); H. E.
Hahn, The Old Testament in Modern Research, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966; Ist ed.
1954). The original essay by Hahn dates to 1954; the 1966 reprint adds “A Survey of Re-
cent Literature” by H. D. Hummel; both deal somewhat with Psalms under other catego-
ries (e.g., “form criticism”). In the Hyatt volume, A. S. Kapelrud’s “The Role of the Cult in
Old Israel” (44-56) deals only briefly with the so-called Enthronement of Yahweh psalms
(62-53)
3. See G, H. A. V. Ewald, Commentary on the Psalms, 2 vols., trans. E. Johnson (Lon-
don: Williams & Norgate, 1880); J. J. S. Perowne, The Book of Psalms, 7th ed., 2 vols. (An-
dover: Draper, 1890); T. K. Cheyne, The Origin and Religious Contents of the Psalter in the
Light of Old Testament Criticism and the History of Religions (New York: Whittaker, 1891;
idem, The Book of Psalms, 2 vols. (London: Kegan, Paul, Touch, 1904); J. Wellhausen, The
Book of Psalms, trans. H. H. Furness et al., Polychrome Bible (London: Clarke, 1898); and
C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Psalms,
2 vols., ICC (Edinburgh: Clark, 1906-7).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 331

tion to the life situations (Sitze im Leben) that supposedly gave rise to
each form.*
Mowinckel’s work followed Gunkel in classifications but cleared its
own way in emphasizing especially the cultic background to almost all
the psalms.° In his view, the major festival in Israel was the fall harvest
and new year festival (Tabernacles), the centerpiece of which was the
so-called Enthronement of Yahweh Festival, one that he reconstructed
from clues he saw in the Psalms.® Scholarly interest in the history and
content of Israel’s religion was now indebted to Psalms studies in im-
portant ways, as it used the Psalms in its reconstructions.
Psalms scholarship has been shaped by the work of Gunkel and
Mowinckel ever since. The essays by A. R. Johnson and J. H. Eaton in
the next two SOTS volumes are almost entirely devoted to studying the
forms and the cultic place and significance of the Psalms,’ as are over-
views by Ronald E. Clements, John H. Hayes, and Erhard S. Gersten-
berger, all from the first half of the period covered by this essay.’ Com-
mentaries until very recently have reflected the same concerns to one
degree or another.’

4. H. Gunkel, Die Psalmen, 4th ed., G6ttinger Handkommentar zum Alten Testament
(G6éttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1926); H. Gunkel and J. Begrich, Introduction to
the Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel, trans. J. D. Nogalski (Macon, Ga.::
Mercer University Press, 1998; original German edition, 1933).
5. S. O. P. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, 6 vols. (Kristiana [Oslo], Norway: Dybwad,
1921-24); idem, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, trans. D. R. Ap-Thomas, 2 vols. (Nash-
ville: Abingdon; Oxford: Blackwell, 1962; reprinted with a foreword by R. K. Gnuse and
D. A. Knight; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992).
6. See Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, vol. 2, Das Thronbesteigungfest Jahwds und der
Ursprung der Eschatologie (Kristiana [Oslo], Norway: Dybwad, 1922); idem, Psalms in Is-
rael’s Worship, 2:106-92.
7. A.R. Johnson, “The Psalms,” in The Old Testament and Modern Study: A Generation
of Discovery and Research: Essays by the Members of the Society, ed. H. H. Rowley (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1951), 162-209; J. H. Eaton, “The Psalms in Israelite Worship,” in Tradition
and Interpretation: Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study, ed. G. W.
Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 238-73.
8. R. E. Clements, “Interpreting the Psalms,” in his One Hundred Years of Old Testa-
ment Interpretation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 76-98; J. H. Hayes, “The Psalms,”
in his Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), 285-317; and E. S.
Gerstenberger, “The Lyrical Literature,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters,
ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker (Philadelphia: Fortress; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press,
1985), 409-44.
9. H. Schmidt, Die Psalmen, HAT 15 (Tubingen: Mohr, 1934); J. Calés, Le livre des
Psaumes, 5th ed., 2 vols. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1936); W. O. E. Oesterley, A Fresh Approach
to the Psalms (New York: Scribner's, 1937); idem, The Psalms: Translated with Text-Critical
and Exegetical Notes (London: SPCK, 1939); M. Buttenwieser, The Psalms: Chronologi-
cally Treated with a New Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938); F.
Nétscher, Die Psalmen, Echter-Bibel (Wurzburg: Echter Verlag, 1947); E. A. Leslie, The
Psalms: Translated and Interpreted in the Light of Hebrew Life and Worship (New York:
382 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

Recently, Psalms studies have focused much more on holistic analy-

ses of the entire Psalter, the most important driving force being Gerald
Wilson’s work (see below). The interest in the composition and message
of the Psalter as a whole, or of portions therein, has a substantial pedi-
gree going back into the nineteenth century and beyond, but Wilson’s
work brought it to the forefront of Psalms studies, where it remains to-
day. Recent surveys of work in the Psalms by J. Kenneth Kuntz, Erich
Zenger, James L. Mays, David C. Mitchell, and myself all reflect this
new interest,!° and recent commentaries on Psalms by Marvin E. Tate,
Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, James L. Mays, J. Clinton
McCann Jr., and Klaus Seybold do so as well."

The Composition and Message of the Psalter

The most important change in Psalms study since 1970 has been a shift
in its dominant paradigm and a refocusing of its attention. Until very
recently, the Psalter was treated almost universally as a disjointed as-

Abingdon, 1949); M. E. J. Kissane, The Book ofPsalms, 2 vols. (Dublin: Richview, 1954);
W. S. McCullough and W. R. Taylor, “The Book of Psalms,” in The Interpreter’s Bible, ed.
G. A. Buttrick, 12 vols. (New York: Abingdon, 1952-57), 4:3-763; A. Weiser, The Psalms,
trans. H. Hartwell, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962); P. Drijvers, The Psalms: Their
Structure and Meaning (New York: Herder & Herder, 1964); A. A. Anderson, The Book of
Psalms, 2 vols., NCB (London: Oliphants, 1972; reprinted, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1981); D. Kidner, Psalms 1-72: An Introduction and Commentary on Books I and II ofthe
Psalms, TOTC (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1973); idem, Psalms 72-150: A Commen-
tary on Books III-V of the Psalms, TOTC (Downers Grove, IIl.: InterVarsity, 1975); P. C.
Craigie, Psalms I-50, WBC 19 (Waco: Word, 1983); H. Ringgren, Psaltaren 1-41, Kom-
mentar till Gamla Testamentet (Uppsala: EFS-forlaget, 1987); H.-J. Kraus, Psalms 1-59:
A Commentary, trans. H. C. Oswald (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988); idem, Psalms 60-150:
A Commentary, trans. H. C. Oswald (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989); W. A. VanGemeren,
“Psalms,” in EBC, 5:1-880.
10. E. Zenger, “New Approaches to the Study of the Psalter,” PJBA 17 (1994): 37-54;
J. K. Kuntz, “Engaging the Psalms,” CR:BS 2 (1994): 77-106; J. L. Mays, “Past, Present,
and Prospect in Psalm Study,” in Old Testament Interpretation: Past, Present, and Future,
ed. J. L. Mays, D. L. Petersen, and K. H. Richards (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 147-56;
D. C. Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of
Psalms, JSOTSup 252 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 15-65; D. M. Howard
Jr., “Editorial Activity in the Psalter: A State-of-the-Field Survey,” Word and World 9
(1989): 274-85 (an updated version of this essay appears in The Shape and Shaping ofthe
Psalter, ed. J. C.McCann, JSOTSup 159 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993], 52-70); idem, The
Structure of Psalms 93-100, Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California,
San Diego 5 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 1-19.
11. M. E. Tate, Psalms 51-100, WBC 20 (Waco: Word, 1990); F.-L. Hossfeld and E.
Zenger, Die Psalmen I: Psalms 1-50, Neue Echter Bibel (Wirzburg/Stuttgart: Echter Ver-
lag, 1993); J. L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1994); J. C.McCann
Jr., “The Book of Psalms: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Inter-
preter’s Bible, ed. L. E. Keck et al. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994-), 4:639-1280; and K. Sey-
bold, Die Psalmen, HAT 1/15 (Titbingen: Mohr, 1996).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 333

sortment of diverse compositions that happened to be collected loosely

into what eventually became a canonical “book.” The primary connec-
tions among the psalms were judged to have been liturgical, not liter-
ary or canonical. The original life setting (Sitz im Leben) of most
psalms was judged to have been the rituals of worship and sacrifice at
the temple. The psalms came together in a haphazard way, and the set-
ting of each psalm in the Book of Psalms (“Sitz im Text”) was not con-
sidered. The Psalter was understood to have been the hymnbook of sec-
ond-temple Judaism, and it was not read in the same way in which
most other canonical books were read, that is, with a coherent struc-
ture and message.
Today, however, the prevailing interest in Psalms studies has to do
with questions about the composition, editorial unity, and overall mes-
sage of the Psalter as a book (i.e., as a literary and canonical entity that
coheres with respect to structure and message) and with how individ-
ual psalms and collections fit together. Regardless of the authorship
and provenience of individual psalms, or the prehistory of various col-
lections within the Psalter, these were eventually grouped into a canon-
ical book in the postexilic period. Studies now abound that consider the
overall structure of the book, the contours of the book’s disparate parts
and how they fit together, or the “story line” that runs from Psalm 1 to
Psalm 150. These studies diverge widely among themselves, but they
can generally be categorized in two major groups: (1) those dealing
with the macrostructure of the Psalter, that is, overarching patterns and
themes, and (2) those dealing with its microstructure, that is, connec-
tions among smaller groupings of psalms, especially adjacent psalms.
Most studies have operated on one level or the other, but in the end they
are inseparable from each other. That is, what is asserted on the higher
level of broad, overarching patterns and themes should be capable of
verification on the lower level of specific word, thematic, and/or struc-
tural and genre links between and among individual psalms. The latter
provide the building blocks for the former.
The publication of Gerald H. Wilson’s 1981 Yale dissertation, The Ed-
iting of the Hebrew Psalter, provided the framework in which such work
could unfold in a systematic fashion.!? It was a landmark essay, a signif-
icant factor in the recent explosion of interest in the Psalter’s final form.
It did not appear in a vacuum, however. Wilson was a student of Brevard
Childs, whose Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture has helped
to define the scholarly landscape since it appeared. In his treatment of
the Psalms, Childs argued for understanding the book more holisti-

12. G.H. Wilson, The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, SBLDS 76 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars
Press, 1985).
334 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

cally.!3 In addition, biblical studies in general were turning toward holis-

tic readings of individual texts and larger collections in the Bible (under
the rubrics of “rhetorical criticism,” “literary analysis,” “structural anal-
ysis,” “narrative criticism,” and the like). Nevertheless, Wilson provided
a programmatic treatment that has defined the discussion ever since.
In his work, Wilson lays a careful methodological foundation for ex-
amining a collection of psalms as a “book,” in that he traces other ex-
amples of hymnic collections from the ancient Near East: the Sumerian
Temple Hymn Collection and Catalogs of Hymnic Incipits and the
Qumran Psalms manuscripts. Each of these exhibits clearly identifiable
editorial techniques in the outlines of its final form, and thus provides
helpful methodological controls for approaching the Psalter. Some
scholars have leveled the charge against Wilson’s or others’ work that
the Psalter’s editorial coherence is merely in the eye of the beholder,
with few or no controls, but these criticisms ignore the methodological
framework that Wilson lays. Unfortunately, this aspect of Wilson’s
work has not received the attention it deserves.
Wilson then turns to the canonical Hebrew Psalter and looks for ev-
idence of the editorial techniques he identifies in the extrabiblical col-
lections, along with others. He finds two types of evidence: explicit and
tacit (nonexplicit). For Wilson, “explicit” indicators are found in the
psalm superscriptions or in the postscript to Books I-II at Psalm 72:20,
while “tacit” indicators are found in editorial arrangements, such as the
grouping of psalms with doxologies at the ends of Books I-IV, or the
grouping of the haléli-yah psalms (104—6, 111-17, 135, 146-50) at the
ends of certain Psalter segments.!*
The Psalter opens with an introductory Torah psalm (Psalm 1), and
it comes to a close with a group of haléli-yah psalms (Psalms 146-50).
The opening psalm instructs the reader of the book to meditate on To-
rah, and its placement suggests that the Psalter itself is now to be re-
garded as Torah, as something to be studied and meditated on (just as
the Torah is), and not just performed and used in cultic contexts. The
concluding crescendo of praise instructs the reader that this is how life
is to be lived: in praise of Yahweh.!5

13. B.S. Childs, An Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: For-
tress, 1979), 504-25. See also his “Reflections on the Modern Study of the Psalms,” in
Magnalia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of
G. Ernest Wright, ed. F. M. Cross, W. E. Lemke, and P. D. Miller Jr. (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1976), 377-88. For reviews of previous scholarship in this area, see Howard,
Structure of Psalms 93-100, 2-9; Mitchell, Message of the Psalter, 15-61.
14. Wilson, Editing ofthe Hebrew Psalter, 9-10, 182-97.
15. In his essay emphasizing the boundaries and “movement” of the Psalter
(“Bounded by Obedience and Praise: The Psalms as Canon,” JSOT 50 [1991]: 63-92), W.
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 53)

Each of the five “books” within the Psalter concludes with a psalm
ending with a short doxology (Psalms 41, 72, 89, 106, 145). An impor-
tant indicator not only of the Psalter’s structure but also of one of its
themes is the occurrence of royal psalms at significant junctures
(Psalms 2, 72, 89), a point noted already by Claus Westermann and
Brevard Childs.!® Wilson finds it significant that these psalms occur
early in the Psalter, in Books I-III, whereas after this the focus is on
psalms of Yahweh’s kingship (Psalms 93-99, 145). He sees in Psalm 89
signs that the Davidic monarchy has “failed”; and therefore, in Books
IV-V, royal psalms are deemphasized and Yahweh’s kingship hailed
(especially in Psalms 93-99), as the Psalter proclaims Yahweh’s king-
ship above all else.
Wilson speaks in a more recent essay of a “royal covenantal frame”
to the Psalter, consisting of Psalms 2, 72, 89, and 144, and a “final wis-
dom frame,” consisting of Psalms 1, 73, 90, 107, and 145 (the first
psalms of Books I, III, IV, and V, along with the final psalm of Book V
proper).!’ For Wilson, the wisdom frame takes precedence over the
royal covenantal frame, and thus “trust in the power of human kings
and kingship is ultimately given up, and hopes rest on Yhwh, who rules
forever, and who alone is able to save.”!® The Psalter, then, is ultimately
a book of wisdom, containing Yahweh’s instruction for the faithful and
emphasizing his kingship.'? In this scheme, Book IV (Psalms 90-106)

Brueggemann argues that Psalms 1 and 150 open and close the Psalter by emphasizing
simple obedience and praise, respectively. In between, however, the very real struggles of
life are indicated by the laments and even the hymns (typified by Psalms 25 and 103, re-
spectively). He argues that a critical turning point in the Psalter is Psalm 73, which en-
compasses both suffering and hope. Thus the pure, unmitigated praise that is urged at
the end of the Psalter (Psalm 150) is now informed by individuals’ and communities’
struggles and experiences of God's hesed (faithful love).
16. C. Westermann, “The Formation of the Psalter,” in his Praise and Lament in the
Psalms, trans. K. R. Crim and R. N. Soulen (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981), 250-58; Childs,
Introduction, 515-17; Wilson, Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, 207-14; idem, “The Use of
Royal Psalms at the ‘Seams’ of the Hebrew Psalter,” JSOT 35 (1986): 85-94.
17. G. H. Wilson, “Shaping the Psalter: A Consideration of Editorial Linkage in the
Book of Psalms,” in Shape and Shaping ofthe Psalter, ed. McCann, 72-82, esp. 80-81.
18. G. H. Wilson, “The Qumran Psalms Scroll (11QPs?) and the Canonical Psalter:
Comparison of Editorial Shaping,” CBQ 59 (1997): 464.
19. G. H. Wilson, “The Shape of the Book of Psalms,” Int 46 (1992): 137-38. Others
who make the same point include G. T. Sheppard, Wisdom as a Hermeneutical Construct:
A Study in the Sapientializing of the Old Testament, BZAW 151 (New York: de Gruyter,
1980), 136-44; J. P. Brennan, “Psalms 1-8: Some Hidden Harmonies,” BTB 10 (1980): 25—
29: J. Reindl, “Weisheitliche Bearbeitung von Psalmen: Ein Beitrag zum Verstandnis der
Sammlung des Psalters,” in Congress Volume: Vienna, 1980, VTSup 32 (Leiden: Brill,
1981), 333-56; J. C. McCann Jr., “The Psalms as Instruction,” Int 46 (1992): 117-28; idem,
A Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms: The Psalms as Torah (Nashville: Abing-
don, 1993).
336 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

stands at the editorial “center” of the Psalter, with its focus on Yahweh
alone as king. Wilson notes:

As such this grouping stands as the “answer” to the problem posed in

Psalm 89 as to the apparent failure of the Davidic covenant with which
Books One-Three are primarily concerned. Briefly summarized, the
answer given is: (1) YHWH is king; (2) He has been our “refuge” in the
past, long before the monarchy existed (i.e., in the Mosaic period); (3) He
will continue to be our refuge now that the monarchy is gone; (4) Blessed
are they that trust in him!?°

Book V, diverse in subject matter, nevertheless sounds notes of praise

of Yahweh, climaxing with an affirmation of Yahweh’s kingship in
Psalm 145 and a concluding crescendo of praise in Psalms 146-50.
That a major break in the Psalter is to be found after Book III is ac-
cepted by most scholars today, and it is confirmed by the evidence from
Qumran, where the manuscripts containing psalms from Books I-III
are predominantly in agreement with the Masoretic Text’s order and ar-
rangement, whereas in Books IV-V there are significant variations.
Since these variations are most pronounced in the earliest manuscripts,
this would seem to point to a stabilization of the text of Books I-III be-
fore that of Books IV-V.?! The break after Psalm 89 is also confirmed
by evidence from the psalm superscriptions. In Books I-III, psalms are
grouped primarily using author and genre designations in the super-
scriptions, whereas in Books IV-V, the primary grouping techniques re-
volve around the use of superscriptions with héda and haléli-yah.??
Wilson’s sketches of the Psalter’s contours are persuasive in the
main, and they have shaped the scholarly discussion of the Psalter’s
composition. Almost all scholars accept his argument that Book V
ends at Psalm 145 and that 146-50 comprise a concluding doxology of
praise (as opposed to only Psalm 150 by itself). The same is true with
his attention to the royal psalms at significant junctures, his assertion
that a significant break is found after Psalm 89, his analysis of Book

20. Wilson, Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, 215.

21. G. H. Wilson, “Qumran Psalms Manuscripts and the Consecutive Arrangement of
Psalms in the Hebrew Psalter,” CBQ 45 (1983): 377-88; idem, Editing of the Hebrew
Psalter, 93-121; idem, “Qumran Psalms Scroll,” 448-64; P. W. Flint, Tze Dead Sea Psalms
Scrolls and the Book of Psalms, STDJ 17 (Leiden: Brill, 1997). The nature of the Qumran
Psalms Scroll as a variant copy of Scripture or as a liturgical collection is still debated.
Flint’s is a major and important work supporting James Sanders’s and Wilson’s view that
it was the former, but others (including myself) hold that it was more probably the latter
(see Howard, Structure of Psalms 93-100, 26-27 and references, to which add the com-
ments of Mitchell, Message of the Psalter, 21-26).
22. Wilson, Editing ofthe Hebrew Psalter, 155-90.
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 337

IV as a “Mosaic” book harking back to exodus and wilderness themes,

and more.
I have, however, registered an objection to Wilson’s and others’ as-
sertions about the almost total subordination of the royal, Davidic
theme to that of Yahweh’s kingship. Contrary to his analysis that Psalm
2 begins Book I proper (Psalm 1 serving as the single introduction to the
Psalter), a better case can be made that Psalms 1 and 2 together consti-
tute the Psalter’s introduction and that Psalm 3 is actually the begin-
ning of Book I.*3 In this way, the themes of Yahweh’s and his anointed
king’s sovereignty that are proclaimed in Psalm 2 also function as key-
notes for the entire Psalter. That Psalm 144 is a royal, Davidic psalm,
immediately alongside Psalm 145, a Kingship of Yahweh psalm, signals
that, at the end of the Psalter as at the beginning, the earthly and the
heavenly expressions of Yahweh’s kingdom stand together as messages
of hope for the Psalter’s readers.**
A recent and impressive full-length treatment is David C. Mitchell,
The Message of the Psalter. After a thorough review of Psalms studies in-
terpreting the Psalter as a coherent collection,’> he proposes his own in-
terpretation: that the Psalter is to be interpreted eschatologically and
that the Davidic kingship, far from being downplayed and viewed as
“failed” in the Psalter, forms the basis for the eschatological hope in a
messianic figure that is found throughout the collection. He states that
“the messianic theme is central to the purpose of the collection,””° and
that the Psalter

was designed by its redactors as a purposefully ordered arrangement of

lyrics with an eschatological message. This message . . . consists of a pre-
dicted sequence of eschatological events. These include Israel in exile, the
appearing of a messianic superhero, the ingathering of Israel, the attack
of the nations, the hero’s suffering, the scattering of Israel in the wilder-
ness, their ingathering and further imperilment, the appearance of a
superhero from the heavens to rescue them, the establishment of his
malkut [kingship] from Zion, the prosperity of Israel and the homage of
the nations.?7

23. For particulars, see “Wisdom and Royalist/Zion Traditions in the Psalter,” in
Howard, Structure of Psalms 93-100, 200-207. See also Mitchell, Message of the Psalter,
73-74.
24. A further critique of Wilson's position on this point is Mitchell’s Message of the
Psalter, which argues in extensive detail that the Psalter’s message is eschatological, with
the Davidic king still an integral part of the message, projected into the eschatological fu-
ture; for specific comments about Wilson’s view, see esp. 78-82.
25. Mitchell, Message of the Psalter, 15-65.
26. Ibid., 87.
2 pelbide mle
338 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

Mitchell faults Wilson and others for reading the Psalter historically
(i.e., tying it in specifically with Israel’s preexilic, exilic, and postexilic
situations) rather than eschatologically, whereby the vision looks far
beyond these historical periods. He combines a close reading of individ-
ual psalms, section by section through the Psalter, with plausible links
of these to the development of Israel’s eschatological program (esp.
Psalms 2, 45, 69, 72, 82, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 95, 109, 110, the Hallel
[113-18], and the Songs of Ascents [120-34], including Psalm 132) in
ways already suggested by “the ancient commentators’ referring to
them in connection with the same or similar events.”28 Much of Mitch-
ell’s support for his thesis rests on hypothetical connections with cer-
tain events—and with the eschatological program of Zechariah 9-14—
that can be debated. The overall force and logic of his argument is im-
pressive, however, and his work will surely occupy a pivotal position in
future discussions of the Psalter’s composition and message.
Another important work is Matthias Millard’s Komposition des
Psalters.*? He devotes far more attention than do Wilson or Mitchell to
diachronic concerns (as is the case with several other German scholars,
e.g., Reindl, Seybold, Hossfeld, Zenger), although his methodology fol-
lows that of Wilson in giving attention to genres, themes, and super-
scriptions. Concerning the overall outlook of the Psalter, Millard con-
cludes that the major theme in the Psalter is Torah, with Yahweh’s
kingship as a central motif. In the end, David is an integrating figure as
“author” of much of the book, but even more importantly in his role as
one afflicted: if Israel’s greatest king was so afflicted, then Yahweh’s
kingship is highlighted all the more. The Psalter in its final form was a
postexilic collection of prayers that originated in private (family)
prayer, as a prayerbook. Its purpose was to help individuals in trouble
be able to address God and ultimately to lead them to communal praise
of God. Millard’s sensitivity to the king’s afflictions is commendable,
but he does not deal adequately with David as a triumphant and escha-
tological figure.
A final book-length treatment of the contours of the entire Psalter is
Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford’s Reading from the Beginning.*® She is con-
cerned with the canonical function of the Psalter’s final shape, follow-
ing the lead of James Sanders’s canonical criticism. She argues that the
Psalter was “adaptable for life,” serving a dual purpose for the postex-

28. Ibid., 299.

29. M. Millard, Die Komposition des Psalters: Ein formgeschichtlicher Ansatz, FAT 9
(Tubingen: Mohr, 1994).
30. N. L. deClaissé-Walford, Reading from the Beginning: The Shaping of the Hebrew
Psalter (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 339

ilic community: (1) as a source book for use at ceremonies and festivals
and (2) as a repository of Israel’s “story” (see Sanders) that, read pub-
licly,?! would function to constitute Israel as a nation, enabling it to
survive with Yahweh as its king. Her work has many valuable sugges-
tions about the Psalter’s shape and function; it is a relatively brief
work, however, and as such, it is more impressionistic and subjective
than any of the three mentioned above, and its argument suffers be-
cause of it.
All four works above deal with the Psalter on a macrostructural level,
paying attention to the large contours and overall theme(s) of the book.
At the other end of the methodological spectrum is David M. Howard
Jr., The Structure of Psalms 93-100, a study at the microstructural level.
I accept the driving idea behind the works above, namely, that the
Psalter should be read as a book with an internal coherence, but I test
that hypothesis on the lowest level, by subjecting Psalms 93-100 to an
exhaustive analysis of every lexeme in every possible relation with every
other one. The advantage of this method is that every relation among
these psalms should thereby be uncovered, but an obvious danger is
that too much will be made of relations that are merely coincidental.**
A clear development of thought, building by stages in praise of Yah-
weh’s kingship, is visible throughout these eight psalms. A weakness in
this particular work is the limited choice of psalms, in the middle of
Book IV, which itself seems to be constructed in three sections—Psalms
90-94, 95-100, 101-6—that are not congruent with the section covered
in this work (i.e., 93-100); thus the obvious and necessary next step is
to consider Book IV in its entirety. Nevertheless, the method forms a
necessary counterpart to the macrostructural works, whereby the lat-
ter’s conclusions can be tested and confirmed.*?

31. Here she parts company with Wilson, Millard, and others, who see the Psalter as
a collection to be used primarily for private study.
32. I have attempted to avoid this pitfall by distinguishing among “key-word links”
(which are the most significant), “thematic word links” (which show only general connec-
tions), and “incidental repetitions” (which are not significant at all) (see Howard, Struc-
ture of Psalms 93-100, 98-102). For two positive assessments of this method, see G. H.
Wilson, “Understanding the Purposeful Arrangement of Psalms in the Psalter: Pitfalls
and Promise,” in Shape and Shaping of the Psalter, ed. McCann, 49-50; L. C. Allen, review
of The Structure of Psalms 93-100, JBL (1998): 725-26. This method needs to be refined
as the units under consideration grow larger. The strongest links between psalms are usu-
ally of concatenation, i.e., links between adjacent psalms, but sometimes very significant
relations exist between psalms somewhat removed from each other (e.g., Psalms 95 and
100). The method does systematically take into account every lexical, thematic, and
structural link among psalms.
33. See further D. M. Howard Jr., “Psalm 94 among the Kingship of YHWH Psalms,”
CBO (forthcoming), which shows how a psalm of a very different nature fits in with the
Kingship of Yahweh psalms around it, and further explains and illustrates the method.
340 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

Another study including the same corpus in its purview is Klaus

Koenen, Jahwe wird kommen, zu herrschen tiber die Erde.** Koenen sees
Psalms 90-110 as a unit, consisting of two sections—Psalms 90-101
and 102-10—each one paralleling the other.*°> Each section shows a
movement from lament to announcement of future salvation (in line
with the overall movement in the Psalter from lament to praise). He
sees Psalms 90-110 as a “composition,” which he defines as a grouping
of psalms in which there is an intentional ordering and a running
theme, which corresponds to the structure of a lament. Koenen detects
this theme by employing the keyword (or “catchword”) method: overall,
the collection offers good news to those suffering, and the work affirms
that Yahweh will come and establish his rule (thus Koenen’s title: “Yah-
weh will come to reign over the earth”). Koenen’s is a careful work that
is somewhat akin methodologically to mine. One problem with his
work, however, is that it cuts across the universally accepted boundary
between Books IV and V (between Psalms 106 and 107). Another is that
his model of the lament is not followed exactly by the structure of his
corpus; for example, whereas in the first section (Psalms 90-101) Psalm
94 corresponds to the “lament” proper and Psalms 99-100 to the “ex-
pression of trust,” in the second section (Psalms 102-10) neither of
these components is found at all.
Gunild Brunert’s Psalm 102 im Kontext des Vierten Psalmenbuches
treats the history, structure, and interpretation of this psalm in its first
two sections, but in her third section she devotes extended attention to
its place in Book IV.*° She advances the provocative thesis that, in the
final form of the Psalter, Psalms 90-100 are the words of Moses (see the
title of Psalm 90), and Psalms 101-6 those of David (see the title of
Psalm 101), but of the “new David,” the coming king of salvation. Her
work thus complements Mitchell’s in instructive ways. “David’s” words
in Psalms 101-4 are intended to answer the questions raised about the
Davidic kingship in Psalm 89. She supports her thesis by attention to
verbal and thematic links between the psalms, but many are merely im-
pressionistic and need confirmation in a more exhaustive treatment of
every lexeme.
Jerome F. Creach’s Choice of Yahweh as Refuge in the Editing of the
Psalter forges a third way between works focusing on macrostructures
(such as Wilson’s, Mitchell’s, or Millard’s) and those focusing on micro-

34. K. Koenen, Jahwe wird kommen, zu herrschen tiber die Erde: Ps 90-110 als Kompo-
sition, BBB 101 (Weinheim: Beltz Athenaum, 1995).
35. See the convenient layout in ibid., 113.
36. G. Brunert, Psalm 102 im Kontext des Vierten Psalmenbuches, Stuttgarter bib-
lische Beitrage 30 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1996).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 341

structures (such as Howard’s, Koenen’s, or Brunert’s).?” He takes a se-

mantic-field (or thematic) approach, studying the associated field of one
specific lexeme (in this case hdsd, to take refuge). The concept of Yahweh
as “refuge,” which is found first in the programmatic Psalm 2 (v. 12), is
found in a majority of psalms and it is concentrated in significant sec-
tions. Creach then uses his findings to comment on the organization of
the entire work. This should be a productive third avenue for the study
of the Psalter’s composition and message, as other potential keywords
that might have been instrumental in shaping its structure are studied.
The eight works mentioned above are the major book-length treat-
ments of the questions about the Psalter’s composition and message by
individual authors since 1970—a small number for almost three de-
cades of research. It is telling, however, that seven of the eight have pub-
lication dates of 1994 or later, indicating the rapidly expanding interest
in this area of study. In addition, three recent collections of essays
should be noted: The Shape and Shaping of the Psalter, Neue Wege der
Psalmenforschung, and Der Psalter in Judentum und Christentum.*® The
first focuses entirely on the issue of the Psalter’s composition and mes-
sage, while the latter two do so in large part.
Many important scholars have not produced book-length treatments
of the issues here but have nonetheless contributed significantly to the
discussion and, in many cases, have helped define it. Of these, pride of
place must go to Erich Zenger, whose prolific contributions range far
and wide throughout the Psalter. A recent essay presents his comprehen-
sive view of the book, which he sees as a well-ordered and well-planned
collection in its final form. As he sees it, the Psalter did not originally
have a liturgical or cultic Sitz im Leben, but it was intended to function
as a “literary sanctuary” (Heiligtum) of sorts, where the one praying en-
ters into Israel’s liturgy by means of his prayer for the deliverance of Is-
rael and the world and Yahweh’s kingship over both Israel and the world
is exalted.*?
The net result of this recent interest in the Book of Psalms is to bring
it into the same arena in which most biblical books have found them-
selves throughout the history of their study: one where they are treated

37. J. FE. Creach, The Choice of Yahweh as Refuge in the Editing of the Psalter, JSOTSup
217 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
38. McCann, ed., Shape and Shaping of the Psalter; K. Seybold and E. Zenger, eds.,
Neue Wege der Psalmenforschung: Fiir Walter Beyerlin, Herders biblische Studien 1
(Freiburg: Herder, 1994; 2d ed., 1995); E. Zenger, ed., Der Psalter in Judentum und Chris-
tentum, Herders biblische Studien 18 (Freiburg: Herder, 1998).
39. E. Zenger, “Der Psalter als Buch: Beobachtungen zu seiner Enstehung, Komposi-
tion und Funktion,” in Psalter in Judentum und Christentum, ed. Zenger, 1-57. Entrée
into Zenger’s previous work may be had via the bibliography in that essay.
342 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

as unified compositions and are mined for the treasures to be found in

their overall message, as well as in their component parts. This new de-
velopment—a rediscovery of an earlier interest among rabbinic and
Christian interpreters—can only be a salutary one.
To be sure, a few skeptical voices have been raised who argue that
too much is claimed for the Psalter in reading it as a book. One objec-
tion raised is that the proposals made for the composition and message
of the Psalter disagree too much among themselves for any of them to
have validity. But this is an unfair charge to level against the pursuit of
a complex subject that is scarcely more than a decade old. Much work
remains to be done, and one should note that there is indeed significant
agreement among many of the major proposals, some of which I have
highlighted in this essay.
One critic, Erhard S. Gerstenberger, argues that the Psalter is not a
book in our modern sense, but that it is nevertheless an extraordinarily
rich collection that addresses the human condition in profound
ways.’ He attributes its present shape not to literary considerations
but to the liturgical needs of the synagogue (as versus the second tem-
ple). In Reading the Psalms as a Book, R. Norman Whybray engages in
a vigorous and sustained critique of efforts to read the Psalter holisti-
cally.4! He sets out to test possible perspectives from which the Psalter
might have been edited in the postexilic period and finds all of them
wanting. But this work has several problems of its own that undermine
the argument.*?
I must mention the work of one more scholar who studies the
Psalms’ order and arrangement, but who does so from a very different
perspective from those mentioned above. Michael D. Goulder has pro-
duced a series of major studies of collections within the Psalter, begin-
ning with Book IV (Psalms 90-106), and including the Korah psalms
(42-49, 84-85, 87-88), the “prayers of David” (Psalms 51-72), the Asaph
psalms (50, 73-83), and Book V (Psalms 107-50), such that to date he
has studied every psalm from Psalm 42 to Psalm 150.43 The common

40. E. S. Gerstenberger, “Der Psalter als Buch und als Sammlung,” in Neue Wege der
Psalmenforschung: Fiir Walter Beyerlin, ed. K. Seybold and E. Zenger, Herders biblische
Studien 1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1994), 3-13, esp. 9, 12.
41. R. N. Whybray, Reading the Psalms as a Book, JSOTSup 222 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1996).
42. See Howard, Structure of Psalms 93-100, 22 n. 31; and my review of Whybray,
Reading the Psalms as a Book, in Review ofBiblical Literature (1998), which is available
online at http://www.sbl-site.org/SBL/Reviews/.
43. M. D. Goulder, “The Fourth Book of the Psalter,” JTS 26 (1975): 269-89; idem, The
Psalms of the Sons of Korah, vol. 1 of Studies in the Psalter, JSOTSup 20 (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1982); idem, The Prayers of David (Psalms 51-72), vol. 2 of Studies in the Psalter,
JSOTSup 102 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990); idem, The Psalms of Asaph and
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 343

thread among all of these is that Goulder takes seriously the order and
arrangement of these collections, as well as the headings of the psalms.
Thus, to take the example of his second book, The Prayers of David
(Psalms 51-72), he sees the Davidic psalms as truly Davidic, not written
by him but composed by a court poet, probably one of David’s sons,
during David's lifetime. The order of Psalms 51-72 is the order in which
they were written, intended to reflect specific events in David's life as
they happened. Goulder does not accept the actual historicity of most
of the historical superscriptions, but he does accept the idea behind
them, namely, that “a psalm can be understood only in the light of the
circumstances for which it was composed.”*4 In this respect, he differs
radically from much of Psalms scholarship, which sees the psalms as
generalizing and universalizing compositions, applicable to many
times and situations.
Thus, in his treatments, Goulder historicizes the psalms in ways rem-
iniscent of traditional Psalms scholars like Franz Delitzsch and Alex-
ander Kirkpatrick, whose influence he acknowledges.” He is, however,
squarely in the cultic and ritual camp of Mowinckel, Johnson, Engnell,
and Eaton, in accepting the Festival of Tabernacles as the central festi-
val of the Israelite religious calendar, and he has attempted to locate the
various collections within that and other festivals as the actual liturgies
followed during those festivals. Thus, in most groupings of psalms (e.g.,
1-8, 42-49, 90-106, 107-18, 120-34, 135-50), he sees an alternation be-
tween odd- and even-numbered psalms that he attributes to their being
morning and evening psalms used in a festival, and he claims to find
clues to this in the wording of the psalms themselves.”” In this he differs
from Mowinckel and the others, who attempted to reconstruct the lit-
urgies supposedly used in the festivals from clues throughout the
Psalter and elsewhere, whereas Goulder sees the texts of these liturgies
lying in full view before us, preserved intact in the collections of the
Psalter.*®

the Pentateuch, vol. 3 of Studies in the Psalter, JSOTSup 233 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1996); idem, The Psalms of the Return (Book V, Psalms 107-150), vol. 4 of Studies
in the Psalter, JsOTSup 258 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).
44. Goulder, Prayers of David, 25.
45. See, e.g., P. D. Miller Jr., “Trouble and Woe: Interpreting Biblical Laments,” [nt 37
(1983): 32-45.
46. Goulder, Psalms of the Return, 8.
47. See, e.g., Goulder’s treatment of Psalms 135, 139, 141, 143, and 145—all suppos-
edly evening psalms—in Psalms of the Return, 302-3, or of Psalms 90-106 in “Fourth
Book of the Psalter.”
48. He judges the MT to be the most faithful textual witness, and he rigorously prefers
the MT to all others in almost every instance.
344 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

Goulder’s scholarship is extremely broad and well informed, and his

exegesis of the texts is careful and impressive. He also advances a num-
ber of provocative hypotheses about the provenience of various collec-
tions that cannot detain us here. His work differs radically from most
others who pay serious attention to the order and arrangement of the
Psalter in that he sees a liturgical, not a literary, rationale for this order-
ing. In trying to locate the specific geographical places and historical
events behind verse after verse in these collections, and in attempting
to correlate them with larger collections within the Pentateuch or the
postexilic literature, he is often forced to make connections that are
very weak, if not nonexistent.?”

Hebrew Poetry
A second area in which there have been far-reaching changes since
1970 is in studies of Hebrew poetry. These studies naturally range be-
yond the Book of Psalms, but the Psalms are the largest extant corpus
of Hebrew poetry. Several major monographs on poetry were produced
in the short space of a few years, effecting changes in poetic studies on
a par with that produced by Wilson’s work discussed above. These
works were aligned along two major trajectories: analyses indebted to
(1) general linguistics and (2) literary studies.*° In the discussion below,
I analyze these two trajectories, along with studies of the structural re-
lations of poetry.

Linguistic Approaches
A remarkable phenomenon developed in the late 1970s and early
1980s, with the appearance of several works that attempted to explain
the workings of Hebrew poetry using linguistic methods, particularly
in terms of syntax. This had not been done previously in biblical stud-
ies, so the confluence of these studies was noteworthy. These include
works by Terence Collins, Stephen A. Geller, M. O’Connor, Adele Ber-
lin, and Dennis Pardee. For the most part, these works are theoretical,

49. See, e.g., the critique by M. L. Barré in his review of The Prayers of David, JBL 111
(1992): 527-28; or my comments in Structure of Psalms 93-100, 12-14 (critique of
“Fourth Book of the Psalter”).
50. Recent overviews of Hebrew poetry include: Z. Zevit, “Psalms at the Poetic Prec-
ipice,” HAR 10 (1986): 351-66; W. G. E. Watson, “Problems and Solutions in Hebrew
Verse: A Survey of Recent Work,” VT 43 (1993): 372-84; J. K. Kuntz, “Recent Perspectives
on Biblical Poetry,” RelSRev 19 (1993): 321-27; idem, “Biblical Hebrew Poetry in Recent
Research, Part I,” CR:BS 6 (1998): 31-64; idem, “Biblical Hebrew Poetry in Recent Re-
search, Part II,” CR:BS, forthcoming; L. Boadt, “Reflections on the Study of Hebrew Po-
etry Today,” Concordia Journal 24 (1998): 156-63.
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 345

concerned to account for the driving mechanisms of Hebrew poetry

and downplaying or ignoring any literary or stylistic dimensions to po-
etry (Berlin’s is somewhat of an exception).°! Their great advantage is
that they reveal things about the workings of Hebrew poetry never be-
fore seen with such clarity, and they are rooted in the nature of lan-
guage itself.
The most ambitious of these works is M. O’Connor’s Hebrew Verse
Structure. After an extended critique of what he calls the “Standard De-
scription” of Hebrew poetry, he proposes to describe Hebrew poetry
strictly in terms of syntactical patterns, and he argues that syntactical
“constriction’—not meter, rhythm, or even parallelism—is the funda-
mental feature of Hebrew poetry. “Just as most poetic systems are
shaped in part by a series of phonological requirements, i.e., by a series
of metrical constraints, so there are poetic systems shaped in part by a
series of syntactical requirements, i.e., by a system of syntactic con-
straints. Among them is Canaanite [i.e., Hebrew and Ugaritic] verse.”>?
O'Connor states that the poetic line®? is limited in length by syntacti-
cal constraints, and he speaks of three grammatical levels: the unit (i.e.,
individual words and particles dependent on them), the constituent (i.e.,
a verb or a nominal phrase, whether adjectival or construct), and the
clause predicator (i.e., a verbal or verbless clause).°* There are six con-
straints that form the structures within which poetic lines operate, four
of which are as follows: Every poetic line contains (1) no fewer than two
nor more than five units, (2) no fewer than one nor more than four con-
stituents, and (3) no more than three clause predicators. (4) Every con-
stituent may contain no more than four units. While the possibilities for
different line forms are manifold, in practice the dominant form in He-
brew poetry (close to 80 percent) is fairly simple: the poetic line con-

51. Another work focusing on syntax from the same time is A. M. Cooper, “Biblical
Poetics: A Linguistic Approach” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976), but this was never
published. (See the brief summary and critique in M. O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure
[Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1980; 2d ed., 1997], 48-49, 52-53.) Cooper has since
abandoned his belief that a strictly linguistic (syntactical) approach is the “key” to He-
brew poetry. His “Two Recent Works on the Structure of Biblical Hebrew Poetry,” JAOS
110 (1990): 687-90, includes critiques of studies by Pardee (Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetic
Parallelism) and van der Meer and de Moor (The Structural Analysis of Biblical and
Canaanite Poetry), two works grouped under the rubric of “structural poetics” (see be-
low). In Cooper's essay, he calls for a poetics that takes into account more than “scientific”
syntactical or structural patterns, one that “concerns itself not with everything that can
be said about a text, but with what is worth saying; it seeks to communicate meaning and
value, not just ‘facts’” (“Two Recent Works,” 690, emphasis Cooper's).
52. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, 65.
53. O'Connor uses “line” to refer to what many other scholars refer to as “colon.”
There is still no generally accepted definition of a line (colon) among scholars.
54. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, 68, 86-87.
346 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

tains one clause and either two or three constituents (phrases) of two or
three units. Knowledge of the syntactical constraints in Hebrew poetry
has a practical dimension: we can more easily know how to divide up
the layout of poetic texts into their true poetic lines, and thus approach
a truer understanding of the mechanisms at work.
O’Connor also identifies six “tropes,” that is, “a group of phenomena
which occur regularly and serve as part of the verse structure.”°° These
are very common and thus definitional of poetry. The six tropes are
(1) repetition, (2) constituent gappings (i.e., ellipsis of words), (3) syn-
tactical dependency, (4) coloration (i.e., the breakup of stereotyped
phrases), (5) matching (i.e., what most would identify with parallelism:
the coordinating of lines with identical syntactical structures),°° and
(6) mixing (i.e., two dependent and two independent lines occurring in
sequence, in which the former depend on the latter). The first and
fourth tropes operate on the word level, the second and fifth on the line
level, and the third and sixth above the line level.*”
O’Connor makes two major contributions of a general sort to poetic
studies: (1) attention to the syntactical patterns underlying Hebrew po-
etry, and (2) recognition that poetic lines operate under certain con-
straints. Beyond these, one of his most important specific contributions
is his recognition that gapping (i.e., ellipsis) is a major feature of He-
brew poetry and does not occur in prose (apart from a few, grammati-
cally insignificant exceptions). One of the major problems with O’Con-
nor’s work is its dense and highly technical jargon, and this
undoubtedly has inhibited its wider consideration in biblical studies.
Yet his system “works’”—at least two major works have adopted its
methodology°’—and it deserves wider exposure. The reissue of the
work with an afterword by O’Connor, as well as two articles by Holla-
day summarizing and applying the system, should help to remedy this
situation.°? Since it operates strictly on the syntactical level, O’Connor’s

55. Ibid., 87-88.

56. See also O'Connor's treatment of “Parallelism,” in The New Princeton Encyclope-
dia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. A. Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1993), 877-79.
57. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, 132-34.
58. W. T. W. Cloete, Versification and Syntax in Jeremiah 2-25: Syntactical Constraints
in Hebrew Colometry, SBLDS 117 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); W. L. Holladay, Jere-
miah, 2 vols., Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986-89). Cf. further the works cited in
O'Connor, “The Contours of Biblical Hebrew Verse: An Afterword to Hebrew Verse Struc-
ture” (in the 1997 reissue of his book), 641-42.
59. O'Connor, “Contours of Biblical Hebrew Verse,” 631-61. See also W. L. Holladay,
“Hebrew Verse Structure Revisited (1): Which Words ‘Count’?” JBL 118 (1999): 19-32;
idem, “Hebrew Verse Structure Revisited (II): Conjoint Cola, and Further Suggestions,”
JBL, forthcoming.
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 347

system does not exhaust the meaning of a poem, and it does not deal
with the artistry of poetry,°° but it has opened new doors with its atten-
tion to the syntactical fundamentals of language.
Prior to O’Connor, Terence Collins had likewise studied Hebrew po-
etry syntactically in his Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry.®! Collins used the
insights of generative grammar developed by Noam Chomsky in pro-
posing a system of “Basic Sentences” and “Line-Types,” which operate
on the level of deep structures, and of “Line-Forms,”®* which operate on
the level of surface structures. Basic Sentences are composed of at least
two of the following constituents: subject, object, verb, and modifier of
the verb. General Line-Types consist of one or two Basic Sentences, in
the same or different orders, while Specific Line-Types are generated
when the different types of Basic Sentences are specified. The different
combinations yield forty different Specific Line-Types, which can be
further subdivided according to various criteria.
As just noted, the first three categories operate on the level of deep
structures of language, and they are theoretical constructs that may or
may not find expression in the surface structures of language (i.e., in ac-
tual sentences and lines), whereas the Line-Forms are constituted from
the Specific Line-Types, depending on the ordering of constituents in
each one, and operate on the level of surface structures. Thus, “the Spe-
cific Line-Type tells us what kind of constituents are involved in the
line, whereas the Line-Form tells us in what order these constituents are
arranged.”°?
Like O’Connor’s, Collins’s work is very helpful in elucidating the syn-
tactical dimension of Hebrew poetry. He speaks more often and more
self-consciously than O’Connor about different levels on which poetry
operates (e.g., phonological, syntactical, semantic), and admits that his
work is limited to the syntactical. He does not claim that his system is
the key to unlocking every aspect of a poem (nor does O’Connor). Nev-
ertheless, he rightly shows that one cannot fully or adequately analyze
a poem without a knowledge of the syntactical patterns inherent in the
deep structures and expressed in the surface structures of a poem.

60. These are points on which it has been criticized (see Kuntz, “Biblical Hebrew Po-
etry in Recent Research, Part I,” 44). See also my comments below on Collins, Berlin, and
various literary approaches to poetry concerning the value of studying poetry on different
levels and as art.
61. T. Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry: A Grammatical Approach to the Stylistic
Study of the Hebrew Prophets, StPohl: Series Maior 7 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute,
1978). See his convenient summary of his work in “Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry,” JSS
23 (1978): 228-44.
62. Collins uses the term “line” to refer to the bicolon, which O’Connor calls the
“naired line.”
63. Collins, “Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry,” 235.
348 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

In Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry, Stephen A. Geller presents a

comprehensive system of linguistic analysis that is more inclusive than
O’Connor’s or Collins’s, in that it includes not only syntax but also se-
mantics (i.e., meaning of words) and meter in its task.°4 He concen-
trates his efforts on the couplet (composed of two lines) and the levels
below this. Like Collins, he deals with the deep structures of poetry;
thus his emphasis on the “reconstructed sentence” allows him to show
deep-structural similarities between two sentences that differ radically
in their surface structures. He shows how this works with an example
from 2 Samuel 22:14: “YHWH thundered from heaven; / Elyon sent
forth his voice.” The verbs are very different—not only in meaning, but,
more importantly, in syntactical form—and yet both occupy the same
syntactical “slot” and thus both are surface-level manifestations of an
underlying deep structure that one can represent as follows: “{(YHWH/
Elyon} from-heaven {thundered/sent-forth his-voice}.”®° His attention
to meter, however, is not especially helpful, in that the phenomenon is
for the most part today judged not to be present in Hebrew poetry, and
his focus only on the couplet and lower levels is inadequate. Neverthe-
less, his linking of semantics with syntax is surely an advance over ear-
lier studies that focused on meter and semantics almost exclusively,
and his point that semantics cannot be left out of the process of inter-
pretation is well taken.
Dennis Pardee’s Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetic Parallelism is a sus-
tained analysis of two texts, one from the Ugaritic corpus and one
from the Bible, using a comprehensive method that includes some
sixteen different steps.® These include analysis of repetitive parallel-
ism (where lexemes are repeated in parallel lines), semantic parallel-
ism, grammatical parallelism (where he analyzes and uses the sys-
tems of Collins, O’Connor, and Geller), and phonetic parallelism. For
our purposes here, the great strengths of Pardee’s work include his ex-
tensive and sympathetic “field-testing” of these three systems—he
finds useful elements in all three—and in his two essays included as
appendixes (given as papers in 1981 and 1982), in which he discusses
types of parallelism and further evaluates the works in question. His
is not a groundbreaking theoretical work—he repeatedly asserts his
status as a nonlinguist—but it is eminently valuable for what it does
accomplish.

64. S. A. Geller, Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry, HSM 20 (Missoula, Mont.: Schol-
ars Press, 1979).
(YS, Mentally:
66. D. Pardee, Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetic Parallelism: A Trial Cut (nt I and Proverbs
2), VTSup 39 (Leiden: Brill, 1988 [Pardee’s work was completed by 1985]).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 349

Adele Berlin’s Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism is the most satisfying

of the present group.®’ She too asserts that parallelism is a linguistic
phenomenon, and she states that parallelism and “terseness” (cf.
O'Connor's “constraint”) are the two markers of poetic texts; when
these predominate, the text is poetic.°® Indeed, she identifies most
closely—although not entirely—with O’Connor’s approach to parallel-
ism.° She argues persuasively that parallelism has many different as-
pects and operates on many different levels. It “may involve semantics,
grammar, and/or other linguistic features, and it may occur on the level
of the word, line, couplet, or over a greater textual span.””° She deals in
successive chapters with grammatical (i.e., morphological and syntac-
tical), lexical and semantic, and phonological parallelism. Great
strengths of her work are its clear and engaging literary style and its co-
pious examples illustrating her points. Her observations that (1) paral-
lelism may operate on one level (e.g., phonological) while it does not on
another (e.g., lexical or syntactical), and that (2) parallelism on one
level raises expectations of parallel relations on another, even when it
is not formally present, are especially helpful.
Berlin thus goes beyond most of the works above by insisting that we
must devote attention to both syntax and semantics (as well as to other
levels). Referring to Edward Greenstein’s argument that grammatical
(i.e., syntactical) parallelism should define all parallelism, she states, “I
cannot agree . . . that syntactic repetition lies at the base of parallelism
and that semantic parallelism is a result of this repetition. In many
cases, it may be the other way around. ... There is no reason to give
syntax priority over semantics (or vice versa); both are important as-
pects of parallelism.””! Berlin’s work, with its interest in parallelism spe-
cifically, and not poetry more generally, does not consider in any detail
poetic levels above the paired line (couplet), certainly not poems in
their entirety; as such, it is an incomplete study of poetry, but it treats
parallelism in a thorough and instructive way.

67. A. Berlin, The Dynamics ofBiblical Parallelism (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1985).
68. Ibid., 5. Here she is responding to J. Kugel’s assertions that we cannot distinguish
at all between poetry and prose (see below).
69. Ibid., 26.
ZO Ubidse25)
71. Ibid., 23. Greenstein represents one pole in studies of parallelism, in that he ar-
gues that parallelism is solely a function of grammar (i.e., syntax). See E. L. Greenstein,
“How Does Parallelism Mean?” in A Sense of Text: The Art of Language in the Study of Bib-
lical Literature, ed. S. A. Geller, JORSup 1982 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983),
41-70. While he admits of semantic parallelism, he does not concede that it can operate
when syntactical parallelism is absent or in very different syntactical structures. See the
further comments of Berlin, Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, 21-25.
350 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

The foregoing survey demonstrates, then, that study of parallelism in

Hebrew poetry must be rooted in syntax, for this lies at the foundation
of language and how texts (including poetic texts) communicate. In the
theory of signs argued by Charles W. Morris, syntactics is the founda-
tion upon which other relations build; it deals with the syntactical rela-
tions of signs to one another.’* Semantics presupposes syntactics, deal-
ing with the relations of signs to the objects they denote. Pragmatics
deals with the relation of signs to their interpreters, that is, “all the psy-
chological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the
functioning of signs.”’* Syntactics is the most abstract, but it has the
greatest explanatory power, that is, it can explain the workings or the
mechanisms of Hebrew poetry in ways that other approaches cannot.
Nonetheless, poetic analysis—which is presumably a tool in the
search for meaning, in the end—cannot find its abode solely in syntac-
tics; it must also consider the levels of semantics, phonology, and mor-
phology. As the literary studies below show, there is also an art to un-
derstanding poetry that is not to be found solely among the
classifications and explanations of the mechanisms of Hebrew poetry.
This art moves far beyond syntactics. Therefore, in the search for the
meaning of a poem, syntax must be foundational, but it is not adequate
by itself to elucidate meaning completely.

Literary Approaches
Consonant with the trends in the larger world of biblical studies, many
works on Hebrew poetry have appeared since 1980 emphasizing liter-
ary approaches, whereby individual psalms are treated as coherent
wholes and the artistic dimensions of poetry are very much the focus.
Authors representing this approach include James Kugel, Robert Alter,
Harold Fisch, and Luis Alonso Schékel. The great advantage of these
works is their literary sensitivity in explicating the art of poetry and not
just its mechanics. I also discuss in this section other works dealing
with Hebrew poetic devices.
James Kugel’s Idea of Biblical Poetry addresses the nature of parallel-
ism.’* His fundamental poetic unit is the paired line, or couplet, and he
expresses the relationship between the two as “A is so, and what’s more,
B.” That is, the second line of the pair will advance the thought of the

72. C. W. Morris, “Foundations of the Theory of Signs,” in International Encyclopedia

of Unified Science, ed. O. Neurath, R. Carnap, and C. Morris (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1938-), 1:77-137. I thank P. C. Schmitz for calling this work to my attention.
73. Ibid., 108.
74. J. L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1981). See also Kugel’s remarks in “Some Thoughts on Future Re-
search into Biblical Style: Addenda to The Idea of
Biblical Poetry,” JSOT 28 (1984): 107-17.
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 30

first line in a “seconding” manner of some sort. As such, he overturns

the popular view of parallel lines as “synonymous.”
He also argues that the distinction between prose and poetry is over-
drawn. On the one hand, in many cases in Psalms, for example, the par-
allelistic connections between lines A and B are almost nonexistent,
such as in “Blessed is the Lord / for he did not make us fall prey to their
teeth” (Ps. 124:6); such a sequence is essentially indistinguishable from
a prose sentence. On the other hand, we find many examples in prose
texts of what we would identify as parallelism if they occurred in the
Psalms, as in “God made me the cause of laughter / all who hear will
laugh at me” (Gen. 21:6) or “I will surely bless you / and surely multiply
your seed” (Gen. 22:17). Kugel argues that, since Hebrew has no word
for “poetry,” there is no such thing. But surely there are differences that
can be distinguished. Hebrew has no word for “prose,” either, but this
does not disprove its existence. Also, in the Psalms, there are many He-
brew words for poetic compositions, such as mizmo6r, maskil, or Sig-
gayon. Nevertheless, Kugel has succeeded in reminding scholars that
much poetry is “prose-like” and vice versa, and that they should think
in terms of a continuum between the poles of prose and poetry, not her-
metically sealed categories.
In contrast to the works above, Kugel resists any “system” for read-
ing poetry: “there is no such thing as an ‘objective’ approach to biblical
texts, no neutral set of literary tools that will take apart any book or pas-
sage and tell us what makes it work.””> Kugel’s great strength is his ex-
plication of the “seconding” relationship between lines A and B, demol-
ishing the simplistic view that equates lines A and B as “synonymous.”
But his disdain for any foundation in a system or theory of language
leaves his approach open to potentially endless subjectivity.’°
This blurring of the lines between poetry and prose finds an echo in
the work of J. C. de Moor on the Book of Ruth and William T. Koop-
mans on Joshua 23 and 24, who speak variously of “narrative poetry,”
“poetic narrative,” “poetic prose,” or “prosaic poetry.””’” They locate the

75. Kugel, Idea of Biblical Poetry, 302.

76. One distinctive of Kugel’s work not found in others is his extensive and authori-
tative tracing of the history of the study of Hebrew poetry from the earliest rabbinic treat-
ments to the present day, including dealing with the rabbinic and early Christian “forget-
ting” and obscuring of parallelism.
77. J. C. de Moor, “The Poetry of the Book of Ruth,” Or 53 (1984): 262-83; Or 55
(1986): 16-46; W. T. Koopmans, “The Poetic Prose of Joshua 23,” in The Structural Anal-
ysis of Biblical and Canaanite Poetry, ed. W. van der Meer and J. C. de Moor, JSOTSup 74
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988), 83-118; idem, Joshua 24 as Poetic Narrative,
JSOTSup 93 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), esp. 165-76. J. C. L. Gibson's
use of the term “narrative poetry” differs from de Moor’s and Koopmans’. He refers to
poetic compositions embedded in narrative texts, such as Exodus 15 and Judges 5, and
352 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

texts in an “intermediate range”’® between the poles of poetry and

prose. Along with Kugel, these scholars remind us that the classical cat-
egories of poetry have many loose ends. It is not clear, however, how in
their scheme one would be restrained from reclassifying any text usu-
ally judged to be prose as “poetic prose”; their work comes close to ren-
dering any distinctions between prose and poetry meaningless.
While Kugel’s work may not be “literary” in the pure sense, three works
that can unquestionably be grouped together as truly literary studies are
those of Alter, Alonso Schokel, and Fisch. None of these authors attempts
a theoretical explanation for Hebrew poetry, but all display masterful
eyes to the details and nuances of poetry as literature, as works of art. In
The Art of Biblical Poetry,’? Robert Alter begins with a discussion of “The
Dynamics of Parallelism” that echoes Kugel’s, in that he sees the second
“verset” of a couplet going beyond the first in any number of ways, only
one of which might be synonymity (and that only rarely). Others include
complementarity, focusing, heightening, intensification, specification,
consequentiality, contrast, or disjunction. Along with Kugel’s observa-
tions, this work effectively demolishes the idea of complete synonymity
between lines.*®° Alter’s treatments of larger units (“From Line to Story”)
and other forms (e.g., “The Garden of Metaphor’) are instructive in the
appreciation of the art of poetry, and they are delights to read.
Luis Alonso Schékel’s Manual of Hebrew Poetics is similar in that it
approaches Hebrew poetry as an art form, and it is a masterpiece of
sensitivity to the text and its subtleties.*! Alonso Schokel read the Bible
as literature long before this approach came into fashion in the 1980s;
indeed, his work helped to usher in the approach. His discussions in-
clude parallelism, sounds and rhythms, synonymy, repetition, meris-
mus, antithesis, polarized expression, images, and figures of speech, all
discussed in concrete and readable ways that demonstrate the value of
close literary reading of poetic texts.
Harold Fisch’s Poetry with a Purpose reads the Bible’s poetry and
other literature with a literary eye, uncovering the rich tapestries of its

he calls for a grammar of narrative poetry to be written. See J. C. L. Gibson, “The Anat-
omy of Hebrew Narrative Poetry,” in Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour
of George Wishart Anderson, ed. A. G. Auld, JSOTSup 152 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1993), 141-48.
78. Koopmans, “Joshua 23,” 88.
79. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic, 1985).
80. Essentially the same point is made by O'Connor, Geller, and Berlin from a linguis-
tic perspective. See O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, 50-52; Geller, Parallelism in Early
Biblical Poetry, 41-42; and Berlin, Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, 14-15, 64-65. :
81. L. Alonso Schékel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics, Subsidia Biblica 11 (Rome: Pon-
tifical Biblical Institute, 1988).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 353

art.** The Bible is at one and the same time esthetic literature, capable of
being appreciated on a literary level, and also religious literature, which,
with the claims to exclusivity contained within it, is like no other. The
irony of much biblical literature is that both of these aspects of its litera-
ture are true (i.e., it is esthetic and it is religious) and that often the Bible’s
poems “gain their power from the devices they renounce.”** The Bible’s
authors, through their use of the literary arts, urge their readers to read
the Bible in ways that are not literary but theological. Fisch argues that
the Bible’s texts regularly subvert themselves (or perhaps we might say
that they subvert the reader’s normal understanding of things), in em-
bracing and yet rejecting literary and poetic forms. Thus, to take but one
example, Isaiah’s treatment of beauty in 52:7 (“How beautiful are the feet
...) shows that beauty is not at all contemplated in the usual categories
of physical beauty, but rather in terms of moving feet and in the fulfill-
ment of their mission; indeed, the beautiful feet bring a message of sal-
vation, that the Lord reigns, a truth that leaves the usual understanding
of “beauty” far behind. Thus the reader, who begins by thinking of
“beauty” in its usual sense, is left with a very different conception of it.
Wilfred G. E. Watson’s Classical Hebrew Poetry and Traditional Tech-
niques in Classical Hebrew Verse are “literary” studies in the sense that
they catalog in great detail numerous literary-poetic techniques in He-
brew, Ugaritic, and Akkadian, such as use of different types of parallel-
ism (e.g., gender-matched, number, stairstep), stanzas and strophes,
chiasms, sounds (assonance, alliteration, rhyme, onomatopoeia, word-
play), repetition, word pairs, and ellipsis.** But they are essentially cat-
alogs for reference rather than treatments outlining any particular way
of reading poetry. Watson does not propound any general theory of po-
etry, “largely because scholars themselves have not yet formulated such
a theory.”®>

Structural Approaches
Closely bound up with the turn to literary studies of poetry are myriad
structural studies. Typically, these deal synchronically with the surface
structure of the Masoretic Text, and they study entire psalms as coher-

82. H. Fisch, Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1988). His work is not limited to poetry, despite its title.
83. Ibid., 4 (this passage concerns two poems by George Herbert, but Fisch uses it to
describe similar tensions in the Bible).
84. W.G.E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its Techniques, 2d ed., JSOT-
Sup 26 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986); idem, Traditional Techniques in Clas-
sical Hebrew Verse, JSOTSup 170 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994).
85. W.G.E. Watson, “Problems and Solutions in Hebrew Verse: A Survey of Recent
Work,” VT 43 (1993): 374.
354 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

ent wholes—a salutary development. They differ somewhat from the lit-
erary studies mentioned above in that the latter truly read the psalms
as works of art, whereas many of these structural studies end up as cat-
alogs of large-scale literary devices, of chiasms, inclusios, and the like,
often spanning many verses. The structures of psalms are laid bare (al-
though often no unanimity on a given psalm’s structure is reached),
with very elaborate diagrams, but too often little is said of a psalm’s art
or its meaning, and virtually nothing of its syntactical underpinnings.
Such an approach is often called analyse structurelle, which studies sur-
face structures, as opposed to analyse structurale, which is the deep-
structural analysis of French Structuralism or semiotics.
Two leading practitioners of analyse structurelle are Marc Girard and
Pierre Auffret, both of whom have produced a great number of struc-
tural studies. In their work, they exhaustively treat repeated patterns
within individual psalms, and consider the lowest levels of the word up
to the highest levels of the poem. In addition, Auffret also is attentive to
such patterns between psalms and within psalm groupings. In Les
psaumes redécouverts, Girard studies the psalms on three levels: syntag-
matic (the most basic relationships, e.g., hendiadys), syntactic (e.g.,
parallelism), and the structural unity. He insists rightly that meaning is
tied to structure, paying attention to both but also distinguishing be-
tween them.®° Auffret has written structural analyses on almost every
psalm, which are collected in a series of books.’ While there are differ-
ences between the two,*® overall their approach is very similar.
Another approach is that of J. C. de Moor and his students at the
Kampen School of Theology in the Netherlands, exemplified in The
Structural Analysis of Biblical and Canaanite Poetry.®’ This approach

86. M. Girard, Les psaumes redécouverts: De la structure au sens, 3 vols. (Quebec: Bel-
larmin, 1994-96).
87. See, e.g., P. Auffret, Hymnes d’Egypte et d’Israel: Etudes de structures littéraires,
OBO 34 (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Suisse, 1981); idem, La sagesse a bati sa mai-
son: Etudes de structures littéraires dans l’Ancient Testament et specialement dans les
psaumes, OBO 49 (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Suisse, 1982); idem, Voyez des vos
yeux: Etude structurelle de vingt psaumes dont le psaume 119, VTSup 48 (Leiden: Brill,
1993); idem, Merveilles a nos yeux: Etude structurelle de vingt psaumes dont celui de 1 Ch
16,8-36, BZAW 235 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1995).
88. See P. Auffret, “Létude structurelle des psaumes: Réponses et compléments I,”
Science et esprit 48 (1996): 45-60; idem, “Létude structurelle des psaumes: Réponses et
compléments II,” Science et esprit 49 (1997): 39-61; idem, “L’étude structurelle des
psaumes: Réponses et compléments III,” Science et esprit 49 (1997): 149-74, where he re-
sponds to Girard’s criticisms of his work.
89. Van der Meer and de Moor, eds., Structural Analysis of Biblical and Canaanite Po-
etry. The essentials of this system are explained in M. C. A. Korpel and J. C. de Moor,
“Fundamentals of Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetry,” UF 18 (1986): 173-212 (reprinted in
Structural Analysis of Biblical and Canaanite Poetry, 1-61).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study le)e)

also includes analysis of poems at all levels, beginning with the foot (a
word with at least one stressed syllable), and proceeding up to the co-
lon, verse, strophe, canticle, subcanto, and canto. The levels of the stro-
phe and above are usually held together by external parallelism,
whereas internal parallelism operates at the lower levels. One weakness
of this approach is that it equates form with meaning in most instances,
implying (erroneously) that, when the structure of a poem is elucidated,
the task of interpretation is complete.” A similar approach is espoused
in South Africa by Willem S. Prinsloo and his students, which he calls
a “text-immanent” approach.?!
Daniel Grossberg’s Centripetal and Centrifugal Structures in Biblical
Poetry includes a study of the Psalms of Ascents (120-34) in which he
analyzes these poems as a unified whole.” He sees elements that act
centripetally to bind together the entire grouping into a tightly related,
consolidated structure, but at the same time he identifies other ele-
ments that act centrifugally, working in the opposite direction. Paul R.
Raabe, in Psalms Structures, is concerned to identify the building
blocks of six psalms with refrains (42-43, 46, 49, 56, 57, 59), and he
deals briefly with four more (39, 67, 80, 99).?* They consist of strophes,
which are combined into stanzas. The refrains (verses repeated at reg-
ular intervals) link stanzas together into larger wholes called “sections.”

Hermeneutics
One of the most striking features of biblical studies today is its vast di-
versity. The Bible is studied from a seemingly endless list of perspec-
tives, using a multiplicity of critical approaches. No longer is the histor-
ical-critical method, the history-of-religions approach, or form criticism
the dominant paradigm of interpretation in any area of biblical studies.
For example, Stephen Haynes and Steven McKenzie’s To Each Its Own

90. See the similar comments by Cooper, “Two Recent Works on the Structure of Bib-
lical Hebrew Poetry,” JAOS 110 (1990): 689-90. Cooper categorizes this work as a purely
“linguistic” work, but, given its lack of theoretical discussion, I judge that it is a “literary”
work focusing almost entirely on form and structure.
91. This approach is a text-based and text-oriented framework for interpretation,
dealing with morphological, syntactical, stylistic, and semantic components of poetry.
See, e.g., W. S. Prinsloo, “Psalm 116: Disconnected Text or Symmetrical Whole?” Bib 74
(1993): 71-82; idem, “Psalm 149: Praise Yahweh with Tambourine and Two-Edged
Sword,” ZAW 109 (1997): 395-407; G. T. M. Prinsloo, “Analysing Old Testament Poetry:
An Experiment in Methodology with Reference to Psalm 126,” OTE 5 (1992): 225-51.
92. D. Grossberg, Centripetal and Centrifugal Structures in Biblical Poetry, SBLMS 39
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). His study of the Psalms of Ascents is on pp. 15-54.
93. P.R. Raabe, Psalms Structures: A Study of Psalms with Refrains, JSOTSup 104
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990).
356 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

Meaning, a standard introduction to the scholarly disciplines, lists no

less than thirteen critical approaches in biblical studies today, and entire
dictionaries devoted solely to interpretation have appeared.”* Today,
Psalms studies can be found using almost every one of these methods.
Several recent works self-consciously use different methods on one
psalm. For example, in The Psalms and Their Readers, Donald K. Berry
applies different critical methodologies—textual, structural (poetic),
form-critical, rhetorical-critical (literary), reader-oriented—to Psalm
18, showing the value of each one.”° His special interest is to show how
reader-oriented study can help to recontextualize the psalm in the
twentieth century. William H. Bellinger Jr. takes a similar approach in
A Hermeneutic of Curiosity and Readings of Psalm 61, using form, ca-
nonical, rhetorical, and reader-response criticisms, ending with a theo-
logical analysis.” His “hermeneutic of curiosity” is one in which the
text invites us to ask questions and to explore, and thus we should read
it using all available methods. The text becomes a window into its world
of origin, its own shape and message, and its readers in relation to it,
and, among them, the critical approaches must cover all three of these
elements. Jutta Schréten, in Entstehung, Komposition und Wirkungsge-
schichte des 118. Psalms, reviews the range of critical approaches to
Psalm 118 throughout the history of interpretation, and then offers two
parallel readings, from synchronic (poetics and form criticism) and di-
achronic (source and redaction criticism) perspectives.”’ In Mijn God,
mijn God, waarom hebt Gij mij verlaten? (“My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?”), scholars in separate disciplines employ nine differ-
ent approaches in the study of Psalm 22: exegetical, poetic (structural),
textual (LXX), psychological, pastoral, systematic theology, church his-
tory, and its use in Jewish commentary (the psalm of Esther) and the
New Testament (Mark 15).?8

94. S.R. Haynes and S. L. McKenzie, eds., Jo Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction
to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993). Cf.
J. Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study, rev. ed. (Louisville: West-
minster/John Knox, 1996), who lays out the range of critical approaches; and the follow-
ing two dictionaries of interpretation: R. J. Coggins and J. L. Houlden, eds., A Dictionary
of Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International; London: SCM, 1990);
J. H. Hayes, ed., Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 2 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999).
95. D. K. Berry, The Psalms and Their Readers: Interpretive Strategies for Psalm 18,
JSOTSup 153 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).
96. W. H. Bellinger Jr., A Hermeneutic of Curiosity and Readings of Psalm 61, Studies
in Old Testament Interpretation 1 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995). See also
idem, “Psalm xxvi: A Test of Method,” VT 43 (1993): 452-61.
97. J. Schréten, Entstehung, Komposition und Wirkungsgeschichte des 118. Psalms,
BBB 95 (Weinheim: Beltz Athenaum, 1995),
98. M. Poorthuis, ed., Mijn God, mijn God, waarom hebt Gij mij verlaten? Een inter-
disciplinaire bundel over psalm 22 (Baarn: Ten Have, 1997).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 357

Herbert J. Levine’s Sing unto God a New Song is a more theoretical

approach, not focusing on one psalm, but he too argues for using sev-
eral disciplines in order to uncover their power, showing how the
Psalms can be used even in the modern day, in both religious and sec-
ular cultures.”? He uses history, anthropology, linguistic philosophy,
phenomenology of religion, literary discourse, “biblical interpretation,”
and post-Holocaust interpretation.
Several works have focused on the history of interpretation of
psalms. For example, in a fascinating study entitled Psalms of the Way
and the Kingdom, John H. Eaton engages two groups of psalms—the
three “Torah” psalms (1, 19, 119) and three “Kingship of Yahweh”
psalms (93, 97, 99)—using ten commentators from the 1890s through
1960s (Delitzsch, Baethgen, Duhm, Briggs, Kittel, Gunkel, Bentzen,
Mowinckel, Kraus, Dahood) as his conversation partners in working his
way through each psalm.!” In addition, he enlists three more recent in-
terpreters for each group (Westermann, Gerstenberger, and Spiecker-
mann for the Torah psalms, and Lipinski, Gray, and Jeremias for the
Kingship of Yahweh psalms). Lars Olov Eriksson’s “Come, Children, Lis-
ten to Me!” deals with Psalm 34 and consists of two major parts: (1) the
distinctives of this psalm in its Old Testament context and (2) its use in
the New Testament and in the early Greek fathers. He also points to the
need for study of rabbinical and patristic writings.!°! Uriel Simon dis-
cusses four rabbinic approaches to the Psalms in the tenth through
twelfth centuries A.p. in Four Approaches to the Book of Psalms.'°? Saa-
diah Gaon treated the Book of Psalms as a second Pentateuch, revealed
to David. The Karaites Salmon ben Yeruham and Yefet ben ‘Ali saw the
Psalms as perfect prophetic prayers for all ages. Moses Ibn Giqatilah
disagreed, seeing the Psalms as nonprophetic prayers and poems. Abra-
ham Ibn Ezra emphasized the Psalms’ sacred character as prophetic
prayers and divine songs. Adele Berlin also treats medieval Jewish exe-
gesis in Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes.'”
Many modern critical approaches, common today in the academy,
are also used in Psalms studies. For example, feminist criticism is rep-

99. H. J. Levine, Sing unto God a New Song: A Contemporary Reading of the Psalms,
Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995).
100. J. H. Eaton, Psalms of the Way and the Kingdom: A Conference with the Commen-
tators, JSOTSup 199 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).
101. L. O. Eriksson, “Come, Children, Listen to Me!” Psalm 34 in the Hebrew Bible and
in Early Christian Writings, ConBOT 32 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991).
102. U. Simon, Four Approaches to the Book of Psalms: From Saadiyah Gaon to Abra-
ham Ibn Ezra, trans. L. J. Schramm (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991).
103. A. Berlin, Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991).
358 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

resented by Ulrike Bail’s Gegen das Schweigen klagen.'°* She sees

Psalms 6 and 55 as the laments of a woman who has been raped, and
links them with the story of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13. Support comes from
the shared terms and imagery in the narrative story (and also Judges
19) and the two psalms (cf., e.g., the “feminine” imagery of the besieged
city in 55:9-11 [55:10-12 MT]). Marchiene Vroon Rienstra’s Swallow’s
Nest is very different, as it is a devotional guide for daily reading, but it
emphasizes and celebrates the “feminine” aspects of God, using femi-
nine pronouns for God and offering suggestions as to settings each
psalm might fit in a contemporary woman's life.!°
Sociological and liberationist approaches are represented by several
authors. In J. David Pleins’s The Psalms: Songs of Tragedy, Hope, and
Justice, he speaks of “a poetry of justice.”!°° He lays out the manifold
form-critical genres with attention to sociopolitical issues of justice,
mercy, and hope, provides his own fresh translations for many psalms,
and consistently brings the Psalms to bear on the modern situation.
Stephen Breck Reid deals with similar issues of marginalization of the
poor and the outsider (the “other,” represented in the Psalms by the en-
emies) in Listening In: A Multicultural Reading of the Psalms.'°’ He em-
ploys insights from the Two-Thirds World in understanding the Psalms’
appeal to those outside the gate, and he too shows how the Psalms
speak to the contemporary world.
Walter Brueggemann’s is a prominent voice employing sociological
insights in biblical studies, including attention to the poor and op-
pressed, and his Psalms studies are permeated with these.!°° One stim-
ulating example is [srael’s Praise. In this book, he argues that the praise
of God is fundamental to the life of faith and that praise must be rooted
firmly in the here and now, in the experiences of life. Furthermore, the
“world” that believers inhabit is formed or shaped, in a very real way,
by the contents and attitudes of the praise they express. If this praise is
shallow, empty, unthinking, then their “world” will reflect that;

104. U. Bail, Gegen das Schweigen klagen: Eine intertextuelle Studie zu den Klagepsal-
men Ps 6 und Ps 55 und die Erztihlung von der Vergewaltigung Tamars (Giitersloh: Chr.
Kaiser, 1998).
105. M. V. Rienstra, Swallow's Nest: A Feminine Reading ofthe Psalms (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1992).
106. J. D. Pleins, The Psalms: Songs ofTragedy, Hope, and Justice (Maryknoll, N.Y.; Or-
bis, 1993).
107. S. B. Reid, Listening In: A Multicultural Reading of the Psalms (Nashville: Abing-
don, 1997).
108. W. Brueggemann, Israel's Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology (Philadel-
phia: Fortress, 1988); idem, Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of
History, Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox,
1991); idem, The Psalms and the Life of Faith, ed. P. D. Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 359

whereas if their praise is based on their genuine experience of God and

his faithfulness in their lives, including their experiences of pain and
discomfort, then this “God” they worship is indeed the true God. In
Abiding Astonishment, Brueggemann speaks again of “world-making,”
dealing with several “historical psalms” (78, 105, 106, 136). He ad-
dresses the questions of (1) how these psalms that recite history with a
supernatural dimension fit into the modern world of history writing
(where the supernatural is excluded) and (2) how they, written by and
for “insiders,” can be used in an inclusive, rather than exclusive, man-
ner. The Psalms and the Life of Faith is a collection of fourteen of his es-
says from 1974 to 1993, including his seminal essay on “Psalms and the
Life of Faith,”!°’ and several from similar (sociological) perspectives.
Many other critical approaches are represented in numerous essays,
including rhetorical criticism (i.e., close literary and structural read-
ings), deconstruction, speech-act theory, discourse analysis, ecological
readings, and what might be called “physiological” readings.!!°

109. See W. Brueggemann, “Psalms and the Life of Faith: A Suggested Typology of
Function,” JSOT 17 (1980): 3-32 (reprinted in idem, Psalms and the Life of Faith, 3-32).
110. For introductions to these interpretive methods, see Hayes, ed., Dictionary of
Biblical Interpretation. Examples of rhetorical criticism: L. C. Allen, “The Value of Rhe-
torical Criticism in Psalm 69,” JBL 105 (1986): 577-98; J. K. Kuntz, “King Triumphant: A
Rhetorical Study of Psalms 20 and 21,” HAR 10 (1986): 157-76; L. D. Crow, “The Rhetoric
of Psalm 44,” ZAW 104 (1992): 394-401. See also the discussion above of “Structural Ap-
proaches,” which in many cases are similar methodologically.
Deconstruction: D. P. McCarthy, “A Not-So-Bad Derridean Approach to Psalm 23,”
Proceedings, Eastern Great Lakes and Midwest Biblical Society 8 (1988): 177-92; D.
Jobling, “Deconstruction and the Political Analysis of Biblical Texts: A Jamesonian Read-
ing of Psalm 72,” Semeia 59 (1992): 95-127; D. J. A. Clines, “A World Established on
Water (Psalm 24): Reader-Response, Deconstruction, and Bespoke Interpretation,” in
The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, ed. J. C.Exum and D. J. A. Clines, JSOT-
Sup 143 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 79-90.
Speech-act theory: H. Irsigler, “Psalm-Rede als Handlungs-, Wirk- und Aussageproze:
Sprechaktanalyse und Psalmeninterpretation am Beispiel von Psalm 13,” in Neue Wege
der Psalmenforschung, ed. K. Seybold and E. Zenger (Freiburg: Herder, 1994), 63-104.
Discourse analysis: E. R. Wendland, “Genre Criticism and the Psalms: What Dis-
course Typology Can Tell Us about the Text (with Special Reference to Psalm 31),” in Bib-
lical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics, ed. R. D. Bergen (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 1994), 374-414.
Ecological readings: B. J. Raja, “Eco-Spirituality in the Psalms,” Vidyajyoti 53 (1989):
637-50; E. Zenger, “‘Du kannst das Angesicht der Erde erneuern’ (Ps 104,30): Das
Schépferlob des 104. Psalms als Ruf zur 6kologischen Umkehr,” Bibel und Liturgie 64
(1991): 75-86; K. V. Mathew, “Ecological Perspectives in the Book of Psalms,” Bible
Bhashyam 19 (1993): 159-68; J. Limburg, “Down-to-Earth Theology: Psalm 104 and the
Environment,” Currents in Theology and Mission 21 (1994): 340-46; M. A. Bullmore, “The
Four Most Important Biblical Passages for a Christian Environmentalism,” TJ 19 (1998):
139-62 (includes Ps. 104).
“Physiological” readings: G. A. Rendsburg and S. L. Rendsburg, “Physiological and
Philological Notes to Psalm 137,” JOR 83 (1993): 385-99 (who argue that in wv. 5-6, which
360 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

Such is the vast new diversity in Psalms studies that even traditional,
christological approaches have received new and stimulating treat-
ments, such as Bruce K. Waltke’s “Canonical Process Approach to the
Psalms” and Georg Braulik’s “Christologisches Verstandnis der Psal-
men—schon im Alten Testament?”!!! Waltke argues for different stages
of reading the Psalms, following the process of canonical formation (in-
dividual psalm, collections, Psalter, OT, Christian canon), and argues
that in the final analysis the entire Psalter should be read christologi-
cally.!!? Braulik likewise sees a messianic (re)interpretation of individ-
ual psalms as these were incorporated into large collections.''?
William L. Holladay’s Psalms through Three Thousand Years is a
work that resists categorization, but I include it here because of Holla-
day’s call for a christological interpretation of the Psalms.''* It traces
the history of the psalms through their origin and development in the
biblical period, and then through the history of Jewish and Christian in-
terpretation from Qumran to the modern day. His work is very sophis-
ticated and is not only cognizant of modern critical scholarship but also
sensitive to religious and nonreligious traditions that would not revere
the Psalms in the ways in which Christians do. Nevertheless, in his final
chapter—entitled “Through Jesus Christ Our Lord”—Holladay calls for
Christians to read the Psalms christologically.

Form Criticism
The middle half of the twentieth century was dominated by form-criti-
cal and cultic Sitz im Leben studies, following the programs laid out by
Gunkel and Mowinckel mentioned above. Since 1970, although the

speak of the psalmist’s right hand withering and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his
mouth, the psalmist is describing a cerebrovascular accident, or stroke, in the left side of
the brain); S. Levin, “Let My Right Hand Wither,” Judaism 45 (1996): 282-86 (who argues
that vv. 5-6 describe cerebral palsy).
111. B. K. Waltke, “A Canonical Process Approach to the Psalms,” in Tradition and
Testament, ed. J. S, Feinberg and P. D. Feinberg (Chicago: Moody, 1981), 3-18; G. Braulik,
“Christologisches Verstandnis der Psalmen—schon im Alten Testament?” in Christologie
der Liturgie: Der Gottesdienst der Kirche—Christusbekenntnis und Sinaibund, ed. K. Rich-
ter and B. Kranemann, Quaestiones disputatae 159 (Freiburg: Herder, 1995), 57-86.
112. A full development and defense of Waltke's idea is J. E. Shepherd, “The Book of
Psalms as the Book of Christ: The Application of the Christo-Canonical Method to the
Book of Psalms” (Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1995).
113. A thorough review of the patristic treatments (mid-second to mid-sixth centuries
A.D.) of Psalm 45 is to be found in E. Griinbeck, Christologische Schriftargumentation und
Bildersprache, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 26 (Leiden: Brill, 1994).
114. W.L. Holladay, The Psalms through Three Thousand Years: Prayerbook of a Cloud
of Witnesses (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 361

most creative energies have been devoted elsewhere and such studies
are no longer dominant, they have by no means ceased.
Pride of place must be given to the recent translation of Hermann
Gunkel’s Introduction to the Psalms.''° Sixty-five years after publication
in German, the results of Gunkel’s form-critical analyses are now acces-
sible to English readers; they can discover for themselves Gunkel’s cat-
egories of individual and communal laments, praise hymns, thanksgiv-
ing psalms, royal psalms, and the minor categories, including his
assignment of specific situations in life corresponding to these (for
Gunkel, these were mostly the cult, i.e., in public ritual situations asso-
ciated with the temple). His interest in a single Sitz im Leben behind
each psalm type is no longer sustainable today. But his form-critical
categories continue to frame the discussion to this day, even though
they have been revised and augmented somewhat.
Another major work made available in English is Claus Westermann’s
Praise and Lament in the Psalms.''© This includes his seminal work, The
Praise of God in the Psalms (1965), and several other essays. Wester-
mann’s most distinctive insight is that Hebrew had no separate word for
“to thank”—the word normally used in contexts where this is expected is
“to bless”—and that thus the word translated “thanksgiving” (t6da)
should be understood as another word for “praise.” He thus argues that
the distinction between psalms of praise and psalms of thanksgiving is
misguided; he calls the first type “psalms of descriptive praise,” where
the praises of God describe his attributes in general, universal terms, and
those of the second type “psalms of narrative (or ‘declarative’) praise,”
where God’s praises are recited (declared) in the form of specifics of
what God has done for the nation or the individual. Westermann over-
states the case somewhat, because certainly there are some meaningful
distinctions between thanksgiving and praise. Nevertheless, his is a most
helpful distinction, by revealing that all of the psalms are ultimately to
be considered “praises” (a point he makes with reference even to the la-
ments, which move toward praise in their concluding vows to praise).
Another work with refinements to Gunkel’s is Erhard S. Gersten-
berger’s Psalms, Part I, a form-critical study of the first sixty psalms.'!7
He follows Gunkel’s classifications, but his distinctive contribution is
his attention to social settings of the psalms, including a focus on “in-
group and out-group” dynamics. He argues that many psalms arose in

115. H. Gunkel and J. Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms: The Genres of the Religious
Lyric of Israel, trans. J. D. Nogalski (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1998).
116. C. Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, trans. K. R. Crim and R. N.
Soulen (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981).
117. E. S. Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part I: With an Introduction to Cultic Poetry, FOTL
14 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988).
362 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

the context of “the small, organic group of family, neighborhood, or

community” (the “out-groups”), not in “the central temple or famous
wisdom academies” (the “in-groups”).!!® As such, the origin and func-
tion of many psalms was not liturgical or connected with the cult at all.
An important enterprise that can be classed as “form-critical” is
Walter Brueggemann’s “Psalms and the Life of Faith.”!'? In this essay
Brueggemann suggests a new way of categorizing psalms by function.
In his scheme (suggested by the work of Paul Ricoeur) “psalms of ori-
entation” are those characterized by the absence of tension, in which
the world is ordered and goodness prevails, such as psalms of creation,
wisdom, retribution, and blessing. The second type is “psalms of disori-
entation,” made up of laments. The third type is “psalms of reorienta-
tion,” composed of thanksgivings and hymns of praise. In these Brueg-
gemann detects a greater sense of excitement than in the “ordered”
psalms of orientation, and in these there is evidence of the psalmists’
having gone through disorientation and now having progressed to a
new place of orientation, which is much more secure and mature than
the original orientation. In this scheme, then, hymns and thanksgivings
(Westermann’s psalms of descriptive and declarative praise), while they
differ formally from each other, are similar in function, in that they be-
long to the new orientation, informed by trouble and God’s gracious in-
tervention.!*° While Brueggemann’s new categories do not do away
with the standard form-critical ones, his model is very useful and has
had a significant influence in Psalms studies since 1980.
As a form-critical category, the psalms of lament have attracted the
most scholarly interest over the years, and form-critical investigations
since 1970 continue this trend. Studies have focused on specific ele-
ments of the laments and on their overall function.
For example, William H. Bellinger Jr., in Psalmody and Prophecy,
deals with prophetic elements in psalms of lament, particularly on the
“certainty of a hearing” portion of these, which he links (following Be-
grich) with the oracle of salvation: as the promise of deliverance is de-
livered to the individual praying the psalm, this individual then re-
sponds with words indicating the faith that he or she will be (or has
been) heard.'*! Bellinger challenges the notion of the “cultic prophet,”

118. Ibid., 33.

119. He has pursued the central idea of this essay in later writings and synthesized it
for a popular audience in The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984).
120. In later writings Brueggemann places some hymns (e.g., Psalm 150) in the cate-
gory of “psalms of orientation,” because they are “static,” with no evidence, in his view,
of the life-transforming experiences found in the psalms of reorientation. See, e.g., [s-
rael’s Praise, 92-93.
121. W. H. Bellinger Jr., Psalmody and Prophecy, JSOTSup 27 (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1984).
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 363

arguing that the oracle of salvation could easily have been uttered by a
priest as well. By contrast, in Seeing and Hearing God in the Psalms,
Raymond Jacques Tournay argues that authentic cultic prophets did
exist; they were the postexilic Levitical singers.!*? He focuses on
theophanic evocations and cultic oracles to show that there is an impor-
tant prophetic dimension to the Psalms, which the Levitical singers
composed in order to bring hope to bear on the postexilic community.
He ties this prophetic hope in with the messianic hope, and argues that
the church can recover some of this hope by focusing on this prophetic
dimension. His argument depends heavily on the postexilic origin of
many of the psalms, however, a point that cannot be verified conclu-
sively in most cases.
In The Conflict ofFaith and Experience in the Psalms, Craig C. Broyles
distinguishes between psalms of plea, in which God is praised and
asked to intervene on the psalmist’s behalf, and psalms of complaint, in
which the psalmist challenges God, who is seen either as an aloof by-
stander or an active antagonist.!*? The complaints are not complaints
per se, but rather intend to summon God to be faithful to his promises
and act on the psalmists’ behalf.
Two works have studied the community laments in the context of the
ancient Near East. Paul W. Ferris Jr.’s Genre of Communal Lament in the
Bible and the Ancient Near East studies nineteen psalms plus the Book
of Lamentations, along with the communal forms of the Mesopotamian
city laments, balags, and ersemmas. His work is “an attempt to develop
a unified comparative description of the Hebrew communal lament in
light of the phenomenon of public lament in neighboring cultures.”!74
His theory of genre is more advanced than traditional form criticism,
and stresses that the constituent parts of a given genre do not need to
be completely uniform and are not necessarily dependent on only one
Sitz im Leben. Ferris concludes there is no connection of dependency
between the Israelite and Mesopotamian laments, but rather that they
both go back to a common cultural inheritance. Walter C. Bouzard Jr.,
on the other hand, disagrees in We Have Heard with Our Ears, O God.
He investigates the possible Mesopotamian sources behind the commu-
nity laments, and concludes that the evidence “points to the strong pos-
sibility of a specifically literary connection between the two collec-
tions,” although he admits that the specific evidence for borrowing is

122. R. J. Tournay, Seeing and Hearing God in the Psalms: The Prophetic Liturgy of the
Second Temple in Jerusalem, JSOTSup 118 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991).
123. C. C. Broyles, The Conflict of Faith and Experience in the Psalms, JSOTSup 52
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989).
124. P W. Ferris Jr, The Genre of Communal Lament in the Bible and the Ancient Near
East, SBLDS 127 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 13.
364 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

only circumstantial.!?° Bouzard questions Westermann’s structural ele-

ments, the “expression of confidence” and especially the “certainty of a
hearing,” since they are not present at all in the Israelite laments he ex-
amines—Psalms 44, 60, 74, 79, 80, 83, 89.!°
In Anneli Aejmelaeus’s Traditional Prayer in the Psalms, she proposes
to call Westermann’s form-critical genre of complaint psalms (Gunkel’s
individual laments) “prayer psalms of the individual,” because of the
prominent place of imperative prayer to God in these.'?’ In the tradi-
tion of classical form critics, she posits an evolutionary development of
“traditional” prayers (i.e., prayers using conventional language that
reach back into Israel’s preexilic history) from simple (preexilic) to
complex (postexilic) forms. The main problem with her approach is
this evolutionary hypothesis, which has been abandoned by most bibli-
cal scholars; nevertheless, her treatment of the form and function of im-
perative prayer is useful.
Two works focus on the individual in the psalms. The first, Steven
J. L. Croft’s Identity of the Individual in the Psalms, engages the often-
asked question about who the individual was.'*® He argues that the
speaker in the “T’ psalms (ninety-six psalms) is either the king, a private
person, or a minister of the cult, whether a cultic prophet, wisdom
teacher, or temple singer. Martin Ravndal Hauge, in Between Sheol and
Temple, does not address the question of the identity of the individual,
but rather seizes upon three fundamental motifs in the psalms—“tem-
ple,” “the way,” and “Sheol’—to describe the emotional and mental lo-
cation of the individual’s religious experience.!?
Mowinckel’s hypothesis of an Enthronement of Yahweh Festival is
kept alive in J. H. Eaton’s Kingship and the Psalms.'3° Eaton accepts
Mowinckel’s reconstruction of this supposed festival and its connection
with the Festival of Tabernacles,'?! along with A. R. Johnson’s argu-
ment that the Israelite king was closely involved in this. He thus ex-

125. W. C. Bouzard Jr., We Have Heard with Our Ears, O God: Sources of the Commu-
nal Laments in the Psalms, SBLDS 159 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 201.
126. Ibid., 109-13, 204—5.
127. A. Aejmelaeus, The Traditional Prayer in the Psalms, BZAW 167 (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1986).
128. S.J. L. Croft, The Identity of the Individual in the Psalms, JSOTSup 44 (Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1987).
129. M. R. Hauge, Between Sheol and Temple: Motif Structure and Function in the I-
Psalms, JSOTSup 178 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).
130. J. H. Eaton, Kingship and the Psalms, 2d ed., Biblical Seminar 3 (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1986).
131. As does J. Jeremias in Das Kénigtum Gottes in den Psalmen: Israels Begegnung
mit dem kanaandischen Mythos in den Jahwe-K6nig-Psalmen, FRLANT 141 (G6ttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), although he does not go to the lengths that Mowinckel
did in reconstructing the festival.
Recent Trends in Psalms Study 365

pands the category of royal psalm to include close to half of the psalms:
the individual laments are actually prayers of the king in most cases.
This expansion has been disputed by many, but the canonical form of
the Psalter supports his view, in that to David the king are attributed
seventy-three psalms.
!3?

The Psalms in the Context of the Ancient Near East

In the early part of the twentieth century, interest in ancient Near East-
ern connections for the Psalms focused primarily on parallels with
Mesopotamian hymns, prayers, and laments. Gunkel looked to these in
his identification of the basic psalm forms, as did Mowinckel in recon-
structing his hypothetical Festival of the Enthronement of Yahweh.
Such interest still continues in several form-critical studies (see above).
In the middle of the century, however, interest shifted to parallels
with Ugaritic literature, which consisted of texts written in a West
Semitic language closely related to Hebrew and including many poetic
compositions. The zenith of Ugaritic influence on Psalms study came
with Mitchell J. Dahood’s Psalms commentary, in which he radically re-
wrote many of the psalms on the basis of supposed Ugaritic parallels.!74
His influence has been negligible in the past two decades, however,
principally because of the excesses in so many of his proposals.
Today, the primary interest in Ugaritic among Psalms scholars lies
in study of the poetic features common to both, paramount among
which are word pairs. Often called “fixed word pairs,” the term “parallel
word pairs” is more appropriate, and it refers to words occurring rela-
tively frequently in parallel lines belonging to the same grammatical
class (e.g., noun, verb, participle). Obvious examples are snow and rain,
left and right, sun and moon, father and mother. Many variations occur,
including repetition of the same verb in a different form (masculine vs.
feminine, singular vs. plural, gatal vs. yigtol, etc.), augmentation of the
same word (e.g., desert and holy desert, wreaths and gold wreaths), or the
metaphorical pairing of words (e.g., honey and oil).'°4 Dahood studied
these extensively,!*> but the standard study today is Yitzhak Avishur,

132. Cf. Waltke, “Canonical Process Approach to the Psalms,” 3-18.

133. M.J. Dahood, Psalms, 3 vols., AB 16-17A (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966-70).
134. See the brief introductions in Berlin, Dynamics ofBiblical Parallelism, 65-72;
Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, 128-44.
135. M. J. Dahood, “Ugaritic-Hebrew Parallel Pairs,” in Ras Shamra Parallels, ed. L.
Fisher and S. Rummel, AnOr 49-51 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1972, 1975,
1981), 1:71-382; 2:1-39; 3:1-206; Dahood listed more than a thousand parallel pairs in
these articles. See also P. Yoder, “A-B Pairs and Oral Composition in Hebrew Poetry,” VT
21 (1971): 470-89.
366 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

Stylistic Studies of Word-Pairs in Biblical and Ancient Semitic Litera-

tures.'36 Avishur catalogs the different types of word pairs and plots
their occurrence in the Bible and extrabiblical languages (Ugaritic,
Phoenician, Aramaic, and Akkadian). He also corrects many of Da-
hood’s excesses, noting, for example, that perhaps 70 percent of Da-
hood’s examples cannot be considered “common word-pairs.” He con-
cludes that there are less than two hundred common word-pairs, some
of which Dahood did not identify.!%7
In another work, Studies in Hebrew and Ugaritic Psalms, Avishur
takes up the problem of the relationship between Ugaritic and Hebrew
psalms, and he concludes that there is no strong connection between Is-
raelite tradition and Ugaritic-Canaanite tradition, but rather that the
similarities can be accounted for by common formal, thematic, linguis-
tic, and stylistic elements.'** Opposed to this, in Yahweh's Combat with
the Sea, Carola Kloos argues on the basis of Psalm 29 and the Song of
the Sea (Exod. 15) that Baalism did indeed form the basis for an impor-
tant strand of Old Testament religion, that Yahweh functioned as an
“Israelite Baal” in his conflict with the sea (Yam).!%?
Interest in the ancient Near East has not been limited to literary or
form-critical studies. A valuable study of ancient Near Eastern iconog-
raphy as it relates to the Psalms is Othmar Keel’s Symbolism of the Bib-
lical World.'*° It organizes its material around ancient Near Eastern
conceptions of the cosmos, destructive forces (death, enemies), the
temple, conceptions of God (in the temple, in creation, in history), the
king, and humans before God, and includes comments—and usually il-
lustrations: there are 556 in the book—for 146 of the 150 psalms.

Conclusion
The most remarkable features of Psalms studies since 1970 are (1) the
paradigm shift in interpreting the Psalter, which is now read more and
more as a unified collection; (2) the paradigm shift in interpreting He-
brew poetry, which is now read more and more syntactically; (3) and
the exponential growth in the number of different approaches to indi-

136. Y. Avishur, Stylistic Studies of Word-Pairs in Biblical and Ancient Semitic Litera-
tures, AOAT 210 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1984).
137. Ibid., 40.
138. Y. Avishur, Studies in Hebrew and Ugaritic Psalms (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1994).
139. C. Kloos, Yahweh's Combat with the Sea: A Canaanite Tradition in the Religion of
Ancient Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1986).
140. O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography
and the Book of Psalms, trans. T. J. Hallett (New York: Seabury, 1978). Cf. also Ringgren,
Psaltaren 1-41, which devotes a great deal of attention to ancient Near Eastern parallels
and iconography.
Recent Trends in Psalms Study BO7

vidual psalms and psalm types. Each of these has its great advantages,
which have been touched on above.
Each has potential pitfalls as well. In the first area, the greatest dan-
gers are those of subjectivity and overgeneralization. This approach
must develop proper methodological controls and also be able to artic-
ulate the results of its investigations with clarity and with sufficient
specificity as to be meaningful. Research in this area must proceed
along at least four fronts.

1. Macrostructures: Most of the research to date is devoted to this

level, and it needs to continue. But it alone cannot definitively
answer all of the questions about the Psalter’s composition and
message.
2. Microstructures: More attention needs to be devoted to the in-
tricate networks of lexical and other connections between and
among individual psalms and psalm groupings, including the
redactional dynamics where preexisting collections begin and
end.
3. Semantic Fields: The semantic-field approach employed by Jer-
ome Creach promises to yield useful results and should be em-
ployed with various key lexemes.
4. Parallels: Further research on other biblical collections (e.g.,
Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Twelve), as well as extrabiblical
ones (e.g., Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Qumran) should offer fur-
ther insights and controls.

In the area of Hebrew poetry, the attention to syntax must be wedded

to semantics and poetics in the pursuit of meaning, as I have argued
above. Attention to syntax, by itself, will yield an understanding of the
workings of Hebrew poetry, but it cannot yield a complete picture of the
meaning of poetic lines, let alone entire poems.
In the area of different approaches, the danger is that overcompart-
mentalization of the discipline of Psalms study will result in few or no
checks and balances on interpretive approaches. This is true of biblical
studies at large: increasing specialization in every discipline can lead to
scholars of one viewpoint talking with only those who agree with them
and no one else, and the salutary effects of critical review are some-
times missing. The exponential growth in approaches to the study of
the Psalms reflects the postmodern times in which we live at the end of
the twentieth century: any and all approaches to a text—and any and all
conclusions about a text—are deemed to be equally valid. However, the
search for authorial meaning and intent, despite the difficulties associ-
ated with recovering these, should not be abandoned in the ever-
368 Recent Trends in Psalms Study

expanding embrace of new approaches, and each should be subjected

to critical review, not only in terms of conclusions reached but also in
terms of the validity and usefulness of the approaches themselves.
Psalms studies are vibrant and flourishing in 1999, compared to
their status in the academy a century ago. They have taken their place
in the mainstream of biblical studies and have grown exponentially.'*!
For the most part, they have reflected the larger trends visible elsewhere
in biblical studies since 1970. And, at the turn of the millennium, when
many people are looking for eschatological signs, the message of escha-
tological hope in the Psalter is as fresh and as relevant as ever.'*”

141. The virtual explosion in the number of books and articles on Psalms, as well as
approaches to them, parallels the numerical growth of the professional societies since
1970. In the Society of Biblical Literature, membership more than doubled in the period
under consideration, from 2820 in 1970 to 7121 in 1998. In the Evangelical Theological
Society, membership more than tripled, from 802 in 1970 to 2539 in 1998. (These figures
are courtesy of Andrew D. Scrimgeour and Gregory L. Glover of the SBL and James A.
Borland of the ETS.)
142. I thank Chris Franke, Mark D. Futato, William L. Holladay, Patrick D. Miller Jr,
Michael Patrick O’Connor, Philip C. Schmitz, and Erich Zenger for offering helpful sug-
gestions on portions of the manuscript, and William L. Holladay and J. Kenneth Kuntz
for placing forthcoming manuscripts of their own at my disposal. A few portions of this
essay are adapted from my review of Psalms studies in The Structure of Psalms 93-100
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 1-19, and are used by permission.
 3
Recent Studies
in Old Testament Apocalyptic

John N. Oswalt

Renewed Interest in Apocalyptic

If one of the marks of apocalyptic is the periodization of history,! then
modern historians are surely the true descendants of the apocalyptists.
For what is more characteristic of modern history writing than its at-
tempt to isolate periods and ages? This same instinct can be seen at
work in studies of the topic under consideration here. It cannot be
doubted that during recent years we have experienced a resurgence of
interest in apocalyptic and in its significance in the emergence of Juda-
ism and Christianity. That being so, we want to know precisely when
this resurgence began. Equally important, we wish to know what
sparked this resurgence.
Klaus Koch has no reticence in dating the beginning of this renewed
interest in a precise fashion. It began, he says, with Ernst Kasemann’s
address in 1959 in which he announced that “apocalyptic is the mother
of Christian theology.”* Such a pronouncement came undoubtedly as a
shock to German scholars nurtured on a Bultmannian denial of any

Portions of this material first appeared in JETS 24 (1981): 289-302; they have been re-
vised for inclusion here.
1. D. E. Gowan, Bridge between the Testaments, 2d ed., PTMS 14 (Pittsburgh: Pick-
wick, 1980), 449.
2. E. Kasemann, “The Beginnings of Christian Theology” (trans. J. W. Leitch), JTC 6
(1969): 40; K. Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic, trans. M. Kohl, SBT 2/22 (Naperville,
Ill.: Allenson; London: SCM, 1972), 14; cf. also E. F. Tupper, “The Revival of Apocalyptic
in Biblical and Theological Studies,” RevExp 72 (1975): 279.

369
370 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

connection between a Christian eschatology and a Jewish apocalyptic.

Nor could such a statement be lightly dismissed, coming as it did on the
heels of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s lecture in which he enunciated his now-
famous philosophy of history, which saw the apocalyptic understand-
ing as an essential link in the development of genuinely historical un-
derstanding.*
Without doubting the importance of Kasemann and Pannenberg, es-
pecially for German-speaking scholars, one can still raise a question as
to whether the “present age” dawned quite as precipitately as Koch sug-
gests. As he recognizes, H. H. Rowley had already in 1944 offered a me-
diating view from Bultmann’s that had found wide acceptance in the
English-speaking world.* In 1952 a similar position was expressed by
S. B. Frost.> In 1957 G. E. Ladd also posed the connection.® Nor was
this recognition of the significance of apocalyptic confined to English
speakers. Otto Pléger’s investigation of the relationship of prophecy to
apocalyptic had already appeared in 1959, and von Rad’s comments
about the rootage of apocalyptic in wisdom, while primarily negative,
still constitute more attention than given in, say, Eichrodt.’
Thus Kaésemann and Pannenberg did not inaugurate a movement.
Rather, they were part of one. To be sure, their formulations probably
crystallized the thoughts of many others and gave the movement new
impetus, but the movement was already there. But if the scholars’ pro-
nouncements did not create the movement, what did? D. S. Russell has
suggested that it is the nature of the events of our time that accounts for
the interest of both scholars and laypeople in the end times.® Faced with
events that make “life as usual” impossible, yet believing there must be
more than merely interior meaning to existence, men and women have
been forced to turn to a philosophy of history that will incorporate and
transcend those events.’ Along with this sociological factor, there may

3. W. Pannenberg, “Redemptive Event and History,” in Basic Questions in Theology:

Collected Essays, trans. G. H. Kehm, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress; London: SCM, 1970-
TAYy W580)
4. Koch, Rediscovery, 51-53; H. H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic (New York:
Association Press; London: Lutterworth, 1944; 3d ed. 1963).
5. S. B. Frost, Old Testament Apocalyptic: Its Origins and Growth (London: Epworth,
1952).
6. G. E. Ladd, “Why Not Prophecy-Apocalyptic?” JBL 76 (1957): 192-200.
7. O. Pléger, Theocracy and Eschatology, trans. S. Rudman (Richmond: John Knox; Ox-
ford: Basil Blackwell, 1968); G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker,
2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row; Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962-65), 2:301-15.
8. D. S. Russell, Apocalyptic: Ancient and Modern (Philadelphia: Fortress; London:
SCM, 1978), 5. Cf. also Koch, Rediscovery, 51, for a comment on the timing of the appear-
ance of Rowley’s book.
9. So, for instance, Augustine's City of God.
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic oT

be an intellectual one. J. J. Collins has pointed out that the Wellhausen-

ian view of Israel’s history, which held sway over Old Testament studies
for the first half of the twentieth century, sharply denigrated the value
of apocalyptic, seeing it as a denial of “true” Old Testament faith. Col-
lins implies that the loosening of Wellhausen’s hold on Old Testament
thought left space for a reconsideration of the significance of apocalyp-
tic.!° It is in this sense that Koch’s assertion concerning the importance
of Kasemann’s address is at least exaggerated. Kasemann and Pannen-
berg gave visibility and point to the larger movement of which they
were a part, but they did not create it.!!

Defining Apocalyptic
Given the renewed interest in apocalyptic in recent years, two foci of
scholarly attention have emerged: definition and derivation. What ac-
tually constitutes apocalyptic? Where did it come from? The problem
of definition has been and remains central, because the literary mate-
rial that has been labeled “apocalyptic” shows a bewildering variety in
content, style, and focus.'* Furthermore, the historical information
concerning the Jewish people during the period when this literature
was produced (ca. 300 B.c. to A.p. 200) is so scanty that it provides few
tools for categorizing the literature by sources or sociological factors. It
is not known who used the literature, or how widespread its influence
was. But, even more seriously, it has been difficult to say what are the
precise characteristics of apocalyptic literature. There have been sev-
eral attempts to produce definitive lists of these characteristics.!? When
the lists are complete, however, no one of the pieces that has been la-
beled “apocalyptic” by one or another meets all the criteria. Thus, as
Margaret Barker points out, Daniel is frequently used as a starting point
from which to characterize apocalyptic, yet Daniel lacks many of the

10. J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of

Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 1, 12-13.
11. Thus they certainly were not responsible for the phenomenal interest in Hal Lind-
say’s books. For a pointed critique of Lindsay, see P. D. Hanson, Old Testament Apocalyptic
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), 53-58.
12. While there are some differences of opinion, apocalyptic literature is generally
held to include the canonical books of Daniel and Revelation, the noncanonical books of
1-3 Enoch, 2-3 Baruch, Jubilees, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Testimony of
Levi, the Testimony of Abraham, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, the Sibylline Oracles, and
portions of several of the Qumran scrolls. All of the Pseudepigrapha are conveniently
available in J. H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983-85).
13. Examples of such lists may be found in Koch, Rediscovery, 24-30; and in D. S.
Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1964), 104-39.
372 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

characteristics of apocalyptic that appear on any final list.'* Collins and

others argue that the fault here lies in oversimplification of very com-
plex material.!> Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the term
apocalyptic should be dropped altogether since it has come to include
so much that it is meaningless.!°
A helpful approach to the problem of definition has emerged from
the discussion. This is the recommendation that we distinguish among
literary genre, social ideology, and literary ideas and motifs. Thus,
some argue, we should talk about apocalypses, apocalypticism, and
apocalyptic eschatology, while avoiding the use of apocalyptic as anoun
altogether. But even here the diversity of the material is such that there
is room for disagreement. For example, F. Garcia Martinez argues that
the limitation of “apocalyptic” to a literary genre (the net effect of the
above move) is excessively reductionistic.!7
Garcia Martinez’s objections notwithstanding, such a set of distinc-
tions as proposed above seems a helpful approach to the problem. Out
of this approach, the following definition has emerged from the work
of a Society of Biblical Literature seminar devoted to the study of apoc-
alyptic and chaired by Collins:

a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a

revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient,
disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it
envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves
another, supernatural world.!®

This definition has the virtue of being broad enough to include all the
various literatures that have been designated apocalyptic, and yet spe-
cific enough to be useful.!? For instance, even though classic Israelite

14. M. Barker, “Slippery Words III. Apocalyptic,” ExpTin 89 (1977-78): 325. See P. R.
Davies, “Eschatology in the Book of Daniel,” JSOT 17 (1980): 33-53, for a similar point
of view. He wonders whether it is even helpful to call Daniel an apocalyptic book.
15. D. S. Russell seems to attempt to take account of this criticism in his latest book
(Divine Disclosure: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic [Minneapolis: Fortress; Lon-
don: SCM, 1992]), in which he highlights the diversities among the materials toa greater
degree than in some of his former books.
16. See the discussion of definition in J. Carmignac, “Description du phenomene de
l’Apocalyptique dans |’Ancien Testament,” in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World
and the Near East, ed. D. Hellholm (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1983), 163-66.
17. F. Garcia Martinez, “Encore l’Apocalyptique,” JSJ 17 (1987): 230.
18. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 4, citing idem, “Introduction: Towards the Mor-
phology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 9.
19. In contrast, compare a definition such as that of U. H. J. Kortner: “Apocalyptic is
speculation that—preferably in allegorical form—interprets the course of events and re-
veals the end of the world” (“Weltzeit, Weltangst und Weltende,” TZ 45 [1989]: 32-52).
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 313

prophecy would include the concepts of revelation, and to some extent,

eschatological salvation, the mediation by an otherworldly being is con-
spicuously absent. At the same time, it is possible that some subdefini-
tions will become necessary in order to distinguish between various ex-
pressions of the genre. Thus, are there characteristics that define the
books of Daniel and Revelation over against the other apocalyptic writ-
ings and that explain why these were designated canonical by the Jew-
ish and Christian communities in contrast to any of the others? There
has already emerged one such distinction between so-called historical
apocalypses and otherworldly journeys,”° but it appears other, even
more precise distinctions may be useful.
At least two objections to this definition have been raised. One is
voiced by Christopher Rowland, who argues cogently that the expecta-
tion of a new age of redemption is not uniquely found in apocalypses
but was characteristic of much of Judaism during late pre-Christian
times. Therefore, he maintains that there is no distinctive apocalyptic
eschatology, and that this feature should not appear in a definition of
the genre apocalypse.*! But Robert Webb seems to be correct when he
observes that just because eschatological concerns are not unique to
apocalypse does not mean that they are not one of the genre’s defining
characteristics.?? To be sure, if such concerns were presented as the
only or even the main characteristic in the definition, Rowland’s objec-
tion might carry more weight. But if they are presented as one of the
characteristics, which they certainly are, a good definition should not
exclude them.
Another concern has been raised by David Hellholm, who points out
that the definition contains no indication of the function of the genre.
Thus he and others have proposed the following addition: “intended for
a group in crisis with the purpose of exhortation and/or consolation by
means of divine authority.”*? Even though it has been widely accepted
that this was the function of apocalyptic writings, however, no concrete
evidence supports this assumption. Lester Grabbe, for one, maintains
that these writings were the product not of marginalized communities
in crisis but simply of visionary groups analogous to modern millenar-
ian groups.”4 In the absence of clear evidence, and given the presence

20. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 6.

21. C. Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Chris-
tianity (New York: Crossroad; London: SPCK, 1982), 29-37, 71.
22. R. Webb, “‘Apocalyptic’: Observations on a Slippery Term,” JNES 49 (1990): 124.
23. D. Hellholm, “The Problem of Apocalyptic Genre and the Apocalypse of John,” Se-
meia 36 (1986): 27.
24. L. L. Grabbe, “The Social Setting of Early Jewish Apocalypticism,” Journal for the
Study of Pseudepigrapha 4 (1989): 27-47.
374 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

of dissenting voices like Grabbe’s, it does not seem wise to make the ad-
dition Hellholm recommends.

The Origin of Apocalyptic

Along with the attempt to reach a more workable definition, there has
been great interest in the derivation of apocalypticism in recent years.
Earlier studies attempted to define the precise relationship between
prophetic and apocalyptic eschatology. Was apocalyptic an unfortu-
nate byroad away from the prophets??° Was it a linear but unfortunate
descendant?2° Was it an appropriate and necessary development of the
prophetic vision?’ Intrinsic to all of this is the uncertainty as to what
actually distinguishes prophetic eschatology from apocalyptic escha-
tology. Hanson suggests that the critical point lies in whether the vision
of the future can be integrated with the events of ordinary life or
whether that vision requires a more or less complete break with ordi-
nary history.” Yet his ability to find such distinctions in biblical litera-
ture depends on a rather tenuous reinterpretation and restructuring of
that literature. Barker suggests that the feature which led normative Ju-
daism to accept Daniel and to reject the apocalyptic writers was the ab-
sence of apocalyptic eschatology in Daniel. While she is not explicit on
the point, she apparently means by “apocalyptic eschatology” the apoc-
alyptic writers’ denial of God’s activity in ordinary history.’ On that
basis there is no apocalyptic in the Old Testament, and the question
might even be raised about the New Testament book whose name “The
Apocalypse” has given a label to the whole enterprise!

Prophecy and Apocalyptic

From about 1960 until about 1980 the trend was to see the apocalyptic
understanding as a more-or-less direct descendant of prophecy. The
only serious attempt to root apocalyptic elsewhere was made by von
Rad in his positing of wisdom as the originating source. Yet the com-
plete lack of any future orientation in wisdom literature tended to make
this suggestion questionable from the outset. Indeed, as Peter von der
Osten-Sacken argues, it may be that both apocalypticism and the late

25. Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:303-5. Cf. also idem, Wisdom in Israel, trans.
J. D. Martin (Nashville: Abingdon; London: SCM, 1972), especially the excursus on “The
Divine Determination of Times,” 263-83.
26. R. P. Carroll, “Second Isaiah and the Failure of Prophecy,” ST 32 (1978): 125.
27. Pannenberg, “Redemptive Event,” 23.
28. P. D. Hanson, “Apocalypticism,” /DBSup, 32.
29. Barker, “Slippery Words III. Apocalyptic”; Davies, “Eschatology in the Book of
Daniel,” 33-53.
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 375

forms of wisdom are dependent on the prophets’ vision of God as both

Lord of history and Creator of nature.*° At any rate, von Rad’s position
was not taken very seriously until the too-facile connection with proph-
ecy began to be called into question after 1980 (see below).
While Jiirgen Moltmann does not make a major issue of proving that
apocalypticism, and particularly its eschatology, came from the proph-
ets, nonetheless his Theology of Hope does much to define such a deri-
vation and make it credible. It may well be that his arguments are the
more convincing because he is not attempting to prove a case on that
point. He does insist that the entire Old Testament was eschatological
in that it looked to the fulfillment of greater and greater promises.! If
that point is correct, as I think it is, then the apocalyptist’s basic orien-
tation, although on a different level than the prophet’s, is still of the
same order. Furthermore, when Moltmann describes later (eschatolog-
ical) prophecy as marked by a refusal to lose hope in God in the face of
his judgments, with instead a projection of that hope out to the ultimate
bounds of existence,** he again shows that apocalyptic is not doing
something completely different from prophecy. Indeed, “in apocalyptic
the whole cosmos becomes interpreted in the light of truth learned
from God's revelation in Israel’s history.”*? In the end, Moltmann’s con-
viction that apocalyptic is a legitimate extension of prophecy brings
him to the point of insisting that their vision is correct: all of history is
under God’s “no”; the only hope is in a future of God that will be radi-
cally discontinuous with present reality.*4
Moltmann’s connection of prophecy and apocalyptic is, however,
somewhat too easy. Even if one accepts that the two ways of looking at
the world have the same starting point and share a similar concern,
there are still significant discontinuities between them.*° In the early
1970s, three different kinds of synthetic study appeared, each of which
underlined this same point. Koch surveys the literature and concludes,
among other things, that “the era of the easy theory of the prophetic
connection will one day come to an end.”° Leon Morris summarizes
the main features of apocalyptic, and in so doing, he too notes the dis-

30. P. von der Osten-Sacken, Die Apokalyptik in ihrem Verhdltnis zu Prophetie und
Weisheit, Theologische Existenz heute 157 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1969), 60.
31. J. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. J. W. Leitch (New York: Harper & Row;
London: SCM, 1967), 124, 126.
BZ bide l32
Som lbiceelksis
34. Ibid., 229; cf. also Koch, Rediscovery, 108; Tupper, “Revival of Apocalyptic,” 300.
35. As already maintained by Rowley, Relevance (1963), 15. Cf. also Russell, Method
and Message, 91.
36. Koch, Rediscovery, 130.
376 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

tinctions from prophecy at point after point.*7 The most comprehensive

of the three studies is that of Walter Schmithals.** In his chapter on the
relationship of Old Testament and apocalyptic, he systematically notes
points of agreement and then moves on to indicate what are to him fun-
damental differences. Among the commonalities are: the same under-
standing of existence—historical; the same concept of God—Lord of
history; the same view of humanity—historical possibility; the same
conceptualization of time—linear progression toward a goal.*”
These are fundamental similarities, but they are also exceedingly
general, as becomes obvious when Schmithals begins to list the distinc-
tions. First of all is the apocalyptic writers’ own sense of discontinuity
with the past. They are bearers of a completely new revelation that has
not even been thought of in the Old Testament witnesses.*? Coupled
with this is the radical pessimism about this aeon. There is no sense in
which this creation will be cleansed and redeemed (contra Rom. 8:19-—
23). Since there is nothing good about this age, there is no historical re-
sponsibility and no salvation in history. Historical activity is thus re-
placed by historical knowledge concerning the meaning and outcome
of historical events.*! Schmithals sums up his findings succinctly:

Apocalyptic thinks historically in principle, . . . but it despairs of history

itself. . . In the apocalypticist’s conviction that he stands at the end of
history there is expressed therefore the hopeful, joyous assurance that
history is coming to its end—an attitude utterly impossible for the Old
Testament.*?

Schmithals’s statement raises concern that he has said too much. First,
he makes it appear that the Old Testament knows nothing of any salva-
tion beyond historical salvation. Second, he implies (and later makes ex-
plicit) that apocalyptic is a decline, a retreat from the insights of proph-
ecy.’? Both of these points of view are open to serious modification.
In the first place, Schmithals can limit the Old Testament to salva-
tion within history only by denying that postexilic prophecy is consis-
tent with the Old Testament.*4 One can only marvel at such a tour de

37. L. Morris, Apocalyptic (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: Inter-Varsity, 1972),

31, 34, 42, 60, 63, etc.
38. W. Schmithals, The Apocalyptic Movement: Introduction and Interpretation, trans.
J. E. Steely (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975).
39. Ibid., 73-77.
40. Ibid., 70.
41. Ibid., 80-82.
42. Ibid., 88.
43. Ibid., 132.
44. Ibid., 79, 80.
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic SPT

force. Unfortunately it is not possible merely to dismiss data that under-

cut one’s conclusions. By what right does Schmithals exclude parts of
the canonical Old Testament from the Old Testament? Indeed, some
features in the Old Testament writings exhibit more of a transition than
Schmithals seems willing to recognize. Georg Fohrer mentions several
of these transitional features in his analysis of Isaiah 40-55: a distinc-
tion between the old and new ages, the belief in the imminent change
from the old to the new, the desire to escape history, and the belief that
salvation will become eternal with the dawn of this new age.*> Without
automatically agreeing with the details of the phrasing, one can accept
the broad outlines of Fohrer’s observations. To suggest that genuine
Old Testament thought knows nothing of a salvation that extends be-
yond ordinary history is insupportable.
This raises the further question: Is Old Testament prophetic teaching
so thoroughly wedded to a salvation within history that any thought of
salvation extending beyond history must be seen as a decline leading to
eventual death? Schmithals is by no means alone in such an assertion.
Von Rad believes that prophecy died with Ezra, whereas Cross sees its
demise along with kingship in Zerubbabel.** R. P. Carroll sees the end
as being implicit in, of all places, “II Isaiah,” whom others have called
the greatest of the prophets. Nevertheless, Carroll argues that it con-
tains “grandiose predictions” couched in “empty rhetoric which fail
miserably.”*7
Once more it appears that the descriptions are too small for the
phenomena. Was prophecy really limited to a restrictive, narrow view
of salvation and existence? Have not scholars overemphasized the his-
torical aspect of Hebrew religion? Undoubtedly, the Old Testament’s
recognition of the significance of this world as the arena of God’s self-
revelation is of great importance. To say, however, that this is all the
prophets recognized and that any extension beyond our history is a
departure from the faith looks suspiciously dependent on a modern
view of reality with its bifurcation between history and meaning. In
this respect, Moltmann’s interpretation of the nature of the prophetic
movement seems much more true to the totality of the data. On the
one hand, by what right are Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi labeled
less “prophetic” than Amos or Hosea? On the other hand, note the vi-

45. G. Fohrer, Introduction to the Old Testament, trans. D. Green (Nashville: Abing-
don, 1968; London: SPCK, 1970), 383.
46. Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:297; F. M. Cross, “New Directions in the Study
of Apocalyptic,” JTC 6 (1969): 157-65.
47. Carroll, “Second Isaiah,” 126. From the intensity of the language used, one cannot
help but feel that Carroll derives pleasure from debunking what virtually all other critics
have called a masterpiece.
378 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

sionary language of Habakkuk 3 or Joel 3 or Jeremiah 31 or Ezekiel

36-38. Shall these be called “grandiose predictions” and “empty rhet-
oric”? No simple isolation of the historical from the extrahistorical
can be made. The prophets knew a God who, although revealed in the
cosmos, yet transcended the cosmos. Thus, although God’s salvation
was demonstrated and explained in terms of human historical experi-
ence, it became increasingly clear that that experience was finally in-
adequate to reveal the whole scope of God’s salvific intent. This is not
an escape from history, nor a denial of the lessons learned from it.
Rather, eschatological prophecy is a projection of those lessons, an ex-
tension of them, onto a broader plane.**® Thus Malachi is not a denial
of historical responsibility; rather it argues that salvation within his-
tory is but part of God’s ultimate plan (e.g., 2:17-3:7).*? Thus, if we
disagree with Moltmann in his seeming to say that prophetic eschatol-
ogy leads straight into apocalyptic eschatology, we must disagree even
more forcefully with Schmithals when he seems to say that apocalyp-
tic eschatology, while spawned by prophetic eschatology, represents
at the end a completely different understanding of salvation.

Myth and Apocalyptic

For those who have explored the mechanisms leading from prophetic
eschatology to apocalyptic eschatology, the contributions of Cross
have been especially important.°° He has argued that it was eschato-
logical prophecy’s reintroduction of myth into the mainstream of He-
brew thought that prepared the way for the apocalyptic vision.*! Ac-
cording to this thesis, the exilic and postexilic prophets, faced with
the failure of salvation in history, appropriated the various myths of
creation and of the Divine Warrior that had been latent in Israel but

48. So H. D. Preuss, Jahweglaube und Zukunftserwartung, BWANT 87 (Stuttgart:

Kohlhammer, 1968), esp. 205-14.
49. For other studies showing developmental connections between the theologies of
the prophets and apocalypticism, see L. C. Allen, “Some Prophetic Antecedents of Apoc-
alyptic Eschatology and Their Hermeneutic Value,” Ex Auditu 6 (1990): 15-28: R. J.
Bauckham, “The Rise of Apocalyptic,” Themelios 3 (1978): 10-23; R. E. Clements, “The
Interpretation of Prophecy and the Origin of Apocalyptic,” Baptist Quarterly (1989 sup-
plement): 28-34; K. Koch, “Is Daniel among the Prophets?” Jnt 39 (1985): 117-30: B.
Otzen, “Himmelrejser og himmelvisioner i jodisk Apokalyptik,” Dansk teologisk
tidsskrift 58 (1995): 16-26; J. C. VanderKam, “Recent Studies in Apocalyptic,” Word and
World 4 (1984): 70-77; B. Vawter, “Apocalyptic: Its Relation to Prophecy,” CBQ 22 (1960):
33-46.
50. In addition to Cross, “New Directions,” see also his “Divine Warrior in Israel’s
Early Cult,” in Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), 11-30; idem, “The Song of the Sea and Canaanite
Myth,” JTC 5 (1968): 1-25.
51. Cross, “New Directions,” 165 n. 23.
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 379

somewhat suppressed. They did this, he argues, in order to transfer

their hope from the disappointing historical plane to the cosmic
plane, where it was not subject to disproof.°* Whether this suggestion
is supportable will be treated below. Nonetheless, its impact through
Cross’s students has been notable, at least in the United States. The
best-known of these is Paul Hanson, with his book The Dawn ofApoc-
alyptic.°? There Hanson proposes that the origins of apocalyptic are
to be found in the immediate postexilic community as represented by
Third Isaiah, Haggai, and Zechariah. The causes of these origins are
to be found in Second Isaiah’s eschatological vision, which utilized
mythical motifs in such a way that a group of visionary followers grew
up who were opposed to the rebuilding of the temple that Ezekiel’s
followers were carrying out. As the realists became more powerful,
the visionaries retreated more into an apocalyptic hope. As seen in
Ezra and the Chronicler, however, the realists’ triumph was eventu-
ally complete and the visionary group died out. Nevertheless, its par-
ticular vision was preserved in the books mentioned above so that it
resurfaced on a national scale in the dark days of the Seleucids and
the Hasmoneans.
Another student of Cross, W. R. Millar, brings the same outlook to
the study of Isaiah 24-27 and arrives at much the same results, al-
though he does not make as much of the supposed sociological conflict
as does Hanson. He concludes that the chapters stem from the period
immediately following the exile and represent a new openness to
mythic themes in response to the crises of the times.°4 Thus, in the
United States at least, the most influential opinion came to be that the
apocalyptic vision grew directly out of prophetic eschatology.

As historical and social conditions made it increasingly difficult to iden-

tify contemporary individuals and structures with divine agents and end-
time realities, as the elect increasingly were deprived of power within
social and religious institutions, and as the vision of ancient myth began
to offer world-weary individuals a means of resolving the tension
between brilliant hopes and bleak realities, the perspective of prophetic
eschatology yielded to that of apocalyptic eschatology.°°

52. So, e.g., in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1973), 34446; cf. also R. P. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed: Cognitive Disso-
nance in the Prophetic Traditions of the Old Testament (New York: Seabury; London: SCM,
1979), 215-18.
53. P. D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975).
54. W.R. Millar, Isaiah 24-27 and the Origin of Apocalyptic, HSM 11 (Missoula, Mont.:
Scholars Press, 1976).
55. Hanson, “Apocalypticism,” 30.
380 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

But as valuable as these insights are in demonstrating that the escha-

tological and apocalyptic visions are not incompatible, the way in
which the connection is established bristles with difficulties. Among
these are: an overemphasis on the later prophets’ use of mythical
sources; an unwarranted application of the Cosmic Warrior motif;
overconfidence in typologies of development, both literary and socio-
logical, resulting in rearrangement of the text with little or no consider-
ation of possible alternative arrangements or explanations; and heavy
dependence on hypothetical reconstructions of Israelite society and
history.
Hanson and Millar are by no means alone in asserting that the later
prophets depended on mythical motifs to expand the concept of God
from the too-narrow association with mundane history it had received
at the hand of the preexilic prophets.°© For these authors, however,
this assertion becomes a linchpin in their argument that the anti-
historical bias of the apocalyptists has its origins in the prophets. But
this linchpin is very fragile. Unmistakable references to the ancient
Near Eastern myths are few and far between, and none of them ap-
pears in anything but a radically altered form. The way in which they
are altered is to bring them out of the cosmic, mythic dimension. For
instance, Leviathan in Job is no cosmic monster at all, but a figure
from within creation that God easily brought under control.°’ To be
sure, this is not God acting in human history. But neither is it saying,
as the creation myths do, that meaning is found in struggles taking
place outside the created order, predetermining what takes place
within that order. Even more to the point are Isaiah 27:1 and 51:9-10,
where the prophet makes plain that the meaning of the conflict with
the serpent is to be found within Israel’s history, in the crossing of the
Red Sea, and in the coming deliverance from Babylon.°’ There is thus
ample reason to assume that these accounts are being used in a liter-
ary way and not in any sense as an affirmation of their value as a way
of thinking. In particular, the appropriation of mythical thinking is in-
comprehensible in a prophet like Isaiah, who attacks idolatry with
such vehemence.
Furthermore, it is not clear that these scattered allusions to myth are
a postexilic phenomenon. At least some studies in the poetry of Job sug-
gest that this book shows features consistent with Israel’s earliest po-

56. Cf. S. Mowinckel, He That Cometh, trans. G. W. Anderson (New York: Abingdon,
1954; Oxford: Blackwell, 1956), 52-95; S. B. Frost, “Eschatology and Myth,” VT 2 (1952):
70-80; Carroll, When Prophecy Failed, 124.
57. Cross, “New Directions,” 162.
58. Cf. Ps. 74:12-14 for this same point of view. For a more lengthy discussion of this
idea, see my “Myth of the Dragon and Old Testament Faith,” EvQ 49 (1977): 163-72.
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 381

etry, not its latest.°? The late dating of Isaiah 24-27 has distinctly circu-
lar features about it. It is dated according to the appearance of certain
“late” elements in it, and then these elements are proved late by their
appearance in the “Isaianic apocalypse.” R. J. Coggins’s comment on
this point is especially apropos:

The supra-historical element appears to me to be present in every section

of the book of Isaiah and though we may be more aware of it in some sec-
tions than in others, I am very doubtful whether a kind of table can be
drawn up to show that the historical sense gradually faded and some
other presentation of reality took its place. 2:2—5 and 4:2-6 provide suffi-
cient illustration of this from the first part of the book.®

I must also say, despite the massive body of scholarly opinion to the
contrary, that it is still true that the supposed postexilic date of Isaiah
40-66 is only hypothetical. Thus the reference to Rahab in Isaiah 51:9,
like the reference to Leviathan in 27:1, is not necessarily postexilic.
Both may come from a period well before the exile. Indeed, none of the
specific allusions to myths comes from any of the three undoubtedly
postexilic authors: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. All the examples of
this “reappropriation of myth” come from passages whose date is open
to serious question.
To sum up this point, the evidence, far from supporting a broadscale
return to the thought patterns of myth among postexilic prophets,
shows that throughout Israel’s history, but especially from the monar-
chy onward, there were scattered allusions in their literature to what
were the dominant literary works of the day. In none of these is there a
flight from this world of time and space into a world or timeless reality.
Rather, the linguistic forms of myth are used to underscore the same
point that all the canonical literature makes: it is in this world where
God is to be known—no other.
Some may say, however, that it is not so much these few specific al-
lusions that demonstrate the use of myth as it is the more general ap-
propriation of certain motifs and genres. An example of this is the Cos-
mic Warrior motif. Cross holds that the later prophets utilize this
vehicle to represent God’s ultimate conquest of evil.®! According to
Millar the presence of this motif can be recognized by the appearance
of the structural elements that have derived from the Canaanite Baal
and Anat cycle: threat, war, victory, feast.°? The extreme generality of

59. D. A. Robertson, Linguistic Evidence in Dating Early Hebrew Poetry, SBLDS 3

(Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1972), 155.
60. R. J. Coggins, “The Problem of Isaiah 24-27,” ExpTim 90 (1978-79): 332.
61. Cross, “Divine Warrior,” 30.
62. Millar, Isaiah 24-27, 71.
382 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

such a structure is obvious. Clearly the presence of these four elements

in an account can say little about the genre of a piece or even of its in-
tent. Furthermore, the central truth of the Baal and Anat cycle is that
the struggle is played out among deities on a cosmic stage. But Yah-
weh’s struggles, if it is right to call them that, are with recalcitrant hu-
mans on an explicitly spatiotemporal stage. Nevertheless, both Hanson
and Millar, following Cross, find the Cosmic Warrior motif present in
the Old Testament and with increasing prominence in prophetic escha-
tology.®? But an examination of the materials they cite raises grave
doubts about the applicability of the idea, not to mention questions
about its being present at all where they profess to find it.
No one would contest that Yahweh is depicted as a warrior at various
places in the Old Testament. But that is just the point. There is no
greater incidence of this image in the later prophets than in the earlier.
To assert that every representation of him as a warrior indicates a bor-
rowing of the Canaanite motif, especially when his warfare is of an-
other nature (over ethical breaches) and on another plane (the spa-
tiotemporal), is to overreach the evidence.
Hanson cites a number of psalms in which the Cosmic Warrior motif
appears.®° Yet, when they are examined, the elements of the motif are
difficult to find. An example is Psalm 9. Here the psalmist asserts that
although he has been surrounded by enemies, God has, from his throne,
issued a righteous judgment against them. There is no threat to God, no
march to battle, no struggle with cosmic forces, no triumphal return,
and no feast of celebration. Nor is Psalm 9 atypical. Indeed, the one
striking feature of most of these psalms is their statement that God has
not left his throne.
Millar's use of the motif is equally questionable. He argues that it is
central to Isaiah 24-27 and furthermore finds there traces of a ritual
procession in which the Divine Warrior’s victory was reenacted.®®
While this aspect was not new, having been part of the royal cult, its ap-
plication to the broad sweep of history by the prophet opened the door
for apocalyptic to enter. Yet when Millar looks for the specific elements
of the motif, which as already noted are exceedingly general, he cannot
find them at several points, and where he professes to find them, they

63. Hanson, Dawn, 98; Millar, Isaiah 24-27, 71ff.

64. Note that while Carroll broadly agrees with Hanson and Cross on the prophetic
use of myth, he has grave misgivings about some of the particular usages (“Twilight of
Prophecy or Dawn of Apocalyptic,” JSOT 14 [1978]: 18) as does M. Delcor in his review
of Hanson’s Dawn (Bib 57 [1976]: 578).
65. Hanson, Dawn, 305-8; Ps. 2, 9, 24, 29, 46, 47, 48, 65, 68, 76, 77, 89, 97, 98, 104,
106, 110.
66. Millar, Isaiah 24-27, 82-90; following Cross, “Divine Warrior,” 24-27.
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 383

are obscure at best. So in his six main segments, the elements of threat
and feast are missing in four. In the two where they supposedly appear,
they are either insignificant or questionable.®’ For instance, it is diffi-
cult to see anything of feast in 27:2-6, which speaks merely of the reju-
venated land. It is also difficult to see how one tricolon of a verse, 27:1c,
qualifies as a major thematic element, that of victory, as Millar is forced
to apply it.
As stated above, there is no doubt that Yahweh is depicted as a war-
rior throughout the Old Testament. Nor is there any question that his
victory over sin and evil is given the broadest dimensions, particularly
in the prophets. I do not see much evidence, however, that Baal’s war-
riorship heavily influenced the Hebrew conception, nor that “late”
prophecy, through an increased use of the motif, created an openness
for the ahistorical stance of apocalyptic.®°
Millar and Hanson base much of their claim to have discovered the
process by which apocalyptic grew out of late prophecy on a methodol-
ogy that Hanson calls “contextual-typological.” Through the applica-
tion of a particular style of prosodic analysis and of an evolutionary pat-
tern of social conflict, they profess to be able to put the various portions
of the postexilic prophets into their original order. That proposed orig-
inal order is quite different from both the canonical order and from the
various proposals of other scholars. This in itself provokes some ques-
tions about the reliability of the proposed method.
The method of prosodic analysis they utilize is the syllable-count ap-
proach proposed by Cross and Freedman.°*’ Using this method, the au-
thors claim to be able to distinguish documents from as little as thirty
years apart on the basis of their prosody.’° Thus they could completely re-
structure the text upon their discovery of a “more baroque” style in a sen-
tence or part of a sentence, when that baroque quality might be nothing
more than the increase of one or two syllables in a colon.’! Several re-
viewers, especially Europeans, express special reserve about this aspect
of these studies.’* Coggins’s comment is typical: “In view of our extremely

67. Millar, Isaiah 24-27, 70, 71.

68. Hanson (Dawn, 185) regards Isa. 66:15-16 as containing mythical war language,
but such language also appears in Ps. 104, which many relate to Ikhnaton’s sun hymn of
the fourteenth century B.c. Thus, the use of such language is not necessarily a mark of
apocalyptic.
69. For a handy introduction to this system, see D. Stuart, Studies in Early Hebrew
Meter, HSM 13 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976). For the contribution of Cross and
Freedman, see Stuart, Studies, 8-9 and notes.
70. Hanson, Dawn, 60.
Tlemibice Als:
72. Sol. Willi-Plein, VT 29 (1979): 123; R. Tournay, RB 83 (1976): 151, 152; P. R. Ack-
royd, Int 30 (1976): 413.
384 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

limited knowledge of Hebrew language and literature, it [the method]

seems to reconstruct a development on gravely inadequate bases. . .
They must not be given more weight than they will bear.’* Indeed, this en-
tire approach to prosody is now greeted with considerable skepticism.”
It is particularly characteristic of Hanson that he brings certain socio-
logical assumptions to bear upon the text. At least one reviewer was un-
able to refrain from pointing out that the two groups he posits (the
priestly realists and the anti-institutional visionaries) have remarkable
analogs in the groupings of the 1960s, when Hanson’s research was
done.’> Furthermore, it is not at all certain that Max Weber’s and Karl
Mannheim’s programmatic views on class struggle can be imported into
the Near East of 2,500 years ago.”° That Isaiah 56-66 must be completely
restructured not only from the canon but from the views of other schol-
ars in order to support the hypothesis suggests the serious possibility that
history has been forced onto a procrustean bed of sociological theory.
The polemic in Isaiah 56-66 is no more indicative of a struggle be-
tween the “establishment” and the dispossessed than is that in other
parts of Scripture, including Isaiah 1-39. Carroll goes so far as to sug-
gest that “mudslinging” was essential to the creation of the biblical tra-
ditions.’’? Without going so far as that, one may still recognize that long
before the supposed visionary followers of Second Isaiah appeared on
the scene, serious charges flew back and forth between prophet and
priest, prophet and prophet, prophet and king (Isa. 1 and 7; Hos. 4; Jer.
7 and 28). Nor were these charges addressed merely to sinful individu-
als. They also included groups and classes (Amos 5 and 6; Isa. 3). Thus
the presence of an intense polemic in the latter chapters of Isaiah does
not require the hypothesis of a group of the dispossessed to explain it.”8
But even if the rather large concession were made that some such
conflict as Hanson hypothesizes did exist in postexilic Judah, how far
toward explaining the rise of apocalypticism would such a hypothesis
take us? Not far enough. Even those writers sympathetic to the ideas of
Cross and his students find the claims to have established a direct con-
nection between prophecy and apocalyptic to be exaggerated.’? Row-
land puts it this way:

73. Coggins, “Problem of Isaiah,” 332.

74. See especially the comments of M. O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1981), 138, 150.
75. Carroll, “Twilight,” 26-27.
76. Hanson, Dawn, 21.
77. Carroll, “Twilight,” 19.
78. I. Willi-Plein, review of Hanson, Dawn, in VT 29 (1979): 124-25.
79. J.G. Gammie, review of Hanson, Dawn, inJBL 95 (1976): 654; W. Roth, “Between
cen and Expectation: The Origin and Role of Biblical Apocalyptic,” Explor 4
(1978): 10.
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 385

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to suppose that, by recovering the resur-

gence of certain myths in the eschatology of the visionary group which
produced some of the oracles in Third Isaiah, one has necessarily uncov-
ered the essential ingredient in apocalyptic, or even, for that matter, in
apocalyptic eschatology.®°

He goes on to point out that what he considers to be the essential fea-

ture of apocalypses, the disclosure of divine secrets in a clearly defined
form, is not found in Third Isaiah. Beyond that, he is uncertain that a
movement oriented toward redemption by God in some supernatural
sphere is really the key to apocalyptic at all.*!
In brief, this particular effort to explain how the move was made
from prophecy to apocalypse, like many others, falls short in the end.
That there was a connection seems clear, but precisely what that con-
nection was remains frustrated by a twofold irony: the complexity of
the apocalypses themselves,** and the paucity of information concern-
ing their origins and originators. As both Gammie and Rowland point
out, there are too many additional features in apocalyptic for which the
Cross school’s hypotheses cannot account.*? Or as Carroll puts it, “late
prophecy contributed a stance that was a necessary condition, but not
a sufficient condition, for the development of a full-grown apocalyptic
consciousness.”*4 In the years between 425 and 175 B.c., over which
Hanson glosses all too easily,®° some critical influences apparently en-
tered the mix, influences that moved the apocalypses of the second cen-
tury outside the limits of Old Testament faith.

The Apocalyptic Mindset

This recognition that the attempts to find a straight-line connection be-
tween prophecy and apocalypticism have failed has spawned a new ap-
proach to the problem of derivation since 1980. This new approach has
assumed that there is no single dominant ancestor, but that a complex
of factors must be sought. Furthermore, it is taken as a given that the
evidence of those factors must be sought in the apocalypses themselves.
Rowland’s Open Heaven was the first of the major efforts along these

80. Rowland, Open Heaven, 196.

81. Ibid., 197.
82. So Russell, Divine Disclosure, 12, has argued that apocalypticism is more of an at-
titude manifested in various ways than a tightly controlled set of themes or forms.
83. Rowland, Open Heaven, 196-97. Gammie, JBL 95 (1976): 654, cites H.-P. Miiller’s
Ursprunge und Strukturen alttestamentlicher Eschatologie, BLAW 109 (Berlin: Topel-
mann, 1969), as a good discussion of elements omitted by Hanson. Schmithals (Apoca-
lyptic Movement, 138) had the same criticism of Ploger.
84. Carroll, “Twilight,” 31.
85. Hanson, “Apocalyptic,” 33.
386 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

lines. It was followed shortly by Collins’s Apocalyptic Imagination.

While expressing appreciation for Hanson’s study, both make clear that
it is necessary to go well beyond his conclusions.
One factor that led in this direction was the discovery of apocalyptic
features in several books in the Qumran library. This led to the conclu-
sion that the apocalyptic mentality may have been more a part of the
general Jewish outlook than scholars had previously supposed. One of
these features is the evidence of merkavah material. Visions in which the
speaker is taken up to heaven in a chariot (merkavah) have been known
previously from the rabbinic period, but the evidence from Qumran
points to the existence of the material even in pre-Christian Judaism. As
early as 1980, Ithamar Gruenwald argued that neither wisdom nor
prophecy could account for apocalyptic, and suggested that Jewish mys-
ticism would be a more fertile field of investigation.*® Although most of
the evidence of this mysticism is later than the apocalyptic literature,
and may therefore derive from it, the essential similarity with some of
the earliest apocalypses such as 1 Enoch suggests that the same mysti-
cal motivations may prevail throughout. Likewise, Rowland argues that
if anything connects prophecy and apocalypse it is the preoccupation
with revelation received by direct divine inspiration.*” He too notes the
continuity with rabbinic mysticism, but takes it to be more a result of
the apocalypses than a contributor to them.®® Nonetheless, both Gruen-
wald and Rowland articulate the conviction that apocalypticism must
be understood more in the light of the Jewish experience of the Seleucid
and Hasmonean periods than through a direct connection with the Old
Testament canon. This conviction has been pursued further by more re-
cent writers such as Collins, Stephen Cook, and Grabbe.*? They have all
argued in one way or another that apocalypticism is the result of a com-
bination of factors: the eschatological concerns and divine inspiration
of classical prophecy, the mantic wisdom of the seer,”° the passion to
know the true meanings of Scripture (coupled with the idea that every
figure of speech has a hidden, mysterious meaning),”! the desire for cer-

86. I. Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, AGJU 14 (Leiden: Brill,

1980), 29.
87. Rowland, Open Heaven, 246.
88. Ibid., 348.
89. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination; Cook, Prophecy and Apocalypticism: The Postex-
ilic Social Setting (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); Grabbe, Priests, Prophets, Diviners, and
Sages: A Socio-Historical Study of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel (Valley Forge, Pa.:
Trinity Press International, 1995).
90. Rowland in particular sees in a positive light von Rad's suggestion that the wis-
dom traditions were a significant factor (Open Heaven, 202-8).
91. Itis a mistake, I believe, to label such use of imagery as mythological thinking, as
Collins (Apocalyptic Imagination, 15-16) does. Mythology involves much more than the
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 387

tainty in uncertain times.” It is suggested that all of these and more in

differing combinations in different settings came together to produce
the unique features of apocalypticism.
In addition, Collins has argued that more attention needs to be paid
to the diverse cultural setting in which early Judaism found itself.
Thus he calls attention to the potential influence of the Babylonian,
Persian, Egyptian, and Hellenistic cultures upon the thinking of the
people of Judea. More than perhaps at any other time in its history,
Judea found itself the object of a tug-of-war between these conflicting
groups and their ideas. Particularly with Judea’s own religious views
in flux because of the disappearance of the Hebrew kingdom, there is
every reason to believe that all these cultures could have had a signif-
icant effect on Jewish thought. If it is correct that the imagery and
some of the thought patterns of the apocalypses show similarity with
that found in the ancient myths, it seems much more likely that the
avenue of entry was through this interaction than through any of the
prophets.
While both Collins and Rowland agree that multiple influences
shaped apocalyptic thinking, both conclude that among the influences,
the Persian one may have been the most significant.* Neither is able to
flesh out his thinking much because of the scantiness of the evidence al-
ready mentioned. Some of the apparent analogs are: the periodization
of history, eschatological woes, resurrection, and supernatural forces of
good and evil.”4 Once again, as pointed out above in regard to supposed
parallels with Canaanite myth, these connections seem remarkably gen-
eral, especially when they are hedged about with questions concerning
the date and composition of much of the Persian material.
As agreement has emerged that no one cultural/literary setting ac-
counts for the rise of apocalyptic thinking, so it has also emerged that
no single social setting accounts for it either. As noted above, it is no
longer believed that this kind of thinking is typical of marginalized sub-
groups.” Again, developing thought about Qumran has played a part
here. More and more scholars are convinced that the Qumran library is
not the work of a single isolated sect but represents something of a

idea that there are invisible realities that have a determinative impact on the visible
world. For further discussion, see my “A Myth Is a Myth Is a Myth: Toward a Working
Definition,” in A Spectrum ofThought: Essays in Honor ofDennis Kinlaw, ed. M. L. Peter-
son (Wilmore, Ky.: Asbury, 1982), 135-45.
92. See also Russell, Divine Disclosure, 64.
93. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 25; Rowland, Open Heaven, 209, in apparent
agreement with Pléger.
94. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 25.
95. See Grabbe, “Social Setting”; cf. Rowland, Open Heaven, 212.
388 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

literary cross section of Jewish thinking in the late pre-Christian era.”°

Thus the evidence of apocalypticism there is not the result of an iso-
lated subgroup but represents one strand in the thinking of the commu-
nity as a whole. Nevertheless, attempts to relate the literature to what
we know of the historical events of the period continue to be frustrated
by the fragmentary nature of the material available.

Canonicity and Apocalyptic

If it is true that prophecy is not the direct antecedent of apocalyptic,
what shall we say about the appearance of the books of Daniel and Rev-
elation in the Hebrew and Christian canons? Why do these two appear
and not others? Indeed, why does Daniel appear at all, if apocalypticism
is not the true descendant of prophecy??’ Earlier writers such as Row-
ley argued that Daniel was the transition between prophetic eschatol-
ogy and truly apocalyptic eschatology.?® More recently the discovery of
portions of 1 Enoch at Qumran dated late in the third century B.c. has
called Rowley’s argument into question and thus also the scholarly con-
sensus that the final form of Daniel must date after 169 B.c. This evi-
dence is especially interesting since 1 Enoch shows less of an eschato-
logical coloration than many of the apocalypses, and certainly less than
Daniel. If anything, these findings make the inclusion of Daniel in the
canon even more difficult to understand. On the other hand, if one
could grant that Daniel is not pseudonymous,”’ then Rowley’s argu-
ments are not called into question by the Qumran findings. If Daniel is
the precursor to the other apocalypses, this could well explain why it
lacks many of the features they include.!°° In this sense, it may be that
Daniel pushed the limits of visionary revelation as found in the proph-
ets to their farthest extreme consistent with the Old Testament view of
history. Beyond that the community may not have felt it was possible
to go. This same explanation might apply if the 169 B.c. date for Daniel
were accepted, but it seems much more difficult to understand why the
community should have recognized this example of apocalypse as au-
thoritative while rejecting the others. The late date for Daniel also
makes it difficult to explain how one gets from Zechariah to 1 Enoch.

96. N. Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran
(New York: Scribner, 1995), 382-83; L. H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls
(New York: Doubleday, 1995), 33-35.
97, What Revelation is doing in the NT may be left to the NT scholars.
98. Rowley, Relevance, 37ff.
99. Were the others excluded because of their obvious pseudonymity?
100. See the comments of Barker (“Slippery Words III. Apocalyptic”) and Davies
(“Eschatology in the Book of Daniel”) referred to above.
Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic 389

For even if one grants that the visions of Zechariah have an apocalyptic
flavor, they are still far from being an example of apocalyptic literature.
Thus it appears that no straight line can be drawn between Zechariah
and 1 Enoch.'°! There is a breach not only in time but in thought. The
books of Daniel and Revelation seem to be adaptations of apocalyptic
thought in that both are firmly rooted in the call to faithful living now
in the light of what is to come. Perhaps this feature causes them to be
included in the Jewish and Christian canons while other examples of
the genre are excluded.

Conclusion
As is evident, study of apocalyptic during the last three decades has
wrestled with the question of the relationship between prophecy and
apocalyptic. In general, the conclusion has been that while there is an
undoubted connection, apocalyptic thought is more of a mutation than
a logical development. This conclusion seems to be supported by the
fact that apocalyptic, in its narrow sense, holds that God’s work in cur-
rent history is hidden in inscrutable predetermination, while it retains
the conviction that human events have no meaning apart from the ulti-
mate purposes of God. Furthermore, if apocalyptic is the logical devel-
opment of prophecy, one would expect the earlier stage to fall by the
wayside. In fact, this does not happen; for the New Testament, while
clearly availing itself of the expanded imagery and thought forms of
apocalyptic, equally clearly retains a point of view fully consonant with
Old Testament prophecy: God is at work in a creation essentially good,
intending to transform that creation through the faithful response of
persons who will own his kingship in their day-to-day behavior. To be
sure, God will bring his work to a final consummation at the end of
time, but it will be a consummation of his work in history, and not a re-
jection of history.'°* This consonance between the Old and New Testa-
ment points of view suggests that the apocalyptic understanding did

101. So Carroll, “Twilight,” 30; Willi-Plein, V7 29 (1979): 126-27.

102. Russell notes how little of the NT, relatively speaking, betrays an apocalyptic out-
look (Divine Disclosure, 130-31). Whatever the apocalyptic expectations of the commu-
nity may have been, its literature, formulated within the first and second Christian gen-
erations, shows that the community retained, along with those expectations, an
expectation that transformation of persons and institutions in this world was a real pos-
sibility through the power of the Holy Spirit imparted by the risen Jesus Christ. Holding
that the mark of apocalypse is visionary experience resulting in direct revelation, Row-
land (Open Heaven, 356, etc.) argues that much of the NT betrays an outlook completely
compatible with the Jewish outlook of the same time. See also Collins, Apocalyptic Imag-
ination, 207ff., for the argument that the Christian doctrine of Christ's resurrection,
which permeates the NT, is fundamentally apocalyptic in nature.
390 Recent Studies in Old Testament Apocalyptic

not replace the prophetic one but rather existed beside it, enriching and
expanding it, but never supplanting it. If prophecy argued for the reality
of this world and for the responsibility of humans to live responsibly in
it in response to the grace of the God who is the Lord of history, the ca-
nonical apocalyptic vision argued that we could continue to live respon-
sibly even when the short-term outcomes did not seem to support that
decision. We could do so secure in the knowledge that although history
is real, it is not all there is to reality. Beyond all that we know, God is
real, and he will achieve his purposes. Thus the apocalyptic under-
standing does not replace the prophetic one but complements it.
 Tt
Religion in Ancient Israel
Bill T. Arnold

Developments in the study of Israelite religion over the past three de-
cades reflect the changes that occurred on the face of Old Testament
studies more generally. The turbulent 1960s witnessed significant par-
adigm shifts in many areas of theological studies, and these shifts are
reflected in biblical scholarship as well. The intense interest in a specif-
ically biblical theology approach waned during that decade and the de-
mise of the biblical theology movement may be traced to numerous in-
ternal and external pressures.! But in point of fact, the biblical theology
movement never ceased as a productive movement; it spawned several
important works on topics traditionally classified as biblical theology
all through the 1970s and 1980s to the present.* Rather, the change oc-
curred in the prestige that biblical theology had among the other disci-
plines. It ceased to wield the kind of authority and persuasive power it
had enjoyed since the end of World War II.? Concurrent with the de-
mise of biblical theology, if it should even be called such, was a renewed
interest in the history of religions, and specifically for our purposes
here, a renewed interest in the history of ancient Israelite religion.

I express my appreciation to Daniel E. Fleming, Theodore J. Lewis, and Brent A.

Strawn for reading and making helpful suggestions on the manuscript.
1. B.S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 61-87.
2. For a survey of the contributions during this period, see R. W. L. Moberly’s essay
in the present volume, chap. 16.
3. J. Barr, “The Theological Case against Biblical Theology,” in Canon, Theology, and
Old Testament Interpretation: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs, ed. G. M. Tucker, D. L.
Petersen, and R. R. Wilson (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 3-5. The process was much
slower in Germany (see R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Pe-
riod, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy, trans. J. Bowden, OTL [Lou-
isville: Westminster/John Knox; London: SCM, 1994], 1-12).

391
392 Religion in Ancient Israel

I offer here a survey of significant contributions on the history of Is-

raelite religion during this period, followed by brief discussions of se-
lected major topics. Finally, I make suggestions for future work on the
history of ancient Israel’s religion.

Trends and Methodologies of the Past Three Decades

Several developments in European and North American scholarship
converged during the 1960s to set the stage for the current recrudes-
cence of interest in the history of Israelite religion. The paradigm shift
is marked by new epigraphic and archaeological evidence from the an-
cient Near East, combined with renewed calls to reexamine older evi-
dence available from earlier excavations. Important monographs by
Klaus Koch, Rolf Rendtorff, and Claus Westermann appeared in Ger-
many calling for a renewed investigation of these comparative materi-
als and offering methodological suggestions for the work. During the
1960s, other scholars offered surveys of the history of Israel’s religion,
though no clear consensus emerged (among these were T. C. Vriezen,
Helmer Ringgren, Georg Fohrer, and Werner H. Schmidt).* Just before
the dawn of the period under investigation here, William F. Albright of-
fered his last book-length contribution on this subject in an important
survey of Canaanite and other comparative materials.°
Though a new period of investigation was burgeoning, the method-
ologies used during the past three decades have been mostly unchanged
from those of previous generations of scholars. Many continue to uti-
lize the comparative method for setting Israel against its ancient Near
Eastern backdrop. I shall emphasize especially the sweeping studies of
Frank Moore Cross and Mark S. Smith in which the texts from Ugarit
are of paramount importance, and several more specialized studies on
topics such as the cult of the dead. Others have pursued the history of
Israelite religion along the lines of a traditio-historical approach to the
biblical texts, combined in the case of Rainer Albertz with innovative
sociological observations.®° But in large measure, the discipline has
hardly advanced beyond the lines of the older differentiation between

4. For a summary of developments in the 1960s, see P. D. Miller, “Israelite Religion,”

in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker (Phil-
adelphia: Fortress; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), 206-8.
5. Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: An Historical Analysis of Two Conflicting Faiths
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday; London: Athlone, 1968).
6. Insome cases, scholars have taken a more distinctly social-science approach (N. K.
Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion ofLiberated Israel, 1250-1050
B.c.e. [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979; London: SCM, 1980]), or a feminist approach (T.
Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transfor-
mation of Pagan Myth [New York: Free Press, 1992}).
Religion in Ancient Israel 393

the American archaeological school (Albright, Bright, etc.) and the Ger-
man traditio-historical approach (Alt, Noth).
Standing as a benchmark near the beginning of this period is the sig-
nificant volume by Cross, which advances our understanding of Israel-
ite religion unlike any other work since Albrecht Alt.’ Cross did not in-
tend to present a systematic reconstruction of Israelite religion, but
rather produced preliminary studies addressing unsolved problems in
the description of Israel’s religious development.’ At the beginning of
his work, Cross articulated several barriers that he believed obstructed
progress toward a new synthesis of Israel’s religion. These were, first,
the overwhelming nature of the burgeoning archaeological evidence,
the sheer mass of which had thrown the field into chaos. The second
barrier was the obstinate survival of remnants of the “idealistic synthe-
sis initiated by Wilhelm Vatke and given classic statement by Julius
Wellhausen.” Cross is often in agreement with Wellhausen’s penetrat-
ing insights on the text, while wanting to disassociate himself from the
German doyen’s basic assumptions and overall approach. The third
barrier Cross identified was the tendency of scholars “to overlook or
suppress continuities between the early religion of Israel and the
Canaanite (or Northwest Semitic) culture from which it emerged.”
Cross rejected the radical uniqueness of Israel stressed by earlier bibli-
cal theologians, and presented the definitive statement of the influence
of Canaanite cultic tradition on early Israelite religion.’
Central to Cross’s approach is his distinction between the Canaanite
cosmogonic myth and the Israelite epic cycle, which was associated
with covenant rites in early Israel. This epic cycle was created under the
impact of historical experiences, but was shaped by the shared mythic
patterns and language of Canaan. Thus the Hebrew epic had both a his-
torical (horizontal) stance and a mythopoeic (vertical) dimension.
Cross opts for “epic” rather than “historical” because the epic narrative
relates the interaction of both the people and the deity through time. In
this sense, the term historical is not an illegitimate designation for the
Hebrew epic. The confusion arises because “historical” narrative usu-
ally refers more narrowly to human actors.!°

7. FE. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion
of Israel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973); and see A. Alt’s classic work
Der Gott der Vater, BWANT 3.12 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1929); reprinted in Kleine
Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1953), 1-78; and in trans-
lation as “The God of the Fathers,” in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion, trans.
R. A. Wilson (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), 3-86.
8. Cross, Canaanite Myth, vii.
9. Ibid., vii-viii. See also idem, “Alphabets and Pots: Reflections on Typological
Method in the Dating of Human Artifacts,” Maarav 3.2 (1982): 130-31.
10. Cross, Canaanite Myth, viii.
394 Religion in Ancient Israel

Furthermore, Israel’s choice of epic (over a mythic) genre is signifi-

cant both for its illustration of Israel’s continuity with Canaanite cul-
ture and for its uniqueness. For, as Cross reminds us, the epic genre was
also well attested in Canaanite religious literature, though it was of
marginal interest. According to Cross, the implications are clear: “Is-
rael’s choice of the epic form to express religious reality, and the eleva-
tion of this form to centrality in their cultic drama, illustrates both the
linkage of the religion of Israel to its Canaanite past and the appearance
of novelty in Israel’s peculiar religious concern with the ‘historical.’”!!
After a penetrating and judicious survey of the ancient Near Eastern
epigraphic evidence and the relevant biblical texts pertaining to
Canaanite and early Israelite religion, Cross agrees generally with Alt’s
earlier assessment of patriarchal religion as a type of personal clan re-
ligion. He argues, however, that the patriarchs worshiped the high god
of Canaan (i.e., El), as opposed to Alt’s view that the patriarchs wor-
shiped various anonymous deities to whom names such as El Shaddai,
El Elyon, El Olam, and so on were given after the settlement in
Canaan. Cross emphasized the continuity between Canaanite El and
Israelite Yahweh, concluding that “Yahweh” was originally a cultic
name of El. Many of the traits and features of El appear as functions
of Yahweh in the earliest traditions of Israel, though Yahwism “split
off from El in the radical differentiation” of the cult of early Israel.!?
Further, Yahwism absorbed and transformed many of the Canaanite
mythic elements relating to Baal until the ninth century B.c., at which
time “a less wholesome syncretism” emerged. Yahwism began to give
way to the popular cult of Baal, and the prophetic movement, begun
with Elijah, may be defined as a battle against this syncretism.!? Thus
Yahweh was primarily a Canaanite El figure, though many of the fea-
tures that distinguished him from El were adapted from Baal mythic

11. Ibid., ix. See also idem, “Epic Traditions of Early Israel: Epic Narrative and the Re-
construction of Early Israelite Institutions,” in The Poet and the Historian: Essays in Lit-
erary and Historical Criticism, ed. R. E. Friedman, HSS 26 (Chico, Calif.; Scholars Press,
1983), 13-19; see also J. J. M. Roberts, “Myth versus History,” CBQ 38 (1976): 1-13. On
Israelite historiography as a historicizing of older poetic epic, a confluence of poetic epic
and historical chronicle, see D. Damrosch, The Narrative Covenant: Transformations of
Genre in the Growth ofBiblical Literature (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); and for
speculation on the transformation from myth to epic, see B. F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon:
Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 41-72.
12. Cross, Canaanite Myth, 71. On the basis of terms describing the gods and their
world in Ugaritic literature that are also used to describe Yahweh in the OT, M. C. A. Kor-
pel concluded that Israel's religion is the result of a schism within the religion of Canaan
(A Rift in the Clouds: Ugaritic and Hebrew Descriptions of the Divine [Miinster: Ugarit-
Verlag, 1990], 621-35).
13. Cross, Canaanite Myth, 190-94.
Religion in Ancient Israel 395

images. This association with Baal elements resulted in the subse-

quent syncretism that became the object of prophetic scorn. Cross’s re-
construction of the religion of Israel has earned acceptance among
many Old Testament scholars. The enduring significance of his contri-
butions may be illustrated by the important Festschriften his students
and friends have published, which contain many articles devoted to
this subject.!*
The impressive work of Mark S. Smith also takes up the comparative
Canaanite material, though with several different results.!° He surveys
the data gleaned from the Canaanite (Ugaritic) religious literature in
light of the consensus among biblical scholars that the gods of Ugarit
(El, Asherah, Baal, Anat, and the solar deity) were Canaanite, not Isra-
elite, deities. Scholars following Albright had assumed that early Israel
was essentially monolatrous (worshiping only Yahweh, although not
denying the existence of other deities). This consensus considered
Canaanite influences on ancient Israel to be syncretistic and outside
“normative” Israelite religion, and scholars often used the distinction
between “popular religion” and “official religion” to explain away such
influences.!° Smith contends, however, that the new epigraphic and ar-
chaeological evidence since Albright calls this consensus into question.
He argues that Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature: “Baal
and Asherah were part of Israel’s Canaanite heritage, and the process of
the emergence of Israelite monolatry was an issue of Israel’s breaking
with its own Canaanite past and not simply one of avoiding Canaanite
neighbors.”!’ Smith avers that religious pluralism in ancient Israel led
to conflict about the nature of correct Yahwistic practice, and this con-
flict in turn “produced the differentiation of Israelite religion from its
Canaanite heritage during the second half of the monarchy.”!* Thus he
rejects the consensus view (of Albright, Cross, and others) of a syncre-

14. B. Halpern and J. D. Levenson, eds., Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points

in Biblical Faith (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1981); P. D. Miller Jr., P. D. Hanson,
and S. D. McBride, eds., Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor ofFrank Moore Cross
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).
15. M.S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Is-
rael (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990); idem, “Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient
Israel: Observations on Old Problems and Recent Trends,” in Ein Gott allein? JHWH-
Verehrung und biblischer Monotheismus im Kontext der israelitischen und altorientali-
schen Religionsgeschichte, ed. W. Dietrich and M. A. Klopfenstein, OBO 139 (Gottingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Freibourg, Switzerland: Universitatsverlag, 1994), 197-234.
For a different perspective on the impact of the discoveries at Ugarit, see O. Loretz, Ugarit
und die Bibel; Kanaandische Gotter und Religion im Alten Testament (Darmstadt: Wissen-
schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990).
16. Smith, Early History, xix—xx.
17. Ibid., xxiii.
13M bids xocd
396 Religion in Ancient Israel

tistic tendency in Israel, beginning especially in the ninth century.

Rather than syncretism, Smith refers to a “differentiation” of Israelite
cult from its Canaanite heritage, a differentiation apparently beginning
in the ninth century.!?
Smith contends that the consensus opinion has crumbled because of
significant changes in scholarly perspective due to epigraphic and ar-
chaeological advances made in the years since Albright’s Yahweh and
the Gods of Canaan (1968). He outlines four changes as follows: First,
Israel’s cultural identity was Canaanite, as evidenced by a large stock of
shared religious terminology.” Second, the understanding of Israel as
a Canaanite culture has meant a reevaluation of the nature of the Yah-
wistic cult. Baal and Asherah were part of Israel’s Canaanite heritage.
There was no religious syncretism of a native Israelite cult with pagan
Canaanite practices during the ninth century as the Bible portrays, and
as the older scholarly consensus assumed. Third, greater significance
has been credited to the monarchy for its role in the development of
Yahwism. The monarchy fostered the convergence of other deities and
their cultic features in exalting Yahweh as the national god during the
first half of its existence (down to ca. 722 B.c.). During the second half
of the monarchy (ca. 722 to 587), religious programs (especially those
of Hezekiah and Josiah) led to the differentiation of Israelite religion
from its Canaanite roots, and led to the eventual emergence of mono-
theism during the exile. Fourth, recent interest in ancient goddesses
and their roles in the Israelite cult has led to greater scholarly scrutiny
of the roles of such deities in Israelite religion.?!
Many scholars working on the history of Israelite religion may be
surprised to learn that these changes are required by “major epigraphic
and archaeological discoveries” since 1968. There is no doubt that
scholarly perspective has changed over the past few decades. But it is
a non sequitur to say the changes are required by new epigraphic evi-
dence since Albright,?? and it is certainly an overstatement to claim
that “the data illuminating the religion of Israel have changed substan-
tially in the last twenty years.”?3 Most of the changes Smith outlines
are due more to a shifting scholarly climate and new interpretations of
older data in light of this new climate than to new discoveries.24 This
may be described as a general new wave of scholarly minimalism or

19. Ibid., xxiv.

20. Ibid., 2.
2 Pl bidy xxiioxexvile
22a bidhexxa
23 bide xis
24. That is not to deny that there have been a few important epigraphic discoveries
since 1970, as discussed below.
Religion in Ancient Israel 397

neo-nihilism. The second change Smith mentions (the Canaanite na-

ture of early Yahwism) grows logically from the first (the Canaanite-
Israelite continuum), and the first is tied to developments happening
in the larger study of Israel’s history, which are sometimes quite min-
imalistic and still very much open to question.?> The third of Smith’s
“changes in scholarly perspective” (i.e., the role of the monarchy in Is-
rael’s religion) is a matter of reinterpreting the biblical record. This
part of his presentation simply applies his assumptions in points one
and two (Israel was Canaanite, and her cult was initially polytheistic)
to the biblical story line. Israel during the judges period knew three,
possibly four, deities (El, Asherah, Yahweh, and possibly Baal).?°
These deities or features of their cults converged into a national Yah-
wism during the first half of the monarchy, and monolatry emerged
during the second half of the monarchy by the process of differentia-
tion. The fourth change (greater interest in ancient goddesses) is a
matter of vacillating scholarly interests. Smith admits “the relative
paucity of primary material bearing on goddesses in ancient Israel’
but refers to recent interest and greater scrutiny of the ancient sources
for information on their role in Israel’s religion. Most of these changes
have more to do with shifting scholarly opinion and new interpreta-
tions of older data than with new archaeological evidence that requires
such constructions (notwithstanding the “Yahweh and his asherah/
Asherah” inscriptions; see discussion of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet
el-Q6m below).
In addition to these comparative approaches, other scholars have
taken up the study of theophoric personal names from Palestine as the
starting point for investigating ancient Israelite religion. The important
work of Jeffrey Tigay surveys the evidence of divine elements in proper
names in Hebrew epigraphic documents.?® His work illustrates the
overwhelming preponderance of Yahwistic names (i.e., names that
have Yahweh as their theophoric element) in ancient Israel and the rel-
ative paucity of non-Yahwistic names. On the basis of this evidence,
Tigay argues that Israel was monotheistic (or at least monolatrous) dur-
ing the monarchy, and that Baal was worshiped briefly and Asherah not
at all in Israel. The problems of historical and religious reconstructions
based on personal names are well known, and Tigay has come under

25. See the essays by K. Lawson Younger Jr. (chap. 7) and Gary N. Knoppers (chap.
8) in the present volume.
26. Smith, Early History, 22. This is based largely on a faulty understanding of Gen.
49:25e (see the review of T. J. Lewis in JITC 18 [1990-91]: 158-59).
27. Early History, xxvi.
28. J. H. Tigay, You Shall Have No Other Gods: Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew
Inscriptions, HSS 31 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986).
398 Religion in Ancient Israel

criticism in some quarters.”? Nonetheless, his volume is suggestive, and

the evidence from such names probably reflects what we may call “nor-
mative” religion in ancient Israel.
In addition to Tigay’s seminal study of epigraphic documents, others
have studied personal names in the biblical text in light of their signifi-
cance for Israel’s religion. Using a less rigorous methodology, Johannes
de Moor has calculated theophoric personal names in the biblical text as
his starting point, and concludes that Yahwism must have started long
before David, and that E] and Yahweh were equally popular designations
of God long before David's time.*° De Moor’s investigation of theophoric
toponyms, on the other hand, reveals almost exclusively the names of
Canaanite deities. This divergence between the personal names and top-
onyms argues against the supposition that Israelite religion was contin-
uous with that of Canaan. The presence of only one personal name con-
taining the name of a goddess (bn nt, son of Anat) suggests that even in
the premonarchical period, Yahweh did not have an official consort.*!
An additional innovative use of comparative materials may be found
in the work of Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger.*? In an impres-
sive collection of epigraphic and inscriptional remains from the Middle
Bronze, Late Bronze, and Iron ages, Keel and Uehlinger base their ob-
servations regarding the forms.and manifestations of ancient Palestin-

29. J. A. Emerton, “New Light on Israelite Religion: The Implications from Kuntillet
<Ajrad,” ZAW 94 (1982): 16 n. 10; S. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel,
SBLMS 34 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 35-36; but see the positive review by T. J.
Lewis in Maarav, forthcoming.
30. J. C. de Moor, The Rise of Yahwism: The Roots of Israelite Monotheism (Louvain:
Leuven University Press, 1990), 10-34. This study omits the onomastic evidence of the
Chronicler, which would have raised the share of Yahwistic names significantly. De Moor
felt this evidence reflected the time of the Chronicler and was not genuinely representa-
tive of the period before David (32). J. D. Fowler has studied both biblical and epigraphic
onomastica (Theophoric Personal Names in Ancient Hebrew: A Comparative Study, JSOT-
Sup 49 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988]). Though her work contains a number of flaws, most
of her basic conclusions concerning the distinctiveness of Israel and the dominance of
exclusivistic Yahwism in the religion of ancient Israel are valid. Other important works
to consult: S. C. Layton, Archaic Features of Canaanite Personal Names in the Hebrew Bi-
ble, HSM 47 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990); R. Zadok, The Pre-Hellenistic Israelite Anthro-
ponymy and Prosopography, OLA 28 (Louvain: Peeters, 1988); N. Avigad, “The Contribu-
tion of Hebrew Seals to an Understanding of Israelite Religion and Society,” in Ancient
Israelite Religion, ed. Miller et al., 195-208; and again J. Tigay, “Israelite Religion: The On-
omastic and Epigraphic Evidence,” in ibid., 157-94.
31. De Moor, Rise of Yahwism, 40-41. One limitation of this line of investigation is
that goddesses do not appear frequently in the personal names of Syria and Mesopota-
mia, certainly not in proportion to their general religious significance. I owe this word of
caution to Daniel E. Fleming, personal communication, April 11, 1996.
32. Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel, trans. T. H. Trapp (Minne-
apolis: Fortress, 1998).
Religion in Ancient Israel 399

ian deities on artifacts from Palestine itself. Such a unique approach al-
lows the authors to outline the development from a period in which
standing stones, sacred trees, and sexually defined cults were promi-
nent (Middle Bronze IIB) to a time when these features (usually associ-
ated with “Canaanite fertility’ religion) were marginalized and the
storm god became viewed more as a warrior deity under Egyptian in-
fluence (Late Bronze). The Iron Age brought a progression from the
time when deities were depicted in military images (Iron I), to a time
when anthropomorphic depictions of the deity were in general found
outside Israel and Judah. Iron II also witnessed the rise of solar ele-
ments on seals and ivories, often associated with Israelite Yahwism. In
general, Keel and Uehlinger do not believe that the iconographic evi-
dence supports the current emphasis on an extended period of polythe-
ism in preexilic Israel. Their work provides one of the most important
and unique contributions from the period under review to the study of
Israelite religion and its Canaanite antecedents.
Rainer Albertz has attempted to go beyond the chronological distinc-
tions that regularly control histories of Israelite religion, that is, pre-
monarchic religion, monarchic religion, and exilic and postexilic reli-
gion. In addition to these, he holds in tension two “foci of identity”: the
family and the people, which bring together two different strata of Isra-
elite religion. The main stratum of “official religion” functioned in re-
gard to the wider group, and the substratum of “personal piety” related
to the individual in the smaller group of the family.*? To this he has now
added a third level, the local level, or the village community, which func-
tioned sociologically between the level of the family and that of the peo-
ple or state. Thus he refers to an “internal religious pluralism” for this so-
cially conditioned stratification within the religion of Israel. All of this is
in addition to the standard sociological observations concerning Israel’s
religion, such as reform groups like the prophets or Deuteronomists.**
Albertz argues that the faith commonly referred to as “patriarchal re-
ligion” reflected in the traditions of Genesis 12-50 is the faith of the
smaller social group (the personal piety of the typical family) during the
judges and early monarchic periods of Israel’s history.*? He also recon-

33. R. Albertz, Persénliche Frémmigkeit und offizielle Religion: Religionsinterner Plu-

ralismus in Israel und Babylon, CThM A/9 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1979). For more on socio-
logical approaches, see E. S. Gerstenberger, “The Religion and Institutions of Ancient Is-
rael: Toward a Contextual Theology of the Scriptures,” in Old Testament Interpretation:
Past, Present, and Future: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker, ed. J. L. Mays, D. L. Pe-
tersen, and K. H. Richards (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 261-76.
34. R. Albertz, A History ofIsraelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, trans. J.
Bowden, 2 vols., OTL (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox; London: SCM, 1994).
35. Ibid., 1:28-29.
400 Religion in Ancient Israel

structs the faith of a “liberated larger group,” which had been an econom-
ically assimilated but socially declassed group of foreign conscripts to
forced labor in Egyptian society under the Ramesides.*° Israel’s Yahweh
religion arose in the liberation process of this group. Yahwism had orig-
inated in Midian and been given to Moses by Jethro/Reuel (perhaps re-
lated to the Shasu of Edom). Sinai traditions were later added to this Yah-
wism. Various Midianite tribes (and now the exodus group) participated
in a Yahweh cult at a mountain sanctuary in the frontier area between
Edom and Midian.?” This Yahweh was a storm god not unlike Baal/
Hadad of Syria-Palestine. In his discussion of the religion of the “pre-
state alliance of larger groups,” Albertz concludes that the exodus group
arrived and contributed the essential unifying element for the tribes
emerging in the central hills of Palestine. The unifying element was Yah-
wism, which fused with Canaanite E] religion and provided the God of Is-
rael, the God who defended the oppressed and resisted domination.*®

Developments on Central Issues

Many various topics have received attention during the past three de-
cades, and in most instances these were the same issues that previous
scholars investigated. This is especially true of the origins of Yahwism
and the history of monotheism. Other topics have presented relatively
new areas of research, such as the cult of the dead, which prior to this
period was not believed to have existed in ancient Israel and received
little attention among modern scholars. Many of these topics are inter-
connected and are discussed briefly here in an attempt to summarize
the advances made in each area of research.*?

The Origins of Yahwism

As I have said, there is a sense in which scholarship has made few ad-
vances beyond the older dichotomy between the American archaeolog-
ical school and the German traditio-historical school. Thus most schol-

36. Ibid., 1:45.

37. Ibid., 1:54-55.
38. Ibid., 1:76-79. I explore below the implications of Albertz’s approach, but space
does not permit me to elaborate further on his views of the monarchy as the singular de-
velopment that transformed Yahweh from a god of liberation into a god of state oppres-
sion, or the application of his sociological approach to the exilic and postexilic periods—
all of which are important contributions to the field of Israelite religion.
39. A survey of this nature cannot treat every issue of importance, and the following
discussion should be accepted as selective. For summaries of developments in the study
of prophecy, wisdom, and apocalyptic, see the appropriate chapters elsewhere in the
present volume.
Religion in Ancient Israel 401

ars sought the origins of Yahweh in either the Canaanite religious

perceptions exemplified most in the Ugaritic material (Albright and his
students) or in an awe-inspiring, numinous encounter of an “exodus
group” with a volcanically active mountain in southern Palestine (Noth
and his students).
Cross has assiduously resisted the volcano explanation in favor of the
view that Yahweh originated as a genuine innovation of the earliest Is-
raelites, a “radical differentiation” of Yahwism from its Canaanite
roots. The name Yahweh was a shortened form of a primitive Hebrew
cultic name for El, which became a divine name: él za yahwi saba°6t,
“El, who creates the heavenly armies.” Earliest Yahwism originated in
the worship of tutelary clan deities identified with the high god El of
Amorite and Canaanite religion, modified by images and practices from
the mythology of Baal. The fire, light, smoke, cloud, thunder, and quak-
ing features of Yahweh’s theophanies are, in Cross’s view, no cause to
“send for seismologists” but poetic descriptions of the theophany of the
storm god, or of the attack of the Divine Warrior. Cross concludes that
Israel’s early descriptions of Yahweh’s theophany derived from tradi-
tional Canaanite language originating in the northern storms of Leba-
non, Cassius, or Amanus rather than Sinai or the southern mountains.”°
Others have argued for a southern origin for Yahwism on the basis
of Egyptian epigraphic evidence and the witness of the biblical tradi-
tions. Two Egyptian topographical lists from the Late Bronze Age pre-
serve a place-name that should be understood as “Yahweh in the Shasu
land,” or “the Shasu land of Yahweh.”*! These references may indicate
a pre-Israelite form of Yahwism practiced among tribal nomads (“the
Shasu”) who roamed about east of the Egyptian Delta, south and south-
east of Palestine. Some scholars have associated the earliest Hebrews
with these Edomite Shasu Bedouin, who were transhumant pastoral-
ists and revered a deity by the same name as the Israelite God, Yahweh.
Donald B. Redford argues that Yahwism originated among these Shasu
nomads, who later became a major component in the amalgam that
constituted Israel.*”

40. Canaanite Myth, 60-75; and for his views on seismological explanations, 167-69.
In his treatment of the Divine Warrior motif, however, Cross also acknowledges the
march of Yahweh from the southern mountains in the oldest poetry of the OT, e.g., Judg.
5:4-5; Deut. 33:2-3; Ps. 68:18; and Hab. 3:3-6 (100-103).
41. Texts from Amenophis III and Rameses IJ attest ssw yhw, where yhw is either a
geographical or ethnic designation in s’sw land. See R. Giveon, Les bédouins Shosou des
documents égyptiens (Leiden: Brill, 1971), docs. 6a (26-28) and 16a (74-77).
42. Redford also assumes that the first extrabiblical reference to Israel (Merenptah’s
Stela, ca. 1208 B.c.) describes a group with the character of a Shasu enclave on the hills
of Ephraim (D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times [Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1992], 273-75).
402 Religion in Ancient Israel

The biblical evidence for the southern origins of Yahwism is well

known and led long ago to the so-called Kenite hypothesis.*? This the-
ory assumes that Yahweh was a specifically Midianite or Kenite God
(Kenites being a subgroup of the Midianites). Moses allegedly learned
of the cult of Yahweh from his father-in-law Jethro, a Midianite
priest.*4 Based then on these biblical and epigraphical data, Albertz can
conclude: “So the god Yahweh is older than Israel; he was a southern
Palestinian mountain god before he became the god of liberation for
the Moses group.”*? In his sociological reconstruction of Israelite reli-
gion, Albertz argues that this liberated exodus group contributed Yah-
wism as the unifying element to the pre-state alliance of larger groups.
Likewise, Niels Peter Lemche believes that Yahweh was originally lo-
cated in the Sinai Peninsula and was brought to Palestine near the end
of the Late Bronze Age. Concerning the question of how this Yahwism
was transported to Palestine, however, Lemche demurs. He is con-
vinced the late biblical sources elevated Moses to the level of the one
who introduced Yahwism into national Israel, while in reality he is a
figure quite beyond our reach. Since Moses was probably created by the
late tradents, we cannot settle the question.*°
Though the biblical references to Yahweh’s association with a south-
ern mountain are indisputable, the Kenite hypothesis is not without its
problems. The Israelites and Edomites/Midianites were closely related
and may have enjoyed alliances and cooperative relations at various pe-
riods in their history. But we possess evidence that the Kenites were or-
dinary polytheists, and it is possible that the Midianites learned the cult
of Yahweh from the Israelites (as indeed Exod. 18:11 implies).*7
Greater questions attend the scant Egyptian epigraphic evidence. It re-
mains to be seen whether the Shasu Bedouin were in any way con-
nected or associated with the tribes of Israel, either as an eventual com-
ponent of later Israel or as originators of Yahwism. Indeed, the
enigmatic lists may have nothing to do with Yahwism, since the name
yhw may actually refer to a people, a seminomadic group plaguing
Egypt from the fourteenth century onward, in which case we have no
reference here to a divine name at all.4 Whether the place-name s’sw

43. For a summary, see J. A. Dearman, Religion and Culture in Ancient Israel (Pea-
body, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1992), 22-23.
44, This has been taken up again most recently by Albertz, History of Israelite Reli-
gion, 1:51-52.
45. Ibid., 1:52.
46. N. P. Lemche, Ancient Israel: A New History of Israelite Society (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1988), 252-56.
47. De Moor, Rise of Yahwism, 224.
48. Ibid., 111-12.
Religion in Ancient Israel 403

yhw was even located in Edom at all is still controverted. One scholar
has placed this site in the Beqa‘-Orontes region of Syria, much farther
to the north.??
So did Yahweh originate as a Midianite/Kenite storm god in the
south, or as a differentiation from Yahweh-El Canaanite religion as
attested in the north, especially at Ugarit? Numerous biblical tradi-
tions reflect the southern connections (Albertz), but the most ancient
texts also bear witness to an early Yahweh-El union, which suggests
northern origins (Cross).°° As Cross has emphasized, it is an extraor-
dinary fact that El “is rarely if ever used in the Old Testament as the
proper name of a non-Israelite, Canaanite deity in the full conscious-
ness of a distinction between ?El and Yahweh, god of Israel.”>! The in-
fluence of the El cult on earliest Yahwism seems undeniable, and
Cross’s argument for a radical theological differentiation in early Is-
rael is convincing. But herein is the problem: we lack any specific ex-
trabiblical references to Yahweh in the north, and we are uncertain of
Canaanite El worship as far south as Sinai, or even southern and
southeastern Palestine.**
The initial claim of Giovanni Pettinato that Yahweh appears as a di-
vine name at Ebla created a stir.** But this has been discredited by the
realization that the element -yad, which is written with the sign NI, is
most likely an abbreviation of NI.NI =i-lé, “my god,” and stands for the
personal guardian deity.*+ Likewise, there has been much speculation
about the yw in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle.*? De Moor has argued uncon-
vincingly that this identification of Yahweh is philologically defensible,
and has offered the unlikely suggestion that Ilimilku has identified Yah-
weh as a god of chaos and anarchy who would eventually, like Yammu,
be conquered by Baal, the champion of prosperity. Thus, in de Moor’s
view, the Ugaritic text is a deliberate caricature of Yahweh as the god

49. M. C. Astour, “Yahweh in Egyptian Topographic Lists,” in Festschrift Elmar Edel:

12 Marz 1979, ed. M. Gorg and E. Pusch, Agypten und Altes Testament 1 (Bamberg: Gorg,
1979), 17-34.
50. Though Cross also traced Divine Warrior motifs to southern regions (Canaanite
Myth, 100-103).
51. Ibid., 44.
52. It is possible to integrate the Kuntillet “Ajrud and Teman materials in one's discus-
sion of southern traditions (see T. Hiebert, God of My Victory: The Ancient Hymn in Ha-
bakkuk 3, HSM 38 [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986], 85-92).
53. G. Pettinato, “Il calendario di Ebla al tempo del re Ibbi-Sipis sulla base di
TM.75.G.427,” AfO 25 (1974-77): 1-36.
54. H.-P. Miiller, “Der Jahwename und seine Deutung Ex 3,14 im Licht der Textpub-
likationen aus Ebla,” Bib 62 (1981): 305-7; idem, “Gab es in Ebla einen Gottesnamen Ja?”
ZA 70 (1980): 70-92.
55a KU eel VEL 4:
404 Religion in Ancient Israel

of fearsome apiru warriors.°° However, this parallel use of yw with the

sea god Yammu has been challenged on the basis of phonetics, and
probably has nothing to do with Yahweh.*’
Since we lack explicit extrabiblical references to Yahweh (besides in-
scriptional Hebrew materials), and we cannot be sure of the prevalence
of Canaanite El worship in the south, the origins of Yahwism continue
to be wrapped in obscurity. Opinions continue to gravitate to either a
northern Ugaritic/Canaanite connection or the older southern Midian-
ite/Kenite association. But a rapprochement between these two is pos-
sible in the future. De Moor believes that the aggressively propagated
cult of Amun-Re resulted in a “crisis of polytheism” across the ancient
Near East, and influenced the cult of El and Yahweh in southern Pales-
tine toward the end of the second millennium.°® T. N. D. Mettinger has
recently argued that the aniconic Amun cult may have played a role “in
the formation of Israelite aniconism.”°? Though much of de Moor’s re-
construction is open to question (Yahweh-E] in Bashan in the Late
Bronze Age and the identification of Moses as Beya, a Canaanite who
became a high official in the Nineteenth Dynasty), he is certainly cor-
rect about the common Amorite cultural milieu linking Ugarit and early
Israel, and he has made us realize that a Yahweh-El connection in the
south is possible. Only more information in the future will be able to
shed light on this problem.°°

56. De Moor, Rise of Yahwism, 113-18; taken up again by de Moor in “Ugarit and Is-
raelite Origins,” in Congress Volume: Paris, 1992, ed. J. A.Emerton, VTSup 61 (Leiden:
Brill, 1995), 219-23.
57. D. N. Freedman and M. P. O’Connor, “YHWH,” TDOT, 5:510; and see Miiller, “Jah-
wename,” 325-27.
58. De Moor, Rise of Yahwism, 42-100. He has also recently argued unconvincingly
that Ugarit’s well-known relations with several cities in the south and the apparent ori-
gins of the proto-Ugaritic ruling class in Edomite territory of Transjordan (as argued by
Dietrich and Loretz) suggest a possibility of a direct link between Ugarit and the proto-
Israelites at the end of the Late Bronze Age. These connections would have included re-
ligious traditions and may have stemmed from a common Amorite cultural continuum
(“Ugarit and Israelite Origins,” 205-38, esp. 236-38).
59. T. N. D. Mettinger, No Graven Image? Israelite Aniconism in Its Ancient Near
Eastern Context, ConBOT 42 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1995), 56; and see the re-
view of T. J. Lewis, “Divine Images and Aniconism in Ancient Israel,” JAOS 118 (1998):
36-53.
60. Cross had already emphasized that the Ugaritic Baal Cycle reflects a literary her-
itage common to the Canaanites “and to those who shared their culture from the border
of Egypt to the Amanus in the Middle and Late Bronze Age” (Canaanite Myth, 113). See
now Mark Smith's speculations concerning possible reverberations of the West Semitic
conflict myth across the ancient Near East, including Mari, Egypt, and the Mesopota-
mian heartland: M. S. Smith, ed., The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, vol. 1, Introduction with Text,
Translation, and Commentary of KTU 1.1-1.2, VTSup 55 (Leiden and New York: Brill,
1994), 107-14.
Religion in Ancient Israel 405

The History of Israelite Monotheism

The most immediate difficulty in discussing the history of monotheism
is precision in terminology. On the one hand, the terms polytheism and
monotheism are clear enough. Scholars are relatively consistent in the
use of “monotheism” for a religion that believes in the existence of only
one god, and “polytheism” for one that believes in and worships a vari-
ety of deities. On the other hand, descriptors such as henotheism and
monolatry are used with less clarity. The former variously denotes a ru-
dimentary monotheism, a momentary veneration of only one deity dur-
ing a crisis, or a more persistent worship of one god without denying
the existence of others. The use of this term developed out of an evolu-
tionary explanation to describe “practical monotheism” as a stage be-
tween polytheism and true monotheism. “Monolatry” appears to have
the same general meanings as “henotheism.” Though the two terms
have a different origin, their current usage among Old Testament schol-
ars appears to be interchangeable.°!
The best model for this discussion has been proposed by David L. Pe-
tersen.© He uses three catchwords to synopsize the various general the-
ories regarding the history of monotheism: evolution, revolution, and
devolution. As Petersen avers, the concept that monotheism developed
out of a prior polytheistic religious milieu (i.e., the evolutionary ap-
proach) has dominated Old Testament studies in general, and develop-
ments over the past three decades have continued that dominance.
There are several variations on the evolutionary approach to the his-
tory of Israelite monotheism. Morton Smith portrays an essentially
polytheistic Israel until the emergence of a “Yahweh-alone” movement
in the ninth century and afterward, which eventually gave rise to an ex-
pression of Yahweh as the only God during the postexilic period.
Bernhard Lang builds on Smith’s sociological approach, though with
much more emphasis on political factors in the movement from poly-
theism to monotheism.” Lang is able to isolate five phases in which the

61. D. L. Petersen, “Israel and Monotheism: The Unfinished Agenda,” in Canon, The-
ology, and Old Testament Interpretation, ed. Tucker et al., 97-98. Baruch Halpern can as-
sert that Israel's “monolatrous henotheism” was essentially monotheism, calling the reli-
gion of monarchic Israel “unselfconscious monotheism” (“‘Brisker Pipes Than Poetry’:
The Development of Israelite Monotheism,” in Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel, ed.
J. Neusner, B. A. Levine, and E. S. Frerichs [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987], 88).
62. Petersen, “Israel and Monotheism,” 92-107.
63. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (New
York: Columbia University Press; London: SCM, 1971), 15-31.
64. B. Lang, Monotheism and the Prophetic Minority: An Essay in Biblical History and
Sociology, SWBAS 1 (Sheffield: Almond, 1983), 13-56. From a distinctly different socio-
logical approach, one could compare Norman Gottwald’s “mono-Yahwism,” which
406 Religion in Ancient Israel

“Yahweh-aloneists” progress from opposition to Israelite polytheism to

“the breakthrough to monotheism” after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 .B.c.
In Lang’s view, the political crisis stimulated the “Yahweh-alone’” ideol-
ogy already present in what he calls “proto-Judaism,” resulting in the
idea of monotheism. “Monotheism .. . is the answer to political emer-
gency, in which no solution is to be expected from diplomatic maneu-
vering or foreign military help.”©
In a more general fashion, Albertz describes an intrinsic exclusive-
ness in early Yahwism due to the combination of the social and reli-
gious factors from which it emerged: the political liberation and ex-
tended wilderness experience of the exodus group, which forged “a
close personal relationship” with Yahweh.® This innate exclusiveness
yielded naturally to a claim by later prophetic opposition groups to the
sole worship of Yahweh from the middle period of the monarchy on-
ward, thus paving the way for monotheism in the exile. Similarly, for
Lemche, monotheistic Yahwism was a religion of the elite during and
after the exile.°’
Mark Smith has argued that the appearance of monotheism in Israel
was both evolutionary and revolutionary.®* On close examination, how-
ever, his reconstruction is a simple evolutionary model. He begins his
reconstruction in the period of the judges when, he believes, Israel was
polytheistic. Its cult included features of worship to El, Asherah, Yah-
weh, and perhaps Baal. Approximately 1100 B.c., a process of conver-
gence began in Israel, by which Smith means the “incorporation of di-
vine attributes into Yahweh.”°? The monarchy played a significant role
in the emergence of monolatrous religion in Smith’s view. During the
first half of the monarchy (ca. 1000-800), Yahweh became a national,
male deity closely associated with the Davidic dynasty. The emphasis
on a covenantal relationship with the deity, innovative centralization of
national worship, the appearance of the “Yahweh-only party” in the
ninth century (cf. Morton Smith), and the role of writing in Israelite so-
ciety all contributed to the process of convergence. During this period
the monarchy encouraged the religious imagery of other deities within

served as a corollary to a new, egalitarian form of social organization (Tribes of Yahweh,

16, 616, and 693). Gottwald’s views have been severely criticized on several fronts, not the
least of which is the sociological evidence that a considerable degree of hierarchical com-
plexity is present wherever societies affirm monotheism. See G. E. Swanson, The Birth of
the Gods: The Origin ofPrimitive Beliefs (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960);
and Petersen, “Israel and Monotheism,” 100.
65. Lang, Monotheism, 54.
66. Albertz, History ofIsraelite Religion, 1:62.
67. Lemche, Ancient Israel, 209-23.
68. Smith, Early History, especially the introduction (xix-xxxiv), and chap. 6 (145-60).
69. Ibid., 147.
Religion in Ancient Israel 407

the cult of Yahweh.”° The second half of the monarchy (ca. 800-587)
witnessed a process of “differentiation” in the religion of Israel, by
which Smith means the “eliminating from the cult of Yahweh features
associated with Baal or other deities.”’! Certain features were dropped
from the cult, such as devotion to the cult of Baal and specific practices
associated with the dead, resulting in a distinct change from the previ-
ous period. This process of differentiation was due largely to prophetic
and legal criticisms of the monarchy’s support of religious imagery of
other deities within Yahwism. Their criticism gained wider influence in
Israelite society because of a growing literacy and the influence of writ-
ing.’? This differentiation, which Smith refers to as a “revolution,”
gradually resulted in monolatrous faith in preexilic Israel and unam-
biguous expressions of monotheism in the exile.
Among other questions raised by Smith’s construction, I should men-
tion at least two here. First, he has failed to explain fully “normative Yah-
wism” as opposed to “popular religion.” Many scholars have rightly
abandoned defining any rigid distinction between ancient Israel’s popu-
lar religion and so-called official religion. There can be no doubt, how-
ever, that certain Canaanite concepts were rejected by what we may call,
for lack of better term, “normative” Yahwism. As the biblical text attests,
many of the features of Canaanite religion were present in ancient Israel
and were soundly opposed by normative Yahwism. Second, and more
specifically, Smith fails to give adequate attention to the absence of sex
and death associated with depictions of Yahweh.” This absence is pro-
found and deep-seated, and marks an early distinction between Israelite
Yahwism and other religious expressions in the ancient Near East.
Karel van der Toorn credits the appearance of genuine monotheism
in Israel (not a momentary henotheistic impulse) to a “theology of ex-
altation,” which was in fact present throughout the ancient Near East.’>
Each community strove to promote its deity to the highest rank, and ex-
altation theologies achieved this goal. Thus the Baal Cycle elevated Baal
among the gods of Ugarit, the Mesha Stela attempts to show that
Chemosh has no equal, the Enuma Elish puts Marduk at the center of

70. Ibid., 147-50.

7 wae lo)tc banbol0
72. Ibid., 150-52.
(3 ibids 156
74. As pointed out by Lewis, the absence of these features in Yahwism formed the cor-
nerstone of the important earlier work by Yehezkel Kaufmann and constituted a major
aspect of the differentiation process (review of Smith in JITC 18 [1990-91]: 162).
75. K. van der Toorn, “Theology, Priests, and Worship in Canaan and Ancient Israel,”
in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. J. M. Sasson, 4 vols. (New York: Scribner,
1995), 3:2056-57.
408 Religion in Ancient Israel

the Babylonian pantheon, and likewise, the exodus narrative teaches

the incomparability of Yahweh over the deities of Egypt. In each case,
the theology of exaltation leads to a monotheism that is politically mo-
tivated. Ancient monotheism is portrayed not as an intellectual and
theological answer to polytheism but as a polemic “against the pre-
tenses of political rivals.”
H. W. F. Saggs has proposed an intriguing evolutionary theory that
has not received great attention among Old Testament scholars.’° In
comparing Israelite religion with Mesopotamian, he reasons that they
were really alike in basic principle, though quite different in details and
points of emphasis. The differences arose because of the great antiquity
and diversity of Mesopotamian culture in conjunction with its intrinsic
conservatism. In Mesopotamian religion, “the new did not lead to rejec-
tion of the old; rather, the old continued to exist alongside the new.””’
Saggs argues that, though there was no static difference of basic prin-
ciple between Mesopotamian and Israelite religion, there was a dy-
namic difference in the way in which religious concepts developed.
Thus, on the one hand, in Mesopotamia the rise of a new city-state to
preeminence meant the rise of a new deity in the pantheon, but not the
exclusion of lesser, previously important deities. All were included in an
ever-growing list of deities. The Israelites, on the other hand, had come
into Palestine relatively recently and had no cultural moorings. They
had less reverence for tradition and could more readily reject the old in
acceptance of the new. Saggs argues that, like early Sumerian religion
with its numerous independent city-state deities, a presettlement Isra-
elite group began with one god. Other Israelite groups each had their
respective deities, the patriarchal numina. But instead of the accretive
principle of early Mesopotamian religion, Yahwism exercised selectiv-
ity and rejection. He concludes: “What began as monolatry in both
Sumerian city-states and Israel developed on one side into polytheism
and on the other into monotheism.”’> While Saggs presents a fascinat-
ing possibility, his reconstruction fails to account for the uniqueness of
this intolerance in early Israel. Why did Israel’s new cultural circum-
stances result in exclusive monotheism, while other West Semites, who
were recent emigrants into Syria-Palestine and under similar circum-
stances, continued along the paths of polytheism?”?

76. H. W. F. Saggs, The Encounter with the Divine in Mesopotamia and Israel (London:
Athlone, 1978), 182-88.
77. Ibid., 184.
78. Ibid., 186.
79. It is also doubtful that the Sumerian city-states may be called “monolatrous” in
any sense of the word. See T. Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopot-
amian Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 25-27, and passim.
Religion in Ancient Israel 409

Old Testament studies during the period under review here have
been dominated by evolutionary explanations for Israelite monothe-
ism. Yet there has not been enough attention given to the onomastic
and iconographic evidence assembled by Tigay, Keel and Uehlinger,
and others,*° which speaks against the theory of an extended period of
polytheism in preexilic Israel (a la Morton Smith, Bernhard Lang, Mark
Smith, etc.). Furthermore, such explanations fail to account for the rev-
olutionary nature of monotheistic religions in general. They appear to
arise in each case out of previously existing polytheistic surroundings,
not in a natural evolutionary process, but rather as a revolution, and
often as the work of a religious reformer.®!
Few Old Testament scholars have followed this line of inquiry. Most
recently, de Moor’s Rise of Yahwism is worthy of consideration. He be-
gins with an observation on the remarkable divergence between the per-
sonal names in the Bible and the toponyms, which, he says, speaks
against the supposition that the religion of the early Israelites was in no
way distinct from that of their neighbors.®? He argues on the basis of the
onomastic evidence for the rise of Yahwism from the spiritual climate
of the Late Bronze Age. Similar to van der Toorn’s “theology of exalta-
tion,” de Moor speaks of “a crisis of polytheism” all over the ancient
Near East as a result of the monotheistic revolution of Akhenaten. An
Egyptian countermovement promulgated the doctrine that all gods
were in reality nothing but manifestations of one god, Amun-Re. This
reduction of the polytheistic principle had reverberated throughout
Syria-Palestine and Mesopotamia. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, polythe-
ism adjusted through the concentration on one god who was thought to
manifest himself in all other deities: Amun-Re and Marduk, respec-
tively. But in Canaan the struggle between El and Baal rendered any
such concentration impossible. Though people of Ugarit remained true
polytheists, it was not without tension.*? And southern Palestine, de
Moor argues, had felt the influence of the Egyptian Amun-Re movement
earlier and more profoundly than Ugarit. In the earliest biblical tradi-
tions, de Moor believes that Yahweh-E] had already attained a status
similar to that of Amun-Re in Egypt or Marduk in Mesopotamia at the
end of the Late Bronze Age. The existence of other deities is not denied,
though they are considered insignificant.*4 De Moor’s reconstruction

80. Tigay, No Other Gods; Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God.
81. R. Pettazzone, “The Formation of Monotheism,” in Reader in Comparative Religion:
An Anthropological Approach, ed. W. Lessa and E. Vogt (New York: Harper & Row, 1965),
34-39: P. D. Miller, “The Absence of the Goddess in Israelite Religion,” HAR 10 (1986): 244.
82. De Moor, Rise of Yahwism, 41.
83. Ibid., 97-100.
84. Ibid., 226.
410 Religion in Ancient Israel

may be a “revolutionary” approach, though in contrast to Mark Smith,

Lemche, and others, he places the revolution early in Israel’s history.
In addition to evolution and revolution, Petersen speaks of another
view that has argued for the existence of primitive monotheism (Urmono-
theismus), or the idea that humankind began with the concept of one god,
but in later weakness adopted a number of deities. From an ancient and
positively valued religious conception (monotheism), there developed a
less sophisticated and ignoble one, polytheism.®° Few indeed are the Old
Testament scholars who have argued for such an ideological dissolution,
though the primeval history traditions of Genesis may be interpreted to
portray such a process. On the other hand, those who maintain an early
revolutionary experience for Israel (de Moor, and certainly Albright; see
below) would no doubt see a similar devolution occurring from that point
onward in Israelite religion. One may place such scholars in this category
who, though they may not argue for a common Urmonotheismus for hu-
mankind, nevertheless believe that Israel was monotheistic (or at least
monolatrous) at the dawn of its appearance in Palestine and that its sub-
sequent religious conceptions tended toward syncretism.*°
The American Albright school was dominated by the view of an un-
adulterated form of Yahwism in early Israel, which was vitiated by con-
tacts with Canaanite religion (apparent in the works of G. Ernest Wright,
George Mendenhall, John Bright, and others). Though the collapse of
this consensus is one of the major developments in the study of Israelite
religion over the past three decades, the monotheistic revolution in
Egypt and Mesopotamia at the close of the Bronze Age makes monothe-
ism (or at least monolatry) entirely plausible at the time of Moses and
even of Abraham, as argued recently by Alan R. Millard.*’ In the face of
wide diversity of opinion among scholars arguing for some form of evo-
lutionary process, it remains curious that the biblical traditions consis-
tently portray a process of devolution; curious, that is, that the Israelite
tradents should preserve their history with so much veracity, coupled
with such an unflattering portrayal. Perhaps van der Toorn’s “theology
of exaltation” is on the right course, though no doubt less politically mo-
tivated than he states and occurring earlier in Israel than he presumes.
Many of the processes he observes in ancient Near Eastern theology
were certainly occurring at the same time Mosaic religion was formed.

85. Petersen, “Israel and Monotheism,” 93.

86. I also have in mind here Cross's portrayal of Yahwism’s differentiation from El
during the proto-Israelite league and its subsequent “less wholesome syncretism” under
the influence of Baalism (Canaanite Myth, 71 and 190).
87. A. R. Millard, “Abraham, Akhenaten, Moses, and Monotheism,” in He Swore an
Oath: Biblical Themes from Genesis 12-50, ed. R. S. Hess, G. J. Wenham, and P. E. Satter-
thwaite (Cambridge: Tyndale House, 1993), 119-29.
Religion in Ancient Israel 411

The themes struck by Albright on Israelite monotheism (and fol-

lowed by many of his students) seem unthinkable in today’s scholarly
climate. Albright referred to the “most exalted emotional experiences
known to man” in reference to religious conversion and mystical union
with God.®* Perhaps the next generation of scholars should hear again
his contention that Israel was monotheistic, though its creed was im-
plicit because it lacked the analytic logic necessary to formulate it.8?

The Kuntillet <Ajrud and Khirbet el-Q6m Inscriptions

Of the new epigraphic evidence coming from the period under investi-
gation, by far the most important for the study of Israelite religion is
that from Khirbet el-Q6m and Kuntillet ‘Ajrud. The former yielded a
tomb inscription, which is the second-longest funerary inscription yet
discovered from the Israelite period.?? Important inscriptions from the
ruins of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, dated to the eighth century B.c., have provoked
an enormous body of secondary literature during the past three de-
cades.’! Of particular importance to this discussion are the various
blessings pronounced in the name of “Yahweh of Samaria and his
asherah/Asherah””* and “Yahweh of Teman,” which has led to reexam-
ination of the complex nature of preexilic Israelite religion.

88. Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 5th ed. (reprinted, Garden City, N.Y.: Dou-
bleday, 1969), 22; see John Dougherty’s explanation of the unique appearance of Israel’s
monotheism as due to “transcendent causes” or “mystical experience [which] obviously
lie outside the control of archaeology” (“The Origins of Hebrew Religion: A Study in
Method,” CBQ 17 [1955]: 138-56, esp. 154-56).
89. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion ofIsrael, 170-71.
90. After the royal steward’s tomb inscription (J. S. Holladay Jr., “Kom, Khirbet el-,”
ABD, 4:98). See the editio princeps in W. G. Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material from
the Area of Khirbet el-K6m,” HUCA 40-41 (1970): 139-204; also idem, “Asherah, Consort
of Yahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet Ajrud,” BASOR 255 (1984): 21-37; Z. Zevit,
“The Khirbet el-Q6m Inscription Mentioning a Goddess,” BASOR 255 (1984): 39-47;
J. M. Hadley, “The Khirbet el-Qom Inscription,” VT 37 (1987): 50-62; M. O’Connor, “The
Poetic Inscription from Khirbet el-Q6m,” VT 37 (1987): 224-30; B. Margalit, “Some Ob-
servations on the Inscription and Drawing from Khirbet el-Q6m,” VT 39 (1989): 371-78;
W. H. Shea, “The Khirbet el-Qom Tomb Inscription Again,” VT 40 (1990): 110-16.
91. For an introduction to the texts and their interpretation, see R. S. Hess, “Yahweh
and His Asherah? Epigraphic Evidence for Religious Pluralism in Old Testament Times,”
in One God, One Lord in a World of Religious Pluralism, ed. A. D. Clarke and B. W. Winter
(Cambridge: Tyndale House, 1991), 11-23; various articles in Ancient Israelite Religion,
ed. Miller et al; and Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images ofGod, 210-48.
92. The final two letters of the word wlsrth, “and by his a/Asherah,” have been much
disputed. Z. Zevit has argued the whole word is a “quaint, yet authentically Hebrew”
name, with a feminine ending, “Asherata” (“Khirbet el-O6m Inscription,” 46). But the
form would be doubly marked as feminine, and the suggestion is not likely, though it is
possible (see S. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, SBLMS 34 [Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1988], 25).
412 Religion in Ancient Israel

Most of the discussion on these inscriptions has to do with the pre-

cise interpretation of the noun asherah/Asherah and its broader impli-
cations for understanding monarchic religion. This is not the venue for
a thorough review of the epigraphic and philological complexities of
the problem (nor is such a review necessary in light of the literature
available). But the various views may be summarized as follows. The
term refers either to the goddess Asherah, or to a symbol of the goddess
(such as her sacred tree), or to a symbol of Yahweh designated as an
“asherah.” Whatever our understanding of the expression, the implica-
tions are provocative, and have led several scholars to conclude that the
goddess Asherah played some role in Israelite popular religion.”? Some
have concluded on the basis of this evidence that the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud
site is “a half-pagan Israelite temple, where both Baal and Asherah
could be worshipped alongside Yahweh” far from the watchful eye of
the Jerusalem religious establishment.?4 P. K. McCarter has suggested
the “asherah” here is the personification of a cult object as a goddess,
specifically a hypostatic form of Yahweh, and therefore not syncretistic
in the strictest sense.”°
Although the new epigraphic evidence may indicate heterodox ten-
dencies in preexilic Israelite religion, several caveats should be men-
tioned in connection with its interpretation. First, Dever and others
have assumed a close association between the drawings on one of the
Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions and the inscription itself; such an assump-
tion frequently affects the outcome of one’s analysis.”° But several con-
siderations call into question whether the lyre player is related to the in-
scription mentioning the “asherah,” and the drawings may have been
from a different hand and from a different time altogether than the in-
scription.”’

93. Olyan argues that the asherah was acceptable in both northern and southern
kingdoms as a general feature of Israelite religion. Asherah was a native Israelite Yah-
wistic cult object instead of a Jezebel import, since Baal was not associated with Asherah
as consort in Canaanite religion. Asherah became Yahweh's consort by virtue of the iden-
tification of Yahweh and El, and the later Deuteronomistic tradition was the only sector
of Israelite society opposed to the goddess Asherah (Olyan, Asherah, 37).
94. W. G. Dever, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research (Seattle: Uni-
versity of Washington Press, 1990), 148.
95. P.K. McCarter Jr, “Aspects of the Religion of the Israelite Monarchy: Biblical and
Epigraphic Data,” in Ancient Israelite Religion, ed. Miller et al., 147-49.
96. Pithos A portrays a female lyre player, which Dever takes as the goddess Asherah,
even though he admits the linguistic problems of taking “asherah” in the nearby text as
a divine name (Dever, “Asherah, Consort of Yahweh?”). For criticism of this view, see
J. M. Hadley, “Yahweh and ‘His Asherah’: Archaeological and Textual Evidence for the
Cult of the Goddess,” in Ein Gott allein? ed. Dietrich and Klopfenstein, 247.
97. P. Beck, “The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet “Ajrud),” Tel Aviv 9 (1982):
4, 43-47; and Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, 240-41.
Religion in Ancient Israel 413

Second, when analyzing the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions in partic-

ular, one should remember that we are dealing here with graffiti. As
Richard Hess has warned, these inscriptions “may represent the mus-
ings of a semiliterate person as easily as they could represent the work
of a trained scribe.”*8 It is unwarranted, therefore, to extrapolate
from this evidence a view of widespread heterodoxy in ancient Israel-
ite society.
Third, the location of Kuntillet <Ajrud should not be dismissed as in-
significant when interpreting these inscriptions. Its geographical locale
(approximately forty miles south/southwest of Kadesh-barnea) made it
a convenient juncture of three caravan routes through the northern Si-
nai, serving apparently as a military outpost and temporary lodging
place for desert caravaners and other travelers. This is certainly the type
of site where one might expect to find religious syncretism and admix-
tures due to foreign influences. The site probably does not inform us
about the extent of the Judean kingdom during the eighth century, nor
does it illustrate “the dimensions of the official Judean religion,” as Ahl-
strém asserted.”
Fourth, the attention given to these inscriptions has overshadowed
the significance of other archaeological and epigraphical evidence from
the Judean heartland, which supports the view of a widely Yahwistic so-
ciety. Yahweh is by far the most frequently used divine name in Hebrew
preexilic inscriptions, and preexilic Israelite onomastic evidence con-
firms the biblical portrait of the primacy of Yahweh as the sole deity of
Israel.!°° Almost all of these data are from sites near Israelite popula-
tion centers (Lachish, Arad, Megiddo, Samaria, Khirbet Beit Lei, etc.),
rather than from peripheral sites such as Kuntillet <Ajrud.!°! The refer-
ence to Yahweh in the Mesha Inscription also speaks of the predomi-
nant nature of Israelite religion toward the end of the ninth century B.c.
(line 18 refers to “the [ves]sels of Yahweh”). In sum, with regard to the
Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions in particular, one should not accept aber-
rations of classical Yahwism from the fringes of Israelite culture as nor-
mative expressions of preexilic religion.

98. Hess, “Yahweh and His Asherah?” 23.

99. G. W. Ahlstrom, Royal Administration and National Religion in Ancient Palestine,
SHANE 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 43. Ahlstrém goes on to aver: “It can be concluded that
this find corrects the picture of the religious history of Judah as advocated by the later
biblical writers. Their censorship has been broken” (43).
100. Yahwistic names make up 94 percent, and names that are plausibly pagan were
only 6 percent (Tigay, No Other Gods, 15). But many of the plausibly pagan names were
Baal names in the Samaria Ostraca, which would not be unexpected in light of the bibli-
cal evidence.
101. Only the Khirbet el-Q6m inscription is from the heartland of Israelite settle-
ment, a point emphasized by Tigay (“Israelite Religion,” 176).
414 Religion in Ancient Israel

Cult of the Dead

The past decade or so has been a remarkable period of scholarly pro-
ductivity on ancestor worship and cults of the dead in an attempt to
set the biblical evidence in its ancient Near Eastern context.!°
Whereas previous scholarship tended to deny the presence of ances-
tral worship in ancient Israel, it is now generally agreed that norma-
tive Yahwism battled against the practice of necromancy and other
death rituals, such as self-laceration and offerings to deceased ances-
tors.!93 As with such practices in comparable cultures, it is assumed
that Israelite cults of the dead sought to appease the dead or to secure
favors from them.
Ancestor worship in Egypt and Mesopotamia is well attested and was
thought to be an effective way to gain the favor of the dead, who it was
believed could either bestow blessings or act malevolently on behalf of
the living. But the most important comparative material has only come
to light in the last few decades in the newly available material from
Ugarit.!°* The most important of these is a tablet discovered at Ras
Shamra in 1973 and made available to the scholarly community in
1975. Since then it has generated a considerable literature.'°> This text
describes a liturgy of a mortuary ritual invoking the deceased royal an-
cestors to assist in bestowing blessings upon the living king (Ammurapi
III, the last known king of Ugarit).!°° The liturgy is likely the funeral rit-
ual for Ammurapi’s immediate predecessor, Niqmaddu III. The ritual
summons both the rp’m (related to Heb. répaim), the long-dead ances-
tors, and the mlkm (the recently dead rulers) to participate in the ritual.
As with cults of the dead elsewhere in the ancient Near East, this liturgy

102. In addition to the large number of articles, I can cite here only a few of the most
important monographs: T. J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit, HSM
39 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); B. B. Schmidt, Israel's Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult
and Necromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition, FAT 11 (Tiibingen: Mohr,
1994; reprinted, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996); K. Spronk, Beatific Afterlife in
Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East, AOAT 219 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neu-
kirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1986); and somewhat earlier N. J. Tromp, Primitive
Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old Testament, BibOr 21 (Rome: Pontif-
ical Biblical Institute, 1969).
103. Particularly Lewis, Cults of the Dead. See especially his helpful distinction be-
tween the “Yahwism which became normative” and “popular religion” (1-2).
104. Though it should be cautioned that funerary practices and beliefs concerning af-
terlife may have been sui generis for Ugarit compared to the rest of Canaan, as a reassess-
ment of Ugaritic tombs suggests (W. T. Pitard, “The ‘Libation Installations’ of the Tombs
at Ugarit,” BA 57.1 [1994]: 20-37).
105. KTU, 1.161. See W. T. Pitard, “RS 34.126: Notes on the Text,” Maarav 4.1 (1987):
75 n. 2; and now Schmidt, Israel's Beneficent Dead, 101 n. 275.
106. Contra Schmidt, who argues instead that we have here a coronation ritual that
incorporates mourning rites on behalf of Niqmaddu (Israel's Beneficent Dead, 100-120).
Religion in Ancient Israel 415

was intended to provide the deceased with essential services and to se-
cure blessings for the living, and in this case the ritual itself presumably
helped to legitimate the succession.! This text, along with others from
Ugarit, has illuminateda vibrant cult of ancestor worship at Ugarit,
comparable to that in Mesopotamia and Egypt.!°°
A reassessment of the biblical evidence in light of these new data re-
flects a cultural continuity between Israel and its neighbors. Lewis con-
tends that Israelite Yahwism borrowed many Canaanite motifs while
rejecting others. He believes that early Yahwism is difficult to distin-
guish from Canaanite religion. As Yahwism progressed, a normative ex-
pression of Israelite religion emerged, which is reflected in the pro-
phetic and the Deuteronomistic literature. The Yahwism that became
normative consistently condemned ancestor worship and death rituals.
But a strong case can be made based on the texts that ancestor worship
and necromancy continued in certain forms of popular religion. That
vestiges of such rituals persisted in the texts at all (and in some cases,
descriptions comparable to those practices at Ugarit; see 1 Sam. 28)
probably reflects their veracity, since one may assume that prophetic
and Deuteronomistic editors would have sought to expunge them from
the records. Thus the biblical text portrays an ongoing battle through-
out Israel’s history between normative Yahwism and practitioners of
death rituals in the popular religion.!°?

Topics and Suggestions for the Future

Arising from the work done over the past three decades, several topics
demand attention in future research.

The Canaanite Continuum

The modus operandi for most scholars currently working on ancient Is-
rael involves the assumption that earliest Israel was Canaanite in cul-
ture, language, and religion. The continuity versus discontinuity ques-

107. B. A. Levine and J.-M. de Tarragon, “Dead Kings and Rephaim: The Patrons of
the Ugaritic Dynasty,” JAOS 104.4 (1984): 649-59.
108. The new information has also led to a reappraisal of the function of the Semitic
institution known as the marzéah, which has been taken as a feast for and with the de-
parted ancestors. But earlier studies may have gone beyond the evidence, since all that
can be said with certainty is that the marzéah was an organization known for its drinking
festivals, which in some cases came secondarily to be associated with funerary feasts. On
all the pertinent Akkadian and Ugaritic texts, see Lewis, Cults of the Dead, 80-94; idem,
“Banqueting Hall/House,” ABD, 1:581-82; and Schmidt, Israel's Beneficent Dead, 22-23,
62-66, 246-49.
109. See Lewis (Cults of the Dead, 171-81) for this reconstruction.
416 Religion in Ancient Israel

tion must begin and end, ultimately, with Israel’s perceptions of deity.
All other related issues, such as Israel’s view of history,!!° Yahweh’s re-
lationship to the cycle of nature,'!' or his sexuality and relationship to
Canaanite fertility rites,!!? must begin with the basic paradigm of Is-
rael’s unique monotheism. This is necessary particularly in light of Is-
rael’s many self-claims to distinctiveness, self-claims that are promi-
nent in the text of the Old Testament itself and that are clearly centered
in its special relationship to its God.'!? Peter Machinist has recently
called us to look not for a list of individual “pure traits” to prove the dis-
tinctiveness of a given culture but for “configurations of traits” that il-
lustrate how that culture magnified certain ancient Near Eastern fea-
tures while obliterating others.''*
Cross and others have demonstrated the high degree of religious
continuity between Canaan and Israel, and the Israelite tendency to-
ward syncretism. Research during the closing decades of the twentieth
century has offered a corrective to the earlier convictions of scholars
in the biblical theology movement who stressed the radical unique-
ness of Israel (particularly G. Ernest Wright and Yehezkel Kaufmann).
But our growing understanding of the continuity has overshadowed
some of the valid observations made by previous scholarship. There
can be no question that Israel shared much with its Canaanite fore-
bears, such as its understanding of the kind creator God (El), and of
Yahweh as God of the storm, provider of rain and fertility, and God of
war (Baal), not to mention the common agricultural-religious festivals
and temple pattern. But during this corrective period, the pendulum
has swung too far to the opposite extreme. As with the pendulum,
which spends more time in the middle, so the truth lies somewhere be-
tween these extremes.

110. B. Albrektson, History and the Gods: An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as
Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and in Israel, ConBOT 1 (Lund: Gleerup,
1967); B. T. Arnold, “The Weidner Chronicle and the Idea of History in Israel and Meso-
potamia,” in Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near East-
ern Context, ed. A. R. Millard, J. K. Hoffmeier, and D. W. Baker (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1994), 129-48.
111. G. Fohrer, History of
Israelite Religion, trans. D. E. Green (Nashville: Abingdon,
1972), 101-6.
112. T. C. Vriezen, The Religion of Ancient Israel, trans. H. Hoskins (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1967), 73.
113. P. Machinist, “The Question of Distinctiveness in Ancient Israel: An Essay,” in
Ah, Assyria... : Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Pre-
sented to Hayim Tadmor, ed. M. Cogan and I. Eph?al (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), 196-212.
114. Ibid., 200. Lewis has recently argued that Israel's unique cultural configuration
included among others: monotheism, aniconism, the extension of divine-human treaties
into a pervasive “covenant theology,” and the absence of sex and death associated with
depictions of Yahweh (Lewis, “Divine Images and Aniconism,” 53).
Religion in Ancient Israel 417

Attention to Ancient Near Eastern Sources

The period under consideration here has witnessed the discovery of
Ebla, Emar, and several smaller finds, all having a bearing on Old Tes-
tament research. The texts from Emar may be particularly illuminating
for the study of ancient Israelite history and religion, since the Late
Bronze Age site on the Middle Euphrates was pulled and pushed by
both city-state cultures and tribally organized societies, and thus pre-
sents a close sociocultural match for ancient Israel.!'!* Emar texts and
recently published texts from Mari have already provided the first
known cognate to the Hebrew word for “prophet” (nabi?).'!® Moreover,
Emar’s ritual texts broaden our understanding of Syrian religion in a
way that may eventually transcend the value of the Ugaritic texts for
biblical studies, not only because they reveal a mixed urban and small-
town Syrian community, but also because Emar was distinctly West
Semitic but not Canaanite, and therefore portrays a more nuanced pic-
ture of Syrian culture and religion.'!” In addition to new finds, scholars
working on the history of Israelite religion have benefited from a reeval-
uation of previously published material from the ancient Orient, espe-
cially Ugarit and Mari.
We have every indication that further work on the comparative ma-
terials will bear rich fruit on investigations of Israelite religion. Surely
the way to progress in the endeavor is to continue to pursue compara-
tive ancient Near Eastern religions, not simply in an effort to find par-
allels, but in order to illuminate the unique convergence of features that
constituted ancient Israel’s religion. The warnings of Benno Lands-
berger can help us avoid the dangers of parallelomania on the one
hand, and on the other hand, the call of Westermann and Hallo can and
must provide the parameters for a genuinely productive comparative
approach.!!® Any future constructions of ancient Israel’s religion that

115. D. E. Fleming, “More Help from Syria: Introducing Emar to Biblical Study,” BA
58.3 (1995): 139-47.
116. D. E. Fleming, “Nab@ and Munabbiatu: Two New Syrian Religious Personnel,”
JAOS 113.2 (1993): 175-83; idem, “The Etymological Origins of the Hebrew nabi?: The
One Who Invokes God,” CBQ 55 (1993): 217-24.
117. D. E. Fleming, The Installation of Baal’s High Priestess at Emar: A Window on An-
cient Syrian Religion, HSS 42 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 1.
118. B. Landsberger, The Conceptual Autonomy of the Babylonian World, trans. T. Ja-
cobsen et al., Monographs on the Ancient Near East 1.4 (Malibu: Undena, 1976), origi-
nally published as “Die Eigenbegrifflichkeit der babylonischen Welt,” Islamica 2 (1926):
355-72; C. Westermann, “Das Verhaltnis des Jahweglaubens zu den ausser-israelitischen
Religionen,” in Forschung am Alten Testament, TBti 24 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1964), 189-
218; idem, “Sinn und Grenze religionsgeschichtliche Parallelen,” in Forschung am Alten
Testament, vol. 2, TBii 55 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1974), 84-95; W. W. Hallo, “Biblical His-
tory in Its Near Eastern Setting: The Contextual Approach,” in Scripture in Context:
418 Religion in Ancient Israel

deserve our attention must consider the ancient Near Eastern milieu
from which it emerged. The benefits of such comparisons go beyond
simply showing how Israel was similar to Mesopotamian, Egyptian, or
Syro-Palestinian religion. The importance of this approach is to dem-
onstrate how Israel shared with, borrowed from, and reacted against its
cultural contemporaries. This total picture will continue to illumine
and frame our understanding of Israel’s God and the cultic expressions
of its relationship with him.

Clarification of the Relationship to Old Testament Theology

The problem of how to define the precise relationship between the his-
tory of Israelite religion and the discipline of Old Testament theology
continues to plague both endeavors. The question has occupied biblical
theologians since the time of J. P. Gabler,!!? and is evident in the mon-
umental work of Gerhard von Rad, who began his Old Testament The-
ology with a 100-page study of the early history of Israelite faith.!?° But
his approach creates a tension in his work, since it is unclear exactly
how this introduction is related to his theological exposition. Erhard
Gerstenberger’s recent attempt to hold the disciplines together by
means of leaping to a pluralistic divine reality is untenable. He wants to
abandon all claims of absolute, timeless truth, valid through the ages,
and accept individual theological configurations of different groups as
“road signs to the Absolute.”!?!
Now that the history of religion has been revived, the problem has
become more acute, since now the two disciplines must forge a symbi-
osis. Some have called for a radical bifurcation, a parting of the ways.!?7
But one suspects that these scholars assume a level of objectivity for the

Essays on the Comparative Method, ed. C. D. Evans, W. W. Hallo, and J. B. White, PTMS
34 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1980), 1-26; see also S. Talmon, “The ‘Comparative Method’ in
Biblical Interpretation—Principles and Problems,” Congress Volume: Gottingen, 1977,
VTSup 29 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 320-56.
119. J. P. Gabler, “An Oration on the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dog-
matic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each,” in The Flowering of Old Testament
Theology: A Reader in Twentieth-Century Old Testament Theology, 1930-1990, ed. B. C. Ol-
lenburger, E. A. Martens, and G. F. Hasel, SBTS 1 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1992), 489-502.
120. “A History of Jahwism and of the Sacral Institutions in Israel in Outline,” in Old
Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962-65),
1:3-102. See also R. W. L. Moberly’s discussion of this problem in chap. 16 of the present
volume and the summary in Albertz, History ofIsraelite Religion, 1:2-12.
121. Gerstenberger, “Religion and Institutions of Ancient Israel,” 274.
122. Of the many examples, see recently W. G. Dever, “‘Will the Real Israel Please
Stand Up?’: Archaeology and Israelite Historiography: Part I,” BASOR 297 (1995): 61-80,
esp. 73-74.
Religion in Ancient Israel 419

historian that is unattainable in reality (as opposed to the subjectivity

of the theologian, which they see as undesirable and unavoidable). The
problems are complex, and I do not presume to offer a solution here.
But I do offer a few observations that may provide a framework for
work in the future. The much discussed question whether Old Testa-
ment theology ought to be purely descriptive or whether it ought in
some way to make statements of faith need not cripple progress in ei-
ther discipline. In a debate of the 1920s, Otto Eissfeldt argued for a
sharp distinction between the history of Israelite religion and Old Tes-
tament theology. But Walther Eichrodt emphasized the theological
character of historical investigation, choosing rather to expose the
“subjective moment” as the epistemological problem of historical re-
search.!*3 Eichrodt critiqued historicism’s mistake: the assumption
that we can move from historical-empirical means to norms or univer-
sally valid propositions. Similarly, positivism errs in assuming that a
particular discipline can renounce all philosophical grounding, and in-
deed must do so if it is to be “objective.” Instead, Eichrodt encouraged
scholars to embrace their guiding conceptions with methodological
self-consciousness, and “not to set to work in the cheery optimism of
absolute objectivity.”
!74
Neither discipline, then, can be thoroughly descriptive. The history
of Israelite religion will be primarily a historical endeavor, engaged in
analysis of texts in light of archaeological, iconographical, and epi-
graphical materials from ancient Israel and surrounding cultures. It is
possible, at least to some extent, to pursue this line of investigation in-
dependent of faith-based theological interests. Yet the historian of Is-
rael’s religion who believes himself or herself to be independently de-
scriptive is misguided, and Eichrodt’s warnings about “historicism”
and “positivism” are apropos. To be independent of faith-based inter-
ests is not to be free of all metaphysical or theoretical presuppositions!
On the other hand, the Old Testament theologian is engaged in analysis
of the text as well, not so much in the light of archaeology, iconography,
and epigraphy but in the light of other texts. And like the historian, the
theologian can never be entirely descriptive. In my estimation, the dif-
ference is that the biblical theologian should not be independent of his-
torical research, as the historian may endeavor to be independent of the

123. See now the translations of their articles by B. C. Ollenburger in Flowering of Old
Testament Theology, ed. Ollenburger, Martens, and Hasel: O. Eissfeldt, “The History of Is-
raelite-Jewish Religion and Old Testament Theology,” 20-29; and W. Eichrodt, “Does Old
Testament Theology Still Have Independent Significance within Old Testament Scholar
ship?” 30-39.
124. Eichrodt, “Does Old Testament Theology Still Have Independent Signifi-
cance?” 34.
420 Religion in Ancient Israel

theological. The theologian must work with the data and explorations
of the more non-theological discipline. But the warning of Eichrodt is
pertinent for both. The purely objective and unbiased scholar, free from
all beguiling preconceptions, is a figment of our scientific age and an
unrealistic goal for modern scholars.
A major difference between these disciplines, then, is that Old Testa-
ment theology is largely canonical in its approach, which marks it as
distinct from the history of Israel’s religion. The former is concerned
not with discontinuity in the text, but with exegeting the meaning of
that discontinuity and applying it to the larger canonical context.!?°
Biblical theology, in the main, accepts the received canon of the church
and often plays a role in confessional communities and may thus have
direct impact on the modern church. The history of religion also should
have an impact, but secondarily so, as prolegomenon to and partner in
the exegetical analysis of the text.

125. Sailhamer has recently argued for (and illustrated) a diachronic, confessional,
and canonical approach to the text: J. H. Sailhamer, Introduction to Old Testament Theol-
ogy: A Canonical Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995),
 ey
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds
Applying the Social Sciences to Hebrew Scripture

Charles E. Carter

Since the rise of critical scholarship in the period of the Enlightenment,

scholars have approached the biblical texts from a humanities perspec-
tive.! Typical of all scholarship, whatever its theological presupposi-
tions, have been analyses of the historical, linguistic, religious, and lit-
erary contexts of ancient Israel. What was often missing, however, was
an analysis of Israelite culture in its social contexts, an assessment of its
beliefs, social structures, and institutions from the perspective of the so-
cial sciences. Despite a few forays of anthropologists and sociologists
into biblical studies, social science approaches remained peripheral to
biblical studies until the last three decades. Yet, Scripture itself contains
several “proto-sociological” observations, clues to the social signifi-
cance of rituals or institutions. When the writer of the Holiness Code
equates Yahweh’s command for ritual purity with the proscription for
ethnic purity, he is touching on the social significance for religious and
social boundaries (Lev. 20:22-26).? Likewise, the Deuteronomic histo-

1. See N. K. Gottwald’s evaluation in “Domain Assumptions and Societal Models in

the Study of Pre-Monarchic Israel,” in Congress Volume: Edinburgh, 1974, VTSup 28
(Leiden: Brill, 1975), 89-100; idem, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of
Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.c.£. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979), 5-22; idem, “Sociology
of Ancient Israel,” ABD, 6:79-89; and idem, “Reconstructing the Social History of Early
Israel,” EJ 24 (1993): 77*-82*.
2. See C. E. Carter, “Purity and Distinction in Leviticus 20:22-26” (paper presented at
the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Washington, D.C., November
1993), available online at http://www.BiblicalResource.com/papers/Leviticus. See M.
Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966). See also D. Smith-Christopher, “The Mixed Marriage

421
422 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

rian comments on the shifting role and function of prophets in his par-
enthetic statement that prophets were formerly called “seers” and “men
of God” (1 Sam. 9:8-9). Provisional observations of this type are also
found in classical texts, with some scholars identifying Herodotus and
others Plato or Aristotle as the first “sociologist”;? early rabbinic texts
often explore the social function of customs from ancient Israel’s and
their own cultures.4 Even so, however, these sociological observations
tended to be peripheral, subjugated to the overarching religious or theo-
logical interpretation of Israelite and Jewish texts.
In the rest of this chapter, I provide a brief historical account of the
emergence of the social sciences and their subsequent application to
biblical cultures and then assess the contributions of this emerging
field of study to knowledge of the biblical world. I conclude with an
analysis of the points of concern evangelicals may raise regarding its
application to Scripture and a discussion of the appropriate methods
for using the social sciences to study the warp and woof of Israelite life.

The Emergence of the Social Sciences

With its perspectives rooted in the priority of human reason over reve-
lation and the empirical analysis of experience, the Enlightenment is
generally seen as having provided the impetus for the social and behav-
ioral sciences to develop.* Philosophical treatises by Hobbes, Locke,
Mill, and other Enlightenment thinkers proposed that human societies
possessed certain common elements and that all societies exist on.a

Crisis in Ezra 9-10 and Nehemiah 13: A Study of the Sociology of the Post-Exilic Judaean
Community,” in Second Temple Studies, vol. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Pe-
riod, ed. T. C. Eskenazi and K. H. Richards, JsOTSup 175 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1994), 242-65.
3. D.C. Benjamin and V. H. Matthews, “Social Sciences and Biblical Studies,” Semeia
68 (1994): 14; see also G. Lenski and J. Lenski, Human Societies: An Introduction to Mac-
rosociology, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 24.
4. See the helpful study of R. R. Wilson, Sociology and the Old Testament (Philadel-
phia: Fortress, 1979), 10.
5. The social and behavioral sciences refer to anthropology, sociology, political sci-
ence, archaeology, economics, psychology, and the study of the behavioral aspects of cul-
tural anthropology, social psychology, and biology. The term used for all of these studies
before the 1950s was the social sciences; after 1950, the behavioral sciences came to be
preferred, though the terms are still often used synonymously. For a more complete dis-
cussion of the rise and context of the social sciences, see my article, “A Discipline in Tran-
sition: The Contributions of the Social Sciences to the Study of the Hebrew Bible,” in
Community, Identity, and Ideology: Social Science Approaches to the Hebrew Bible, ed.
C. E. Carter and C. L. Meyers (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 3-39. For an ex-
haustive treatment of the role of the Enlightenment in the emergence of the social sci-
ences, see also M. Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Cul-
ture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 423

continuum of social complexity. These ideas formed the foundation for

both sociology and anthropology, viewing societies from a common,
humanist perspective and providing a basis for the comparative analy-
sis of human culture and its institutions.
Many of the seminal scholars within the social sciences—from Toén-
nies and Spencer to W. Robertson Smith, Durkheim, and Weber—de-
veloped these ideas into the two related disciplines of anthropology and
sociology.® Several distinct lines of social analysis have emerged in the
last century. These are typically categorized as the conflict tradition, the
structural-functional approach, the idealist perspective, and the mate-
rialist perspective. The conflict model of analysis examines the way that
societies and social entities respond to the influences of internal or ex-
ternal social, economic, military, and political pressures. It explores the
strategies of these sometimes competing groups as they respond to each
other's concerns, their attempts to assert their own influence and to le-
gitimate their interests. It is concerned with the way in which societies
achieve balance in the face of the flux that often results from the inter-
relationship of groups with competing interests. When societies fail to
achieve balance they may instead weaken and ultimately implode.’
In contrast to the conflict tradition, the structural-functional ap-
proach emphasizes the basic unity that exists within societies. While it
does not deny the existence of conflict and competing ideologies within
a particular society, it suggests that even in the face of these tensions,
balance is achieved by consensus rather than being imposed. The struc-
tural-functional approach emerged as an alternative to the naively evo-
lutionary and deterministic perspective that was introduced by Spencer
and that dominated the social sciences for nearly a century. It grew out
of the French structuralist school that traces itself to Durkheim, and
has been the most prominent method of inquiry in European and
American sociology since the 1950s. As its name implies, it commonly
examines the structure and function of both institutions and ideologies
within societies as well as the complex relationships and interrelation-
ships that result from their interaction.’

6. Articles by M. Weber, A. Causse, and W. R. Smith appear in Community, Identity,

and Ideology, 40-118. For an in-depth analysis of the growth of the social sciences and
their use in the study of the Hebrew Bible, see A. D. H. Mayes, The Old Testament in So-
ciological Perspective (London: Pickering, 1989).
7. Fora discussion of the conflict model, see B. Malina, “The Social Sciences and Bib-
lical Interpretation,” Int 37 (1982): 229-42, esp. 233-35; and Mayes, Old Testament in So-
ciological Perspective, 18-27 and 36-77.
8. On the structural-functional approach, see Malina, “Social Sciences and Biblical
Interpretation,” 233-35; Lenski and Lenski, Human Societies, 25-26; Mayes, Old Testa-
ment in Sociological Perspective, 27-35 and 78-117; and Harris, Rise of Anthropological
Theory, 468-74 and 514-28.
424 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

The materialist perspective (often referred to as cultural materialism)

is frequently associated with the theory of Marx and is typically con-
trasted with the idealist orientation.? Both approaches agree on the
power of social, religious, and political ideologies. They differ, however,
on the origin of these ideologies, the factors that make them effective,
and their role in cultural change. The materialist viewpoint posits that
the physical realities of a culture give rise to the ideologies whereas the
idealist perspective emphasizes the impact of ideologies on particular
social structures. A good example of these approaches concerns the
emergence and significance of the Israelite dietary laws. Marvin Harris,
writing from a materialist orientation, maintains that the pork taboo re-
sulted from the economic and environmental constraints of Syria-Pales-
tine. Pigs, he suggests, compete with humans for natural resources such
as water, food, and shade. The costs—both economic and in terms of
human capital—were too great for both pigs and humans to flourish
concurrently in this environment with its limited resources. Thus pork
taboo emerged in order to protect human culture and ensure its survival.
Mary Douglas, writing from an idealist perspective, claims that the
dietary restrictions come instead from a more comprehensive concept
of order and purity. In her view, many of the Priestly writings establish
categories of “normalcy”; any animal or practice that violates that nor-
mal order is considered out of place and therefore unclean.!° While it is
true that much, if not most, sociological theory is idealist in nature,'!
what is often overlooked is that some of the early anthropological and
sociological theorists recognized the effect of material realities in the
development of social structures, cultural practices, and ideology. Thus
W. Robertson Smith called attention to the materialist origin and sig-
nificance of rituals; and L. Wallis and A. Causse independently argued
that the prophetic emphasis on social justice was rooted in class divi-
sions, in the material effects of oppression.!?

9. The term cultural materialism was introduced by M. Harris and subsequently

adapted by biblical scholars and Syro-Palestinian archaeologists. See Harris’s work, Cul-
tural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (New York: Vintage, 1980).
10. See the selections by Harris(135-51) and Douglas (119-34) on this topic in Com-
munity, Identity, and Ideology.
11. G. Herion, “The Impact of Modern and Social Science Assumptions on the Recon-
struction of Israelite History,” JSOT 34 (1986): 3-33; reprinted in Community, Identity,
and Ideology, 230-57.
12. W.R. Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series: The Fundamental
Institutions (Edinburgh: Black, 1889), 437ff. See the discussion in my “Discipline in Tran-
sition,” 13-15; and T. O. Beidelman, W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Reli-
gion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 56-57. See L. Wallis, “Sociological Sig-
nificance of the Bible,” American Journal of Sociology 12 (1907): 532-52; and A. Causse, Les
“pauvres” d'Israél: Prophétes, psalmistes, messianistes (Strasbourg: Librairie Istra, 1922).
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 425

Sociology and the Hebrew Bible: A Brief Overview

The most influential work of the twentieth century on the social setting
of ancient Israel is without question Max Weber’s Ancient Judaism.'3 A
cursory look at his analysis of ancient Israel demonstrates its impact
even on the most recent social science studies of the Hebrew Bible. His
understanding of the covenant and its centrality to ancient Israel’s so-
cial and religious formation, his analysis of the social structure of Is-
rael—based on the bét ab, mispahd, and sebet—his assessment of Yah-
weh as a war deity, his analysis of the role of law and the social context
of the Levites, his description of the judges as charismatic leaders, his
analysis of the origin and growth of the prophetic tradition, and his
treatment of the origins of sectarian Judaism continue to be discussed,
even when newer data require that his ideas be revised. Weber’s studies
embody the conflict tradition within sociology; biblical scholars whose
work follows this general tradition include G. Mendenhall’s peasant re-
volt model of Israelite origins and B. Lang’s Monotheism and the Pro-
phetic Minority.'*
Antonin Causse analyzed Israelite society through the lens of the
French sociological school and its most prominent thinkers, Emile
Durkheim and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl.!° He consciously applied to ancient
Israel Durkheim’s notion of “group mentality” and Lévy-Bruhl’s notion
of the development of human consciousness from a primitive, collec-
tive phase to a logical, individualistic phase.!° Causse’s analyses of Is-
rael were published initially in a series of articles in the Revue d'histoire
et de philosophie religeuses, but then revised and collected into several

13. Published initially as a series of essays in the journal Archiv ftir Sozialwissenschaft
und Sozialforschung (1917-1919), the work was edited by his wife and published posthu-
mously as Das antike Judentum in 1921. See H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale, eds. and
trans., “Preface,” in Ancient Judaism (Glencoe, IIl.: Free Press, 1952), ix.
14. G. Mendenhall, “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine,’ BA 25 (1962): 66-87; re-
printed in Community, Identity, and Ideology, ed. Carter and Meyers, 152-69. B. Lang,
Monotheism and the Prophetic Minority: An Essay in Biblical History and Sociology,
SWBAS 1 (Sheffield: Almond, 1983).
15. For a complete discussion of Causse’s thought and significance, see S. T. Kim-
brough Jr., “A Non-Weberian Sociological Approach to Israelite Religion,” JNES 31
(1972): 197-202; idem, Israelite Religion in Sociological Perspective: The Work of Antonin
Causse, Studies in Oriental Religions 4 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1978); Mayes, Old Tes-
tament in Sociological Perspective, 78-87.
16. Causse’s reliance on Lévy-Bruhl’s categories is generally seen as his greatest weak-
ness. “His adherence to the categories of pre-logical and logical thinking, which allowed
him to state a development from a primitive collectivism binding together worshippers
and their God into a ritual community, to an individual rationalism, went beyond what
Durkheim considered the proper task of sociology. Moreover, it reflected an understand-
ing of the nature of human thinking which was quickly shown to be inappropriate, at
least for ancient Israel” (Mayes, Old Testament in Sociological Perspective, 87).
426 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

books.!7 Although his work is not as widely known as Weber's, it is no

less insightful; and though many of the scholars who have commented
on his work have considered it “Weberian” in outlook and perspec-
tive,!8 his writings instead exemplify the structural-functional ap-
proach to sociology.
In Causse’s analysis, a communal, primitive stage is characteristic of
the tribal period, with its emphasis on kinship and family bonds, and
relates to Durkheim’s concept of “organic solidarity.” As Israelite soci-
ety became more complex not only did these social bonds lose signifi-
cance, but the class distinction and social stratification of the monar-
chy weakened the earlier social unity. Urban centers increased in power
and importance, usurping the role of villages and their ruling struc-
tures. Causse held that during this phase, and under the impetus of the
prophetic movement, a shift began toward a more individualistic men-
tality. The influence of the earlier corporate solidarity could still be seen
in the moralizing tone of the Deuteronomic History and the judgment
oracles of the eighth-century B.c. prophets. With Ezekiel and the exilic
prophets, however, a new notion emerges: the responsibility of the in-
dividual for his or her own actions. This shift toward individualism is
completed with the emergence of sectarian Judaism in the late fifth and
early fourth centuries B.c.!?
The sociological perspective came to the fore once again in the work
of George Mendenhall and Norman K. Gottwald. Though they ap-
proach ancient Israel very differently in the details of their scholarship,
both raise significant methodological questions, both challenge the as-
sumptions that had previously dominated biblical scholarship, and
both agree that biblical Israel can be understood fully only when one
analyzes its social setting. Mendenhall’s initial contribution concerns
the question of Israel’s emergence in Palestine and the role of Yahwism

17. See his Les “pauvres” d'Israél; idem, Les dispersés d'Israél: Les origines de la di-
aspora et son réle dans la formation du Judaisme (Paris: Alcan, 1929); and his most im-
portant work, Du groupe ethnique a la communauté religieuse: Le probléme sociologique
de la religion d'Israél (Paris: Alcan, 1937).
18. According to Kimbrough, no less a scholar than W. F. Albright considered Weber
to have been the source of Causse’s biblical sociology (“Non-Weberian Sociological Ap-
proach,” 199, 202).
19. Causse’s “From an Ethnic Group to a Religious Community: The Sociological
Problem of Judaism,” is reproduced in Community, Identity, and Ideology, 95-118; see
also Mayes, Old Testament in Sociological Perspective, 85-86. The number of scholars who
have followed Causse and applied an even more rigorous structural-functional approach
to the Hebrew Bible is impressive. To Causse, one can add N. K. Gottwald’s groundbreak-
ing work, The Tribes of Yahweh; R. R. Wilson's Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Phil-
adelphia: Fortress, 1980); and F. Frick’s The Formation ofthe State in Ancient Israel: A Sur-
vey of Models and Theories, SWBAS 4 (Decatur, Ga.: Almond, 1985).
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 427

as a cultural tradition that gave the newly formed Israel its social and
religious coherence. He questions the validity of using a nineteenth-
century model of Bedouin culture as a model for Israelite society; he
shows that the notion of the tribe had been poorly defined in previous
research, which had not approached tribal structure from a social sci-
ence perspective; he suggests that Israel’s emergence was a complex so-
cial process that originated from Canaanite unrest, as demonstrated in
the Amarna Letters, and converged as the Gpiru joined with the band
of slaves who had escaped Egyptian oppression under Moses’ leader-
ship. In his view, both the Moses group and the Canaanite peasants
along with the apiru shared a common identity when they adopted
Yahwism as a religious tradition and rejected enslavement and oppres-
sion. But Mendenhall’s contribution goes far beyond his programmatic
“peasant revolt model” of Israelite origins. He develops Weber’s con-
cept of the covenantal community as the basis for Israelite unity and
studies the social and religious context of law.
Gottwald accepts the basic outline of Mendenhall’s peasant revolt
model, but approaches earliest Israel from a materialist rather than an
idealist perspective. Gottwald’s groundbreaking study on “Domain As-
sumptions and Societal Models” also critiques the basic working as-
sumptions of biblical scholars, as well as what he refers to as the “hu-
manist” approach rooted in linguistics, theology, and literary and
historical studies. He identifies three assumptions that have formed the
basis of theories on Israel’s emergence: that social change results pri-
marily from population displacement, originates from the desert re-
gions, and is idiosyncratic or arbitrary. He suggests instead that social
change is a normal, internal process, that the desert cultures had a min-
imal influence on this change, and that such change is multifaceted and
complex. Gottwald’s critique anticipated a major change in both bibli-
cal archaeology and anthropology. In questioning these ruling assump-
tions and replacing them with ones that define social change in more
broadly based and nuanced ways, he places a greater emphasis on in-
digenous developments and views Israelite culture and cultural change
from a more systemic and holistic viewpoint.
Mendenhall and Gottwald have been both roundly criticized and
widely praised for their pioneering work. Both, for example, have been
criticized for lacking sophistication on the one hand, and for being too
comprehensive on the other.”° Gottwald’s Tribes of Yahweh has been al-
Peake
20. Both criticisms can be found in N. P. Lemche’s “On the Use of ‘Systems Theory,’
‘Macro Theories,’ and ‘Evolutionistic Thinking,” SJOT 2 (1990): 73-88, and in his longer
work, Early Israel and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the Monarchy
(Leiden: Brill, 1985).
428 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

ternately dismissed as “the worst of arm-chair sociology”?! and com-

pared to Julius Wellhausen’s Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Is-
rael and W. F. Albright’s From the Stone Age to Christianity in its
potential impact on the field of biblical studies.’* If there is a major
weakness in Gottwald’s early work, one particularly demonstrated in
Tribes, it is his personal commitment to a Marxist dialectic. The cul-
tural materialist perspective at times seems to be forced upon Israelite
tradition, causing him to draw conclusions that the data do not neces-
sarily warrant. For example, while it is true that “only as the full mate-
riality of ancient Israel is more securely grasped will we be able to make
proper sense of its spirituality,”*> Gottwald is clearly off the mark when
he interprets Israelite literacy as a social tool designed to celebrate its
difference from the Canaanite context from which it emerged.*4 In-
stead, writing is a tool intended to encourage social order and to control
access to goods and resources; as such, it promotes social control rather
than independence. Similarly, Gottwald may be correct in observing
that a critical element of premonarchic Israel is its egalitarian (and he
would add, “anti-statist”) ideology. But he may be criticized for being
inconsistent in applying his materialist model to biblical Israel. It is
more likely that any egalitarianism that may have existed in tribal Israel
was due to the social realities from which Israel emerged. The earliest
settlements in the hill country are characterized by crude pottery and
architectural traditions and a subsistence economy with little, if any,
surplus. Societies with these features tend to be egalitarian by nature,
since stratification tends to occur only when a substantial surplus is
produced.”° A commitment to egalitarianism, and possible legitimiza-
tion of it in Yahwistic religion, would probably have been secondary
and socially influenced.

Toward a Sociology of Biblical Israel

As the interest in applying the social sciences to the biblical world has
increased over the last thirty years, several distinct areas of interest
have emerged. Since many different scholars apply different models

21. A. Rainey’s acerbic review of Tribes in JAOS 107 (1987): 541-43.

22. W. Brueggemann, “The Tribes of Yahweh: An Essay Review,’ JAAR 48 (1980):
441-51.
23. Gottwald, Tribes, xxv.
24. Ibid., 409.
25. G. Lenski, Power and Privilege (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), discusses the in-
fluence of economic surplus on social stratification. In particular note chap. 3, “The Dy-
namics of Distributive Systems,” and chap. 4, “The Structure of Distributive Systems,”
43-93,
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 429

and approaches to the biblical data and to these interests, it may be

helpful to frame the following discussion in terms of a few fundamental
questions and then to present some of the basic answers they have re-
ceived. These central questions include, but are not limited to, the fol-
lowing: What social forces led to the emergence of Israel in Palestine’s
central hill country and what was the shape of Israelite society during
this time period? What led to the emergence of a monarchy from a
loosely federated group of tribes? How should one define the role and
function of Israelite prophecy? To what degree is it possible to recover
the role and place of women within Israelite society—both its sanc-
tioned and suppressed forms? What is the social function of the biblical
traditions and to what degree do they reflect the real versus the ideal Is-
rael? To what degree do changes in the social fabric after the exile affect
the concept of a “divinely chosen” community called “Israel” and how
do those changes affect emergent Judaism? Perhaps most fundamen-
tally, what social models are appropriate analogs for biblical Israel, and
how should these models be applied?

The Origins of Israel and Development of the Monarchy

Since the initial question that Mendenhall and Gottwald addressed was
Israel’s emergence, it is no surprise that this question has evoked the
most discussion in the recent social science analysis of biblical cultures.
What is surprising, however, is that even now no consensus has been
reached. Albright’s “conquest model,” which closely parallels the bibli-
cal traditions of the Book of Judges, has been largely abandoned in the
scholarly world. The peaceful infiltration and the peasant revolt theo-
ries remain the most widely held theories that account for the Israelite
settlement. Both seek to combine archaeological, biblical, and extra-
biblical textual data to achieve a comprehensive picture of nascent Is-
rael, but both have radically different points of departure. The peaceful
infiltration theory, most recently revised by Israel Finkelstein,?° main-
tains that the Israelites entered the central hills from Transjordan,
abandoning a seminomadic lifestyle in favor of a sedentary existence.
The model remains heavily influenced by analogs from Bedouin and
other seminomadic cultures. The peasant revolt theory suggests that
the earliest Israelites were in effect disillusioned Canaanites, who either
rebelled against or withdrew from a stratified, oppressive Canaanite
city-state system that is reflected in the Amarna Letters and in the ar-
chaeological record of Syria-Palestine. Essentially, these Canaanites

26. The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society,
1988).
430 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

“retribalized’”—that is, they left a more developed social setting of the

city-state for a more open tribal system.
Several refinements of the basic peasant revolt model have been pro-
posed. Attempting to merge both Mendenhall’s and Gottwald’s theories,
Marvin Chaney has reexamined the Amarna correspondence as a social
indicator and seeks to harmonize archaeological data and the unrest
documented in the Amarna Letters with the traditions of Joshua and
Judges. What emerges from his study is a more comprehensive portrait
of both biblical and social worlds. Gerhard Lenski, a sociologist who cri-
tiques Gottwald’s work, suggests that Gottwald’s reconstruction of Isra-
elite society fails to answer a more basic question.?’ Lenski maintains
that while peasant unrest and even revolts are common in agrarian and
semifeudal societies, they are seldom successful. Given this typical fail-
ure of peasant revolts, he suggests that more fundamental questions for
biblical sociologists are: Why did this revolt succeed? and Why did a
monarchy replace the more egalitarian tribal social organization so
quickly? Lenski contends that a social model that more directly answers
both questions is the “frontier model.” In this model, a republican orga-
nization—which tribal Israel loosely embodies—is typically replaced by
a more centralized monarchic structure, as is the case in Israel.?®
Several scholars have analyzed the nature of Israelite society in the
premonarchic period and the forces that led toward the monarchy.
Abraham Malamat applied Max Weber’s notion of the ideal type and
the various stages of social development to the “judges.” According to
Weber, societies typically progress from ad hoc to institutional forms of
leadership. Weber referred to this process as the “routinization” of au-
thority, and suggested that such authority begins in a “charismatic”
phase in which leaders arise in times of social duress; these leaders
function for a limited time and for a specific purpose. Often, however,
the position of the charismatic leader becomes “routinized” as the po-
sition that was originally spontaneous and centered around the leader
becomes part of the social fabric. Weber refers to this as the “rational”
phase of leadership. Malamat identifies Israel’s “judges” as charismatic
leaders and suggests that the Philistine threat produced the necessary
impetus for the charismatic phase to end and the monarchy, a routin-
ized, rational institution, to emerge.

27. Review of Gottwald’s Tribes of Yahweh in RelSRev 53 (1980): 275-78.

28. Gottwald answers Lenski’s observations in “Two Models for the Origins of Ancient
Israel: Social Revolution or Frontier Development,” in The Quest for the Kingdom of God:
Studies in Honor of George E. Mendenhall, ed. H. B. Huffmon et al. (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1983), 5-24, I have developed the frontier model further in an unpublished
manuscript, “The Emerging Frontier in the Highlands of Canaan: New Models for an Old
Problem,” available online at http:/Awww.BiblicalResource.com/papers/Frontier.
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 431

In the years following Malamat’s study, several scholars have applied

a different model to the social setting of the “tribal period” and the de-
velopment of the monarchy. The studies of Frank Frick, James Flana-
gan, Israel Finkelstein, and Robert Coote and Keith Whitelam have
contributed to the emergence of a new consensus. All identify this pe-
riod as a chiefdom, a type of society that frequently precedes a monar-
chy or centralized form of government in social development.” Several
elements unify these studies. They all are rooted in anthropological
and/or macrosociological theory, they all make significant use of ar-
chaeological data, and they all agree that such external data provide a
more accurate portrait of such a dramatic change than does the Philis-
tine threat model that relies rather uncritically on the biblical narra-
tives in Judges and 1 Samuel. This marks a significant departure from
previous scholarship. It recognizes that the perspective of the biblical
writers was not sociological but theological/ideological and maintains
that in order fully to understand the social development of ancient Is-
rael one can profit from applying models of social development from
the social sciences to the biblical data. This perspective, and this use of
models from other cultures, unites virtually all social science criticism
of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Each of these studies concentrates on different elements of chief-
doms. Flanagan directly applies to ancient Israel the theory of social
evolution initially developed by Elman Service. He suggests that Israel
evolved from a tribal or segmented society, to a chiefdom, and finally
to a monarchy. He identifies the rule of Saul, and then of David, as
chiefdoms. In a subsequent study, he analyzes the forces that led to a
full-fledged monarchy, employing the notion of a hologram and its
multifaceted image to suggest that any social analysis of Israelite soci-
ety must be multilayered and account for multiple factors in order to
present a coherent picture of Israelite society.*°
Frick’s study is more archaeological in nature. He demonstrates the
weaknesses in the former consensus view that slaked-lime cisterns, ter-

29. R. Coote and K. Whitelam, “The Emergence of Israel: Social Transformation and
State Formation Following the Decline in Late Bronze Age Trade,” Semeia 37 (1986):
109-47; I. Finkelstein, “The Emergence of the Monarchy in Israel: The Environmental
and Socio-Economic Aspects,” JSOT 44 (1989): 43-74; J. Flanagan, “Chiefs in Israel,”
JSOT 20 (1981): 47-73; Frick, Formation of the State; and A. Malamat, “Charismatic
Leadership in the Book of Judges,” in Magnalia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God: Essays on
the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of G. Ernest Wright, ed. F. M. Cross, W. E. Lemke,
and P. D. Miller Jr. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), 293-310. With the exception of
Frick’s work on state formation, these articles are reprinted in Community, Identity, and
Ideology.
30. J. Flanagan, David's Social Drama: A Hologram of Ancient Israel, SWBAS 2 (Shef-
field: Almond, 1988).
432 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

race agriculture, and iron tools were the prime technological forces
that allowed Israelite settlement in the hill country of Palestine. In-
stead, he suggests, these technologies were not developed by the Israel-
ites to enable settlhement, but rather were technological adaptations
that allowed a surplus to be produced in an agriculturally marginal
area in response to the pressures of population growth. In most societ-
ies, as a surplus is produced social complexity concomitantly increases.
In the case of Israel, the increase in agricultural production both al-
lowed a chiefdom to emerge and made controlling its territory more de-
sirable to other political entities such as the Philistines. Frick finds ev-
idence for the social differentiation that typifies chiefdoms in the site
of Tel Masos. Excavations in the northeastern sector of the tell (Area A)
revealed a belt of ten houses with similar size, plan, and artifacts. Apart
from other data, this might suggest that the social structure of the set-
tlement was egalitarian. In Area H, located in the southern part of the
site, however, a large building was discovered that was twice the size of
those in Area A. It contained pottery that was more sophisticated in
both form and decoration, evidence of imported wares, and luxury
items, such as an ivory lion’s head. Thus both the size of the building
and its contents suggest that its inhabitants were of a different social
rank than those of the buildings in Area A, that the family was that of
the local area’s chieftain.*!
Coote and Whitelam identify the various social pressures that existed
at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age as
factors that allowed first the emergence of Israel and then its transition
from chiefdom to monarchy. They suggest that the perspective of the
French theorist Ferdnand Braudel of la longue durée best explains Isra-
elite political and sociological evolution. Rather than view the tribal
and monarchic periods as two opposite poles or even two distinct de-
velopments, they concentrate on the processes behind the various social
changes that occurred in Syria-Palestine and view them as develop-
ments on a continuum. Among the factors influencing the emergence
of Israel and the formation of the monarchy are the collapse of Egyp-
tian hegemony and trade at the end of the Late Bronze Age, agricultural
intensification in the Early Iron Age, social stratification, and popula-
tion pressures.
Israel Finkelstein also addresses the emergence of Israel and transi-
tion toward a monarchy from the perspective of la longue durée. While
his studies are conversant with important social science theories, he
does not always apply social models consistently or in a methodologi-

31. In particular, see the section “Tel Masos, Agriculture, and the Archaeology of
Chiefdoms,” in Formation ofthe State, 159-69.
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 433

cally sound manner.*? Nonetheless, his sensitivity to the environmental

features of the land of Israel, his understanding of the demographic pat-
terns from the mid-thirteenth through the tenth centuries, and his abil-
ity to interpret these data in a comprehensive manner make his studies
essential reading for a careful study of earliest Israel.*? Finkelstein ad-
vocates a neo-Altian, peaceful infiltration model to explain the settle-
ment of Israel in the central highlands of Canaan and suggests that the
settlement process was one of sedentarization of nomads.*4 He argues
that the four-room house, once identified with a specifically Israelite
material culture, follows the pattern of the nomadic tents, and that ar-
chaeological features such as storage pits that are independent of archi-
tectural remains for early settlements such as Isbet Sarta also represent
a nomadic lifestyle and the first phases of sedentarization. Like Frick,
Flanagan, and Coote and Whitelam, he views much of the premonar-
chic period as a chiefdom, and uses site distribution and population es-
timates to suggest an increased social and economic structure that led
to the establishment and increasing complexity of kingship and petty
statehood.

Prophecy and the Prophetic Tradition

Biblical scholars of all theological persuasions have identified the pro-
phetic tradition as one of the enduring contributions of Israelite reli-
gion to subsequent human civilization. Much scholarship has concen-
trated on the prophetic office, the prophetic message, and the literary
and moral force of prophetic literature. But the social sciences have
also been applied to the prophetic tradition from the earliest efforts of
W. Robertson Smith to the more recent work of Robert R. Wilson. Sev-
eral lines of interest have been particularly fruitful. Max Weber viewed
the prophetic tradition as emerging from the early Israelite notion of
YHWH as a war deity and from the perspective of covenant.*> While

32. I have analyzed Finkelstein’s sometimes insightful, sometimes uncritical use of

social modeling in “A Social and Demographic Study of Post-Exilic Judah” (Ph.D. diss.,
Duke University, 1991), see in particular chaps. 3, 5, and 6.
33. See in particular Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement and “Emergence of the
Monarchy in Israel.”
34. By describing Finkelstein’s study as “neo-Altian,” I am drawing attention to two
things. On the one hand, his work follows the basic outline of Israelite emergence first
proposed by A. Alt (see “Die Landnahme der Israeliten in Palastina,” in A. Alt, Kleine
Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 3 vols. [Munich: Beck, 1953-59], 1:89-125; in
English as “The Settlement of the Israelites in Palestine,” in A. Alt, Essays on Old Testa-
ment History and Religion, trans. R. A. Wilson [Oxford: Blackwell, 1966], 135-69). On the
other hand, his work brings to bear new data from archaeological studies not available
to Alt but that augment the peaceful infiltration model.
35. Weber, Ancient Judaism, 90-117.
434 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

certainly not all scholars have adopted his conceptual framework of the
war deity, virtually all scholars speak of the covenantal, and therefore
sociological, nature of prophecy. Further, Weber was one of the first
scholars to speak of what he called the “social psychology of the proph-
ets” and to seek to uncover their social context.*° Writing from a differ-
ent perspective, both Louis Wallis and Antonin Causse saw the pro-
phetic call for social justice as rooted in the growing stratification and
class struggles that accompanied the development of Israelite society
after the period of the judges.*’ Gottwald stresses this notion of the in-
fluence of an increased level of material and economic differentiation
on the prophetic ideal in his most recent social reconstructions.*®
Recently, social science approaches to prophecy have used cross-cul-
tural parallels to concentrate on such issues as social location and con-
text, prophetic authority, and the rise of the apocalyptic tradition. Rob-
ert R. Wilson’s Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel identifies the
Israelite prophets as intermediaries and finds social parallels for Israel-
ite prophecy in shamanism and spirit possession of contemporary
tribal societies. He analyzes spirit possession that is considered “posi-
tive” and “negative” by their social groups and is particularly interested
in the social context of prophets and the level of cultural support that is
necessary for prophetic survival. He identifies two distinct prophetic
traditions, the Ephraimite tradition of such figures as Samuel, Elijah
and Elisha, Hosea and Jeremiah, and the Judean tradition of Nathan,
Isaiah of Jerusalem, and Amos. While these traditions have distinct
theological perspectives, they are similar in that individual prophets
function either as central intermediaries—those who have direct access
to and the approval of the ruling establishment—or peripheral interme-
diaries—those whose access is limited and who frequently lead protest
movements against the establishment.
Thomas Overholt and Burke Long focus more on prophetic author-
ity and, like Wilson, introduce ethnographic parallels for biblical
prophecy. Overholt concentrates on Native American shamans as a
source for prophetic models, using the Ghost Dance movement of the
late nineteenth century and the Seneca holy man Handsome Lake.2?

36. Ibid., 267-96.

37. Causse, Les “pauvres” d’Israél; Wallis, “Sociological Significance of the Bible.”
38. This is particularly evident in his “Sociology of Ancient Israel,” ABD, 6:84. Gott-
wald's “Hypothesis about Social Class” delineates the notion of increasing class differen-
tiation but does not include the prophetic protest against the upper classes.
39. T. Overholt, “The Ghost Dance of 1890 and the Nature of the Prophetic Process,”
Ethnohistory 21 (1974): 37-63; idem, “Prophecy: The Problem of Cross-Cultural Compar-
ison,” Semeia 21 (1982): 55-78; B. O. Long, “Prophetic Authority as Social Reality,” in
Canon and Authority, ed. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 3-20.
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 435

He builds on Long’s suggestion that prophetic authority resides not

only in the spoken word but also in the community to which the
prophet speaks. He develops a dynamic idea of authority, suggesting
that prophecy was not simply a function of the message from YHWH
but also was affected by the audience to whom he or she spoke. Com-
paring Handsome Lake with Jeremiah, he maintains that the prophet
would typically receive feedback from the hearers, which would in
turn help the prophet to refocus the message. As members of the com-
munity accept the revised message, they in turn validate the prophet’s
authority.
Bernhard Lang views the prophetic movement with its monotheistic
ideal as a minority religious tradition.*? Lang’s study identifies the sa-
lient points in the development of monotheism within ancient Israelite
religious tradition, and like Wallis, Causse, and Gottwald, places the
prophetic minority tradition within a social context of peasant poverty.
Prophets, like Amos with his concern for social justice, often stood in a
position of social critics.
Paul Hanson and Steven Cook present opposing accounts of the rise
of apocalyptic tradition. Both see the crisis of exile and return as pro-
viding a major impetus for apocalyptic literature to emerge from the
prophetic movement. Hanson applies the conflict tradition of the social
sciences to the period and the literature of Haggai, First and Second Ze-
chariah, Joel, and Third Isaiah. In his view, a critical tension existed be-
tween the hierocratic party represented by the Jerusalem priestly estab-
lishment and the disenfranchised visionaries.*! Cook suggests instead
that apocalyptic tradition need not arise from marginalized groups. He
notes that prophets with priestly origins or influences, such as Ezekiel,
First Zechariah, and Joel, operated from an apocalyptic perspective
with its hope for a radical inbreaking of God’s kingdom. By rooting his
position in the study of millenarian groups in many different historical
and social settings, Cook shows not only that priestly groups can and
do demonstrate eschatological fervor but that they also frequently hold
central positions of power and leadership.*? Thus he contends that it
was not internecine conflict but a priestly, millennial context that best
explains apocalyptic literature, the apocalyptic worldview, and an
apocalyptic community.

40. Lang, Monotheism and the Prophetic Minority.

41. P. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic: The Historical and Sociological Roots ofJew-
ish Apocalyptic Eschatology, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 70-79, 258-70; idem,
ed., Visionaries and Their Apocalypses, IRT 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress; London: SPCK,
1983), 37-60.
42. S.L. Cook, Prophecy and Apocalypticism: The Postexilic Social Setting (Minneapo-
lis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), 19-84.
436 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

Gender in Cult and Culture

One of the most important areas of the social setting of ancient Israel
to be recovered is the role and place of women within Israelite culture
in general and in Israelite religion in particular. While a significant por-
tion of this recovery has come through feminist scholarship, often liter-
ary and linguistic studies of the Hebrew text and comparative analyses
of ancient Near Eastern documents,” the social sciences—particularly
archaeology, sociology, and anthropology—have shed considerable
light on these issues as well. Thus the most important works on women
in ancient Israel have been both cross-cultural and interdisciplinary in
nature; most have built in some way on early works of both Rosemary
Radford Ruether and Phyllis Trible.*4 The result of the more recent
studies is on the one hand a clearer understanding of male/female roles
and authority and on the other hand an indication of the degree to
which women enjoyed positions of status. What is clear is that where
traditional, male-dominated areas of society are restrictive, women
often find positions of power and influence outside the accepted social
frameworks. Thus women exercised significant authority within the
wisdom tradition and functioned as prophets and official cultic func-
tionaries, as did Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah.*° As Phyllis Bird points
out, male-dominated biblical scholarship often devalued other impor-
tant roles of women as cult functionaries, such as their role as profes-
sional mourners, singers, and celebrants. In this respect, Bird has fur-
thered the discussion of women’s place in ancient Israel by making
scholars more aware of the ways in which interpretive bias has further
skewed the record of the Hebrew Bible; for males dominated not only

43. See, e.g., Women's Earliest Records from Ancient Egypt to Western Asia, ed. B. S.
Lesko, BJS 166 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); for a detailed bibliography of works ap-
plying feminist perspectives to the study of Scripture, see M. I. Gruber, Women in the Bib-
lical World: A Study Guide, vol. 1, Women in the World of Hebrew Scripture, ATLA Bibliog-
raphy Series 38 (Philadelphia: ATLA; Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1995).
44. Ruether, Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Tradi-
tions (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974); Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, OBT
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978); idem, Texts of Terror: Literary Feminist Readings ofBiblical
Narratives, OBT (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).
45. C. Camp, “The Wise Women of 2 Samuel: A Role Model for Women in Early Is-
rael,” CBQ 43 (1981): 14-29; idem, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs, BLS
11 (Decatur, Ga,: Almond, 1985); P. Trible, “Huldah’s Holy Writ: On Women and Biblical
Authority,” Touchstone 3 (1985): 6-13; J. Ochshorn, The Female Experience and the Nature
of the Divine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 182; and C. E. Carter, “Hul-
dah as Prophet and Legal Authority: A Linguistic and Social-Science Approach” (paper
presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature [Social Sciences and
the Interpretation of Hebrew Scripture section], San Francisco, Calif., November 1997),
available online at http://www.BiblicalResource.com/papers/Huldah.
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 437

ancient culture but until recently also modern scholarship. Two layers
of interpretation, then, must be shed in order better to understand the
cultural landscape of ancient Israel: that of the Hebrew Bible itself and
that of its modern interpreters.*° Further, modern scholarship has
tended to look exclusively at sanctioned institutional avenues of power
and influence, such as the priesthood, rather than those that were sup-
pressed, and the public roles rather than those that were private. By
opening the study of women’s roles within the cultus to the private
sphere and the suppressed traditions, we can better understand the sig-
nificance of women’s power and influence.
Carol Meyers’s work has concentrated more on the place of women
within the family and village economy of ancient Israel.*” She also distin-
guishes between private and public spheres of influence, suggesting that
while women were often excluded from positions of public power, they
often wielded considerable influence—if not power—in the domestic
sphere. Women’s roles within the family were focused on production—
not just childbearing and child rearing, but also tending flocks and herds
and producing foodstuffs, clothing, and household goods. Meyers evalu-
ates these roles within a broader construct of agrarian societies. She
demonstrates that within such societies, gender roles are often clearly de-
fined, but women are more highly considered than in other cultural con-
texts due to their vital contribution to family, village, and clan survival.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky brings a more global approach to the cultic
sphere within ancient Israel. Her study, In the Wake of the Goddesses:
Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth, exam-
ines the forces that led to the exclusion of women from the priesthood
in ancient Israel. She notes that in Mesopotamian tradition women per-
formed official priestly functions and that goddesses were an important
part of the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian pantheons in the ear-
3
46. Bird, “The Place of Women in the Israelite Cultus,” in Ancient Israelite Religion:
Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. P. D. Miller Jr., P. D. Hanson, and S. D.
McBride (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 397-419. See also idem, “Women’s Religion in
Ancient Israel,” in Women’s Records, 283-98.
47. Meyers’s most comprehensive work on women in Israel is Discovering Eve: An-
cient Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). See also
idem, “Gender Roles and Genesis 3:16 Revisited,” in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth:
Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. C. L.
Meyers and M. O’Connor (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 337-54; idem, “Pro-
creation, Production and Protection: Male-Female Balance in Early Israel,” JAAR 51
(1983): 569-73; reprinted in Community, Identity, and Ideology, ed. Carter and Meyers,
489-514; idem, “Gender Imagery in the Song of Songs,” HAR 10 (1987): 209-23; and
idem, “An Ethnoarchaeological Analysis of Hannah’s Sacrifice,” in Pomegranates and
Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in
Honor of Jacob Milgrom, ed. D. P. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz (Winona Lake,
Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 77-91.
438 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

liest written texts until the middle of the second millennium B.c.**
Frymer-Kensky observes that while women were allowed prominent
social and religious functions until this time, their public role began to
decline so that by the first millennium women were “practically invisi-
ble” in the texts from Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamian world “by the
end of the second millennium was a male’s world, above and below; and
the ancient goddesses have all but disappeared.”*”
According to Frymer-Kensky, as the Israelites moved gradually to-
ward monotheism, the functions and characteristics of both male and
female deities within the ancient Near Eastern pantheons were sub-
sumed within Yahwistic religion. But the Israelite social and religious
traditions were, at their heart, more egalitarian than those of Israel’s
neighbors. Thus, while Israel did not fully comprehend or even estab-
lish an entirely gender-neutral tradition, monotheism allows a more
holistic attitude toward gender and sexuality. This would change in
both Judaism and Christianity as they were influenced by a Hellenistic
culture that was often misogynist in its orientation. Frymer-Kensky’s
work is appealing in that it examines carefully the Mesopotamian tra-
ditions and their developments, the social worlds that produced them,
and the differences that emerged with Israelite monotheistic impulses.
It is perhaps too facile, however, in attributing the negative attitudes to-
ward women primarily to the influences of Hellenism.

Exile and Identity

The Persian period, once neglected in favor of periods considered more
important, has enjoyed a recent surge of interest.°° Although most schol-
ars are highly skeptical of the accounts of Ezra and much of the Ne-
hemiah tradition, there is a growing sense that the Persian period is the
turning point of biblical history. Virtually all scholars place much of the
editing and transmission—some would argue, even the origin—of much
of the Hebrew Bible in the Persian period.°! These renewed assessments

48. The same may be observed for the other major cultures and mythic traditions of
the ancient Near East, including Syria, Egypt, Anatolia, and Palestine.
49. T. Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake ofthe Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical
Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Can-
ada, 1992), 79-80.
50. Fora discussion of recent developments in the study of this period, see my “Prov-
ince of Yehud in the Persian Period: Soundings in Population and Demography,” in Sec-
ond Temple Studies, 2:106-45; and my Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social
and Demographic Study (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, forthcoming).
51. P. R. Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel,” JSOTSup 148 (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1992); idem, “The Society of Biblical Israel,” in Second Temple Studies, 2:22-33; G. Garbini
also argues for a Persian period date for most of the writing and editing of the Hebrew
Bible in “Hebrew Literature in the Persian Period,” in Second Temple Studies, 2:180-88.
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 439

of the importance of the period make the social setting and ideological
developments within the postexilic community of great significance.
Several scholars have applied the conflict tradition to the social com-
munity of Yehud between 538 and 332. This tradition is at the heart of
Hanson’s understanding of the tension between the hierocrats of the
temple establishment and the visionaries of Isaiah 56-66. It is also fun-
damental to Joel P. Weinberg’s influential Bzirger-Tempel-Gemeinde
(citizen-temple community) model for the postexilic community,
though clearly his work employs a cultural materialist viewpoint as
well.°? Weinberg suggests that the province of Yehud was structured
around a temple economy, a structure found throughout Mesopotamia
in various periods of its history. He identifies Yehud as a rare type of
citizen-temple community in which the temple itself did not hold any
land, but suggests that the temple functionaries gradually came to rule
not only the temple but also civic affairs. One of the weaknesses of his
model is the uncritical manner in which he takes the biblical numbers
of deportees in Jeremiah and 2 Kings, and returnees in Ezra 2 = Ne-
hemiah 7. This leads him to suggest a province with a population in ex-
cess of 200,000 persons in the fifth century B.c., a figure that the demo-
graphic evidence does not support. As his model seems to depend in
part on a substantial population for the province, it is surprising how
widely accepted his model has become. Yet his model does address one
of the major questions of the period, that of the identity of the g6la com-
munity. Weinberg believes that the conflict that is alluded to in some of
the prophetic books and in Ezra-Nehemiah comes from the tension
that arose when the returnees (the members of the gd/4 community) at-
tempted to assume power over those who had remained in Palestine
during the exile. The effect of this idea is that the official history (Ezra,
Nehemiah, the Chronicler) can be trusted only to present the perspec-
tives of the members of the exilic community who returned to Yehud
from Babylon from 538 through the middle to end of the fifth century.
Daniel Smith has contributed much to our understanding of the so-
ciology of the exile and the importance of identity.°? Smith relates the
sociology and psychology of the exilic community to other societies
that have been dispossessed, conquered, or marginalized. He identifies
four major types of responses: structural adaptation, in which the rul-
ing structure of the social group changes in response to a new reality; a

52. Weinberg’s most important essays are collected in The Citizen-Temple Community,
trans. D. L. Smith-Christopher, JSOTSup 151 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992).
53. D.L. Smith, The Religion of the Landless: The Social Context of the Babylonian Exile
(Bloomington, Ind.: Meyer-Stone, 1989). See also idem, “The Politics of Ezra: Sociological
Indicators of Postexilic Judean Society,” in Second Temple Studies, vol. 1, Persian Period,
ed. P. R. Davies, JSOTSup 117 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 73-97.
440 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

split in leadership, in which traditional leaders and new vie for influ-
ence as the larger group attempts to adapt and survive; the development
of new rituals that redefine the boundaries between the community and
its rulers; and the development of folk heroes and a literature of resis-
tance. These strategies of survival functioned to keep the social and re-
ligious structures of the g6l4 community intact. Their strong identity
and belief that they represented the “true Israel” in turn led to a pro-
tracted struggle for power between their leaders and those of the indig-
enous community of Judeans who had remained in the land.
As mentioned above, what makes Weinberg’s proposal of the citizen-
temple community problematic is his lack of reliable data concerning
site distribution and population for the province during the Persian pe-
riod. My own research suggests that the total population of the province
ranged between a low of about 13,000 and a high of 21,000 from 538-
332 B.c., a population of less than 10 percent of Weinberg’s proposal. It
is not currently clear whether this difference in population invalidates
his model, but these data do raise significant questions concerning the
nature of the political and social structure of the province. If the prov-
ince was as small as the most recent archaeological reconstructions
suggest, the need to construct meaningful boundaries between Judeans
(the “true seed of Israel”) and various “outsiders” is more intelligible.

Economic Perspectives: Subsistence Strategies

and Mode of Production
Several of the previous aspects of Israel’s social setting are directly re-
lated to its economic context—the prophetic call for justice, the role of
women in production, the emergence of Israel, and the monarchy, for
example. The various socioeconomic contexts that developed in antiq-
uity can be approached from two distinct, but sometimes complemen-
tary, perspectives: that of subsistence strategy and that of mode of pro-
duction. Subsistence strategy is a more general term that refers to the
methods and technologies that cultures, groups, and societies use to
adapt to and survive within their environment.** It applies a taxonomy

54. This is developed in Lenski and Lenski, Human Societies, 78-93. Lenski and Len-
ski propose a basic time line for societal development as follows: The hunter-gatherer
strategy dominated from the earliest hominid culture until approximately 7000 B.c.; hor-
ticultural societies were dominant from 7000 to 4000 B.c.; agrarian societies emerged in
approximately 4000 B.c. and extended until roughly a.p. 1800; the Industrial Age lasted
from the late nineteenth century until the present. If one adds, as I do, the information
age, it would begin in about the 1980s with the advent of the personal computer and will
continue well into the twenty-first century. On the latter, see M. G. Dolence and D. M.
Norris, Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century (Ann Ar-
bor, Mich.: Society for College and University Planning, 1995). ;
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 441

to societies from the simplest hunter-gatherer cultures to the most

complex industrial societies, and defines four basic types and three
environmentally specialized types. These include hunter-gatherer,
horticultural, agrarian, and industrial; of these, horticultural and
agrarian are typically subdivided into their simple and complex forms
according to technological developments. So, for example, use of a
hoe rather than a wooden digging stick distinguishes a complex horti-
cultural society from its simple counterpart; agrarian societies de-
velop where a plow replaces a hoe; and a complex agrarian society
constructs tools and weapons from iron rather than the copper or
bronze tools used in a simple agrarian society. Fishing, maritime, and
herding societies are environmentally specialized types that develop
to allow survival in ecologically marginal areas (such as herding soci-
eties), or areas in which specific environmental factors make a partic-
ular strategy more attractive (fishing and maritime cultures). Cultures
that use two or more strategies to survive within their environment are
considered hybrid societies. Given this taxonomy, one would identify
early Israel as a hybrid culture, one that applied both herding and
agrarian subsistence strategies to the various environmental niches of
Syria-Palestine. Although Israel cannot be compared to its larger
neighbors in terms of its social complexity, the development of iron
tools and weapons suggests that it evolved from a simple to an ad-
vanced agrarian culture.°>
Scholars analyzing ancient Israel’s economic context from the per-
spective of the mode of production would argue that a society’s place in
the taxonomy of cultures tells only part of the story. While it is impor-
tant to understand the various subsistence strategies and technologies,
they would argue that these factors alone cannot account for the com-
plex interrelationships that exist within the society. Mode of production
is a concept that Marx and Engels applied to the industrial setting of
late-nineteenth-century Europe. They proposed that cultures could be
divided among three or four types based on the relationship between
the political and economic sectors of society. Marx called this relation-
ship the political economy, and highlighted the relationship between
the “material forces of production” and the “social relations of produc-
tion.”°° Marx divided societies into four phases through which human
cultures have progressed: an egalitarian, classless society, a slave-based

55. For a useful analysis of Israel’s subsistence strategies and its response to its envi-
ronment, see D. Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age,
SWBAS 3 (Decatur, Ga.: Almond, 1985); idem, “Life on the Land: The Subsistence Strug-
gles of Early Israel,” BA 50 (1987): 471-88.
56. Gottwald, “A Hypothesis about Social Class,” 144-53; idem, “Sociology of Ancient
Israel,” 82-83.
442 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

social order, a feudal society, and the capitalist society that has typified
Western culture since the industrial age. Some scholars have argued
that a fifth phase be added, the Asiatic Mode of Production, or AMP.
This type of social order exists when the cultural elite controls a central-
ized state, when there is a self-sufficient village economy, and when
there is little or no private land ownership. On the evolutionary scale,
this mode of production would best fit between the classless and the
slave-based society. Marx predicted an eventual return to a classless so-
ciety when the underprivileged masses revolt against their bourgeois
oppressors, a theory that led to the establishment of communist states
in the former Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and other
similar cultural experiments.
According to Gottwald, when one applies the perspectives of political
economy and mode of production to Iron Age Israel, the following fea-
tures stand out. During most of the premonarchic phase, during its
transition from a tribal society to a chiefdom, Israel functioned as an
egalitarian society. The material cultural evidence from the few exca-
vated villages demonstrates a rustic, subsistence-level culture, with lit-
tle class differentiation.°’ As a chiefdom and then monarchy emerge,
there is greater economic specialization and a transition to an Asiatic,
or tributary, mode of production. This involves the elite siphoning off
surplus from the peasantry, which in turn causes an increasing eco-
nomic gap between the upper and lower classes. During the monarchic
period, the surplus—extracted through taxation and debt slavery—
went to the growing bureaucracy in order to finance the needs of the
emergent state. With the fall of the northern and later the southern
kingdoms, this internal tributary mode of production shifted to an ex-
ternal, or foreign, tributary mode, with the resources extracted from
the peasantry going both to indigenous elite and foreign overlords. It is
only in the Roman period that a modified slave-based mode of produc-
tion emerges.

Evangelical Scholarship and Social Science Criticism

At the same time that social science criticism has become more ac-
cepted in mainstream scholarship, evangelical scholars have generally
been slow in adopting this new method of biblical study; until recently
few evangelical works applied anthropological or sociological per-
spectives to the Hebrew Scriptures and the cultures that produced

57. Several village excavations suggest this. See Finkelstein’s Tzbet Sarta: An Early
Iron Age Site near Rosh Haayin, Israel (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1986);
idem, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement.
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 443

them.°® Instead, some prominent evangelical scholars consider social

science interpretation of Scripture to be peripheral, mere “fluff” sub-
ject to the whims of the practitioner.
I attribute this type of dismissive attitude to a number of specific
concerns, including: (1) a theological commitment to the uniqueness of
Israel coupled with a desire to avoid cultural and religious relativism;
(2) a hesitation to apply cross-cultural parallels to the biblical world
and an attempt to avoid reading modern worldviews onto ancient Is-
rael; and (3) a concern that social science criticism will take away from
the more legitimate aspects of biblical interpretation. As these concerns
are closely interrelated and therefore somewhat difficult to separate, I
discuss them briefly together, giving examples of each where possible.
1. A theological commitment to the uniqueness of biblical Israel cou-
pled with a desire to avoid cultural and religious relativism. Perhaps the
greatest concern evangelicals have regarding social science criticism
stems from the tendency of the social sciences to view human culture
on a continuum. This cross-cultural approach stands in stark contrast
to the commitment of the biblical authors—and of evangelical schol-
ars—to the uniqueness of Israel.°? Throughout the biblical narratives—
whether of the call and covenant with Abraham, the exodus event, the
emergence of Israel in Canaan, or the prophetic ideals—the Israelite au-
thors define themselves and their commitment to Yahweh as com-
pletely distinct from the faith of their neighbors in other gods and god-
desses. While the biblical writers certainly considered their words
God’s word to Israel, some evangelicals have added the theological con-
cepts of plenary inspiration and the inerrancy of Scripture. These theo-
logical perspectives are not necessarily in conflict with sociological or
anthropological theory, though some scholars who apply the social sci-
ences to Scripture do so as a rejection of any theological commitment.
The social scientist would speak of Israel’s belief in its uniqueness, but
would examine other cultural traditions to see whether they shared this
concept. If other cultures can be shown to have a concept of a special
call from their gods or goddesses, then the social scientist would see Is-
rael’s uniqueness as a cultural concept rather than a theological truth.
The evangelical scholar would begin with the theological presupposi-
tion of the universal truth of the biblical traditions, whereas the social

58. This section raises concerns that are more evident within the American evangeli-
cal community, which most commentators would agree is considerably more conserva-
tive than the British evangelical tradition. The latter community is generally more open
in its use of critical scholarship and the application of some of the newer critical methods
than American evangelicals are.
59. This is a departure from literary studies within evangelical scholarship, which
readily looks for parallels to Israelite literature within its ancient Near Eastern context.
444 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

scientist would begin with an examination of Israel’s beliefs as religious

ideology. Thus, for example, rather than looking solely at the provisions
of the Decalogue as divinely given law, the sociologist or anthropologist
might examine the Decalogue primarily from a social and communal
perspective. This emphasis ought not to be problematic for evangelicals
in and of itself; indeed, one’s understanding of the ancient force of the
command—and therefore its modern application—could be enhanced
by a social science study of covenant and law.
It is important to note that it is not only evangelical or conservative
scholars who defend the distinctiveness of Israel or who would place
specific controls on the use of the social sciences in biblical studies. Ro-
land de Vaux sought to delineate the difference between Israelite and
other ancient Near Eastern sacrificial traditions by showing that while
Canaanite and Mesopotamian sacrifices were intended to provide food
for the deities, the Israelite priesthood was oriented toward a more
“ethical” understanding of sacrifice. Yahweh, who was spirit, needed
no sustenance (Ps. 50:12—14). As Gary Anderson has shown, however,
the notion of sacrifice as food for YHWH, while perhaps diminished for
ideological reasons in the Hebrew Bible, is still evident in both legal and
poetic traditions and is present in texts that span biblical genres and
historical periods alike.
2. A hesitation to apply cross-cultural parallels to the biblical world and
an attempt to avoid reading modern worldviews onto ancient Israel. Re-
cent studies of the nature of earliest Israel and of the focal point of its
ideology suggest that early Israel was a more complex society than the
biblical narratives indicate. If one follows the biblical story line for the
transition from tribal league to monarchy, the Philistine threat stands
out as the prime mover for the rise of Saul and the Davidic monarchy.
As noted above, the social sciences propose a multilevel cause for Is-
rael’s emergence and political development, one rooted in the collapse
of Late Bronze Age social structures, a declining economy, a volatile po-
litical atmosphere, and a rise of available surplus and, with it, of spe-
cialization. This perspective ofla longue durée, tracing Israel’s evolution
from a tribal league, to a chiefdom, to a petty kingship does not in itself
necessarily conflict with biblical narratives, but it does require supple-
menting the biblical traditions with social science models. Once again,
the critical issues are the priority and perspective of the social science
data regarding the biblical traditions, and the degree to which parallels
from other societies can be appropriately applied to the biblical narra-
tives. Here additional concerns emerge: Is it legitimate to supplement

60. G. Anderson, Sacrifices and Offerings in Ancient Israel: Studies in Their Social and
Political Importance, HSM 41 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 14-16.
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 445

biblical narratives with modern social science models? Does doing so

necessarily undermine one’s commitment to Scripture as God’s Word?
Similar questions arise when one seeks to place Israelite religion
within its ancient Near Eastern-context. Evangelicals have long rejected
the history of religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule). This
perspective suggests that Israelite religion is best understood as a form
of Syro-Palestinian cultus, with strong influence from the Mesopota-
mian, Syrian, Ugaritic, and to a lesser extent, Egyptian cultures. Once
again, the issue that is brought into sharp focus is the evangelical belief
in the uniqueness of Israelite religion as revealed religion and truth and
the social science analysis of religion as a human phenomenon. This
tension makes it particularly difficult for many evangelical scholars to
accept the use of sociological parallels when analyzing Israelite reli-
gious practices, although the use of literary parallels from ancient Near
Eastern cultures is a common practice. Few evangelical scholars would
hesitate to use the Mari texts to compare Mesopotamian and Israelite
prophetic practices,°! texts from Emar to shed light on the priest-
hood,°? Ugaritic language and texts as parallels to Biblical Hebrew or
Israelite poetic traditions,°* or suzerainty-vassal treaties to help define
Israel’s relationship with Yahweh.** While evangelical scholars may
draw different conclusions from their mainstream scholarly counter-
parts, they employ a similar critical methodology in applying these par-
allel texts to the biblical record.
Those same scholars might be less comfortable applying practices
of Native American holy men as parallels to Jeremiah’s prophetic min-
istry and the nature of prophetic authority within a community. One
may indeed ask whether it is appropriate to compare biblical proph-
ecy with “spirit possession” or shamanism. The issue of Israel’s

61. The definitive article on the Mari prophecy texts was written by W. L. Moran,
“New Evidence from Mari on the History of Prophecy,” Bib 50 (1969): 15-56. See also H.
Huffmon, “Prophecy in the Mari Letters,” BA 31 (1968): 101-24.
62. The recent study of D. Fleming, The Installation of Baal’s High Priestess at Emar,
HSS 42 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), makes an important contribution in this regard.
63. D. Stuart, Studies in Early Hebrew Meter, HSM 13 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars
Press, 1976); M. D. Coogan, ed., Stories from Ancient Canaan (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1978); P. C. Craigie, Ugarit and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983); idem,
Psalms 1-50, WBC 19 (Waco: Word, 1983). See also the voluminous works of Mitchell J.
Dahood, whose usages of Ugaritic as a basis for understanding Hebrew literature are well
known even if not universally accepted. See in particular his commentaries on the Book
of Psalms (3 vols., AB 16, 17, and 17A [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965-70]) and his
Ugaritic-Hebrew Philology: Marginal Notes on Recent Publications, BibOr 17 (Rome: Pon-
tifical Biblical Institute, 1965).
64. See M. Kline, Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy:
Studies and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963); idem, The Structure of Bibli-
cal Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972).
446 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

uniqueness would again be the sticking point for some scholars. If Is-
raelite prophecy is unique, and the place of the prophet in the commu-
nity is different from ancient Near Eastern analogs, then Israel’s
uniqueness is preserved. But if the role and status of the prophet are
shown to have legitimate social parallels with spiritual leaders from
other tribal cultures, then the commonness of spiritual power is em-
phasized, ostensibly at the expense of Israel’s distinctiveness. Again, I
believe that aspects of the social parallels drawn by Overholt and Wil-
son (mentioned above) add to, rather than take away from, one’s view
of prophecy. Such parallels reinforce the power of the prophet in his
or her community, and in particular provide a clearer understanding
of the struggles that peripheral prophets such as Elijah and Jeremiah
faced in proclaiming the word of YHWH to their fellow Israelites and
Judeans.
3. Aconcern that social science criticism may diminish the more legit-
imate aspects of biblical interpretation. For the evangelical community,
the ultimate aim of all of the methods of critical scholarship—from ar-
chaeological excavation to historical and literary studies—is the inter-
pretation of Scripture for the community of faith. For this reason, es-
tablishing the text, understanding the literary, linguistic, and historical
contexts of Scripture, and then applying certain hermeneutical princi-
ples to Scripture to allow its current application(s) are considered fun-
damental tasks for the interpreter. Biblical exegesis—establishing the
original meaning of the text—and hermeneutics—proposing a contem-
porary meaning of that text—are together a theological work. Scripture
is not simply a historical document that informs us of the beliefs and
story of an ancient culture. It is instead a living document that can
transform individuals, churches, and even cultures when it is heeded
and practiced. This belief allows us to speak with conviction about cur-
rent issues, such as social justice, religious orthodoxy, the virtue of love,
gender equality, and environmental ethics.
The concern that the social sciences in fact take away from rather
than add to the interpretive task is amplified when some mainstream
critical scholars advocate social science criticism as an alternative to
theologically oriented biblical scholarship. Robert Oden’s The Bible
without Theology® and Philip Davies’s In Search of “Ancient Israel” ad-
vocate such a position. Both suggest, though in different ways, that bib-
lical scholarship has too long been subject to theological agendas that,
they claim, render such scholarship biased by nature. Further, they sug-
gest that in order for critical scholarship to be truly objective, it must

65. R. A. Oden Jr., The Bible without Theology: The Theological Tradition and Alterna-
tives to It, NVBS (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 447

extract itself from any theological commitment. In many respects, this

marks but the most recent volley in the long-standing tension between
theologically oriented studies and a supposedly more “neutral” reli-
gious studies approach to Scripture. This tension has led to an increas-
ingly theologically independent discipline within colleges and universi-
ties as compared to that of seminaries, and this continues to be a point
of discussion within academe. What makes this different, however, and
more threatening to evangelicals, is the clear repudiation of the theo-
logical method as an authentic, objective enterprise and the replace-
ment of theology with the social science ideology. I would argue, how-
ever, that the social sciences are by no means anti-theological in and of
themselves; nor need they be peripheral in the theologically oriented in-
terpretive task. Indeed, they can underpin and enhance both the under-
standing of the original social and historical context of a text and its
current proclamation. Understanding the nature of social and class dif-
ferentiation allows us better to grasp the severity of Amos’s critique of
oppression and oppressors in eighth-century Israel and thereby to pro-
claim responsibility to be a voice for the voiceless in twentieth- and
twenty-first-century culture. Understanding patriarchy and the signifi-
cance of the place of women—such as Deborah and Huldah—who rose
to power despite the limitations imposed on them by a patriarchal sys-
tem allows us to empower women to assume positions of leadership in
the church today.
It is in that spirit that some evangelical scholars have made initial
forays into social science criticism. One of the first evangelicals to do so
was Gordon Wenham in his commentaries on Leviticus and Num-
bers.®° He turns primarily to anthropology to shed light on issues such
as sacrifice, purity, and ritual practices. He quotes extensively and ap-
provingly from Mary Douglas’s study Purity and Danger throughout his
commentary on Leviticus, using her concepts of ritual and victual pu-
rity as stemming from the need to establish social boundaries and or-
der. Similarly, he cites anthropological sources on tribal societies as
showing that Israelite sacrificial rituals were not mere magic but were
instead part of a meaningful symbolic world. What is impressive about
his work is that it is sensitive to the complex methodological issues that
surround the appropriate use of anthropological analogs for the study
of Scripture.®’

66. G. J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979);
idem, Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary, TOTC (Downers Grove, IIl.: InterVar-
sity, 1981); idem, Numbers, Old Testament Guides (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1997).
67. See, e.g., Wenham, Numbers, TOTC, 32-39, 146-47.
448 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

Two other recent works deserve mention, both of which provide so-
cial science backgrounds for the worldviews of the biblical writers. The
more ambitious of the two is a collaboration between Victor Matthews
and Don Benjamin, Social World of Ancient Israel, 1250-587 B.c.£.°° In
it, Matthews and Benjamin attempt to demonstrate for the reader the
ways in which a social science perspective can augment other, more
traditional forms of interpretation. Matthews and Benjamin have col-
lected an impressive amount of anthropological and sociological mate-
rial in the research for their work. The application of these sources is
often uneven, however, with assumptions from the social sciences ap-
plied to the biblical text somewhat uncritically. The volume is a useful
introduction to social science criticism and its benefits, but falls short
of being a true social history of either the tribal or monarchic periods
of Israelite and Judean history. It is inferior even to some of the ground-
breaking works that approached biblical studies from a social science
methodology; it lacks the breadth and critical perspective of works by
Gottwald, Wilson, or Frick. To be fair to Matthews and Benjamin, how-
ever, this may be in part a function of its intended audience, which is
not that of biblical scholars but of an educated laity or even of under-
graduate students.
A second volume is a collaborative effort by Victor Matthews and
John Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Genesis—Deuter-
onomy.® As its title implies, it is concerned with general backgrounds
to the texts of the Torah and the cultural traditions it represents. The
work, like Social World of Ancient Israel, is aimed at lay readers rather
than the community of scholars. Further, it is not strictly interested in
sociological or anthropological settings of the biblical texts but has a
wider scope, one that includes literary, legal, and religious back-
grounds. As such, it does make a contribution to biblical scholarship,
since one of its overall goals is an improved, if not more accurate, inter-
pretation of Scripture. Matthews and Walton therefore present the
evangelical audience with an instructive, if brief, commentary on the
biblical world and culture behind the Torah.

The Future of Social Science Criticism

I have argued above that the critiques from those who would reject the
use of the social sciences in interpreting the Hebrew Bible are not con-
vincing. Instead, they sometimes reflect a type of scholarly hubris or
siege mentality that both liberal and conservative scholars show when

68. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993.

69. Downers Grove, IIl.: InterVarsity, 1997.
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 449

new methodologies are introduced to biblical studies.”” This response is

different, however, from those who suggest specific controls that would
make the use of the social sciences more productive. Gary Herion cau-
tions biblical scholars not to be too quick to read modern parallels onto
ancient Israel so as not to be either deterministic or positivistic in the
reading of ancient Israelite society. He is further concerned that a cul-
tural relativism that reflects modern interpretations of reality not be read
back on ancient Israel, a culture that was far more rigid and exclusivis-
tic—at least in its official presentation that we have received in the He-
brew traditions—than is our own. What makes Herion’s cautions more
helpful, however, is that he seeks a middle ground, one that views the so-
cial sciences as a genuine source of data for biblical interpretation. Thus
his criticisms of the early work of both Gottwald and Wilson are tem-
pered with suggestions for the profitable applications of social science
criticism to biblical studies. To this end, he suggests that biblical scholars
first come to a more complete understanding of sociopolitical functions
of religions in other cultures before seeking to apply the sociopolitical
model to a biblical culture to which it may not be appropriate. In urging
this, he seeks an approach that is more intentionally interdisciplinary in
its analysis of biblical cultures. Herion also encourages scholars to be
aware of their implicit “modern tempocentrism and urban ethnocen-
trism” and therefore of their “need to acquire a more sympathetic aware-
ness of the simple, ‘folk’ or primitive” societies. Such sensitivity would
allow them to approach Israelite society with a “conceptual ‘continuum’
of societal typologies.” Finally, he encourages scholars to make greater
use of legitimate ethnographic materials for their analyses of biblical cul-
tures and to be more rigorous in their analysis of social science models.”!
Inasmuch as it was the influence of Norman Gottwald that, more
than any other scholar, put the recent use of the social sciences on a
more systematic and methodologically sound footing,” it is fitting to

70. The comments of B. Halpern exemplify both attitudes: “social-scientific (meth-

ods) . . . call on models extrinsic not just to the text, but to the culture as a whole. They
apply universal, unhistorical schematics, like those of the natural sciences, yet deal, like
the human sciences, in variables (e.g., forms of society) whose components, whose at-
oms, are never isolated. Such tools cannot usher in a revolution in historical certainty.
Their promise, like that of the positivist program of the nineteenth century, is an escha-
tological one” (The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History [New York: Harper &
Row, 1988], 5).
71. Herion, “Impact,” 22-25 (reprint, 250-54); for another discussion of determinism
and positivism in social science studies of biblical cultures see Malina, “Social Sciences
and Biblical Interpretation.”
72. This concern for methodology is evident in his foundational article, “Domain
Assumptions and Societal Models,” and is developed further throughout The Tribes of
Yahweh.
450 Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds

conclude our discussion with his most recent musings on methodology.

In what Gottwald describes as a more mature presentation of the issues
involved in reconstructing a history or social science analysis of biblical
Israel, he identifies four characteristics such interpretations should
share. In being sensitive to these four elements, scholars will demon-
strate a greater awareness of the complexity of social processes. In
some early studies of Israelite culture, monolithic or simplistic models
were imposed on the data, which led to a study in which the complex is
described in terms of the simple. This has led to the charges discussed
above that the social science studies of Israel are positivistic and deter-
ministic, and that such studies are “eclectic” rather than comprehen-
sive.’? In order to ensure a more comprehensive understanding of Isra-
elite culture, Gottwald suggests that scholars relate four distinct
elements in a series of grids to form a cultural overlay.”4 The physical
grid examines the skills and technologies necessary to deal with the fea-
tures of the natural geography and environment in which the culture is
located. The cultural grid analyzes the self-understanding that emerges
within a society through its use of language, symbols, mores, and cus-
toms. The social organizational/political grid is concerned with the var-
ious social structures that develop within a society, including the man-
ner in which power is used to establish order or to promote the interests
of the sometimes competing groups that exist. The religious grid con-
centrates on identifying the rituals, beliefs, and practices of a culture’s
popular, official, and suppressed traditions. None of these aspects of
culture existed in a vacuum, and therefore when one does not examine
them within the overall social context, one introduces the possibility of
distortion. Gottwald therefore contends that a whole range of sources
should be consulted, including social science models, textual data, and
artifactual data in order to create an anthropological “triangulation.”
This, he maintains, will allow scholars to reconstruct the social setting
of ancient Israel—or any culture from antiquity—with the greatest pos-
sible clarity and depth.
The social sciences have already added much to the study of Hebrew
Scripture. Without a solid understanding of tribal cultures, of kinship
patterns, of protest movements, of insider-outsider status in social
groups, and without the social parallels that modern ethnographic
studies provide, our understanding of biblical cultures would be impov-

73. J. W. Rogerson offers an extensive critique along these lines in “The Use of Soci-
ology in Old Testament Studies,” in Congress Volume: Salamanca, 1983, ed. J. A. Emer-
ton, VTSup 36 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 245-56.
74. Gottwald lays out his new methodology in “Reconstructing the Social History of
Early Israel.”
Opening Windows onto Biblical Worlds 451

erished. To be sure, the field, particularly as a discipline within biblical

scholarship, needs to continue to mature and become more rigorous in
its methodology. But it is clear that the social science study of the First
Testament is no longer an ancillary and optional mode of interpretation
but has become a critical element of biblical exegesis. As the discipline
grows, we can look forward to a more comprehensive understanding of
both the biblical cultures and the literature they produced.
 O
Theology of the Old Testament

R. W. L. Moberly

Recent Old Testament theology presents a somewhat uncertain face to

the onlooker. There may be a smile; there is certainly plenty of literature
and lively debate. But the smile is at least enigmatic.

General Survey of Recent Literature

The initial problem is perhaps that it is unclear precisely what to look
for. If one is looking for volumes entitled “Theology of the Old Testa-
ment” (or something similar), there is a curious situation. That is, there
are a good number of recent books, but they are almost entirely from
scholars more concerned to make the discipline accessible than to de-
velop fresh insights. For example, Walther Zimmerli’s Old Testament
Theology in Outline reads rather like a committal to print of lectures to
his students, while Claus Westermann’s Elements of Old Testament The-
ology clearly has the nonspecialist in view—and, as such, is an admira-
ble introductory guide to a characteristically German way of presenting
the theological content of the Old Testament.' Ronald E. Clements, in
his Old Testament Theology: A Fresh Approach, readably thinks through
some of the basic theological implications of the Old Testament.? John
Goldingay lucidly relates recent debate to a fresh theological structur-
ing of the content of the Old Testament in his Theological Diversity and

1. W. Zimmerli, Old Testament Theology in Outline, trans. D. E. Green (Edinburgh:

Clark; Atlanta: John Knox, 1978); C. Westermann, Elements of Old Testament Theology,
trans. D. W. Stott (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982).
2. R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology: A Fresh Approach (Basingstoke: Marshall,
Morgan & Scott; Atlanta: John Knox, 1978).

452
Theology of the Old Testament 453

the Authority of the Old Testament.* Not least because Goldingay dis-
cusses obvious problems that scholars sometimes neglect to discuss—
What about “contradictions”? Can we affirm some viewpoints and crit-
icize others?—his is a good way into the subject for the student and
nonspecialist.*
In terms of weightier volumes, Horst Dietrich Preuss has recently
published a two-volume Old Testament Theology.> Although this con-
tains useful material, organized around the theme of election, it does
not really offer any conceptual advances over the two major landmarks
of the modern discipline, Walther Eichrodt’s Theology of the Old Testa-
ment and Gerhard von Rad’s Old Testament Theology,® and may rather
represent something of a step backward. Since he makes no real use of
insights that have unsettled and enlivened recent Old Testament study,
Preuss may be a guide more to where Old Testament theology has been
than to where it is and will be. Indeed, if one wants a work utilizing
older categories, good theological insights can be found in Hans Urs
von Balthasar’s Theology: The Old Covenant.’ Von Balthasar is one of
the most distinguished Roman Catholic theologians of the twentieth
century; but he was not a biblical specialist, and his work has been al-
most entirely neglected by Old Testament scholars.®
Two of the leading American contributors toward a fresh rethinking
of theological interpretation of the Old Testament have produced major

3. J. Goldingay, Theological Diversity and the Authority of the Old Testament (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).
4. Various other short books relate Old Testament theology to contemporary faith, for
example, from a Roman Catholic perspective, N. Lohfink, Great Themes from the Old Tes-
tament (Chicago: Franciscan Herald; Edinburgh: Clark, 1982); or, from an evangelical
Protestant perspective, W. J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation: An Old Testament Cove-
nantal Theology (Exeter: Paternoster; Flemington Markets, N.S.W.: Lancer, 1984; pub-
lished in the U.S. as Covenant and Creation: A Theology of the Old Testament Covenants
[Nashville: Nelson, 1984; reprinted, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993]); and, at an elementary
level, W. Dyrness, Themes in Old Testament Theology (Exeter: Paternoster; Downers
Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1979).
5. H.D. Preuss, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1991-
92); English edition: Old Testament Theology, trans. L. G. Perdue, 2 vols. (Edinburgh:
Clark; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1995-96).
6. W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, trans. J. A. Baker, 2 vols., OTL (London:
SCM; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961-67); G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans.
D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd; New York: Harper, 1962-65).
7. H.U. von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 6, Theology:
The Old Covenant, trans. B. McNeil and E. Leiva-Merikakis, ed. J. Riches (Edinburgh:
Clark; San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991). It is the sixth volume in a seven-volume magnum
opus on the nature of theological aesthetics. Although part of von Balthasar's larger theo-
logical thesis, the OT volume can be understood and profitably read in its own right.
8. One looks in vain for any reference to von Balthasar even in the OT theology survey
volumes listed below.
454 Theology of the Old Testament

works.” Brevard Childs’s Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context

is, however, surprisingly thin and, in terms of approach, stands in
something of an unresolved tension with his more substantial Biblical
Theology of the Old and New Testaments.'° Walter Brueggemann’s re-
cent Theology of the Old Testament moves in a different direction from
that of Childs and, in some ways, from his own previous work.'! Both
Childs and Brueggemann are discussed more fully later.
Much of the most interesting work in Old Testament theology has ap-
peared in contexts other than explicit 7eologies. First, there has been
a renewed interest in Old Testament theology within the context of bib-
lical theology.'* The monograph series Overtures to Biblical Theology
contains, for example, Walter Brueggemann, The Land; Phyllis Trible,
Texts of Terror; Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God; Rolf Rendtorff,
Canon and Theology; and my own The Old Testament of the Old Testa-
ment.'? Four recent periodicals, Biblical Theology Bulletin, Horizons in
Biblical Theology, Ex Auditu, and Jahrbuch fiir biblische Theologie, all
focus both on hermeneutics and on exegesis, and in their various ways

9, Mention should also be made of R, P, Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology
(Grand Rapids; Rerdmans, 1995), which contains thought-provoking and sophisticated
reflections on both method and content,
10, B.S, Childs, Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (London: SCM; Phil-
adelphia: Fortress, 1985); idem, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theolog-
ical Reflection on the Christian Bible (London: SCM; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). Con-
cerning unresolved tensions in Childs’s work, see under “The Work of Brevard Childs” in
the present essay,
11, W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997),
12. The term biblical theology is, unfortunately, too rarely defined. OT scholars tend
to use itas asynonym for “Old Testament theology” (see the quotations by Trible and Col-
lins under “Rethinking the Nature of the Subject via Its Terminology” in the present es-
say), while NT scholars tend to use it as a synonym tor “New Testament theology.” The
Christian canon as a whole presents fundamental theological issues in christological
form, which are usually posed in terms of the relationship between the testaments, an
issue regularly ignored or marginalized in separate Old and New Testament theologies.
On this, see D, L. Baker, Tivo Testaments, One Bible: A Study of the Theological Relation-
ship between the Old and New Testaments (Leicester: Apollos; Downers Grove, Il: Inter-
Varsity, 1976; 2d ed, 1991); H, G, Reventlow, Problems of Biblical Theology in the Twentieth
Century, trans, J, Bowden (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); M, Oeming, Ge-
samtbiblische Theologien der Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1985; 2d ed. 1987); also
my The Old Testament of the Old Testament; Patriarchal Narratives and Mosaic Yahwism,
OBT (Minneapolis; Fortress, 1992), chaps, 4 and §,
13, Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith
(Philadelphia; Fortress, 1977); Trible, Revts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Bib-
lical Narratives (Philadelphia; Fortress, 1984); Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old
Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Rendtorff, Canon and Theology:
Overtures to an Old Testament Theology, trans, and ed, M, Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1993),
Theology of the Old Testament 455

well represent the contemporary differences in approach between the

United States and Germany.
Second, there has been a spate of monographs and articles. It is diffi-
cult to select, and only three categories will be briefly noted, all charac-
terized by the writers’ explicit concern with the bearing of the Old Tes-
tament on Christian faith (and none is included in standard discussions
of OT theology; see below). First, although ethics can be treated sepa-
rately from theology, the biblical text always links the two, and so do re-
cent attempts to interpret Old Testament ethics, such as Christopher
J. H. Wright, Living as the People of God and God’s People in God’s Land;
Bruce C. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down; and Waldemar Janzen, Old Testa-
ment Ethics.'* Second, a renewed interest in prayer is evident in Hen-
ning Graf Reventlow, Gebet im Alten Testament; Patrick D. Miller, They
Cried to the Lord; and Samuel Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible.'°
While studies of the Psalter have always been plentiful, studies of prayer
as such are few. Third, two works relate to the general area of spiritual-
ity. Robert Davidson’s The Courage to Doubt is almost a miniature Old
Testament theology arranged around the theme of Israel’s questioning
of God.'® Questioning is integral to the Old Testament presentation of
the nature of faith (most obviously in the psalms of lament, to the study
of which Brueggemann has made many contributions),!” and is a recur-
rent issue in the life of faith today. Davidson’s thoughtful treatment
combines academic with pastoral wisdom, as does Deryck Sheriffs in
his The Friendship of the Lorp, a work that in explicit and sophisticated
ways relates the study of the Old Testament as an ancient Near Eastern
text to questions of how one should walk with God today.!8

14. C.J. H. Wright, Living as the People of God: The Relevance of Old Testament Ethics
(Leicester: InterVarsity, 1983); in the U.S. published as An Eye for an Eye: The Place of Old
Testament Ethics Today (Downers Grove, IIl.: InterVarsity, 1983); idem, God's People in
God’s Land: Family, Land, and Property in the Old Testament (Exeter: Paternoster; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990); B. C. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics,
and Christian Life (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991); W. Janzen, Old Testament
Ethics: A Paradigmatic Approach (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994).
15. H. G. Reventlow, Gebet im alten Testament (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1986); P. D.
Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 1994); S. Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible: The Drama of Divine-Human Dia-
logue, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).
16. R. Davidson, The Courage to Doubt: Exploring an Old Testament Theme (London:
SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1983).
17. E.g., W. Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1984). See now his volume of collected essays on the Psalms, The Psalms and the Life of
Faith, ed. P. D. Miller (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), esp. chaps. 1-5; see fur-
ther below.
18. D. Sheriffs, The Friendship of the Lorp: An Old Testament Spirituality (Carlisle: Pa-
ternoster, 1996).
456 Theology of the Old Testament

A third locus for Old Testament theological contributions is com-

mentaries. In particular, three important commentary series are
aimed at ministers and teachers. The contributors to the Interpreta-
tion series and the Expositor’s Bible Commentary read almost like a
Who’s Who of American Old Testament theologians from general
Protestant and specifically evangelical perspectives, while the Inter-
national Theological Commentary has a more international range of
contributors. !?

A Survey of Surveys of Recent Literature

It would be easy to devote this whole essay simply to enumerating re-
cent literature and to discussing recurring issues of debate. This is un-
necessary, however, for guides to (all but the most recent) scholarly lit-
erature already exist, and those seeking an overview of debate are well
served by them. First and foremost, there is The Flowering of Old Testa-
ment Theology: A Reader in Twentieth-Century Old Testament Theology,
1930-1990.*° In addition to overview essays by the editors, we are given
excerpts from the works of all the major scholars who have contributed
to Old Testament theology in that period together with a bibliography
of writings by and about each scholar and a brief theological synopsis
of each.
Apart from quibbling over editorial decisions, I would raise one
question of principle about this volume. On the one hand, there is noth-
ing on Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel, two leading Jewish think-
ers who, perhaps precisely because they were not primarily biblical
scholars and yet had thought deeply about the biblical material, regu-
larly contain insights not found elsewhere, and, whatever their defects,
are never less than thought-provoking.*! On the other hand, Karl Barth
is conspicuous by his absence. It is not just because of his influence on
Old Testament specialists, especially von Rad and Childs, that Barth is

19. Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, ed. J. L. Mays,
P. D. Miller, P. J. Achtemeier (Atlanta and Louisville: John Knox, 1982-); Expositor’s Bible
Commentary, ed. F. E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979-92); International
Theological Commentary, ed. F. C. Holmgren and G. A. F. Knight (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans; Edinburgh: Handsel, 1983-).
20. Ed. B. C. Ollenburger, E. A. Martens, and G. F. Hasel, SBTS 1 (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1992).
21. For example, M. Buber, 7wo Types of Faith, trans. N. P. Goldhawk (London: Rout-
ledge & Paul; New York: Macmillan, 1951); A. J. Heschel, The Prophets, 2 vols. (New York:
Harper & Row; Burning Bush, Jewish Publication Society, 1962). Heschel’s classic work
The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (1951; reprinted, New York: Noonday, 1990)
draws out much of the inner logic of the biblical material precisely by contextualizing it
within Jewish thought and practice.
Theology of the Old Testament 457

important.’ For Barth himself could produce outstanding theological

interpretation of the Old Testament. For example, his handling of
1 Kings 13, surely one of the most perplexing stories in the whole Old
Testament, is seminal; alternatively, his interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is
full of suggestion, probing theological issues that most commentators
neglect (if only Barth were not so long-winded!).?? The (seemingly par-
adoxical) point is that it may be a mistake to limit Old Testament the-
ology to Old Testament scholars. Since (to anticipate our later discus-
sion) the very nature of what Old Testament theology is and should be
is a central issue in recent debate, it may be that to restrict what counts
as Old Testament theology to Old Testament specialists, who represent
an institutional embodiment of precisely those assumptions that need
reexamination, may be to some extent effectively to beg the question.
Nonetheless, despite this caveat (which applies equally to the works in
the next few paragraphs), The Flowering of Old Testament Theology
must surely be a primary resource for every student of the subject.
Second, there is the dissertation of Frederick Prussner, revised and
updated by John H. Hayes, Old Testament Theology: Its History and De-
velopment.*+ This does not bring the story up to the present, as does The
Flowering of Old Testament Theology, apart from its final twenty-five
pages on “Continuing and Contemporary Issues in Old Testament The-
ology” (which already looks somewhat dated). Yet its publication is el-
oquent testimony to the search for self-understanding that has charac-
terized recent Old Testament theology; here the history of the discipline
is traced behind its conventional starting point in the 1787 lecture of
Gabler’? back to the Reformation and post-Reformation scholasticism,
Pietism, and rationalism. As with all significant human concerns, it is
doubtful how far one will be able to make real progress in the future
without a grasp of the historical roots of the present. Since, however, it
is the interpretation of the historical development that is of crucial sig-
nificance, one must remember that this history can be understood in
more than one way. Childs in particular offers an important construal

22. For von Rad see R. Rendtorff, “‘Where Were You When I Laid the Foundation of
the Earth?’ Creation and Salvation History,” in his Canon and Theology: Overtures to an
Old Testament Theology, trans. and ed. M. Kohl, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 92—
113. For Childs, see C. S. Scalise, “Canonical Hermeneutics: Childs and Barth,” Scottish
Journal of Theology 47 (1994): 61-88.
23. On 1 Kings 13 see Church Dogmatics, vol. 2.2, trans. G. W. Bromiley et al. (Edin-
burgh: Clark, 1957), 393-409; on Gen. 1-3 see ibid., vol. 3.1, trans. J. W. Edwards et al.
(Edinburgh: Clark, 1958), 94-329.
24. J. H. Hayes and F. C. Prussner, Old Testament Theology: Its History and Develop-
ment (London: SCM; Atlanta: John Knox, 1985).
25. The text of Gabler’s address is conveniently given in Flowering of Old Testament
Theology, ed. Ollenburger, Martens, and Hasel, 489-502.
458 Theology of the Old Testament

that differs from that of many other scholars, a construal that is part of
his reconceptualization of the discipline as a whole.”°
Third, there are various monographs devoted to surveying the field
of Old Testament theology. These provide discussion of the issues and
more or less comprehensive bibliographies. Four may be noted.’’ First,
Gerhard Hasel’s Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current De-
bate, which has several times been revised and updated, offers wide cov-
erage and is deservedly a well-known resource.”* Second, Henning Graf
Reventlow, Problems of Old Testament Theology in the Twentieth Cen-
tury, has a format that makes it not particularly readable, but it is useful
and contains material that does not simply overlap with Hasel, though
it is less up-to-date.”? Third, Leo Perdue, The Collapse of History: Recon-
structing Old Testament Theology, is comparable to Hasel and Revent-
low, but focuses on wider theological trends and the way they are rep-
resented in selected Old Testament scholars, whose positions receive
substantial exposition.*”
Finally, there is the newly published major and magisterial work of
James Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspec-
tive,*! which eclipses in scope that of the three books just mentioned
and is particularly strong on recent German contributions. Barr freshly
and pungently reconsiders well-worn issues, and his book has an obvi-
ous claim to be the survey of the field. Yet even so, the book is less de-
finitive than it might be. It is somewhat prolix and repetitive. It assumes
that conventional approaches are basically satisfactory and gives little
sense of why some scholars have recently tried to reconceptualize the
discipline. In particular, the concerns motivating Childs and Bruegge-
mann are unrecognizable; in each case Barr sees some of the trees but
not the forest. And Barr’s own sense of what constitutes theology is
open to question (see below).

26. Childs, Old Testament Theology, chap. 1. This needs to be read in conjunction with
Childs’s fuller discussions elsewhere, esp. his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scrip-
ture (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), part 1; The New Testament as Canon:
An Introduction (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), part 1; Biblical Theology of
the Old and New Testaments, 3-94. See further below.
27. There are others. For example, J. Hogenhaven, Problems and Prospects of Old Tes-
tament Theology, Biblical Seminar 6 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), is a curious book. An
initial analysis of problems has real value; yet the positive proposals for a way forward
simply and obviously repeat the very problems he has just pointed out.
28. G. Hasel, Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate (Grand Rap-
ids: Eerdmans, 1972; subsequent editions 1975, 1982, 1991).
29. H. G. Reventlow, Problems of Old Testament Theology in the Twentieth Century,
trans. J. Bowden (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).
30. L. Perdue, The Collapse of History: Reconstructing Old Testament Theology, OBT
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994).
31. London: SCM, 1999,
Theology of the Old Testament 459

Two comments may be made about these overview monographs.

First, they are best used by those who have already done some work in
Old Testament theology. They are not for beginners, for whom a few
pages of von Rad or Childs themselves are far more likely to be of inter-
est and value than any number of pages discussing possible problems
with von Rad’s or Childs’s approaches.*? If one wants a brief introduc-
tory overview in order to get one’s bearings, it is better to go for an ar-
ticle rather than a book. From among the many such articles, Robert L.
Hubbard Jr., “Doing Old Testament Theology Today,” lucidly sets out a
standard account, while John J. Collins, “Is a Critical Biblical Theology
Possible?” sharply describes precisely the assumptions with which Old
Testament theology must wrestle—and beyond which, in my judgment,
it must move.*? Second, the monographs are all “talks about talks,” dis-
cussions of discussions of the biblical text (like this present volume!).
There is no exegesis or persuasive and memorable interpretation of the
biblical text. Yet without such firsthand engagement with the primary
text, discussions can rapidly lose their bearings and significance, espe-
cially for the nonspecialist.

Rethinking the Nature of the Subject via Its Terminology

So far, so good. The trouble is that one might think that in all this talk
about “Old Testament theology” there is a basic agreement as to what
one is talking about. This, however, is hardly the case. As Phyllis Trible
has put it, “Biblical theologians, though coming from a circumscribed
community, have never agreed on the definition, method, organization,
subject matter, point of view, or purpose of their enterprise.”>+ That
does not leave much out! Even more seriously, the very place of Old
Testament theology as, arguably, the goal toward which other Old Tes-
tament disciplines should aim and converge is in question. In the words
of John J. Collins:

32. There are, of course, selections from von Rad and Childs in Flowering of Old Tes-
tament Theology, ed. Ollenburger, Martens, and Hasel. Alternatively, or in addition to
them, I would suggest von Rad on Jeremiah (Old Testament Theology, 2:191-219) and
Childs on “How God Is Known” (Old Testament Theology, 28-42).
33. R. L. Hubbard Jr, “Doing Old Testament Theology Today,” in Studies in Old Tes-
tament Theology, ed. R. L. Hubbard Jr., R. K. Johnston, and R. P. Meye (Dallas: Word,
1992), 31-46; J. J. Collins, “Is a Critical Biblical Theology Possible?” in The Hebrew Bible
and Its Interpreters, ed. W. H. Propp, B. Halpern, and D. N. Freedman (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1990), 1-17.
34. P. Trible, “Five Loaves and Two Fishes: Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical The-
ology,” TS 50 (1989): 279-95; reprinted in Flowering of Old Testament Theology, ed. Ol-
lenburger, Martens, and Hasel (quotation is from p. 451); also reprinted in The Promise
and Practice of Biblical Theology, ed. J. Reumann (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress,
1991), 51-70.
460 Theology of the Old Testament

Biblical theology is a subject in decline. The evidence of this decline is not

so much the permanent state of crisis in which it seems to have settled,
or the lack of a new consensus to replace the great works of Eichrodt or
von Rad. Rather the decline is evident in the fact that an increasing num-
ber of scholars no longer regard theology as the ultimate focus of biblical
studies, or even as a necessary dimension of those studies at all. The cut-
ting edges of contemporary biblical scholarship are in literary criticism
on the one hand and sociological criticism on the other. Not only is the-
ology no longer queen of the sciences in general, its place even among the
biblical sciences is in doubt.*°

The underlying problems may perhaps be approached through reflec-

tion on the very words “Old Testament theology.” “Old Testament” is a
value-laden term, while “theology” is ambiguous. On the one hand, atten-
tion has increasingly been given to the fact that “Old Testament” is ex-
plicitly a Christian name for the Hebrew Scriptures. In particular, “Old”
is a correlative of “New”; that is, there is no “Old Testament” without a
“New Testament.” Until recently this was rarely deemed worthy of com-
ment, because of a lingering cultural presupposition that the Christian
name was the name. Greater awareness of contemporary religious and
cultural plurality has shown that the Christian presupposition at the very
least needs justification. One of the striking features of recent biblical
scholarship has been the contribution from Jewish scholars. From a Jew-
ish perspective,*° the Hebrew Scriptures are not “Old Testament” (except
out of conformity to traditional Western usage or deference to Christian
sensibilities), but rather are Tanakh, Migra’, or simply “Bible.”*” It is in-
creasingly common to argue that because “Old Testament” is a specifi-
cally Christian name for the biblical text, it is therefore an affront to Jew-
ish sensibilities and ought, in a multicultural context, to be dropped3®

35. Collins, “Is a Critical Biblical Theology Possible?” 1.

36. This does not apply, of course, to those Jews who have a Christian faith, for whom,
whatever continuing significance they may give to their Jewish religious and cultural
roots, it is ultimately Jesus as the Christ, more than Torah, that is the determinative key
to God and humanity. .
37. Tanakh is an acronym of the three constituent parts, Torah, Neb?im, Ketubim.
Migqra is that which is read out in-public worship (from Hebrew gard, “to call out, to
read”). When Jewish scholars write a book with a title that includes the word biblical,
they understand that word in accordance with their own tradition; that is, the content is
restricted to the Hebrew Scriptures without consideration of the Christian NT. See, e.g.,
R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Basic Books,
1981); M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, ILBS (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1985); S. Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, trans. D. Shefer-Vanson,
JSOTSup 70 (Sheffield: Almond, 1989); H. C. Brichto, Toward a Grammar ofBiblical Po-
etics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
38. See, e.g., P. van Buren, “On Reading Someone Else's Mail,” in Die Hebréiische Bibel
und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte: Festschrift fiir Rolf Rendtorff zum 65. Geburtstag, ed.
Theology of the Old Testament 461

I have addressed these issues in The Old Testament of the Old Testa-
ment. There I argue that the problem of a Christian approach to the He-
brew Scriptures as Old Testament is closely paralleled by a similar
problem within the heart of Torah. When God reveals Himself?’ to
Moses as YHWH at the burning bush, this constitutes a new beginning
in relation to the patriarchal knowledge of God in Genesis 12-50 com-
parable to the new beginning in Christ in relation to the Old Testament.
The problem that the Old Testament poses to Christians—How do we
use it when we know the one God differently, and Jesus relativizes To-
rah?—is the problem that the patriarchal traditions posed to the writers
of the Pentateuch, for the patriarchal context is pre-Torah, and the pa-
triarchs do not observe Torah; how then should those who obey Torah
understand and use the patriarchal stories? The hermeneutical as-
sumptions of promise and fulfillment and typology, which Christians
have used to appropriate the Old Testament, were used by Mosaic Yah-
wistic writers of the Pentateuch to appropriate the patriarchal tradi-
tions. It follows from this that the language of “Old/New Testament” is
christological and embodies basic Christian assumptions about a
Christian relationship to Hebrew Scripture (the one God, truly revealed
to Israel, known definitively in Christ). Moreover, the fact that a similar
phenomenon can be found in the heart of Torah opens the way to un-
derstanding the notion of “Old Testament” in a way that may perhaps
be more readily accessible to Jews.*°

E. Blum, C. Macholz, and E. W. Stegemann (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,

1990), 595-606. A replacement for “Old Testament” is less obvious. “Hebrew Bible” is
widely favored, despite the obvious problems it poses for the small portions in Aramaic,
and, more seriously, for the Septuagint (study of which is hardly well classified under
“Hebrew Bible”). Moreover, the term Bible is still ultimately a word whose significance
depends on recognition of a Jewish or Christian canon (i.e., a selective procedure made
on a religious basis) and whose meaning varies according to Jewish or Christian context.
For a significant recent discussion, see C. R. Seitz, “Old Testament or Hebrew Bible?
Some Theological Considerations,” in his Word without End: The Old Testament as Abid-
ing Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 61-74.
39. At a time when the propriety of applying masculine pronouns to God is under
intense scrutiny, I use a capitalized form to make the point that (quite apart from not
confusing grammatical gender with biological gender) masculine terms have a differ-
ent significance when applied to God from their conventional usage with reference to
human beings. That such a capitalized form is also an ancient reverential usage is a
bonus.
40. There are many implicit wider issues about how best to affirm Christian faith in
a culture in which, as in the early Christian centuries, Christian beliefs about God and
humanity are in a minority. It should at least be clear that, although Christians must be
open to learn from those of other outlooks, there is nothing to be gained from sacrificing
identity and integrity on the altar of cultural pluralism (which may be a guise for an im-
perialistic cultural homogeneity).
462 Theology ofthe Old Testament

The Meanings of “Theology”

The term theology is ambiguous and all too rarely defined. Often “Old
Testament theology” is simply set over against “history of Israelite reli-
gion.” The difference between the two is rarely entirely clear (and on
most library shelves they are intermingled). There are, I suggest (to over-
simplify somewhat a complex issue), two basic distinguishing features.
First, the issue is whether one can make the affirmation of faith that
the God of whom the biblical text speaks is the one God whom Chris-
tians know and worship today through Jesus Christ. That is, there is a
question of religious truth at stake. The belief that what the Old Testa-
ment says may be, in some sense (with however many qualifications
one may add), true with regard to God and humanity constitutes a basic
division between those who do, and those who do not, practice Old Tes-
tament theology (as distinct from histories of Israelite religion). If the
question of truth is bracketed out or denied, then any kind of account
of the religious content of these ancient Israelite texts, no matter how
much it focuses on beliefs portrayed as normative within the text, is not
in principle different in kind from an account of the religious beliefs of,
say, ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Persia, or Arabia. All may be ac-
counts of belief systems of no continuing normative significance (i.e.,
truth content) for the interpreter; or whose continuing significance is
an arbitrary matter of individual choice. Conversely, some explicitly de-
velopmental accounts of Israelite religion may have high “theological”
content precisely because writers believe in the continuing truth of that
witness to reality whose early historical embodiments they describe.
To be sure, most writers of Old Testament theology have assumed
the enduring truth, in some sense, of what the Old Testament says. But
often they have simply assumed it, without arguing it. If doubts about
the possibility of doing Old Testament theology are to be met, the
grounds for the Christian assumption must be spelled out and be shown
to be coherent and integrated with the handling of the biblical text.
(Both here and elsewhere in this essay, similar concerns obviously ap-
ply, mutatis mutandis, for Jewish scholars.)
Second, the all-important and supremely difficult question is that of
establishing criteria by which biblical truth may be meaningfully
claimed and discussed. How may one understand, weigh, and respond
appropriately to claims about the nature of reality, about God and hu-
manity, life and death? The Christian faith has many such criteria, but
they are too little used or understood in the context of biblical scholar-
ship. Too often the criteria are thought to be solely the creeds and dog-
mas of Christian theology—which, in part, they are—and that these are
to be excluded from Old Testament (and New Testament) study as
Theology of the Old Testament 463

anachronistic and debilitating (one needs only a moderate level of his-

torical understanding to recognize that the writer of Gen. 1 would not
have had the Trinity in mind).
One basic difficulty has to do with the nature of God Himself. God is
not a person or object in the world like any person or object with which
we may be familiar. How then may we know Him? If someone speaks
about God, how can we know that they know what they are talking
about? In the development of modern culture, in which scientific knowl-
edge and method became the norm of knowledge and epistemology,
fateful moves were made. On the one hand, since God could not be stud-
ied scientifically, the focus shifted to the human dimension that could
be so studied—human language, thoughts, and feelings about God
could all be analyzed and classified. On the other hand, the category of
knowledge was reserved for that which was scientifically established,
and religious claims were demoted in status. Belief became an inferior
alternative to knowledge, reserved for things whose status was more or
less doubtful. These factors, among many others, have tended to leave
would-be biblical theologians in somewhat of a limbo—wanting to talk
about God, yet in practice analyzing human beliefs in God, beliefs
whose status is often unclear, not least because of a separation of bibli-
cal interpretation both from the realities of Christian living and from a
broader context of dogmatic, systematic, and philosophical theology.
Challenges to continuing (and often insufficiently thought through)
Christian assumptions about the biblical text are recurrent in recent de-
bate. John J. Collins, for example, maintains the importance of a strictly
descriptive approach to the biblical text (as in a typical agenda of the
nineteenth century) and at the same time removes the question of truth
from the biblical agenda (for the ready evaluations of liberal Protestant-
ism, which initially accompanied the historical agenda, can no longer
be taken for granted, and he has no alternative that can be justified
within his descriptive agenda):

The biblical texts must also be recognized as proposals about metaphys-

ical truth, as attempts to explain the workings of reality. . . . The question
here is whether any of these biblical accounts can now be accorded any
explanatory value; whether any of the biblical world views can be said to
be true as well as useful. The problem is that we lack any acceptable yard-
stick by which to assess metaphysical truth. . . . It is not within the com-
petence of biblical theologians as such to adjudicate the relative adequacy
of metaphysical systems. Their task is to clarify what claims are being
made, the basis on which they are made, and the various functions they
serve.*!

41. Collins, “Is a Critical Biblical Theology Possible?” 14.

464 Theology of the Old Testament

Alternatively, one fashionable aspect of some literary studies is to

focus on the text as ideological artifact in such a way as to bracket out
questions about the truth of the God depicted therein. This is usually,
however, accompanied by the reconstrual of the text within the terms
of a contemporary ideology; that is, the interpretation of the text is seen
necessarily to relate to a framework of meaning beyond itself, but this
framework is not that of Christian (or Jewish) theology.” For example,
David Clines writes:

There seem to me to be three kinds of data we could use in constructing

a picture of God in the Pentateuch. The first is what the character God
says about himself. . . . [This] might seem to some readers a very reliable
type of information; for here it might appear that it is God himself who is
talking about himself. But we need to realize that when the narrative
says—‘The Lorp . . . proclaimed, ‘the Lorp, the Lorp, a God gracious and
merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness’”
(Exod. 34:6)—this self-description does not consist of the words of God
himself (what language does he speak?) but of the words of the narrator
(in Hebrew). These are no more than words put in the mouth of the char-
acter God by the narrator, and, behind the narrator, by the author. Such
sentences of self-description contribute to our overall picture of the char-
acter God, of course, but the words in the mouth of God have no privi-
leged status compared with words spoken directly by the narrator in
describing God’s motives and actions.*?

The questionable assertion, of course, is that what the text says is no

more than words put in the mouth of the character God. In literary
terms, the words are that. But whether they are also more than that is
precisely the fundamental question at stake about the nature of reality,
which can be resolved positively only by relating the biblical text to a
context larger than itself in which the truth claims are critically af-
firmed (i.e., the continued living of Jewish or Christian faith).**

42. Theological concerns are not necessarily lacking. D. Patrick has written a curious
book, The Rendering of God in the Old Testament, OBT (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), in
which he portrays God as a “character” in Scripture but argues: “I believe that the God ren-
dered in Scripture has the capacity to convince us of his reality. To entertain this God as an
imaginary character, one must finally recognize that he actually exists” (14; cf. xxiii, chaps.
8 and 9), Imaginative power is indeed a significant element if the biblical portrayal of God
is to become a transforming reality for people. But Patrick's argument as it stands, a strange
kind of reworking of the ontological argument for the existence of God, is simply absurd.
43. D. J. A. Clines, “God in the Pentateuch: Reading against the Grain,” in Interested
Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible, JSOTSup 205 (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 187-211 (quotation from p. 187). This is a revision of
his earlier “Images of Yahweh: God in the Pentateuch,” in Studies in Old Testament The-
ology, ed. Hubbard, Johnston, and Meye, 79-98.
44. Clines himself recognizes that his way of putting things invites an obvious re-
sponse—“No doubt there is a serious question here, namely what the relationship is
Theology of the Old Testament 465

Such questions about the reality of that to which the Bible witnesses
are of course particularly difficult with regard to the Old Testament. On
the one hand, the primary focus for Christian faith in God is Jesus
Christ, and this naturally raises questions about the nature and value of
the pre-Christian faith of Israel and the centrality of Torah in the Old
Testament as it now stands. On the other hand, the Old Testament as-
cribes words and deeds to God that Christians have always found diffi-
cult to accept as true of the God in whom they believe.*> But this simply
means that the question of criteria for assessing the truth of what the
Old Testament says about God is all the more important to engage fully
and explicitly.

Possible Ways Ahead

The Work of Brevard Childs
What then may be the way ahead for Old Testament theology? In asking
this question I do not seek to describe the present and likely future ac-
tivity of those within the guild of Old Testament scholars.** Rather, I
wish to bring to bear some explicit concerns of contemporary Christian
faith, and to do this via the work of two eminent scholars who, in one
way or other, exemplify such concerns.*”

”
between the God who is a character in a book and the ‘real God’”—but has no more to
say about the question than that “we cannot begin to address it until we have systemati-
cally made a distinction between the two. How else could we approach the issue of their
relationship?” (“God in the Pentateuch,” 191 = “Images of Yahweh,” 82). His rhetorical
question obscures both the tendentious nature of his systematic distinction and the fact
that there are many criteria within Christian theology for weighing and assessing what
the Bible says about God. His recent writing elsewhere suggests that a materialist ideo-
logical criticism provides a norm by which the Bible may be assessed (and, unsurpris-
ingly, regularly found wanting): “Biblical Interpretation in an International Perspective,”
BibInt 1 (1993): 67-87, esp. 84-86.
45. This applies especially to God’s command to put to death all the inhabitants of
Canaan (Deut. 7; Josh. 1-11), and the command always to blot out Amalek (Exod. 17:8-
16; Deut. 25:17-19; 1 Sam. 15:1-3). On the former, see my “Toward an Interpretation of
the Shema,” in Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs, ed. C. Seitz and
K. Greene-McCreight (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 124-44.
46. Fora brief account on these lines, see B. Childs, “Old Testament Theology,” in Old
Testament Interpretation: Past, Present, and Future: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker, ed.
J. L. Mays, D. L. Petersen, and K. H. Richards (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 293-301.
47. A focus on Childs and Brueggemann means that, for better or worse, the contri-
butions of other scholars must be passed over. From a Jewish perspective, some of the
most stimulating work in recent years has come from J. D. Levenson. Although Leven-
son’s approach is that of a historian of religion, his concern to integrate such work with
a context of historical and continuing Jewish faith gives a genuinely theological dimen-
sion to what he does (in significant ways analogous to the Christian approach of Childs).
See especially his Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnip-
466 Theology of the Old Testament

First and foremost, a key contribution to the debate has been made
by Brevard Childs.*8 For Childs’s primary concern is precisely to ad-
dress the question of how these ancient Hebrew texts can responsibly
be understood and appropriated as Christian Scripture, as texts received
(in their canonical form) and lived with by Christians down through the
ages. To do this he has sought fundamentally to rethink a common ap-
proach to the text in which scholars primarily apply the common crite-
ria of ancient historical method and then, if they are so inclined, add
some “theological” icing to the cake thus baked. For to assume that
Christians can use the text as Scripture only by initially bracketing out
their Christian perspectives and then subsequently bringing them to
bear is what makes the whole task of theological appropriation impos-
sible from the outset; for then, by definition, the Christian perspective
is marginal, not foundational and integral, to the whole enterprise.
What Childs has argued for is nothing less than reconceptualizing the
discipline of biblical study as a whole by reuniting it to the wider con-
text of Christian faith and theology from which, at least in theory,”? it
has been separated in the name of a critical historical awareness that
has sought to understand the text in its own right and with its own au-
thentic voice by freeing it from the shackles of anachronistic ecclesias-
tical dogma.*° Simultaneously Childs has consistently argued that one

otence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), which offers a challenging reformulation of
a doctrine of creation, and The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transfor-
mation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1993), which offers, in effect, a theology of election. Also, the robust recent essays on the-
ology, hermeneutics, and exegesis by Christopher Seitz (Word without End) make it likely
that Seitz will be an increasingly significant contributor to the debate in coming years.
48. Seen. 26.
49, Levenson has recently argued for the enduring influence of Christian assump-
tions upon the study of the Hebrew Scriptures, even when Christian scholars were in
principle renouncing them. Unquestioned assumptions are often best seen by those who
do not share them. It should be noted, however, that Levenson is not at all hostile to re-
lating the Bible to faith, for this is his own concern in his Jewish context. His critique
rather is directed at the failure to be properly self-critical about the way in which biblical
study is in fact done. See “The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criti-
cism” (1-32) and “Why Jews Are Not Interested in Biblical Theology” (33-61) in The He-
brew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster/John
Knox, 1993).
50. The slogans of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates are still repeated to-
day: “The historical-critical study of the Bible . . . allows the biblical literature to be read
in the context of the time of its production rather than in accordance with the dictates of
later dogmatic systems of belief. ... The critical approach to the Bible has released its
great literary and aesthetic qualities from the ecclesiastical captivity of the book. The He-
brew Bible has been freed from the christological manacles imposed on it in Christian
circles” (R. P. Carroll, Wolf in the Sheepfold: The Bible as a Problem for Christianity [Lon-
don: SPCK, 1991]; in the U.S. as The Bible as a Problem for Christianity [Philadelphia:
Trinity Press International, 1991], 21-22, 24).
Theology of the Old Testament 467

must incorporate the many genuine insights of historically oriented crit-

icism and not seek to negate them as many who have sought to hold the
Bible and Christian theology together have sometimes tended to do. Cru-
cial to the task of rethinking the relationship between text and theology
is attention to the received, canonical shape of the biblical material, on
the grounds that the shaping the biblical texts have received is integral
to a process whereby the enduring significance, and possible continuing
appropriations, of the text has been made accessible to those who come
after its original addressees or recipients. To ignore the received shaping
of the texts, and to prefer instead some kind of reconstruction of some-
thing more “original” behind the text (the person of a prophet, the course
of religious history), exacerbates rather than solves questions of respon-
sible use and application by continuing communities of faith.
Problems with Childs’s work abound. Childs has not always ex-
pressed himself as clearly as he might, his use of key terms like canon
has sometimes been imprecise, some of his arguments are stronger
than others, and sometimes he has realized that his own earlier propos-
als have been inadequate (though if one is trying fundamentally to re-
think several centuries of debate and an established consensus, one can
hardly be expected to get everything right the first time). Moreover, a
comparison between his Old Testament Theology and his Biblical Theol-
ogy of the Old and New Testaments suggests significant uncertainties
about aspects of method still within Childs’s own mind, not least with
regard to the relationship between tradition history and the received
text.°! Much of this is well documented in the literature discussing
Childs’s work. Too often, however, Childs’s critics have discussed par-
ticular trees and missed the forest, focusing on questions about the
final form of the text at the expense of the relationship between received
text and Christian faith and theology.°? Even a full exposition and cri-
tique of Childs such as Mark Brett’s Biblical Criticism in Crisis? does not
succeed in penetrating to the heart of Childs’s concerns.°* For to sug-

51. See the comments in F. Watson’s significant essay, “Old Testament Theology as a
Christian Theological Enterprise,” in Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edin-
burgh: Clark; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), esp. 209-19.
52. This particularly applies to J. Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Bibli-
cal Study (London: Darton, Longman & Todd; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984; 2d ed.,
Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1996), chaps. 6 and 7; and J. Barr, Holy Scripture:
Canon, Authority, Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983); and
the situation is not improved in Barr’s recent Concept of Biblical Theology.
53. M. Brett, Biblical Criticism in Crisis? The Impact of the Canonical Approach on Old
Testament Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). See also now P. R. No-
ble, The Canonical Approach: A Critical Reconstruction of the Hermeneutics of Brevard S.
Childs, Biblical Interpretation Series 16 (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1995), which has
many good insights into Childs’s approach.
468 Theology of the Old Testament

gest that ultimately Childs’s approach is one among many, to be used

alongside others,>4 is to miss his point—“Old Testament theology” can
remain a meaningful concept only if the fundamental placement of the
biblical text within Christian faith and theology is made explicit and
maintained. Otherwise there is neither an “Old Testament” (but only
Tanakh or ancient Israelite texts) nor a “theology” in the sense of under-
standing a living reality today rooted in God’s self-revelation in Israel
and in Christ (but only accounts of ancient religious thought of ulti-
mately rather arbitrary interest and significance today). If the status of
the biblical text as Christian Scripture be retained, then sociocritical,
feminist, narratological, and other approaches to the text may be of sig-
nificance for contemporary appropriation of the text. If the link be lost,
then the biblical text becomes a text “like any other,” and it becomes dif-
ficult to see why it should continue to receive privileged status in terms
of time and resources devoted to it and expectations of special contem-
porary significance in the results of any study.
Childs’s approach is thus basic to the very nature and definition of
the discipline in a way that most other contemporary approaches are
not. This is not to say that Childs, as such, is right. It is to say that unless
the issues of Bible and theology that Childs highlights are resolved, at
least to the extent of being seen to be interdependent within a coherent
conceptual framework of Christian faith and to be concerned with the
truth about God and humanity, then Old Testament theology (and New
Testament theology) has no future ahead of it other than steady dimi-
nution—diminution not to nothing but to a small niche within ancient
Near Eastern religion and culture and a somewhat larger niche within
Western literary and cultural studies. But either way, it would be solely
evidence of past beliefs (i.e., theology as religious history) divorced
from knowledge of God as a present reality.
One possible attempt to blur the sharpness of this alternative would
be to appeal to the category of a “classic” —a work of high literary quality
and enduring imaginative appeal that contains valuable insights into the
human situation.°° The Old Testament is at least this, and for many peo-
ple it functions in this way—a way that may be a prelude to an accep-
tance of the text in the more demanding category of Scripture. But there
are at least two problems here.°° First, there would be little future or de-
mand for “theology” of such a text, for, other than as religious history,

54. Brett, Biblical Criticism in Crisis? 156-67.

55. See, e.g., D. Tracy, The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981); K.
Stendahl, “The Bible as a Classic and the Bible as Holy Scripture,” JBL 103 (1984): 3-10;
W. C. Smith, What Is Scripture? (London: SCM; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 182-95.
56. Childs himself dismisses the concept of a classic rather brusquely without explor-
ing its possible strengths and weaknesses (Biblical Theology, 72-73).
Theology of the Old Testament 469

such an exercise makes no sense apart from a living religious community

concerned to understand the truth about God and humanity today in the
light of the biblical text as a unique witness to that truth. The Bible as cul-
tural classic would attract a different kind of study—perhaps of the kind
that Robert Alter elegantly practices,’ but more likely focusing increas-
ingly on the interpretation and use of the Bible within Western culture.
Second, the pluralism of contemporary culture makes the notion of a
classic itself problematic, for the notion depends on precisely the kind of
consensus recognition and sense of the enduring value of the past for
present self-understanding and identity that is being eroded. If it is not
possible to sustain the Old Testament as a witness to a living faith rooted
in the past, the Hebrew Bible as a cultural artifact (and an all too hierar-
chical, sexist, and heteronomous artifact) may not fare much better.
To accept Childs’s proposals, at least in outline, as a possible basis for
the future of Old Testament theology is not to deny that there are prob-
lems with his proposals. In my judgment the most serious weaknesses
are twofold. First, in his recent works Childs has so concentrated on an-
alyzing and engaging with the scholarly debates that he has failed to
produce convincing and memorable exegesis and interpretation of the
biblical text. Until the Christian framework is seen to be fruitful in its re-
sults, there is a danger that it will remain either unpersuasive or unduly
abstract. In his Biblical Theology Childs speaks of “those who confess
Christ struggling to understand the nature and will of the One who has
already been revealed as Lord. The true expositor of the Christian scrip-
tures is the one who awaits in anticipation toward becoming the inter-
preted rather than the interpreter.” Childs also speaks of “the ability of
biblical language to resonate in a new and creative fashion when read
from the vantage point of a fuller understanding of Christian truth.”°®
This is a fine statement of the interpretive task. But when Childs takes
as an exegetical case study Genesis 22, one of the most memorable and
influential of all biblical stories, the result, while not without interest,
hardly exemplifies his own principles. This is perhaps ironic when it is
set alongside the interpretation of von Rad, whose christological and
cross-oriented interpretation of Abraham as “on a road out into Godfor-
sakenness, a road on which Abraham does not know that God is only
testing him,” is, while not without its own problems, surely a clear dem-
onstration of the principles that Childs advocates.°?

57. Especially Alter's Art of Biblical Narrative.

58. Childs, Biblical Theology, 86, 87.
59. G. von Rad, Genesis, trans. J. H. Marks, 2d ed., OTL (London: SCM; Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1972), 244. I have analyzed von Rad and also attempted my own prelimi-
nary exemplification of a Christian approach to Genesis 22 in my “Christ as the Key to
Scripture: Genesis 22 Reconsidered,” in He Swore an Oath: Biblical Themes from Genesis
470 Theology ofthe Old Testament

Second, Childs is weak in offering criteria for assessing the truth of

what the Bible says. The concern should be not to establish the truth of
God in Christ by criteria other than this truth itself, a process that
Childs would rightly reject as improper, for (at the risk of oversimplify-
ing complex issues) ultimate reality ceases to be ultimate if there are
truths beyond itself by which it is established. Rather, the need is to dis-
cern the evaluative procedures already present within the biblical
canon and to draw out their potential wider significance for contempo-
rary theology. Childs does this primarily for the status of the canonical
text in relation to its possible prehistory, but has little to say about how
the canonical text should function with regard to the dynamics of faith
today, for example with regard to distinguishing between more and less
valid claims with regard to knowing God, or to establishing appropriate
use of language about God. Childs affirms the whole of Scripture as the
norm for knowledge of God, but leaves unclear how the norm should
function.
This lack may be in part because Childs reacts against the idea of a
“canon within the canon.” To decry a “canon within the canon” should
not, however, be allowed to obscure the fact that interpretive decisions
must be made, that some parts of Scripture are more important than
others, and that God’s self-revelation in Christ transforms the continu-
ing significance of His previous self-revelation to Israel. Too often,
however, it must be said that interpreters do utilize a questionable form
of a “canon within the canon” that can be used to play down, or even
denigrate, those portions of Scripture that do not obviously agree with
a prescribed norm (itself often narrowly conceived).©
A clear example of the kind of thing Childs is worried about can be
seen in several recent works of Old Testament theology that have been
influenced by Norman Gottwald’s Tribes of Yahweh.*! In this work Gott-
wald takes as normative the earliest period of Israel’s history (as recon-
structed by himself) in which Israel is an “egalitarian” and therefore
“free” society formed in opposition to “hierarchical” and therefore “op-
pressive” Canaanite society.°* Egalitarianism is good because it means
freedom, and hierarchy is bad because it means oppression (these

12-50, ed. R. S. Hess, G. J. Wenham, and P. E. Satterthwaite (Carlisle: Paternoster; Grand

Rapids: Baker, 1994), 143-73; and more fully in my The Bible, Theology, and Faith: A Study
of Abraham and Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
60. At worst, of course, interpretation can degenerate to the self-serving principle that
one attends only to those parts of Scripture that conform to one’s existing presupposi-
tions and preferences.
61. N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Is-
rael, 1250-1050 B.c.z. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979; London: SCM, 1980).
62. Ibid., e.g., 464-65, 692.
Theology of the Old Testament 471

terms being extensively elaborated through a materialist analysis and

neo-Marxian rhetoric). Thus Gottwald takes a dim view of the Davidic-
Solomonic monarchy (while recognizing it as a military necessity to
counter the Philistines) because it is intrinsically hierarchical.®? As the
Old Testament links David and Zion traditions, so doubts about David
extend equally to Zion.
Bruce C. Birch, while avowedly pursuing a “canonical” approach
that “protects against the selection of only portions of the biblical text
as authoritative,’®+ comes out with a consistently negative assessment
of Solomon and the Jerusalem temple.

Israel under Solomon ceases to live as an alternative community in the

world (although some kept this tradition alive), and instead adopts a
model of royal ideology and management borrowed from surrounding
Canaanite culture... . Under Solomon the covenant politics of justice are
replaced by the politics of power. . . . It is the Jerusalem temple that most
epitomizes Solomon’s attack on the covenant religion of Yahweh... The
domestication of the radically free God of covenant is also accomplished
through the creation of a nationalized religion where the interests of God
are considered inseparable from the interests of the king. .. . The temp-
tation is always to believe that the patterns of community put forward by
the world can be indulged in to some degree without compromising the
covenant.®°

How then we should understand the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings

8, which is clearly presented by the Old Testament as one of the high
points of Israel’s history, we are not told.
It is evident from Birch’s language that his motivating concern is to
find in the Old Testament an “alternative community” that can serve as
a model for the Christian church; and similar concerns seem to moti-
vate Gottwald also. Since, however, the Old Testament’s generally pos-
itive (though not uncritical) presentation of the kingship of the house
of David and of the Jerusalem temple does not fit Birch’s notion of an
“alternative community,” supposedly derived from the Sinai covenant
traditions, he does not adjust his notion of the possible forms that de-
sirable community might take but rather reinterprets and downgrades
the biblical material that disagrees with his notion. Birch’s lack of any
self-critical reflection on the internal tensions, indeed contradictions,
within his approach to the biblical text is remarkable. One can see more
clearly why Childs’s stress on the normative nature of the canon as a

63. Ibid., 415, 417.

64. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down, 45.
OS. Uowel, 22iSVD, 223), DAS, Poy P23),
472 Theology of the Old Testament

whole may serve as a safeguard against a too easy co-opting of the bib-
lical text to serve the fashions of the day.

The Work of Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann has been one of the most prolific contributors to
Old Testament theology in recent years, and his consistent concern has
been to relate the biblical text to Christian life today. How many other
leading Old Testament scholars would produce a title like Interpretation
and Obedience: From Faithful Reading to Faithful Living?°® His breadth
of reading is remarkable, and he draws on, and makes accessible, in-
sights from sociology, psychology, literary theory, and the wider post-
modern debate. Three recent volumes of collected essays clearly show
his characteristic approach and concerns: Old Testament Theology, A
Social Reading of the Old Testament, and The Psalms and the Life of
Faith.®’ To these may now be added a full-scale Theology of the Old Tes-
tament.®® Interestingly, this latest work veers away from some of the
perspectives set out in two preliminary essays, “A Shape for Old Testa-
ment Theology, I: Structure Legitimation,” and “A Shape for Old Testa-
ment Theology, II: Embrace of Pain.”©’ One receives the impression
that Brueggemann, like Childs, may in certain respects be less resolved
in his own mind than either his admirers or his detractors tend to allow.
In the essays Brueggemann argues that there is a constructive (nec-
essary, indissoluble, and life-enhancing) tension between “structure le-
gitimation” and “the embrace of pain.” The former concerns a publicly
structured and institutionally embodied understanding of morality, ra-
tionality, and coherence in life and faith. The latter represents the ac-
tual, experienced pain and conflict of life for many, a pain frequently
caused by the public structures of morality and order, a pain that there-
fore critiques and opposes such public structures. Brueggemann sees
the former as a “common theology” of the ancient world, based on cre-
ation and concerned for order, while the latter is Israel’s distinctive pro-

66. W. Brueggemann, Interpretation and Obedience: From Faithful Reading to Faithful

Living (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991).
67. W. Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text,
ed. P. D. Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); idem, A Social Reading of the Old Testa-
ment: Prophetic Approaches to Israel's Communal Life, ed. P. D. Miller (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 1994); idem, The Psalms and the Life of Faith, ed. P. D. Miller (Minneapolis: For-
tress, 1995).
68. W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997). ;
69. The essays originally appeared in CBQ 47 (1985): 28-46, 395-415; reprinted in
Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology, 1-21, 22-44. Pages 31, 395-402, and 407-15 are
excerpted in Flowering of Old Testament Theology, ed. Ollenburger, Martens, and Hasel,
409-26.
Theology of the Old Testament 473

phetic witness, concerned forjustice. He also makes the move of align-

ing the David/Zion/creation/wisdom traditions with the former, and the
Mosaic/prophetic/Job/lament-psalm traditions with the latter.
Much of the attraction of Brueggemann’s writing lies in a powerful
pastoral concern, with much of which any Christian can hardly dis-
agree: “What we make of pain is perhaps the most telling factor for the
question of life and the nature of faith. It has to do with the personal
embrace of suffering as possibly meaningful in our lives. It also has to
do with social valuing of the pained and the pain-bearers—the poor, the
useless, the sick, and the other marginal ones.”’° Yet there is an obvious
difficulty. On the one hand, Brueggemann says programmatically that
the two primary traditions must be held in tension, that both are valid
and necessary: “The main dynamic of the Old Testament is the tension
between the celebration of that legitimation and a sustained critique of
it’;”! “the practice of pain-embrace must always be in tension with the
legitimation of structure, never in place of it. It is this tension that is the
stuff of biblical faith and it is the stuff of human experience; however,
simply to choose the embrace of pain instead of legitimation of struc-
ture as a rubric for theology is romanticism.””?
On the other hand, in these essays Brueggemann in practice tends to
handle the relationship not as an intrinsic tension of two legitimate po-
larities but as one of enduring problem (structure legitimation) and
ever-renewed solution (embrace of pain). Crucial here is an explicit
hermeneutic of suspicion, informed by Marx’s classic critique of reli-
gion as ideology, refined by the Frankfurt School of postwar Germany.
In Marx’s classic formulation, ideology (with which theology is readily
identified) is an outlook that promotes the interests of the powerful in
society by obscuring the nature of their power and so perpetuating it;
this perpetuation of power is at the expense of the powerless, who are
duped by the ideology into acquiescence in their powerlessness instead
of doing something to change the situation.

Every theological claim about moral rationality is readily linked to a

political claim of sovereignty and a political practice of totalitarianism.
Such linkage need not be so. There is no necessity to it, but it regularly is
so. Creation theology readily becomes imperial propaganda and ideol-
ogy. Then, when the order of life is celebrated, it is the political order with
which we agree. Indeed, it becomes the legitimated order from which we
benefit and that we maintain in our own interest, if at all possible. The
political order may be derived from, reflect, and seek to serve the cosmic

70. Brueggemann, “Shape I,” in Old Testament Theology, 19.

Thi. Mastele iE
72. Brueggemann, “Shape II,” in ibid., 26.
474 Theology of the Old Testament

order, but derivation is so easily, readily, and frequently inverted that the
cosmic order becomes a legitimation for the political order, and so there
is a convenient match (often regarded as an ontological match) between
God’s order and our order. What starts as a statement about transcen-
dence becomes simply se/f-justification, self-justification made character-
istically by those who preside over the current order and who benefit
from keeping it so.”

Of course, once one has felt the force of a Marxian critique, it can
never be lightly dismissed; nor should it be, for it presents, in secular-
ized form, much that is characteristic of Hebrew prophecy (which is
not entirely surprising, given Marx’s Jewish background). Yet it is vital
that an appropriately (self-)critical hermeneutic of suspicion should
not become indiscriminating and facilely brand all concern for struc-
tural, and sometimes hierarchical, order as intrinsically oppressive of
the poor and marginalized. The biblical and historical Christian con-
strual of institutional order as mandated by God, with power as a
means of service, needs always to be kept in view.
In his recent Theology Brueggemann retains a dialectical structure to
the theology, but differs from the previous essays in at least two ways.”4
First, the basic structure of the work is provided by the dialectic be-
tween Israel’s “core testimony,” that is, its positive and foundational af-
firmations about the nature of God, and its “countertestimony,” that is,
its affirmations of puzzling and difficult aspects of the divine nature.
Second, the suspicions about Davidic and Zion traditions play a rela-
tively minor role within the whole, and there is more consistent and ex-
plicit concern that such suspicions should not be allowed to reduce lan-
guage about God to mere human ideology and self-interest.
Thus, for example, in a discussion of Psalm 96:10, “Say among the
nations, “The Lord is king!’” Brueggemann first says: “The locus of this
assertion is the Jerusalem temple, which means that the Yahwistic
claim is shadowed by the interest of the Davidic-Solomonic establish-
ment. That is, the Yahwistic claim, surely theological in intent, is never
completely free of socioeconomic-political-military interest.” Yet in the
next paragraph he continues: “Recognition of the ideological element
in the assertion of Ps. 96:10 in itself does not dispose of nor delegitimate
the theological claim that is here made. Simply because we recognize
such an interest does not mean that the claim of Yahweh’s sovereignty
is reduced to and equated with Israelite interest, for this is, nonetheless,

73. Brueggemann, “Shape I,” 16-17.

74. The following remarks are amplified in my book review in Ashland Tiheological
Journal 30 (1998): 100-104.
Theology ofthe Old Testament 475

a God who is committed to justice and holiness that are not cotermi-
nous with Israel’s political interest.””>
There are, however, other areas where Brueggemann’s Theology is
likely to prove controversial. First and foremost is the question of the
status of Israel’s testimony to God as Brueggemann expounds it. He
makes much (rightly) of the significance of language and rhetoric, and
warns against too-easy transposition of Israel’s language about God
(“testimony”) into other forms. On the one hand he makes the move, fa-
miliar already from von Rad (though still controversial), of severing
such testimony from historical-critical reconstructions of Israel’s his-
tory and religion. On the other hand, and rather more surprisingly, he
severs such testimony from any ontological claims about the reality of
God. He is entirely explicit about this: “I insist that it is characteristic
of the Old Testament, and characteristically Jewish, that God is given
to us (and exists as God ‘exists’) only by the dangerous practice of rhet-
oric. .. . 1 shall insist, as consistently as I can, that the God of Old Testa-
ment theology as such lives in, with, and under the rhetorical enterprise
of this text, and nowhere else and in no other way.”’® The only qualifica-
tion to this which he allows is that “any faithful utterance about Yah-
weh must at the same time be an utterance about Yahweh’s partner,”
that is, that language about Israel’s God necessarily implies and entails
“characteristic social practice that generates, constitutes, and mediates
Yahweh in the midst of life,” social practice that is supremely the prac-
tice of “justice as the core focus of Yahweh’s life in the world and Is-
rael’s life with Yahweh.”?”7
Brueggemann has undoubtedly put his finger on something both
central to the biblical material and regularly absent from modern bib-
lical scholarship: valid language about God cannot be separated from
human engagement in particularly demanding forms of living. None-
theless, the way he does this creates grave unease. For he consistently
sets up Classic and ecclesial Christian theology as a rigid, constricted,
and constricting straitjacket from which Old Testament theology
must be liberated (in a way reminiscent of eighteenth- and nine-
teenth-century rhetoric), rather than as a context of disciplines that
precisely enable language about God to be true rather than idolatrous,
faithful rather than manipulative, and to be rightly related to human
living.’”® Underlying this, one senses Brueggemann’s deep dismay at

75. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 493.

76. Ibid., 66 (italics original).
77. Ibid., 409, 574, 735.
78. He mentions “classic theology” only so as to dismiss it brusquely, e.g., ibid., 82,
230, 332, 559, 563. Yet the great theologians are not such men of straw as Brueggemann
seems to imply.
476 Theology of the Old Testament

battles for the Bible and for control of seminaries that have marked
recent Christian history in the United States, battles in which, in his
judgment, appeals to orthodoxy have been used to preempt genuine
engagement with the biblical text or with other people and in which
power struggles have displaced justice.” But even if Brueggemann
were entirely right about such recent events (a matter that I am not in
a position to evaluate), it remains a gross travesty to tar all classic and
ecclesial Christian theology with the brush of its abuse. One must al-
ways insist that abuse does not remove right use, and that the answer
to poor use of Christian theology must be good use, not its caricature
and abandonment.
The problems that Brueggemann’s approach may lead to can be
clearly seen in his brief and casual treatment of the issue of true and
false prophecy, which should be an issue of prime importance, for here
the biblical writers themselves focus on the key question as to how
claims to the (invisible) reality of God can be appropriately given visible
public recognition. Brueggemann says that “prophetic mediation
makes a claim of authority that is impossible to verify. That is, all of
these claims and uses are reports of a quite personal, subjective experi-
ence. No objective evidence can be given that one has been in the divine
council. . . Scholars are agreed that there are no objective criteria for
such an issue.”8° Where decisions have been made by the canonizing
process as to which prophets should be recognized as “true,” this is sim-
ply the result of an “ideological struggle.”*! It is dismaying that at the
crucial moment, where what is needed is the classic language and dis-
ciplines of moral and spiritual discernment (the primary and perennial
form of theological hermeneutics), Brueggemann lapses into the lan-
guage of pure positivism, with its clean, clear dichotomies of “objec-
tive” (public, accessible, and discussable) and “subjective” (private, in-
accessible, and incapable of discussion), where encounter with God is
entirely relegated to the latter (and thus apparently evacuated of all gen-
uine significance). In other words, whatever Brueggemann’s insistence
upon the nonreducible nature of Israel’s testimony to God and its rela-
tionship to human practices of justice, his account in fact, because of
an inability sufficiently to articulate basic issues of theology, tends to
sever the artery between humanity and the reality of God that is foun-
dational to the Old Testament. On this view, biblical testimony to God
is in danger of becoming an elaborate code for the practice of justice
and of ceasing to be simultaneously the kind of revelation of, and en-

79. Ibid., 106.

80. Ibid., 631.
81. Ibid.
Theology of the Old Testament 477

gagement with, an ultimate gracious and just Reality with whom Jews
and Christians, in differing ways, have always believed their faiths have
had to do.®?

Conclusion
It is disappointing that Childs and Brueggemann, who both have
much to offer, seem to have no real dialogue with each other and tend
to present their approaches as mutually exclusive alternatives. Childs,
in his Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context, never discusses
or even mentions Brueggemann (except in bibliographies), and in his
Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments brusquely and star-
tlingly dismisses Brueggemann in less than a page as one who “is sin-
cerely striving to be a confessing theologian of the Christian church
and would be horrified at being classified [as Childs classifies him] as
a most eloquent defender of the Enlightenment.”** Sadly, Bruegge-
mann in his turn gives as good as he gets and dismisses Childs as
“massively reductionist,” and caricatures Childs’s appeal to recontex-
tualize the Bible within the “Rule of Faith” as “an unqualified embrace
of the Tridentine inclination to subject the text and its possible inter-
pretation to the control of church categories.”*4 It is a matter of great
dismay that eminent scholars who argue for, and display, learned
openness to the biblical text can become so opaque when they read
each other’s writings. In my judgment Childs’s work is the more pro-
found and far-reaching and will have the most enduring significance
for the discipline, but Brueggemann’s engagement of the text with
contemporary life represents an indispensable element within the
theological task. Although one cannot simply combine the two, one
can learn from both.
In sum, Old Testament theology has a potentially rich future ahead
of it, if it can relearn the disciplines of being truly theological. This will
be demanding because the scholar will need to be conversant not only
with the classic disciplines of Old Testament study but also with the na-
ture of Christian theology in its historical and contemporary forms and

82. For other evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of Brueggemann’s propos-
als, see N. K. Gottwald, “Rhetorical, Historical, and Ontological Counterpoints in Doing
Old Testament Theology” (11-23); and T. E. Fretheim, “Some Reflections on Bruegge-
mann’s God” (24-37), in God in the Fray: A Tribute to Walter Brueggemann, ed. T. Linafelt
and T. K. Beal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998). This collection of essays is intended as a
companion volume to Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament.
83. Childs, Biblical Theology, 73.
84. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 92. Compare the astonishing depic-
tion of Childs as seduced by a neo-Hellenistic lust for ontology (p. 714).
478 Theology of the Old Testament

be able to integrate them convincingly. But if an Old Testament theol-

ogy does not make clear that the witness of the Old Testament entails a
transformative engagement with God that is as demanding as it is gra-
cious, as corporate as it is individual, as strange as it is familiar, and
that receives its deepest realization in the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus, it will be failing in its task.
Subject Index

Abraham 122 philosophy of history 370, 374-78,

Achaemenid Empire 237, 245, 261, 265 380, 389-90
agrarian societies 437, 441 and prophecy 370, 374-78, 384-86,
agricultural production 432 389-90
Ahmar, Tell 69 and wisdom 370, 374-75
Akhenaten 53-54, 409 application (of Prophets) 267
Akkadian 39, 40, 43, 44, 64, 66, 366 Arabic 319
cuneiform 150 Arad 45, 82, 413
goddesses 437 Aramaic 44, 243-44, 264, 303, 319, 366
poetry 353 Aramaic targum of Job 320, 321
Aleppo Codex 34 Aram-Naharaim 92
Alexander the Great 263 archaeology 59-96, 157, 159-61, 171-
“alternative community” in Old Testa- 72, 395-96
ment 471 of Babylonian invasions 233
Amarna letters 53-54, 81, 89, 189, 198, and biblical studies 211-12
220, 303, 427, 429-30 and destructions 202
Amenemhet III 56, 75
of early Israel 177
limitations 204, 206
Amenemhet IV 56
of monarchy 208, 220-21
Amenemope 303, 307
objectivity 201-2, 211
Amenhotep IIT 88, 89, 93
of postexilic period 237
Amenhotep III 54, 81
of prophetic material 278
Amenhotep IV 53, 81
Aristotle 281
Ammonites 53
ark of the covenant 213
Ammurapi III 414
Artaxerxes I 249, 258, 260
Amun cult 404 Artaxerxes II 46, 261, 262
analyse structurelle 354 Artaxerxes III 46, 261-62
Anat 381-82, 395, 398 Asaph psalms 342
ancestor worship 414-15 Ashara, Tell 65
Annales school 188, 191-92 Ashdod 217
anthropology 157, 158, 172, 423, 447- Asherah 48, 395, 396, 397, 406, 412
48 Ashtar 50-51
and prophets 275-76, 294 Ashurnasirpal II 44
and theology 443 Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) 442
apocalyptic 369-90, 434, 436 Assyria 42, 44, 92, 202, 231, 253
definition 371-74 decline 217, 226
and eschatology 379-80 prophetic texts 272-73
as literary genre 372 western campaign 228-29
and myth 378-85 atheism 167, 170
pessimism in 376 authority, routinization of 430

479
480 Subject Index

Azu 43 causality, primitive idea of 167

Chemosh 407
Baal 51, 366, 381-83, 394-95, 396, 397, chiasms 354
400, 403, 406-7, 409, 416 chiefdoms 431-33, 442, 444
Babylon 22, 42, 67, 231-32, 387, 437, Childs, Brevard 466-72
439 Christian faith and Old Testament 460-
Babylonian captivity. See exile 61, 462-69
Bahrain 41 Christian theological framework 469
Balaam texts 47, 92-94, 274 Chronicler 213-14, 226, 234, 258
basic sentences (Hebrew poetry) 347 Chuera, Tell 44, 66
Bedouin cultures 427, 429 citizen-temple community 246, 248-52,
bespoke criticism 113 255
Bethel 233 city-states 219
Beth-shan stelae 45-46 coins 263, 264
Bible comparative method 392, 417-18, 444-
dating 209-10, 212-15 45
inspiration and authority 443 complaint psalms 363-64
as literature 101-2, 110-11, 163-64, composition (of Prophets) 267
208-9, 353 conflict tradition (sociology) 423, 425
unity 99 conquest 78-90, 202, 203, 204, 205
see also Old Testament conquest model 178-79, 200, 429
Biblia Hebraica 35, 36 consensus in society 423
biblical interpretation constriction in Hebrew poetry 345
and archaeology 211-12 consummation 389
and social science criticism 446-47 Cosmic Warrior. See Divine Warrior
biblical theology 391, 416, 419-20, 454, couplet 348, 349, 350, 352
459-60 covenant 136, 425, 433-34
Book of the Dead 54—55 and prophets 274-75
Bronze Age 186, 195 in Psalms 335
see also Early Bronze Age; Late and wisdom literature 297, 301
Bronze Age; Middle Bronze Age covenant lawsuit 274
Brueggemann, Walter 472-78 criticism, analogy, correlation (histori-
Bubastite Portal 55 cal-critical method) 154, 169
bureaucracy 442 Cult of the Dead 392, 414-15
burial 54-55 cultural grid 450
cuneiform texts 38-39, 40
camel domestication 70 curse formula 56
Canaanite culture 159, 187-88, 190, Cyrus 234, 243, 248, 254
196, 345, 393-95, 415-16
Canaanite religion 393, 400, 403-4, 409 D (Pentateuch source) 116, 128, 129,
Divine Warrior motif 382 212
fertility religion 399 Daliyeh, Wadi ed- 46, 263
myth and apocalyptic 387 Daliyeh papyri 46
polytheism 410 Dan, Tell 279
prophetic texts 274 Daniel, Book of 279, 371-72, 386
sacrifices 444 Danites 190
canonical criticism 99, 119, 420, 467-72 Danuna 190
canon within the canon 470 Darius I 254
Catalogs of Hymnic Incipits 334 Darius II 261
catchwords 311, 340 Darius III 46, 261
Subject Index 481

David 215, 220, 222 decline 217, 432

Davidic monarchy epigraphy 53-58
and exile 253 hegemony 225
in Psalms 335, 337-38, 340 hieroglyphics 150
see also monarchy Hyksos period 75, 87
Dead Sea Scrolls 20-21, 22, 25, 28, 212 instruction literature 297
Deborah 436, 447 monotheism 409
Decalogue 444 prophecy 274
deconstruction 107-10, 111, 115, 359 proverb collections 302-4
Deir ‘Alla 46-47, 93, 274 schools 308
deism 149 topographical lists 401
“deportation literature” 232 Egyptian sojourn 75-78, 400
determinism 449, 450 El 394, 395, 397, 400, 401, 403-4, 406,
Deutero-Isaiah 129, 289, 381, 384 409, 416
Deuteronomistic History 124, 128, 129, election 453
139-40, 198, 210, 213-14, 226, 421- Elephantine Papyri 55-56, 247, 262, 263
22, 426 Emar 43, 69, 76, 273, 417, 445
on Hezekiah 230 “embrace of pain” 472-73
on Judah’s decline 234 Enlightenment 101, 148, 149, 151-52,
on Solomon 224-25 153, 421, 422, 477
diachronic studies 140-41, 146, 163 Enuma Elish 407
dialectology 283 Ephraimite prophetic tradition 434
Diaspora 251 epigraphic discoveries 38-58, 208, 395—
dietary laws 424 96
“differance” 109 epistemology 463
discourse analysis 282, 359 eschatology 436
disputational literature 325-26 apocalyptic 372-73, 374, 385, 388
divination 274 of Psalms 337-38, 368
Divine Warrior 378, 380, 381-83, 401 ethics 455
documentary hypothesis 116-44, 150- ethnicity 194-97
Ml ethnographic studies 449-50
doubt. See skepticism eudaemonism in wisdom literature
drought 189, 205 297-98
Euphrates River 63, 65, 68
E (Pentateuch source) 116, 117, 123, evangelical scholarship 98, 150, 442-47
125-26, 128-30, 139, 142, 143, 277 evolution, revolution, devolution (of
Early Bronze Age 39-41, 63-66, 186 monotheism) 405, 409-10
Early Iron Age 69, 84, 186, 187-90, 194, execration texts 56-57
195, 432 exegesis 289, 446, 469
Ebla 40, 65, 69, 279, 302, 417 exile 229-30, 231-35, 249, 252-54, 429,
Ecclesiastes 315-18 435, 438-40
secularism 317 history 240-43
skepticism 315-17 and Israelite identity 439-40
Edom 47, 253, 402 exiles, tensions with survivors 234, 255
educational sayings 311 existentialism 113
egalitarianism 428, 430, 438, 441-42, exodus 78-90, 180, 408
470 exodus group 400, 401, 406
Egeria 73-74 Ezra 234, 241, 243-44, 249, 251, 254,
Egypt 22, 90-92, 387, 445 438-39
archaeology 70-71 dating and authenticity 256-59
482 Subject Index

mission 259-61 intervention 260

as misogynist 438
Fakhariyah (Fekherye), Tell 44, 253 mythology 124
famine 76-77 and Proverbs 302, 304
Fara 63 rhetoric 281
“fathers’ houses” 249 group mentality 425
fear of the Lord 297, 314
feminist criticism 106-7, 112-13, 436 Hadad 400
of Job 327 Hadidi, Tell 43, 65
of Prophets 293 Haggai 251
of Psalms 357-58 Halaf culture 61
fertility rite 416 haléli-yah psalms 334, 336
Festival of Enthronement of Yahweh Halzi Gate 69
364, 365 Hananiah 56
Festival of Tabernacles 343, 364 Hapiru 90, 181-82, 427
feudalism 442 Haradum 41-42, 67
First Enoch 386, 388-89 Haran 131
folk heroes 440 Hariri, Tell 65
formalism 100, 102, 104, 105, 115 Harris Papyrus 72
form criticism 98, 125, 355 Hasmoneans 379
of Prophets 284 Hatti 68-69, 217
of Psalms 330, 356, 360-65 Hazor 94-95, 178, 216, 217-18, 221
fortifications 216-18, 219, 222 Hebrew Old Testament Text Project 35-
under Hezekiah 227 36
under Nehemiah 260 Hebrew Scriptures 460-61
fragmentary hypothesis 119, 129-30 Hebrew University Bible Project 32, 34
Fray, Tell 43 Hebron 219
frontier model 430 henotheism 405, 407
Ful, Tell el- 95-96 hermeneutic of curiosity 356
hermeneutic of suspicion 473-74
G (Grundlage) 117 hermeneutics 355-60, 446, 454
gapping 346 Hesban, Tell 82-83
Gedaliah 253 Hexapla (Origen) 24-25
Genesis, historicity of 122-23 Hexateuch 117
Gezer 216, 217-18, 219 Hezekiah 52, 227, 228, 230
Gibeah 95-96 hierarchy 470-71
Gibeon 233 historical-critical method 98, 101, 114,
God 143, 144, 146, 152-56, 162, 165,
as character 464 168-71, 209, 350, 355
development of personal names 394— historical psalms 359
99 historicism 419
kingdom of 436 history
as Lord of history 389-90 accuracy 211
nature 463-64 in apocalyptic 374-78, 380, 389-90
goddesses 437 and bias 206
Goshen 73-74, 88 of exile 240-43
governor 247-48, 253 “from below” 160
Greek culture as literature 209
and apocalyptic 387 Old Testament as 155-56
building techniques 237 philosophy of 191-92, 370, 375
Subject Index 483

see also Old Testament: historiogra- distinction among “historic,” “bibli-

phy cal,” “ancient” 190
history of Israelite religion 391-400, economic context 440-42
462 history of religion 391-419
history-of-religions school 236, 355, as hybrid culture 441
418-19, 445 as indigenous to Canaan 182-91, 427
Hittites 42, 68-69 monotheism 395-96, 405-11, 416
holiness 136 premonarchic 177-91
Holiness Code 134-35, 138-39, 421 social contexts 421
Holiness School (HS) 134-38 syncretism 395-97, 412, 416
Horemheb 89 uniqueness and distinctiveness 443-
Hormah 82 46
horticultural societies 441 Israelite epic cycle 393-94
Horvat Uza ostraca 47 Israelite history 146
Hoshaiah 50, 53 Israel Stela 82
Huldah 436, 447
humanities 421 J (Pentateuch source) 116-17, 119-21,
hunter-gatherer 441 IDB M25 -SOMB2FIS3 Misra so)
Hurrians 65, 68, 190 142, 143, 277
hyperbole 203 Jabin 95
Jacob stories 126
idealist perspective (sociology) 423, 424 Jemdet Nasr period 63
Jeremiah 445
identity, and exile 439-40
Jericho 81
ideological criticism 106
Jeroboam II 51, 226
ideology 473
Jerusalem 219, 220-21, 227-28
Idumea 47
destruction 231, 233, 252-53
Iltani 41
refortification 260
inclusio 354
temple 471, 474
individualism 425-26
Jewish scholars 456, 460, 462
infighting 203, 205
Jezreel 221
inner-biblical exegesis 289 Job 318-21
insider-outsider status 450 literary approaches 323-27
intentional fallacy 105 recent interpretation 322-23, 327
interpretive community 106 Joseph story 71-78, 119-21, 126
interpretive task 469-70 Josephus 254, 261-62, 263-64
Iraq. See Syro-Mesopotamia Joshua
Iron Age 183-84, 398-99, 432 contradictions with archaeology 201
mode of production 442 contradictions with Judges 200
population growth 218-19 hyperbole in 203
urbanization 216 Judah 214, 227-29
see also Early Iron Age decline 233-34
irony Persian period 240, 246-52, 254-64
in Israel’s history 222 Judaism 426, 429
in Job 326 Judean prophetic tradition 434
Isaiah, composition of 289-90 judges 87, 406, 425, 430
Isbet Sarta 433 justice 473
Ischali, prophetic texts 272-73
Ishtar 51 kaige recension 24, 26
Israel Karnak 223-24
484 Subject Index

Kassite period (Mesopotamia) 302 Mari 40, 42, 65, 67, 303, 417, 445
Kenites 402, 403-4 prophetic texts 272-73
Ketef Hinnom scrolls 48 marriage 285
Kingship of Yahweh psalms 357 Marxist criticism 106, 181, 293, 424,
kingship vs. alternative community 471 428, 471, 473-74
kinship 426, 450 Mashkan-Shapir 41, 67
Korah psalms 342 Masoretic text 21, 22, 24, 27, 29, 30, 33,
Kuntillet <Ajrud 49, 278, 411-13 34, 35-36
Job 319, 321
Labayu 89-90 Psalms 336, 353
Lachish 80, 90, 178, 217, 219, 233, 413 see also proto-Masoretic text
Lachish Letters 45, 49-50 materialist perspective (sociology) 423,
Lagash 39, 64 424, 428, 439
lament, Job as 325 meaning 106-13
Lamentations 233, 234 in Hebrew Poetry 350
lament psalms 362-65, 455 Megabyzos revolt 259, 261
language 212, 347 Megiddo 80, 216, 217-18, 219, 221, 223,
skepticism 109 225, 413
and structuralism 103-4 Memphis 88
see also literary approaches Merenptah 82, 86, 89, 180
Late Bronze Age 68-69, 77, 79-81, 83, Merenptah Stela 57, 190, 197-98
88-89, 183-86, 188-90, 194, 220, merkavah material 386
398-99, 401-2, 409, 432 Mesha 50
law 425 Mesha Stela 220, 407, 413
and wisdom 307-8 Mesopotamia 444, 445
leadership 440 metaphor, use by prophets 285-87
Leiden Peshitta 27 meter, poetic 348
Leilan, Tell 42, 66 Middle Assyria 76, 302-3
Levant 60-61, 196 Middle Bronze Age 41-42, 84, 186, 398-
Leviathan 380 99
lexicography 283 archaeology 67-68
liberalism 149-50 and exodus 89
liberation theology Midianites 400, 402-4
in Job 327 Midianite sojourn (Moses) 87, 400
in Prophets 292 millenarian groups 436
in Psalms 358 Minor Prophets 290
line-forms (Hebrew Poetry) 347 Miqra’ 460
line-types (Hebrew Poetry) 347 miracles 155, 170
literary approaches 97-115, 131, 146, Miriam 436
161-64, 165, 172-74, 460 Mitanni 42, 68
as ahistorical 173-74 mixed marriages 260
to Job) 323=27 Mizpah 233
to Prophets 281-83, 294 Moab 50, 83
to Psalms 350-53 Moabite Stone 50, 280
mode of production 441-42
Ma‘at 298 monarchy 215-21, 440, 442, 444
Malachi 251 artificiality 222-23
Mardikh 65 charismatic phase 430
Mardikh, Tell 40, 65 development 207-15, 429-33, 431
Marduk 407, 409 divided 222
Subject Index 485

and prophets 268 oppression 293, 470

monolatry 395-97, 405, 408, 410 oral tradition 117, 123, 125, 126, 131,
monotheism 142, 229, 395-96, 405-11, 283-84, 290
416, 435, 438 order 298
morphology 282 organizational/political grid 450
Mosaic traditions 143 Osorkon I 91
Moses Osorkon [IV 90, 92
as prototypical prophet 269-70 ‘Ouelli, Tell el- 62
in Psalms 337
Mozan, Tell 40, 66 P (Pentateuch source) 116, 124-26,
mysticism 386 128-31, 134, 137, 139, 142, 143, 277
myth and apocalyptic 378-85 Palestine 22
mythology 124 archaeology 70-71, 79-81
epigraphy 45-53
narrative criticism 115, 334 history 191
narrative poetry 351 Palmyra 279
nation-states 220 parallelism 349-51, 352
Native American prophets 275, 434-35 external and internal 355
Negev 82 types 353
Nehemiah 234, 241, 246, 247, 249-50, paronomasia 311
251, 438-39 pastoralism 186, 193, 205
dating and authenticity 256-57 patriarchs 122, 126-29, 133, 143, 399,
mission 259-61 461
Neolithic period, archaeology of 60-62 peaceful infiltration model 179-80, 429,
neoorthodoxy 150 433
New Criticism 100, 105, 119, 140, 144 peasant revolt theory 425, 427, 429-30
New Historicism 107, 111, 191 Pentateuch 116-44, 461
Nineveh 44, 63, 69 composition 277
Niqmaddu III 414 historicity 122-25, 132-33, 144
nomads 159, 180, 182, 185, 186, 189, Mosaic authorship 148
192-93, 202, 429, 433 Persia 212, 221, 237, 239-42, 249, 254-
normalcy and order 424 64, 387, 438-40
northern kingdom 210, 214, 219, 226, Peshitta 19, 26-27, 29, 321
229 Pethor 92-93
Nuzi 220 Philistines 57, 217, 432, 444
Phoenician language 366
objectivity 446-47 physical grid 450
Old Babylonian period 41, 42 Pietism 457
Old Greek text 24-25, 319-20 Pi-Rameses 86, 87
Old Syrian period 67 plague narrative 89
Old Testament pluralism 418
and Christian faith 460-61, 462-65 in contemporary culture 469
as Christian Scriptures 466-69 in Israel 399
Christology 461, 478 poetry
historiography 145-75 in Job 324-25
history 1, 155, 173-74 in Prophets 281-82
as literary “classic” 468-69 and prose 351-52
sociological observations 421-22 in Proverbs 309-13
theology 412-20, 452, 477 in Psalms 344
see also Bible; Hebrew Scriptures; text political economy 441
486 Subject Index

polytheism 405-10, 408 social function 271

poor 293, 473-74 prose and poetry 281, 351-52, 383
popular religion in Israel 407, 412 protest movements 450
population proto-Israelites 183-84, 194-95
in Iron Age 218-19 proto-Masoretic text 21, 22, 25, 26, 28—-
migration 202-3, 205 BRS 2
postexilic 249-51 proto-Theodotion text 24
pork taboo 424 “proverb performance meaning” 310
pornography 286, 287 Proverbs
positivism 212, 419, 449, 450, 476 authorship 301-2
postexilic community 379 contradictory 310
continuity with preexilic and exilic home school setting 308-9
communities 233 numerical coherence 313
legalism 236 poetics 309-13
realists vs. visionaries 379, 384-85 repetition 312
restoration as pious fiction 232-33 retribution 314-15
poststructuralism 110-13, 115 theology 313-15
power 437, 473 providence 322
powerlessness 473-74 Psalms
pragmatism 119 and ancient Near East 365-66
praise 358-59, 361, 362 categorized by function 362
prayer 455 christological approaches 360
prayer psalms 364 composition and message 332-44,
Prayers of David 342-43 367
preachers 283 “disorientation,” “orientation,” “reori-
precomposition (of Prophets) 267 entation” 362
pre-Samaritan manuscripts 22 ecological readings 359
priesthood 424, 437 eschatology 337-38, 368
postexilic reorganization 264 form criticism 330, 360-65
and prophets 268 genres 330
Priestly Torah (PT) 134-38 hermeneutics 355-60
promise and fulfillment 461 historical criticism 330
prophecy literary approaches 350-53
and apocalyptic 370, 374-78, 384-86, as “literary sanctuary” 341
389-90 “physiological” readings 359
definition 268-69 poetry 344
development 433-35 prophetic dimension 363
as poetry 281-82 structural approaches 353-55
sociological perspective 445-46 as wisdom 335
and wisdom 370 and Yahweh's kingship 337-39, 341
and Yahwism 407 pseudepigrapha 316
prophets 476 Psusennes II 223
authority 270, 285
as covenant mediators 274 Qohelet 315-17
as ecstatics 275-76 Q6m, Khirbet el- 48, 411
identity and literature 267 Qumran 21, 22-23, 25, 28, 30, 34, 320
metaphors in 285-87 and apocalyptic 386, 387-88
as postexilic innovation 269-70 Psalms 334, 367
preexilic existence 269
rhetoric 280-81 Rameses II 45, 84, 86, 87, 89, 180
Subject Index 487

Rameses III 57, 72-73, 80 sexuality 286

Ras Shamra. See Ugarit/Ugaritic Shabaka Stone 58
rationalism 457 Shalmaneser ITT 44
reader-response criticism 105-7, 112- Shalmaneser V 228
13,356 shamanism 434, 445
redaction criticism of Prophets 287-91 Shamshi-Adad 41, 67
Reformation 457 Sharon plain 50
Rehoboam 222-23, 224, 226 Shasu 185, 401-2
relativism 443 Sheikh Hamad, Tell 43
religious grid 450 Sheshbazzar 247, 254
Renaissance 148 Shishak 55, 91, 222, 223-26
repetition Shubat-Enlil 42, 67
in Pentateuch 130 Shurrupak 63
in Proverbs 312 Siamun 217
revolt models 181-82 sign 102-4, 108-9
rhetoric 280-81 Siloam tunnel 51-52, 227
rhetorical criticism 334, 356, 359 Sitz im Leben 212, 284, 331, 333, 341,
Rimah, Tell al- 41 360-61, 363
romanticism 473 skepticism 109-10
royal fictional autobiography 316 in Ecclesiastes 315-17
in Job 326
sacrifice 444 slavery 76-77, 441-42
Samaria 51, 214, 246, 247, 248, 250, Sleima, Tell 39-40
2537203; 413 So 91-92
Samaritan Pentateuch 21, 22, 27-28, 29, social justice 434, 435, 440, 447
34,77 social science methods 156-61, 165,
Sanballat I 263 171-72, 421-24, 426, 431, 450
Sargonic kings 64 and biblical interpretation 446-47
Saul (Israelite king) 215, 276 on monarchy 218-19, 234
scholasticism, Protestant 457 on postexilic period 237
scientific method 463 and theology 446-47
scribes 220-21, 308 sociological criticism 460
seals and bullae 247, 264, 280 of Prophets 268-71
Sea Peoples 57, 190 of Psalms 358
Second Isaiah. See Deutero-Isaiah sociology 157, 158, 172, 423, 447-48
second temple period 239-40 and theology 443
sedentarization 179, 182, 185, 186, 189, Solomon 215, 220, 471
205, 429, 433 authorship of Proverbs 301-2
Seleucids 379 building activity 216-17
semantics 312, 350, 367 decline 224-25
and poetry 348 diplomatic relations 217, 224
and Psalms 341 enlightenment under 305-6
semiotics 102-5, 354 sound play 281
Semitic philology 318-19 source criticism 98, 114, 122, 125, 140,
Sennacherib 44, 52, 228-29, 230, 278 144, 162
Senusert III 56, 75, 77 southern kingdom. See Judah
Septuagint 19, 21, 22, 23-25, 34, 73-74, speech-act theory 359
77-78, 212 spirit possession 434, 445
Job 319-20 spirituality 455
Seti I 45-46, 84, 86, 89 stratification 428, 432, 434
488 Subject Index

structural-functional approach (sociol- theism 167, 170-71, 174

ogy) 423, 425-26 theology
structuralism 102-5, 107-8, 312, 334 and Christian faith 468
in Psalms 353-55, 356 of Proverbs 313-15
structure legitimation 472-73 and social sciences 446-47
subsistence strategy 440-41 theology of exaltation 409, 410
suffering 472-73 theophany 401
Sumer 63, 65, 302 Thirty Sayings of the Wise 303
goddesses 437 Thutmose III 77, 88, 89
kings 64 Tiglath-pileser III 228
religion 408 Torah 461
supplementary hypothesis 119, 129-30 Torah psalms 334, 357
suzerainty-vassal treaties 445 tradition criticism 131, 143, 284
synchronic analysis 140-41, 146, 163 Trans-Euphrates 239, 249
syntactics 282-83, 347-48, 350, 367 Transjordan 82-83, 85
Syria 38, 40, 42, 69, 226, 445 transmission (of Prophets) 267
Syriac Bible. See Peshitta tribes 198-99, 429, 431, 444
Syro-Ephraimite War 228 tropes 346
Syro-Mesopotamia 38-44, 59-69 truth 470
Tukulti Ninurta I 44
Tale of Two Brothers 58 Tutankhamun 54
Tanakh 460 typology 461
targums 19, 26, 29
technologies 432, 440 UBS Hebrew Old Testament Text
TefnakhtI 91 Project 32
Tel Dan Stela 52 Ugarit/Ugaritic 43, 51, 68-69, 279, 305,
Tell. See under place name 319, 392, 407, 417, 445
Tell Siran bottle 52-53 ancestor worship 414-15
temple 213, 229, 439, 471 language 445
destruction 231 literature 395
postexilic 251 poetry 345, 348, 353, 365-66
rebuilding 234, 249, 255, 256, 379 polytheism 409
Temple Hymn Collection (Sumerian) religion 401, 403-4
334 United Bible Societies (UBS) 35-36
temple pattern 416 University of Berlin 101
tempocentrism 449 Ur Ill 41
Terqa 42, 65, 68 urbanization 62, 63-64, 221, 426
Tetrateuch 129 Urkish 40-41, 66
text 19-37 Urtenu 43
authority 113 Uruk period 38-39, 62-63, 64
diversity 21-23
final form 31, 32, 162, 237 villages 399, 426, 442
inspired editions 36-37 visionaries 379, 384-85, 436, 439
literary development 32-34 Vorlage 24, 25, 27, 320, 321
no determinate meaning 106, 110, Vulgate 19, 27, 29
111-12, 113
original 31-33, 36-37, 237 Wen-Amun 274
production 221 wisdom 295, 296-301, 308, 326
as sign 102-4 and apocalyptic 370, 374-75
textual criticism 31-34, 290-91, 356 and law 307-8
Subject Index 489

and prophecy 370 of Samaria 49

in Psalms 335 of Teman 49
religious vs. secular distinction 297- as war deity 433
98 Yahwism 398-400, 405-6, 408, 409,
Woman Wisdom 299, 300 410, 413, 414-15, 426, 438, 474
women origins 400-404
degradation by prophets 287 as postexilic 406, 407
in Israelite culture 436-38 Yammu 403-4
role 440, 447 Yavneh-Yam ostracon 53
wordplay 281 Yehud 212, 214, 221, 246, 439
worldview 166-68, 171, 175, 443 Yohanan the priest 247-48, 262, 264
writing, evolution of 39
Zechariah 388-89
Yahweh 48, 142, 394-95, 396-97, 413, Zerah the Ethiopian 91
461 Zerubbabel 247, 249, 253-54
kingship psalms 337-39, 341
Author Index

Abou-Assaf, A. 44 n. 40, 253 n. 51 Alt A, Vl6=072 118% 1593179 LOSS

Abraham, W. J. 154 n. 26, 168-70 Me L222 nm. 208222. A 246,250:
Abrams, M. H. 108 n. 38 253, 393, 394, 433 n. 34
Achtemeier, E. 292 n. 114 Alter, R. 97-98, 99-100, 102, 104, 121,
Achtemeier, P. J. 456 n. 19 132) 1445 209s 7, 28) m.7.7,. 350)
Ackroyd RuRee2 325255 mal S23 352, 460 n. 37, 469
Os fy, Seth 1, WH? Andersen, F. I. 279 n. 62, 282 n. 78, 283
Adamthwaite, M. R. 76n. 81, 76 n. 83, n. 85
90 n. 138 Anderson, A. A. 332 n. 9
Adogbo, M. P. 275 n. 43 Anderson, B. W. 285 n. 95, 288 n. 105
Anderson, G. W. 9 n. 1, 444
Aejmelaeus, A. 364
André, G. 275 n. 44
Aharoni, ¥. 46 n. 42, 55 n. 60, 82
Andre-Salvini, B. 41 n. 20
ny OV, 217 ne43,224-n. 77, 226m. 83;
Archer Geis. tre LOL
229 n. 104, 247 n. 33
Archi, A. 40 n. 12
Ahituv, S. 206 n. 136
Armerding, C. E. 285 n. 97
Ahlstrém, G. W. 159, 183, 184 n. 32,
Armstrong, J. 68 n. 47
LOOSE ZO Smee eel a2 7
Arnaud, D. 43 n. 31, 43 n. 32, 93 n. 153,
n. 44, 222 n. 71, 227 n. 92, 228 n. 102,
2713 nes
229m 104, 23 ten. 114, 231 ms 115;
Arnold, B. T. 49 n. 49, 278 n. 58, 282
240 nil 2256. 65,27 Lime 1743
n. 79, 284 n. 91, 416 n. 110
Aitken, K. T. 304n. 51
Arnold, P. M. 95-96
Akkermans, P. 61 n. 9
Asen, B. A. 279 n. 64
Albertz, R. 210, 240, 290 n. 108, 391
Assmann, J. 54n. 59, 58 n. 66
n. 3, 392, 399-400, 402, 403, 406 Astour, M. C. 403 n. 49
Albrektson, B. 29-30, 416 n. 110 Audet, J.-P. 307
Albright, W. F. 21, 22 n. 3, 70-71, 74 Auerbach, E. 97 n. 2
mele 93 495) 1185122) 159. 17.8 ms 6, Auffret, P. 354
179, 208 n. 2, 231-32, 233, 303 n. 44, Aufrecht, W. E. 321 n. 173
305, 392, 393, 395, 396, 401, 410, 411, Auld, A. G. 198 n. 110, 210 n. 15, 214
426 n. 18, 428, 429 n. 29, 269 n. 9, 270 n. 12
Alden, R. L. 304 n. 51 Ausin, S. 288 n. 105
Alexander, P. S. 244 n. 20 Austin, J. L. 109 n. 41
Algaze, G. 62 n. 15, 63 n. 18, 64 n. 21 Auwers, J.-M. 291 n. 112
Aling, C. F. 72 n. 64, 74 n. 74, 81n. 101, Avigad, N. 227 n. 93, 228, 246, 247
86 n. 124, 88 n. 31, 247 n. 33, 280 n. 71, 398 n. 30
Allen, L. C. 99 n. 6, 339 n. 32, 359 Avishur, Y. 365-66
n. 110, 378 n. 49
Alonso Schokel, L. 98 n. 4, 163, 350, Bach, Ay 106meus3, 1074 1N2=13
B52 Bader, N. 61 n. 4

490
Author Index 491

Baethgen, F. W. A. 357 Bellinger, W. H., Jr. 271 n. 17, 356, 362-

Bahar, S. 282 n. 79 63
Bail, U. 358 Bendor, S. 198 n. 110
Baillet, M. 78 n. 88 Benjamin, D.C. 422 n. 3, 448
Baines, J. 72 n. 64, 88 n. 134 Ben-Tor, A. 95, 218 n. 53
Baker, D. L. 454 n. 12 Bentzen, A. 357
Baker, D. W. 9 n. 2, 270 n. 16 Bergant, D. 295 n. 1, 327 n. 200
Bal, M. 106 n. 33 Berge, K. 133
Balentine, S. E. 213 n. 24, 455 Berger, P.-R. 243 n. 19, 254 n. 54
Balz-Cochois, H. 286 n. 99, 293 n. 118 Berlin, A. 100 n. 11, 161 n. 59, 281
Barag, D. 247 n. 35, 262, 264 n. 89 n. 77, 344, 345, 347 n. 60, 349, 352
Bar-Efrat, S. 98 n. 4, 100 n. 11, 460 n. 80, 357, 365 n. 134
imei Bernanos, G. 318
BarkayeG. 222 |, 216m. 389220 Berquist, J. L. 240 n. 12, 242 n.15
ne OOF 220. $5,227 ns 88, 227 0: 90; Berry, D. K. 356
228 n. 96, 228 n. 100, 233, 252 n. 47 Betlyon, J. W. 262 n. 83
Barker, M. 371, 374, 388 n. 100 Beuken, W. A. M. 282 n. 79, 290 n. 109,
Barnes, W. H. 92 n. 145 318 n. 160
Barr, J. 154 n. 25, 162 n. 60, 288 n. 105, Bianchi, F. 253 n. 50
391 n. 3, 458, 467 n. 52 Bickerman, E. J. 243, 252 n. 46
Barré, M. L. 286 n. 98, 344 n. 49 Bienkowski, P. 201 n. 118
Barrelet, M.-T. 59 n. 1 Bietak, M. 74 n. 74, 87 n. 126, 88 n. 134
Barry, 2: Lol a73: Biggs, R. 39 n.7
Barstad, H. M. 252 n. 46, 269 n. 11, 279 Bimson, J. J. 74 n. 74, 80 n. 96, 81, 82
n. 62 n. 107, 84, 85, 86n. 123, 86n. 124, 87
Barth, K. 456-57 Mg SON8O 29D) a Oneal
Barthélemy, D. 19 n. 1, 24, 35-37, 291 Bintliff, J. 192 n. 74
Tad 2: Biran, A. 220 n. 65, 280 n. 65
Barthes, R. 105 n. 27 Birch, B. C. 455 n. 14, 471
Bartlett, J. R. 253 n. 49 Bird, P. 436
Barton, G. A. 319 n. 161 Blackmore, R. 322
Barton, J. 99, 102 n. 17, 146 n. 4, 162- Blaiklock, E. M. 72 n. 60
63, 285 n. 96, 356 n. 94, 467 n. 52 Blenkinsopp, J. 230 n. 113, 245 n. 27,
Barucgq, A. 307 248 n. 36, 250 n. 38, 256 n. 64, 261
Bar-Yosef, O. 193 n. 80 n. 81, 268 n. 4, 307
Baskin, J. R37323m, 179 Bloch-Smith, E. 196 n. 99
Bastiaens, J. C. 289 n. 106 Block, D. 200 n. 116
Battenfield, J. R. 77 Blommerde, A. C. M. 319
Batto, B. F 394n. 11 Blumy 8. 125,9127-285 129 gsi li32!
Bauckham, R. J. 378 n. 49 140, 143
Beal ke 1071933 Boadt, L. 282 n. 80, 282 n. 81, 344 n. 50
Beardsley, M. C. 105 n. 28 Bogaert, P.-M. 291 n. 111
Beck, P. 412 n. 97 Bolin, T. L. 215 n. 34
Becker, J. 257 n. 70 Boorer, S. 133-34
Becking, B. 228 n. 100, 291 n. 111 Boraas, Reo. oomle L10)
Beckman, G. 69 n. 50, 203 n. 125 Bordreuil, P. 43 n. 30
Bedford, P R. 248 n. 36, 251 n. 45 Boshoff, W. 278 n. 58
Begrich, J. 331 n. 4, 361 n. 115, 362 Bostré6m, G. 311
Behnke, P. 313 Bostrom, L. 299, 313 n. 127
Beidelman, T. O. 424 n. 12 Bounni, A. 44 n. 36
Beit-Arieh, I. 47 n. 45 Bouzard, W. C., Jr. 363-64
492 Author Index

Boyle, M. O. 274 n. 40 Campbell, C. 108 n. 39

Bradley, F. H. 166 Campbell) He 276 na5i,
Brandfon, F. 161 n. 56 Campbell, S. 62 n. 11
Braslavi, J. 279 n. 62 Carbone, S. P. 291 n. 112
Braudel, F. 186, 191, 432 Carmignac, J. 372 n. 16
Braulik, G. 360 Carr, D. M. 114, 282 n. 83, 290 n. 109
Braun Rees lanes Carrard, P. 192 n. 74
Breasted, J. H. 72 n. 63 Carroll, M. D. 285 n. 96, 292m: 115
Breniquet, C. 61 n.6 Carroll, R. PR. 232-33, 244 n. 23, 268
Brennan, J. P. 335 n. 19 n. 6, 270 n. 12, 276 n. 47, 287 n. 100,
Brenner, A. 285 n. 94, 286 n. 100, 287 374 n. 26, 377, 379 n. 52, 380 n. 56,
n. 100, 293 n. 118, 324 n. 186 382 n. 64, 384, 385, 389 n. 101, 466
Bresciani, E. 252 n. 46 n. 50
Brett, M. G. 194 n. 85, 467 Garter C/E. 9-2; 158 nm: 39,208 a: 3;
Brettler, M. Z. 161 n. 58, 165, 192, 192 221 m61,9250) 268 te ee fo ie
als 7 421 n. 2, 422 n. 5, 424 n. 12, 430
Brant 233 nas: n. 28, 433 n. 32, 436 n. 45, 438 n. 50
Brichto, H. C. 460 n. 37 Cassuto, UL 84 12 116
Briggs, C. A. 330 n. 3, 357 Gatheart; Ke Je 291 an 12
Briggs, E.G. 330 n. 3, 357 Causse, A. 423 n. 6, 424, 425-26, 434,
Bright, J. 87 n. 127, 118, 178 n. 6, 208 435
n. 2, 217 n. 45, 393, 410 Cavigneaux, A. 40 n. 10
Broshi, M. 166 n. 74, 219, 221, 226
Cazelles, H. 198 n. 110
n. 86, 228 n. 96, 229 n. 105
Ceresko, A. R. 282 n. 81, 288 n. 105,
Brotzman, E.R. 20 n. 1, 27 n. 28, 36
319 n. 164
Brown, C. 154 n. 23
Chaney, M. 180 n. 17, 430
Broyles, C. C. 288 n. 104, 363
Chapman, B.C. 83 n. 108
Brueggemann, W. A. 152 n. 19, 285
Charlesworth, J. H. 371 n. 12
n. 96, 292, 296, 306, 335 n. 15, 358-
59, 362, 428 n. 22, 454, 455, 458, 465 Charpin, D. 41 n. 21, 41 n. 22, 67 n. 44
n. 47, 472-77 Chavalas, M. 42 n. 24, 43 n. 31, 68 n. 46
Brunert, G. 340, 341 Cheney, M. 325, 326
Bryce, G. E. 303, 306, 312 Cheyne, T. K. 330 n. 3
Buber, M. 456 Childs, B. S. 32, 85 n. 116, 99, 287
Buccellati, G. 41 n. 17, 41 n. 18, 42 n. 104, 333-34, 335, 391 n. 1, 454,
n. 25, 65 n. 29, 66 n. 34, 68 n. 46 456, 457-58, 459, 465-72, 477
Budge, E. A. W. 297, 302 Chisholm, R. B., Jr, 99 n. 6, 288 n. 105
Bulliet, R. W. 192 n. 74 Chomsky, N. 347
Bullmore, M. A. 359 n. 110 Christensen, D. L. 9 n. 2, 91, 92 n. 148,
Bultmann, R. 167, 370 277 N51, 281 NaS, 282 Mosh 262
Bunimovitz, S. 208 n. 3 n. 79
Bunnens, G. 69 n. 53 Clark, D. J. 282 n. 83, 286 n. 99, 286
Burger, J. A. 278 n. 57 n. 100
Burke, P. 191 n. 74, 192 n. 74 ClarkeJed.- 61 nes
Buttenwieser, M. 331 n. 9 Clark, S. 192 n. 74
Clayton, C. 316
Caird,G. B. 151 n.18 Clements, R. E. 268 n. 7, 270 n. 13, 285
Callaway, J. A. 183 n. 31 n. 94, 288 n. 105, 290 n. 108, 292
Calvert, Y. 68 n. 48 nu 116, 30132302) Sisins 120e
Camp, C. V. 106 n. 33, 305, 310-11, 436 314, 331, 378 n. 49, 452
n. 45 Clendenen, E. R. 282 n. 83
Author Index 493

Clines, D>, A. 98 n. 4, 111m. 47, 112, Currid, J. D. 303

113) 132, 140-41, 256 n. 64, 257, 281 Curvers, H. 66 n. 36
ne 17, 324, 325 n. 186,326,327
n. 198, 359 n. 110, 464 Dahood, M. J. 279 n. 62, 279 n. 63, 305,
Cloete, W. T. W. 346 n. 58 319, 357, 365, 366, 445 n. 63
Coats, G. W. 120, 121 Dalley, S. 41 n. 21, 41 n. 22, 94, 273
Cody, A. 274 n. 35 n. 28
Cogan, M. 229 n. 104 Damrosch, D. 394 n. 11
Coggins, R. J. 356 n. 94, 381, 383-84 Dandama(y)ev, M. A. 238 n. 3, 252
Cohen, R. 217 n. 44 n. 46
Cohen, S. J. D. 225 n. 80 Daniels, D. R. 275 n. 40
Collins, J. J. 371, 372, 386, 387, 389 Danie Ke Pe 266 tale Ooms 9S
n. 102, 454 n. 12, 459, 463 n. 118
Collins, T. 281 n. 77, 290 n. 110, 344, Davidson, R. 455
347, 348 Davies, E. W. 285 n. 96
Coogan, M. D. 279 n. 61, 445 n. 63
Davies, G. I. 278 n. 56, 308
Cook, J. 320 n. 167
Davies, P.R. 80, 146 n. 2, 154 n. 25,
Cook, J. M. 238 n. 3
Sage laoe LoOme als lO2ets OO, le 7,
Cook, S. L. 288 n. 105, 289 n. 106, 386,
HOSmiee2 gOS leans OO ee
435
n. 22, 214 n. 29, 215 n. 34, 224 n. 79,
Cooper, A. M. 325 n. 187, 345 n. 51, 355 239m» 1072801. 65, 280 ms 67, S22
n. 90
n. 14, 374 n. 29, 388 n. 100, 438 n. 51,
Coote, R. B. 51 n. 54, 158, 183, 186 446
n. 50, 188-89, 431, 432, 433
Davies, W. D. 238 n. 4
Copeland, P. E. 284
Davis, J. J. 88
Cotter, D. W. 324n. 185
Day, J. 92 n. 145, 289 n. 106, 295 n. 1,
Cotterell, P. 282 n. 82
303 n. 45
Cottini, V. 314 n. 132
Dearman, J. A. 50 n. 51, 222 n. 69, 402
Course, J. E. 324n. 185
n. 43
Cowley, A. 262 n. 84
deClaissé-Walford, N. L. 338-39
‘Core, (C1 SO Ov
Degenaar, J. 175
Cox, D. 304n. 51
Deist, F E. 20 n. 1, 25 n. 14, 283 n. 88,
Coxon, P. 279 n. 61
PHS iy Say. PAS) save ANG)
Craigie, PC. 332 ny 9
Delcor, M. 151 n. 18, 382 n. 64
Crawford, V. 39 n. 8, 39 n.9
Creach, J. F 340-41, 367 Delitzsch, F. 311, 343, 357
Crenshaw, J. L. 295 n. 1, 296, 301-2, Dell, K. J. 326
305, 308, 314, 316 de Meyer, L. 67 n. 41
Croatton) Ss 292 nm. V5 de Moor, J.C. 196 n. 101, 345 n. 51,
Croft, S. J. L: 364 351-52, 354-55, 398, 402 n. 47, 403-
Cross, F. M., Jr. 21, 22, 23, 29, 46 n. 43, 4, 409-10
234 n. 129, 263-64, 377, 378-79, 380 DeRoche, M. 275 n. 40, 286 n. 99
ily, Sip, Shewlly Stews, Sieh, Srey4lsByehoy, So, Derrida, J. 108-9
393-95, 401, 403, 404 n. 60, 410 de Tarragon, J.-M. 415 n. 107
n. 86, 416 Detweiler, R. 105 n. 27, 110 n. 43
Grossales Del 4m on Slama oD) Deutsch, R. 48 n. 47, 50 n. 52
Crow; Ey D359 ne t0 Deutsch, R. R. 285 n. 95
Cryer Pie 2D) 160 mao y272 Dever, W. G. 80 n. 97, 147 n. 5, 158
n. 23, 280 n. 66, 280 n. 68 n. 40, 158 n. 41, 159, 171-72, 176
Culler, J. 103 n. 20, 104 n. 22, 108 n. 37 my Bp aa, Ae I, TOG sh, lteisrcisy,
Culley, R. C. 104 191, 194, 195, 197, 201 n. 119, 212
494 Author Index

m0 206 me SS a2 17 e438 moos Engnell, I. 343

218 n. 53, 411 n. 90, 412, 418 n. 122 Epbh’al, I. 238 n. 6
De Vries, S. J. 290 n. 110 Eriksson, L. O. 357
de Wette, W. M. L. 139 Eskenazi, 1G. 2236 m3 14239. LO i257
Dhorme, E. 318 Esse, D. 185
Dietrich, M. 272 n. 23, 279 n. 62, 404 Estes, D. J. 298, 313 n. 127
n. 58 Evans, C. A. 288 n. 104, 290 n. 109
Diez Macho, A. 26 Ewald, G. EH. ALY. 31330. 3
Dijkstra, M. 275 n. 40 Exam,J; 'G.* L060; 333011 n.4 702:
Dillard, R. B. 99 n. 6, 315, 317 293 n. 118
Dimant, D. 291 n. 112
Dion, P.-E. 36 n. 68, 244 n. 20, 248 Fadhil, A. 44 n. 38
n. 36, 326 n. 194 Farmer, K. 304 n. 51, 317, 318 n. 158
Dirksen, P. B. 27 n. 25 Faulkner, R. O. 72 n. 60
Di Vito, R. A. 49 n. 50 Fensham, F.C. 246 n. 29, 256 n. 64
Dobberahn, F. E. 278 n. 54, 292 n. 115 Fenton, T. L. 279 n. 62
Dolence, M. G. 440 n. 54 Ferris, P. W., Jr. 363
Donner, H. 120 Fewell, D. N. 111 n. 48
Dornemann, R. 43 n. 29, 65 n. 30 Fichtner, J. 302
Dougherty, J. 411 n. 88 Finkelstein, I. 177 n. 4, 183, 185-87,
Douglas, M. 421 n. 2, 424, 447 189, 194, 195, 197, 218, 218 n. 54,
Dirijiversprmoo2 leo 219, 220 n. 66, 221, 226 n. 86, 228
Driver, G. R. 319 n. 161 n. 96, 229 n. 105, 231 n. 114, 429,
Driver, S. R. 116, 318 431, 432-38, 442 no 50.
Dubin Bele soi7 Finkelstein, L. 238 n. 4
Dumbrell, W. J. 453 n. 4 Finley, T. J. 282 n. 83
Durand, J.-M. 41 n. 21, 41 n. 22, 272 Fisch, H.73507352=535
n. 24, 273 n. 30 Fish, S. 106
Durkheim, E. 423, 425, 426 Fishbane, M. 141, 289 n. 106
Dyrness, W. 453 n. 4 Fitzmyer, J. A. 164 n. 66, 244 n. 20, 321
Dyson, S. L. 208 n. 3 1ail 2
Flanagan, J. 158, 431, 433
Eaton, J. H. 331, 343, 357, 364—65 Fleming, D. E. 43 n. 33, 43 n. 34, 273
Eaton, M. A. 315, 316 n. 30, 273 n. 31, 398 n. 31, 417 n. 115,
Edelman, D. V. 190 n. 69, 194 n. 85, 417 n. 116, 417 n. 117, 445 n. 62
195 n. 90, 196 n. 98, 225 Flint, PRW. 336n. 21
Edwards, M. 113 n. 57 Fohrer, G. 377, 392, 416 n. 111
Eichrodt, W. 370, 419, 420, 453, 460 Fokkelman, J. P. 100 n. 11, 141, 281
Eidem, J. 41 n. 21, 41 n. 22 n. 78
Eidevall, G. 286 n. 98 Follis, E. 286 n. 98
Eissfeldt, O. 419 Fontaine, C. R. 306, 310
Elayi, J. 239 Forrest, R. W. E. 325 n. 189
Elhotelwsw vos Foucault, M. 107 n. 34
Ellermeier, F. 272 n. 24 Fowler, J. D. 398 n. 30
EllissMaDw272 nu23) 202 ne2ss272 Fox, M. V. 306, 307, 308, 309, 316, 317
n. 26 Franken, H. J. 47 n. 44
Ellul, J. 318 n. 159 Fredericks, D. C. 316
Ellwood, G. FE. 286 n. 100 Freedman, D. N. 151 n. 18, 277 n. 48,
Emerton, J. A. 295 n. 2, 298 n. 16, 398 279 n. 62, 280 n. 69, 283 n. 85, 383,
n. 29 404 n. 57
Engels, F. 441 Frei, P. 245
Author Index 495

Frendo, A. J. 193 Giron-Blanc, L.-F. 28

Fretheim, T. E. 454, 477 n. 82 Gispen, W. H. 84 n. 116
Prick hese ioce205ms 132,426 nao) Gitay, Y. 281
431-32, 433, 448 Giveon, R. 401 n. 41
Friedman, R. E. 234 n. 126, 279 n. 62 Gladson, J. A. 315
Fritz, V. 180 n> 18, 216m. 38, 216 n. 40; Glatzer, N. N. 318 n. 160
216 n. 41, 217 n. 43, 217 n. 44 Gnuse, Re 176m, 177m: 4,
Frost, S. B. 370, 380 n. 56 Golb, N. 388 n. 96
Frye, R. N. 238 n.3 Goldingay, J. 155 n. 29, 452
Frymer-Kensky, T. 392 n. 6, 437-38 Goldsworthy, G. 314
Goldwasser, O. 80 n. 92
Gabler, J. P. 418, 457 Golka, F W. 307
Gaebelein, F E. 456 n. 19 Gonealves\ FJ. 228.101) 277 my Sir
Gal, Z. 193 n. 82 278 1855
Galling, K. 250 n. 38 Good, E. M. 326n. 194
Gammie, J.G. 295 n. 1, 320 n. 168, 384 Goodman, L. E. 323 n. 180
n. 79, 385 Goody, J. 276 n. 47
Garbimi; G.. 224, 225; 2578258 ne 72) Gordon, C. H. 118, 122
438n. 51 Gordon, E. I. 302 n. 41
Garcia Martinez, F 289 n. 106, 372 Gordon, R. P. 9n. 2, 99 n. 6, 210 n. 13,
Garcia-Treto, F.O. 106 n. 33 266 n. 1, 268 n. 4, 268 n. 6, 269 n. 11,
Gard, D. 319 IAS) ial SY, TAS ATE Tek, HES TES) To, BV,
Gardiner, A. H. 73, 88 n. 133, 88n. 134, 284 n. 90, 285 n. 96, 295 n. 1, 295 n. 2
88 n. 136, 93 n. 150 Goshen-Gottstein, M. H. 35 n. 63
Garr, W. R. 281 n. 78, 283 n. 87 Gottlieb, C. 304
Garrett, D. A. 304 n. 51, 313, 316 Gottwald, N. K. 80, 106 n. 33, 158, 159,
n. 139, 318 n. 158 i/o Ue lsO me Toes 183
Gelb, I. 40 n. 14, 40 n. 15, 64n. 22 n. 31, 198 n. 110, 199 n. 112, 199
Gelinas, M. M. 215 n. 34, 219, 224 n. 79 n. 113, 293, 304 n. 55, 392 n. 6, 405
Geller, S. A. 281 n. 77, 344, 348, 352 n. 64, 421 n. 1, 426, 427-28, 429, 430,
n. 80 434, 435, 441 n. 56, 442, 448, 449_50,
Gemser, B. 307 470-71, 471, 477 n. 82
Gentry, P. J. 25, 320 Goulder, M. D. 342-44
Geoghegan, J.C. 280 n. 69 Gowan, D. E. 369 n. 1
George, A. 44 n. 39 Grabbe, L. L. 26 n. 18, 240, 245, 256
Geraty, Ey Ih 83mr £10 n. 66, 258, 262 n. 84, 264 n. 88, 266
Gerleman, G. 319 oy, Jk IL ios Os DIP? ioe Hay, “Ilsa, 722),
Gershevitch, I. 238 n.5 274 n. 36, 275 n. 44, 283 n. 88, 319
Gerstenberger, E. S. 307, 331, 342, 357, n. 164, 373, 374, 386, 387 n. 95
361-62, 399 n. 33, 418 Graetz, N. 286 n. 100
Gerth, H. H. 425 n. 13 Gray, G. B. 318
Gese, H. 298 Gray Jeeo2iinel 72,357
Geus, C. H. J. de 158, 159 Grayson, A. K. 70 n. 55, 272 n. 26
Geyer, B. 68 n. 48 Greenberg, M. 90 n. 139
Geyer, J. B. 286 n. 98 Greenfield, J. C. 264 n. 89, 279 n. 62,
Gibson, J.C. L. 45 n. 41, 49 n. 50, 50 303 n. 43
im, Sil, Sil, SS), Sil sey, 'S4), Shins D7, S5UI Greenstein, E. L. 168, 281 n. 77, 349
TO, WH Greimas, A. J. 104, 105 n. 26
Gillingham, S. 288 n. 105 Gropp, D. M. 46 n. 43
Gilpin, W. C. 318 n. 160 Grossberg, D. 355
Girard, M. 354 Gruber, M. I. 285 n. 97, 436 n. 43
496 Author Index

Gruenwald, I. 386 284 n. 90, 331, 356 n. 94, 359 n. 110,

Griinbeck, E. 360 n. 113 457
Gryson, R. 291 n. 112 Hayes, W. C. 72 n. 64, 88 n. 136
Guillaume, A. 319 n. 162 Haynes, S. R. 355-56
Gunkel, H. 123, 125, 131, 159, 284, Heater, H. 320
330-31, 357, 360, 361, 364, 365 Heaton, E. W. 306 n. 62
Gunn, D. M. 98 n. 4 Heil, J. P. 286 n. 98
Gunneweg, A. H. J. 245, 256 n. 63, 256 Heim, K. M. 309, 311
n. 64, 258 Helck, W. 53 n. 58
Gutierrez G-327 Hellholm, D. 373, 374
Heltzer, M. 239 n. 8
Ha, J. 143-44 Hendry, G. S. 317 n. 158
Habel, N. C. 324 Hensley, L. V. 244
Herion, G. 424 n. 11, 449
Hackett, J. A. 51 n. 54, 94n. 159
Hermisson, H.-J. 308, 311, 312
Hadley, J. M. 411 n. 90, 412 n. 96
Herrmann, S. 158 n. 39, 159, 160 n. 52,
Hahn, H. F. 330 n. 2
160 n53, 165,074, 208 ne2* 222
Hall, D. R. 163
nf 71,224 ne77
Hall, G. 286 n. 99
Herzog, Z. 194n. 85, 216 n. 42, 217
Hallo, W. W. 40 n. 13, 43 n. 35, 157
n. 43, 217 n. 49, 217 n. 50
n. 39, 417
Heschel, A. J. 456
Halpern, B. 158,159, 160-51), 171,
Hess, R.S. 9n. 2, 176 n. 1, 196 n. 96,
177 n. 4, 180, 182 n. 28, 198 n. 110,
201 n. 118, 204 n. 129, 411 n. 91, 413
IAD ity AilsCAN Oninw Wels Paley AN eye
Hesse, B. 195 n. 94, 195 n. 95
220 ms 65,225 745 227 mw. 92, 227
Hestrin, R. 45 n. 41, 48 n. 47,50 n. 51,
MeO Se 2 eae 2 Sle OZ 229
51 ness; 5154453 1.57
n. 104,244 n. 22; 255 n. 57, 255 n. 61,
Hiebert, T. 403 n. 52
279 n. 62, 280 n. 69, 395 n. 14, 405
Hieke, T. 291 n. 112
n. 61, 449 n. 70
Hijara, I. 61 n.8
Hanhart, R. 24n. 7, 24n.8
Hilhost, A. 289 n. 106
Hansen, D. 64 n. 20, 64 n. 24
Hill, A. E. 289 n. 106
Hanson, P. D. 371 n. 11, 374, 379, 380,
Hilton, M. 288 n. 105
382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 395 n. 14,
Hoffman, Y. 325 n. 189, 326 n. 194
435
Hoffmeier, J. K. 197
Haran, M. 132, 134
Hoftijzer, J. 93-94
Hardmeier, C. 286 n. 98
Hogenhaven, J. 458 n. 27
Harris, M. 422 n. 5, 423 n. 8, 424 Hoglund, K. G. 247 n. 32, 255, 257,
Harrison, R. K. 81 n. 102, 82 n. 105, 87, 259-61
317 n. 158 Holbert, J. C. 326 n. 194
Hartman, G. 108 Holbrook, D. J. 282 n. 83
Harvey, V. A. 154 n. 25, 166, 167, 170 Holladay, J. S., Jr. 48 n. 47, 207 n. 1,
Hasel, G. F 9n. 2, 456 n. 20, 458 217 n. 50, 219, 273 n. 29, 411 n. 90
Hasel, M. G. 197 Holladay, W. L. 290 n. 109, 346 n. 58,
Hauge, M.R. 364 346 n. 59, 360
Hauser, A. J. 182 n. 28, 192 Holmgren, F.C. 456 n. 19
Hawkes, T. 103 n. 20 Hdlscher, G. 275 n. 44
Hawkins, J. D. 273 n. 28 Holter, K. 282 n. 79
Hayes, J.H. 147 n. 6, 148, 149-50, 151, Hopkins, D. 184 n. 31, 441 n. 55
156-57, 158 n. 42, 216 n. 40, 227 Horn, S.4227ms88> 231 meai5
ib tli Pekan, MON Ashi ia, We eh Horowitz, W. 90 n. 138, 95 n. 160
Nl 55240. 12 253i oe 256m" Oss Horsley, R. A. 248 n. 36
Author Index 497

Hossfeld, F-L. 332, 338 Johnson, A. R. 271 n. 17, 331, 343, 364
Houlden, J. L. 356 n. 94 Johnson, R. 286 n. 98
House, P.R. 9n. 2, 97n. 1, 99 n. 6, 290 Johnston, A. 288 n. 105
Tel) Jones, BRA. 290m 1107292 ne 112
Howard, D. M., Jr. 209 n. 6, 234 n. 127, Jongeling, B. 321 n. 172
S32 nelOnsSs4im isso oOme2 Ie 33e Joosten, J. 138-39
n. 23, 339, 341, 342 n. 42, 368 n. 142
Hrouda, B. 67 n. 41 Kaiser, W. C., Jr. 289 n. 106, 316 n. 139
Hubbard, D. A. 304 n. 51 Kallai, Z. 199
Hubbard, R. L., Jr. 459 Kapelrud, A. S. 330 n. 2
Huffmon, H. B. 272 n. 24, 273 n. 26, Kasemann, E. 369, 370, 371
273 m3 27,274 ny 369274 n237 Kaufman, I. T. 51 n. 53
Humbert, P. 303 Kaufmann, S. 321 n. 172
Hummel, H. D. 330 n. 2 Kaufmann, Y. 134, 407 n. 74, 416
Humphreys, W. L. 120, 121 Kayatz, C. 300, 303-4
Huot, Jes 4iin. 1926185, 62 n2- Kedar, B. 27 n. 27
67 n. 41 Keefe, A. A. 286 n. 100
Hupper, W. G. 266 n. 1 Keegan, T. J. 111 n. 49
Hurowitz, V. A. 76, 204 n. 130, 272 Keel, O. 279 n. 60, 366, 398-99, 409,
e235 411 n. 91, 412 n. 97
Hurvitz, A. 132, 134, 138, 139, 283 Kelly-Buccellati, M. 41 n. 17, 41 n. 18,
n. 86 66 n. 34
Huwiler E. F. 299 Kempinski, A. 218 n. 51
Hwang, S.J. J. 282 n. 83 Kenyon, K. M. 228
Hyatt, Js P..87,330.n. 2 Kepinski-LeComte, C. 67 n. 43
Hyvarinen, K. 26n. 18 Khazanoyvy, A. 193 n. 80
Kidner, D. 256 n. 64, 295 n. 1, 299, 300,
Ibach, R., Jr. 83 n. 109, 83 n. 111, 83 Bi, 332 0. 9
fave MIDZ Kiesow, K. 281 n. 78, 288 n. 105
i Oprinell, G. C. 288 n. 105 Kikawada, I. M. 99 n. 7
Irsigler, H. 359 n. 110 Kimbrough, S. T., Jr. 425 n. 15, 426
Iser, W. 106 n. 18
Ishida, T. 209 n. 10 King, P. J. 278, 280 n. 71, 280 n. 72, 280
Isserlin, B. S. J. 176 n. 1 il le}
Kirkbride, D. 61 n. 6
Jacobsen, T. 408 n. 79 Kirkpatrick, A. 343
Jameson, F. 106 n. 33 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. 310
Jamieson-Drake, D. W. 219, 221, 227 Kissane, M. E. J. 332 n.9
n90; 227 Nags Kitchen, K. A. 71, 72, 73 n. 66, 74 n. 74,
Janssen) Ja 235 qe isi 75, 77 n. 86, 79 n. 90, 84 n. 115, 85,
Janzen, J.G. 288 n. 105, 297 n. 9 85 n. 119, 85 n. 120, 86 n. 121, 86
Japhet, S. 211 n. 18, 227 n. 92, 234, 250 mo 122) 8604123), 87 ne 127, 88,90;
jak SiS), Mays} ne a)7,, Woks) 0h ors 91592795 relG3, 197 mel02, 27223
Jarick, J. 270)n. 15 n. 75, 224 n. 77, 304, 305
Jeffers, A. 272 n. 23 Kittel, R. 357
Jensen, J. 289 n. 106 Klein, R. W. 19n. 1, 235 n. 131
Jepsen, A. 296 Kleinig, J. W. 236 n. 1
Jeremias, C. 288 n. 105 Klement, H. H. 164
Jeremias, J. 271 n. 20, 357, 364 n. 131 Kline, M. G. 90 n. 139, 445 n. 64
Joannés, F. 41 n. 23 Kloos, C. 366
Jobling, D. 105 n. 27, 359 n. 110 Knapp, A. B. 192 n. 74
498 Author Index

Knauf, E. A. 219, 220 n. 65, 222 n. 69, Le Goff, J. 191 n. 74

280 n. 67 Leaman, O. 323, 323 n. 182
Knierim, R. P. 454n.9 Lebrun, R. 274 n. 37
Knight, D. A. 10 n. 3, 151 n. 16 Leichty, E. 76 n. 81, 76 n. 83
Knight, G. A. F 456 n. 19 Leitch, V. B. 108 n. 37, 108 n. 39
Knohl, I. 134-38, 144 Leith, M. J. W. 293 n. 118
Knoppers, G. N. 210 n. 14, 211 n. 18, Lemaire, A. 45 n. 41, 49 n. 50, 51 n. 53,
213 n. 24, 214 n. 28, 214 n. 30, 214 52'n. 56, 53 n. 57, 93-94, 179 m- 10)
my Sls AUS any, S¥o, Asan col, Asya, foi 208 n. 2, 246 n. 30, 247 n. 31, 250
227 n. 94, 230 n. 110, 252 n. 46, 397 n. 40, 254 n. 53, 263 n. 86, 264 n. 89,
he AS 280 n. 70, 302, 308
Koch Kee ale 2845208) 309 ne Onsialg Lemche, N. P. 80 n. 97, 90 n. 139, 157
375, 378 n. 49, 392 1391587159) 160 me 537 161, 162
Kochavi, M. 81 n. 99 nm. 60; 1677176, 17? n. 3; 177 ne 4, tts
Koenen, K. 340, 341 n. 8, 180 n. 15, 180 n. 17, 181, 182
Koopmans, W. T. 351-52 n.25, 187, 189 ns62, 190,191 ne 72
Korpel, M. C. A. 354 n. 89, 394 n. 12 198 n. 110, 215 n. 34, 223 n. 76, 280
Kortner, U. H. J. 372 n. 19 n. 68, 402, 406, 410, 427 n. 20
Koster, M. D. 27 n. 26 Lenski, G. 422 n. 3, 423 n. 8, 428 n. 25,
Kovacs, B. W. 305 n. 60, 306, 312 430, 440 n. 54
KraSovec, J. 282 n. 81 Lenski, J. 422 n. 3, 423 n. 8, 440 n. 54
Krauss bled. Ons) 352 moms Lentricchia, F 109 n. 40
Kreissig, H. 248 n. 36 Leslie, E. A. 331 n.9
Krispenz-Pichler, J. 311
Levenson, J. D. 269 n. 10, 288 n. 105,
Kruger, P. A. 286 n. 99 395 n. 14, 465 n. 47, 466 n. 49
Kselman, J. S. 276 n. 47, 282 n. 81
Levin, C. 125, 128-29
Kugel, J. L. 101, 114 n. 60, 281 n. 77,
Levin, D. 174
349 n. 68, 350-52
Levin, S. 360.110
Ktthne, C. 274 n. 37
Levine, B. A. 285 n. 96, 415 n. 107
Ktthne, H. 44 n. 36
Levainey Ei: Je 357)
Kuhrt, A. 238 n. 3, 243 n. 19
Lévi-Strauss, C. 109 n. 41
Kuntz, J. K. 332, 344 n. 50, 347 n. 60,
359 n. 110 Lévy-Bruhl, L. 425
Lewis, T. J. 397 n. 26, 398 n. 29, 404
Laato, A. 287 n. 104 n. 59, 407 n. 74, 414 n. 102, 414
Labuschagne, A. S. 289 n. 106 n. 103, 415, 416 n. 114
Lack, R. 290 n. 109 Licht,t.4 LOO. (teeta
Ladd, G. E. 370 Lichtheim, M. 54 n.59, 57 n. 63, 58
Laffey, A.L 106 n. 33 n. 65, 58 n. 66
Lalouette, C. 54 n. 59, 58n. 65, 58 n. 66 Lieberman, S. 39 n. 3
Lamb; J..322 Limburg, J. 359 n. 110
Lambert, F. 198 n. 110, 199 n. 111 Lindenberger, J. M. 45 n. 41, 47 n. 45,
Lambert, W. G. 303 n. 42 49 n. 50),53' ny 5756 11619244 ne 20)
Landsberger, B. 417 303 n. 43
Lang, B. 268 n. 5, 293 n. 117, 308, 405- Lindsay, H. 371 n. 11
6, 409, 425, 435 Lipinski, E. 357
Langlamet, F. 210 n. 12 Liverani, M. 184 n. 35
Kappy ee l738 mez Livingston, D. 81 n. 100, 84, 89
Larsen, M. 63 n. 16 Livingstone, A. 272 n. 26
Lawton, R. B. 45 n. 41 Loader, J. A. 317
Layton, S.C. 93 n. 154, 398 n. 30 Lohfink, N. 229 n. 108, 453 n. 4
Author Index 499

Long, B. O. 269 n. 8, 276 n. 46, 434, Matthews, V. H. 422 n. 3, 448

435 Matthiae, P. 44 n. 36, 65 n. 27
Long, V.P. 99 n. 6, 114n. 59, 149 n. 14, Mayer, W. 43 n. 31, 202 n. 123
153 n. 21, 158 n. 42, 161 n. 59, 163 Mayes, A. D. H. 276 n. 45, 423 n. 6, 423
n. 62, 163 n. 64, 163 n. 65, 168 n. 84, n. 7,425 n. 15, 425 n. 16, 426 n. 19
208 n. 4, 209 n. 6 Mays, J. L. 10 n. 3, 332, 456 n. 19
Longacre, R. E, 120, 121, 282 n.83 Mazar, A. 80, 82 n. 105, 82 n. 106, 82
Longman, T., TT 99n,6, 111 n. 46, 111 n. 107, 83 n. 108, 185 n. 40, 205
n. 49, 115 n. 63, 164 n. 66, 315, 316, n. 131, 216 n. 40, 217 n. 44, 224 n. 77,
aM 227-90, 2270930227 Toone 29
Lorenz, Gs i92in. 75 n. 104, 233 n. 124, 252 n. 47
Loretz, O. 279 n. 62, 282 n. 78, 395 Mazar, B. 224 n. 77
n. 15, 404 n. 58 Mazzoni, S. 69 n. 52
Lowth, R. 322 McBride, S. D. 395 n. 14
Lucas, E. C. 288 n. 105 MceGanns J. Ge JEeso2,1oSom 6 O341
Luckenbill, D. D. 228 n. 103, 229 n. 104 n. 38
fens aG. Zon. LS McCarter, P. K., Jn 20n. 1, 45 n. 41, 46
Lumsden, S. 44 n. 37, 69 n. 51 n. 42, 46 n. 43, 47 n. 44, 47 n. 45, 48
Lundbom, J. R. 278 n. 51 n. 46, 48 n. 47, 49 n. 48, 49 n. 49, 49
Lust, J. 254n. 55, 271 n. 23, 289 n. 106, _ lh uns Sle Oral, sy, Sul iy SS}, Sul
29V et i vt), SA ints) 5) SY tak 9), 28) ins ei; 18)
. 58, 54n. 59, 55 n. 60, 56 n. 61, 56
Machinist, P. 44 n. 36, 416 62,57 Me 63,57 1.64,.5o:ne OD Do
Macintosh, A. A. 296 n. 2 Gel
Beh
et . 66, 80 n.
aie) 97, 209 n. 8, 209 n. 9, 209
Magass, W. 308 n. 10, 412
Magdalene, FR. 273 n. 29, 286 n. 100 McCarthy, D. J. 274 n. 39
Maier, C. 286 n. 98, 286 n. 100 McCarthy, D. P. 359 n. 110
Maier, G. 169 n. 85 McCartney, D. 316
Malamat, A. 93 n. 149, 93 n. 151, 95, McClellan, T. 65 n. 31
Pen. O,2227. 70) 23 im. Wi se272 McConville, J.G. 139-40, 206 n. 134,
n. 24, 430 285 n. 96
Malchow, B. V. 306, 312-13 McCullough, W. S. 332 n. 9
Malek, J. 72 n. 64, 88 n. 134 McEvenue, S. E. 246 n. 29
Malina, B. J. 293 n. 117, 423 n. 7, 423 McFague, S. 286 n. 100
n. 8, 449 n. 71 McKane, W. 266 n. 1, 271 n. 17, 278
Mangan, C. 321 male 296 1129 7503 09 38 ea
Mannheim, K. 384 McKeating, H. 269 n. 10, 288 n. 105
March, W. E. 284 n. 92 McKenzie, S. L. 355-56
Marcos, N. F. 320 n. 167 McKnight, E. V. 105 n. 27, 106 n. 31
Margalit, B. 279 n. 62, 411 n. 90 McNamara, M. 26 n. 23
Margalith, O. 256 n. 66 Meadowcroft, T. M. 291 n. 112
Margueron, J.-C. 40 n. 11, 65 n. 28 Meinhold, A. 304 n. 51, 313
Marinkovic, P. 286 n. 98 Meinhold, J. 296
Marrs, R. R. 285 n. 96 Mendenhall, G. 158, 159, 181, 410, 425,
Martens, E. A. 9n. 2, 456 n. 20 426-27, 429, 430
Martin, H. P. 64 n. 19 Merling, A. 279 n. 61
Martindale, D. 425 n. 13 Merling, D., Sr. 176 n. 1, 201 n. 118
Marx, K. 424, 441-42, 473-74 Merpert, N. 61 n. 8
Marzal, A. 303 n. 44 Merrill, E. H. 84 n. 113, 88, 176 n. 1
Mastin, B. A. 296 n. 2 Meshel, Z. 49 n. 49, 218, 218 n. 56
Mathew, K. V. 359 n. 110 Meshorer, Y. 263 n. 87
500 Author Index

Mettinger, T. N. D. 283 n. 85, 404 Motyer, J. A. 290 n. 109

Meyer, E. 243 n. 18 Mowinckel, S. O. P. 271 n. 18, 330, 331,
Meyers, C. L. 9n. 2, 158 n. 39, 268 n. 5, 343, 357, 360, 364, 365, 380 n. 56
275 n. 42, 437 Muilenburg, J. 98 n. 3, 100
Meyers, E. M. 236 n. 1, 247 n. 31, 278 Mulder, M. J. 20 n. 1
Mea 2 Miller, H.-P. 385 n. 83, 403 n. 54
Michaelsen, P. 275 n. 44 Munachey, R. 61 n. 8
Michel, W. L. 319 n. 165 Murphy, R. E. 295 n. 1, 297, 299, 302
Milano, L. 40 n. 16 n. 36, 305, 306, 308, 313, 326 n. 192
Mildenberg, L. 247 n. 34
Milgrom, J. 134 Naaman, N. 53 n. 58, 90 n. 139, 188,
Milik, J. T. 78 n. 88 198n. 107, 198n. 109, 200 n. 115, 220
Millar, W. R. 379, 380, 381-83 n. 66, 224 n. 77, 227 n. 93, 234 n. 126
Millard) AYR 20 net; 1230, 257-210 Naré, L. 307
n. 13, 221 n. 69, 410 Naumann, T. 289 n. 106
Millard, M. 338, 339 n. 31, 340 Naveh, J. 220 n. 65, 264 n. 89, 280 n. 65
Millbank, J. 293 n. 117 Naville, E. 73
Miller, J. M. 81 n. 99, 147n.5, 148 n. 6, Negev, A. 279 n. 62
151 n. 18, 154-55, 156-57, 158, 165, Nel, P. J. 296-97, 299, 308
179 n. 10, 193, 201 n. 120, 216 n. 40, Newsom, C. A. 293 n. 117, 293 n. 118,
22269, 227m Sia 228 lOle2 3 299
n. 114, 231 n. 115, 240 n. 12, 253 Niccacci, A. 303
iy yA, Waveyiok (eo) Nicholson, E. W. 87 n. 127
Miller, P. D., Jr. 209 n. 8, 266 n. 1, 268 Niditch, S. 275 n. 40
nat 2/0m. 135279 n. 62, 34345. Nielsen, K. 275 n. 40, 286 n. 98
392 n. 4, 395 n. 14, 409 n. 81, 411 Niemann, H. M. 222 n. 69
n. 91, 455, 456 n. 19 Nissen, H. 38 n. 1, 38 n. 2, 39 n. 5, 39
Milson, D. 217 n. 49 n. 6
Minor, M. 97 n. 1 Nissinen, M. 273 n. 26
Miosi, F. T. 58 n. 65 Noble, P. R. 467 n. 53
Miscall, P. D. 110 Nogalski, J. D. 290 n. 110
Mitchell, D. C. 332, 334n. 13, 336 Noort, E. 272 n. 24
n. 21, 337-38, 340 Norris, C. 108 n. 37
Mitchell, T. C. 238 n. 6 Norris, D. M. 440 n. 54
Moberly, R. W. L. 141, 142-44, 163 Noth, M. 87 n. 127, 117-18, 125, 131,
n. 62, 391 n. 2, 454, 465 n. 45, 469 139, 159, 179 n. 10, 180 n. 18, 208
n. 59, 470 n. 59, 474 n. 74 mn. 2,209 n. 10; 224 n 777258 nero:
Molist, M. 62 n. 14 393
Moltmann, J. 375, 377, 378 Notscher, F. 331 n. 9
Montet, P. 73 n. 66
Moore, A. 61 n. 7 Oates, D. 66 n. 35, 68 n. 45
Moore, R. D. 325 n. 189 Oates, J. 61 n.5, 62 n. 13, 66 n. 35
Moore, S. D. 108 n. 37, 114, 286 n. 97 O’Brien, J. A. 286 n. 97, 286 n. 99
Moorey, P. R. S. 64 n. 19 Ochshorn, J. 436 n. 45
Moran, W. L. 76 n. 80, 273 n. 28, 445 O’Connor, M. 281 n. 77, 344, 345-47,
n. 61 348, 349, 352 n. 80, 404 n. 57, 411
Morgan, D. F. 295 n. 1, 307 n. 81 n. 90
Morgan, R. 146, 149, 153, 154 n. 23 Oded, B. 228 n. 99, 228 n. 100, 231
Morris, C. W. 350 De £15,235 n. 1319252 ne46
Morris; L. 375-76 Oden, R. A., Jr. 446
Morrow, F. J. 321 n. 172 Oeming, M. 454 n. 12
Author Index 501

Oesterley, W. O. E. 331 n.9 Betersen) Duss! Om: ozo7. 26s m4

Ofer, A. 220 n. 66, 221 n. 67, 227 n. 95, 268 n. 5, 274 n. 34, 274 n. 38, 405,
229 410
Ogden, G. S. 288 n. 105, 316-17, 318 Petrotta, A. J. 282 n. 79
n. 158 Pettazzone, R. 409 n. 81
O’Kane, M. 269 n. 10, 288 n. 105 Pettinato, G. 40 n. 12, 65 n. 27, 279
Ollenburger, B. C. 9 n. 2, 419 n. 123, n. 63, 302 n. 40, 403
456 n. 20 Pfeiffer, C.F. 75
Oller, G. H. 93 Phillips, G. A. 107 n. 34
Olmstead, A. T. 238 n. 3 Pietersma, A. 320 n. 169
Olrik, A. 123 Pitard, W. T. 414 n. 104, 414 n. 105
Olson, DP i 141 Pitkin, R. 316 n. 139, 317 n. 158
Olyan, S. 398 n. 29, 411 n. 92, 412 n. 93 Pleins, J.D. 358
Ong, W. J. 276 n. 47 Ploeg, J. van der 321 n. 171
Oosthuizen, M. J. 325 n. 186 Pléger, O. 304 n. 51, 313, 370, 385 n. 83
Oppenheim, A. L. 76 n. 80 Pocock. J. G. Aw 222 nw
Oren, E. D. 206 n. 136 Podany, A. 42 n. 24
Orlinsky, H. 319 Polley, M. E. 293 n. 117
Orthmann, W. 44 n. 36, 66 n. 33 Polzin, R. M. 104 n. 24, 141, 325 n. 191
Ortlund, R. C., Jr. 286 n. 99 Poorthuis, M. 356 n. 98
Oswalt, J. N. 290 n. 109, 380 n. 58, 387 Pope, M. 279 n. 62
n. 91 Porten, B. 56 n. 61, 244 n. 20, 252 n. 46
Ottosson, M. 192 n. 77 Porter, J. R. 148 n. 6, 276 n. 45
Otzen, B. 378 n. 49 Porter, P. A. 286 n. 98
Overholt, T. W. 269 n. 8, 269 n. 11, 275, Postgate, J. N. 39 n. 7, 44 n. 39, 64
434-35, 446 net O20 ine 21202
Overland, P. 303 Poythress, V. P. 102 n. 17
Brats bas Ome
Pannenberg, W. 370, 371, 374 n. 27 Preuss, H. D. 378 n. 48, 453
Pardee, D. 43 n. 30, 45 n. 41, 49 n. 50, Prickett, S. 101, 101 n. 16
53 n. 57, 344, 345 n. 51, 348 Prinsloo, G. T. M. 355 n. 91
Pardes, I. 293 n. 118 Prinsloo, W. S. 285 n. 96, 355
Parker, J. F 98 n. 4 Propp, W. H. 49 n. 50, 53 n. 58
Parker, S. B. 275 n. 44, 276 n. 45 Provan, I. W. 169 n. 89, 177 n. 3, 209
Parpola, S. 272 n. 26 ole
Partner, N. F 192 n. 75 Prussner, F. C. 457 n. 24
Parunak, H. V. 282 n. 81, 282 n. 83 Puech, E. 48 n. 46
Patrick, D. 464 n. 42 Pury, A. de 220 n. 65, 280 n. 67
Patte, D. 98 n. 4
Patton, C. 288 n. 105 Qedar, S. 263 n. 87
Paul, S. M. 279 n. 62, 284 n. 89 Quinn, A. 99n.7
Payton, G. 282 n. 83
Peake, A. S. 9n. 1, 330 n. 1 Raabe, P. R. 355
Peckham, B. 269 n. 11, 277 Rabe, V. W. 269 n. 11, 276 n. 45
Peirce, C. S. 103, 104, 105 n. 26 Rabin, C. 35 n. 63
Penchansky, D. 326 Rachet, G. 53 n. 58,54 n. 59
Perdue, L. G. 295 n. 1, 318 n. 160, 326 Rad, G. von 117, 120, 125, 155-56, 209
n. 192, 458 n. 11, 298, 305-6, 314, 370, 374, 375,
Perowne, J. J. S. 330 n. 3 377, 418, 453, 456, 459, 460, 469, 475
Ltsamarsn (Gs wey Rahmani, L. Y. 247 n. 34
502 Author Index

Rainey, A. F. 82 n. 103, 82 n. 104, 182 Rooker, M. F. 283 n. 86

n. 26, 188, 190 n. 68, 198 n. 106, 198 Rosenbaum, J. 227 n. 92
n. 108, 239 n. 8, 280 n. 69, 428 n. 21 Rosenbaum, M. 282 n. 81
eypy, Bhd), Sao) ia, NG Ross, A. P. 304n. 51
Ramsey, G. W. 154 n. 25 Ross, J. F 272 n. 24
Rashid, F 40 n. 10 Rost, L. 209 n. 10
Rast, W. E. 194 n. 85 Roth, W. 384 n. 79
Rawi, F. al- 40 n. 10, 44 n. 39 Rouault, O. 42 n. 24
Rays Das O2nes9 Rowland, C. 373, 384-85, 386, 387, 389
Redditt, P.L. 278 n. 51 n. 102
Redford, D. B. 56 n. 62, 70, 71, 78 Rowlett, L. 191 n. 73
n. 89, 85 mn. 119) 120, 180 n. 19, 223 Rowley, Hy H-*9 im: 173707875 ny35,
n. 76, 224 n. 77, 401 388
Reich, R. 216n. 41 Rowton, M. B. 90 n. 139
Reid, S. B. 358 Royle, N. 110 n. 44
Reindl, J. 335 n. 19, 338 Rudolph, W. 234 n. 129
Rendsburg, G. A. 84, 141, 206 n. 135, Ruether, R. R. 436
304 n. 52, 359 n. 110 Ruffle, J. 71 n. 58, 303
Rendsburg, S. L. 359 n. 110 Russell, D9 S.93 70537 War 13,372 n>
Rendtorff, R. 125-27, 128, 129, 131, 375 De 357385, 82) SOT m2 oOo
132, 134, 140, 143, 146 n. 3, 151 n. 102
n. 16, 158 n. 39, 392, 454, 457 n. 22 Ryken, L. 99 n. 6, 111 n. 46, 161 n. 59
Renz, J. 45 n. 41, 48 n. 46, 48 n. 47, 49
ne49e49 mn. SOP Sian. 3.0o0 meb4e55 Sacchi, P. 253 nm. 50
Rei Saebg, M. 254 n. 55, 311-12
Reventlow, H. G. 148 n. 6, 322 n. 175, Sages, H. W. F. 272 n. 23, 408
454 n. 12, 455, 458 Sailhamer, J. H. 420 n. 125
Ribera, J. 291 n. 111 Salvesen, A. 26 n. 18
Richards, K. H. 10 n. 3, 239 n. 10 Salvini, M. 182 n. 27, 198 n. 108
Richter, H.-F 291 n. 112 Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. 239 n. 7
Richter, W. 307-8 Sanders, J. A. 32, 336 n. 21, 338, 339
Ricker, R. S. 316 n. 139, 317 n. 158 Sanderson, J. E. 20 n. 1, 20 n. 2, 25
Ricoeur, P. 327, 362 mn. 14;26nr19, 28
Rienstra, M. V. 358 Sapin, J. 239, 251 n. 43
Rignell, L.G. 321 n. 174 Saussure, F. de 103, 109, 109 n. 41
Ringe) s, Hi 293m. 118 Sawyer, J. F. A. 285 n. 97, 315 n. 134
Ringeren, H. 182 n. 29, 271 n. 22, 286 Scalisey GS.) 457me 22
ie QE cylin, WPA Ses inl, S)nSXols ial, tes10) Scanlin, H. 20n. 2
392 Schaeder, H. H. 243 n. 18
Ripinsky, M. 70 Schafer-Lichtenberger, C. 193
Rizzin GeO lene 12 Schaller, B. 320 n. 168
Roaf, M. 60 n. 2 Scharfstein, B. A. 166
Roberts, J. J. M. 209 n. 8, 394n. 11 Schart, A. 272 n. 24, 290 n. 110
Robertson, D. A. 114 n. 58, 325 n. 191, Schenker, A. 36 n. 69
381 n. 59 Schiffman, L. H. 30 n. 45, 31, 34, 388
Robinson, H. W. 9 n. 1 n. 96
Rogerson, J. W. 51 n. 54, 198 n. 110, Schmandt-Besserat, D. 39 n. 3, 39 n. 4
450 n. 73 Schmid, H. H. 298
Rollefson, G. O. 240 n. 12 Schmidt, B. B. 414 n. 102, 414 n. 105,
Romer TC) 200 n. 115,220 n? 65) 280 414 n. 106, 415 n. 108
n. 67 Schmidt, H. 331 n.9
Author Index 503

Schmidt, W. H. 392 im, Sil; Sibin, Si, Sik im, Syl, 52 im, SYey, Se?
Schmithals, W. 376-77, 378, 385 n. 83 im, aii
Schmitt, J. J. 283 n. 88 Smend, R. 160
Schmitz, P. C. 350 n. 72 Smith, D. L. 248 n. 36, 252 n. 46, 439-
Schmo6kel, H. B. 272 n. 24 40
Schneider, T. 280 n. 73 Smith, G. V. 270 n. 14
Schniedewind, W. M. 52 n. 55, 270 Smith, M. 246, 405, 406, 409
Scholes, R. 104 n. 22 Smith, M.S. 196 n. 101, 392, 395-97,
Schoors, A. 274 n. 40 404 n. 60, 406-7, 409, 410
Schottroff, W. 293 n. 117 Smith, P. A. 289 n. 107
Schoville, K. N. 277 n. 51 Smith, W. C. 468 n. 55
Schramm, B. 255 n. 59 Smith, W. R. 423, 424, 433
Schreiner, S. E. 322, 323 Smith-Christopher, D. 421 n. 2
Schro6ten, J. 356 Smitten, W. T. in der 258 n. 75
Schultz Rab, 313m. 127 Suelia Deco i
Schwartz, D. R. 262 n. 84, 264 n. 88 Soderlund, S. 291 n. 111
Schwartz, G. 66 n. 36 Soggin, J. A. 45 n. 41, 46 n. 43, 47
Schweizer, H. 120, 121 n. 44, 49 n. 50, 50 n. 51, 51 n. 53, 51
Scoralick, R. 309, 312
n. 54,53 n. 57, 56n. 61, 148 n. 6, 208
i, 2, Phin, 2, DUNS sal, Ssh, DOS ia, TOO),
Scott, Ro B. Y.1306, 309, 312
Bin, WS
Segert, S. 282 n. 81
Sokoloff, M. 321 n. 172
Seifert, B. 286 n. 97
Sollamo, R. 192 n. 77
Seitz, Carn. 209m 02278 nS, 288
Spaer, A. 247 n. 35, 263 n. 86
n. 105, 289 n. 106, 292 n. 114, 292
Sparks, K. L. 194 n. 85
n. 116, 461 n. 38, 466 n. 47
Speiseml Aw iS 22 123
Selman, M. J. 53 n.58
Spencer, H. 423
Seow, C. L. 316
Sperber, A. 26
Servet, M. J. D. 291 n. 112
Spieckermann, H. 357
Service, E. 431
Sprinkle, J. M. 141 n. 91
Seybold, K. 332, 338, 341 n. 38 Spronk, K. 414 n. 102
Shaffer, A. 95 n. 160 Stadelmann, R. 57 n. 64
Shanks, H. 280 n. 69, 280 n. 73 Stager L. E. 196 n. 96, 198 n. 110, 218
Shapiro, M. 103 n. 19 1a, SW, PTS} 1a, SS)
Sharon, I. 184 n. 35 Stanford, M. 167
Shea, W. H. 88 n. 134, 411 n. 90 Sere Il 27 in, 235 2 2S
Shehadeh, H. 28 Stec, D. M. 321
Shepherd, J. E. 360 n. 112 Steck, O. H. 288 n. 105, 289 n. 106
SheppardaG. Dy 3179335519 Stendahl, K. 468 n. 55
Sheriffs, D. 455 Stern, E. 233 n. 122, 240, 246 n. 29
Sherratt, A. 192 n. 74 Sternberg, M. 100 n. 11, 141, 164 n. 66,
Sherwood, Y. 293 n. 118 165, 209 n. 6, 460 n. 37
Shiloh, Y. 185 n. 40, 216 n. 42, 227 Stiebing Jr, W. H. 177 n. 4
n. 89, 227 n. 90, 228 n. 97 Stienstra, N. 286 n. 99
Shupak, N. 308 Stigers, H. G. 73 n. 66
Silver, M. 293 n. 117 Stipp, id--Je 290i
Simon, U. 282 n. 83, 357 Stohlmann, S. 229
Skehan, P. W. 20 n. 2, 313 Stoianovich, T. 192 n. 74
Skladny, U. 306, 312 Stone, E. C. 41 n. 19, 67 n. 42, 201
Smelik, K. A. D. 45 n. 41, 47 n. 44, 48 Strange, J. 179 n. 10, 200 n. 115
n. 46, 48 n. 47, 49 n. 49, 49 n. 50, 50 Straumann, H. S. 293 n. 118
504 Author Index

Strauss, D. F. 152-53, 154 n. 36, 30-31, 32-33,34435 mm, 63,291

Strommenger, E. 42 n. 28 md Pie Ot
Stronach, D. 44 n. 37, 69 n. 51 Loy Catia
Stuart, D. K. 281 n. 78, 383 n. 69, 445 Tracy, D. 468 n. 55
n. 63 Trebolle Barrera, J.C. 223 n. 73
Stuhlmueller, C. 285 n. 96 Trible, P 106 n. 33, 287 n. 100, 293
Suirenhagen, D. 63 n. 17 n. 118, 436, 454, 459
Sutcliffe, E. F. 319 n. 161 Troeltsch, E. 154
Swanepoel, M. G. 286 n. 98 Tromp, N. J. 414 n. 102
Swanson, G. E. 406 n. 64 Tsevat, M. 145 n. 1
Sweeney, M. A. 266 n. 1, 277 n. 51, 278 Tsumura, D. T. 9n. 2,99 n. 6
n. 51, 283 n. 85, 284 n. 92, 287 n. 102, Tucker, G. M. 10 n. 3, 269 n. 8, 271
290 n. 109 n. 17, 284 n. 92, 287 n. 103, 288
Syrén, R. 141 n. 105, 292 n. 116
Szpek, H. M>-321 Tupper, E. FE. 369 n. 2, 375 n. 34
Turner, L. A. 141
Turner, M. 282 n. 82
Tadmor, H. 229 n. 104, 238 n. 6
Tur-Sinai, N. H. 319 n. 162
Tal, A. 28
Talmon, S. 19 n. 1, 22, 23, 35 n. 63, 418
Uehlinger, C. 279 n. 60, 398-99, 409,
n. 118
411 n. 91, 412 n. 97
Talstra, E. 283 n. 84
Uffenheimer, B. 268 n. 7, 275 n. 44
Tappy, R. 218 n. 52
Ulrich, E. 20 n. 2, 23, 32, 33-34
Tate, M. E. 332
Taylor, R. A. 291 n. 112
Uphill, E. P. 74n. 74
Urbrock, W. J. 325 n. 191
Taylor, W.R. 332 n.9
Ussishkin, D. 80 n. 93, 81, 218 n. 51,
Teissier, B. 94
226 n. 85
Teixidor, J. 279 n. 62
Tetley, M. C. 87-88
van Buren, P. 460 n. 38
Thackeray, H. St. J. 74
van Cangh, J.-M. 196 n. 101
Thiele, E.R. 91
VanderKam, J. C. 262 n. 84, 264 n. 88,
Thiselton, A. C. 164 n. 66 378 n. 49
Thompson, H. O. 266 n. 1 van der Kooij, A. 288 n. 105, 292 n. 112
Thompson, J. A. 50 n. 51, 84n. 115 van der Kooij, G. 93 n. 155
Thompson, T. L. 52 n. 55, 70, 80, 80 van der Lugt, P. 281 n. 77, 324
mn. 97122 a1 5 8eloOe 160 sl62 1. 60; van der Meer, W. 345 n. 51, 354 n. 89
177 0.35189; 190; 207 ne 1.212. 23; van der Toorn, K. 407, 409, 410
DIDS Mesa. 21 O22 224 82250232" van der Weiden, W. A. 305
233, 280 n. 68 van der Westhuizen, J. P. 282 n. 80
Thuesen, I. 62 n. 13 van Dijk-Hemmes, F. 286 n. 100
Tidwell, N. L. 291 n. 112 Vanel, A. 277 n. 51
Tigay, J. H. 397-98, 409, 413 n. 100, VanGemeren, W. A. 332 n. 9
413 n. 101 Vanhoozer, K. J. 99 n. 6, 113 n. 57
Tollefson, K. D. 241 n. 14, 257n. 71 Van Leeuwen, R. C. 304 n. 51, 306, 310
Tomasino, A. J. 290 n. 109 n96, 512, 313,314. 315
Torezyner, H. 319 n. 162 van Loon, M. 65 n. 30
Tornkvist, R. 293 n. 118 van Rooy, H. F. 288 n. 105
Hlorrey, Gs Gae23)l 2524235 van Ruiten, J. T. A.G. M. 289 n. 106
Tournay, R. J. 363, 383 n. 72 Van Seters, J. 70, 73 n. 66, 74 n. 74,
Tov, B.820 ne 22 23.024en. Il 25326 121-25, 128, 132, 133, 140, 144, 156
ne 17, 26s (9426 nae 22 deme 2D M32, LOO mes I-20 ne te
Author Index 505

van Voss, M. H. 54 n. 59 Weems, R. J. 286 n. 100, 287, 292

van Wieringen, A. L. H. M. 283 n. 84 n. 114
van Wolde, E. J. 104-5 Wei, T. F. 74 n. 71
Vatke, W. 393 Weinberg, J. 323 n. 179
Vaux, R. de 78 n. 88, 118, 147 n. 6, 172, Weinberg, J. P. 248-51, 439, 440
243 n. 18, 444 Weinberg, S. S. 252 n. 47
Vawter, B. 268 n. 4, 269 n. 11, 378 n. 49 Weinfeld, M. 134, 229 n. 107, 272 n. 24
Veeser, H. A. 107 n. 34, 111 n. 45 Weippert, H. 157 n. 39, 240 n. 11
Veijola, T. 230 n. 112 Weippert, M. 157 n. 39, 179 n. 10, 180
Vervote 72. mol me lOn268 m4 272 me 24) 272 nh 26;
Vermeylen, J. 287 n. 104 274 n. 37
Vervant, J. 271 n. 23 Weiser, A. 332 n. 9
Vervenne, M. 289 n. 106 Weiss, H. 42 n. 26, 60 n. 3, 64 n. 23, 64
Vincent, C. 42 n. 27 n. 25, 64 n. 26, 66 n. 37, 66 n. 38, 66
Vincent, J. M. 281 n. 78 n. 39, 66 n. 40, 67 n. 44
Vogels, W. 325 n. 189 Weiss, M. 100 n. 11, 325 n. 186
Weitzman, M. 321 n. 174
Volz, P. 308
Wellhausen, J. 116, 118, 125, 134, 150—
von Balthasar, H. U. 453
51, 1597161, 330 n. 3, 371, 393)428
von der Osten-Sacken, P. 374
Welten, P. 213 n. 25
Vorster, W. S. 106 n. 29
Wendland, E.R. 359 n. 110
Vriezen, T. C. 392,416 n. 112
Wenham, G. J. 72 n. 61, 99 n. 7, 116
n. 1, 121, 123 n. 25, 144 n. 100, 447
Wacker, M.-T. 293 n. 118
West, G. 327 n. 200
Waddell, W. G. 70 n. 54
Westbrook, R. 141
Walker, C. 41 n. 19
Westermann, C. 120, 139, 149 n. 14,
Walker, C. B. F. 273 n. 28 284,285 mn 96" 306, 307931083125
Wallis, L. 424, 434, 435 325, 335, 357, 361, 364, 392, 417, 452
Walters, S. D. 272 n. 24 Wevers, J. W. 24, 24n. 7, 24 n. 9, 74
Waltke, B. K. 19n. 1, 20 n. 1, 28 n. 29, meth
QS so s—92 55450) 290 me 1se500 Whedbee, J. W. 307
ne 26, 300 ns 28, 300 n: 29, 301 mn. 315 White, H. C. 107 n. 34, 120
302.0, 38. 313 n/ 123; 313 nal274314 Whitehead, J. D. 244 n. 20
n. 128, 314 n. 132, 315 n. 135, 360, Whitelam, K. W. 70, 157 n. 39, 162
365 me bse n. oO 76m, 3, lai nes, toons 0)
Walton, J. 448 188-89, 191, 201 n. 119, 238 n. 2,
Warburton, W. 322 431, 432, 433
Ward, W. A. 72 n. 62, 73 n. 66, 74 n. 73 Whiting, R. 67 n. 44
Washington, H. C. 304-5 Whybray, R. N. 99 n. 7, 119, 129-33,
Watanabe, K. 272 n. 26 140, 205 n. 134, 296, 298, 301 n. 30,
Watson, F. 467 n. 51 303), 304'n. 51,305;7306, 307, 308)
Watson, W. G. E. 281 n. 77, 344 n. 50, 311, 312, 313, 342, 342 n. 42
353, 365 n. 134 Widengren, G. 264 n. 88
Watts, J.D. W. 285 n. 97, 290 n. 109 Wiener, H. M. 22 n. 3
Webb, B. G. 99 n. 6 Wightman, G. J. 218 n.51
Webb, R. 373 Wilcke, C. 41 n. 19
Weber, M. 158, 159, 268, 384, 423, 425, Wildeboer, D. G. 311
426, 430, 433-34 Wiles, J. K. 306
Webster, E. C. 324 Wilhelm, G. 41 n. 18, 65 n. 32
Weeks, S. 295 n. 1, 298 n. 14, 306, 308, Wilkinson, J. 74 n. 68, 74 n. 69
313 Wilkinson, T. 62 n. 10
506 Author Index

Willi, T. 226 n. 84 Wright, J. 271 n. 23

Williams, J. G. 314, 326 n. 194 Wright, J. W. 213 n. 26
Williamson, H. G. M. 194 n. 85, 212 Wurthwein, E. 19n. 1, 25 n. 16, 210
ine 23 e216 me Zoe 2 14 nies 1 234 el 9F Ml, 297,
241 n. 14, 242 n. 17, 244 n. 22, 245
my 25, 2461.50) 249ine 374 250 me 38) Yadin, Yo 95) 17/3116) 216-139
251 n. 44, 253 n. 48, 254 n. 54, 254 Yaffe, M. D. 323 n. 180
idly SXO)n, oloiims Oe), Mosysay Oil, “As)s) Ml, (oy. Yamauchi, E. M. 87 n. 127, 148n. 6,
256 n. 64, 256 n. 66, 257 n. 69, 257 158'n 395 211 m9) 240m. 125 256
i, Wl Doin, Wey, Mschia, Wl, Houle, teil. n. 64, 256 n. 66
262 n. 82, 264 n. 88, 264 n. 90, 285 Yardeni, A. 244 n. 20
n. 96, 289 n. 107, 290 n. 108, 295 n. 1, Yoder, P. 365 n. 135
296 n. 2 Yoffee, N. 61 n. 8
Willi-Plein, I. 289 n. 106, 383 n. 72, 384 Yon, M. 43 n. 30, 68 n. 49
n. 78, 389 n. 101 Young, E. J. 316
Willis) ieee dione 4 O27 Sle fee os Young, I. 283 n. 87
Dacoye2oo ao
Younger, Ko Lig 99 nh ol 7om oe
Wilson, F. M. 297, 298 n. 14
n. 28, 192.7. 76,0193 1625200 mat he:
Wilsons G Eas32)333=3 7338)359
200 tay. L208 sis, 1265204 Tiel 2g
n. 31, 339 n. 32, 340, 344
204 nm: 128, 397 0,25
Wilson, R. R. 268 n. 6, 271 n. 18, 272
Younker, R. W. 218 n. 53
ne24,.273 ne29,274n. 3872 15=16;
Yurco, F J. 82 n. 103, 82 n. 104, 86, 197
284 n. 92, 422 n. 4, 426 n. 19, 433,
n. 103
434, 446, 448
Wimsatt, W. K. 105 n. 28
Zaccagnini, C. 196 n. 97
Wiseman) sJavol nes4. 123m. 25:
Zadok, R. 398 n. 30
Witherington, B., III 281 n. 74, 281
ily Ae)
Zapff, B. M. 288 n. 104, 289 n. 107
Wolfers, D. 327 Zenger, E332, 338, 341, 359 n. 110
Wolff, H. W. 152 n. 18, 276 n. 45, 285 Zertal, A. 179
n. 96, 307 Zettler, R. 65 n. 31
Wolters, A. 304 Zevit, Z. 344 n. 50, 411 n. 90, 411 n. 92
Wood, B. G. 84n. 114, 89, 201 n. 118 Ziegler, J. 24 n. 7, 320
Wood, L. J. 78 n. 87, 81 n. 101, 88 Zimansky, P. 41 n. 19, 67 n. 42
Woodhead, J. 49 n. 50 Zimmerli, W. 283 n. 88, 297, 452
Worschech, U. 286 n. 98 Zimmerman, F. 319 n. 161
Woude, A. van der 31, 321 n. 171 Zimmermann, F. 317
Woudstra, M. 86n. 121 Zipor, M. A. 286 n. 99
Wright, C.J. H. 455 Zsengellér, J. 46 n. 43
Wright, G. A. 317 Zuck, R. B. 318 n. 160
Wright, G. E. 410, 416 Zuckerman, B. 326
Scripture Index

Old Cestament
Genesis 2126) 31 47 77
1 58, 138, 463 22 128, 469, 469 n. 59 47:11 73
1-3 457, 457 n. 23 22129210) 121 47:13-26 75, 120
1-11 9n.2, 124 2268128 AL 2a 16
1228 137 22:16-18 128 47:26 121
2aLOS 29 221d Soil 48-50 121
2-3 104 23516 nI28 48:2-50:14 121
2:1-3 137 24 128 OMS eA0)
3 105 Zap l27. SO) alk W227
Sal 173 25-35 120, 141 50:14-26 121
97138 26 123, 128 50:15-21 120
Doel 37 26:1-11 123
26:2-5 128 Exodus
L223 5128
12-26 123 BT) NWO 1 84
12-50 399, 461 27-33 127 1:7-14 86
12:1-3 112 27:27-29 133 1:8-22 84
12226133 Z8lOm1Z29 iso ms 20k 7s)
12 29 CH 1:14 84
12829 35:1-29 121 jigpaey (il
12:10-20 70, 123 S120 3 142
136128 37-50 119-20, 121 3:14-15 142
1321829 yo) NO), al 6 142
14 122, 124 3985S 6:2-3 142
14:18-20 124 39-45 120 6:3 47
May il eh ile}, MAIS) 40:1 72 ORAS 13)
15:6 128 40:2 72 12:40 75, 77-78, 85,
15:18-21 123 41:14 75 8509 19
16 128 41:45 75 14:7 91
L723 yi2838 43:32 75 14:9 91
AFI. ANSI) 44:1-5 274 Ney Wal, sieve, Wily Sier8
18 128 45:2 300 17:8-16 465 n. 45
18-19 128 45:10 73 18:11 402
ZO 23523, 46-50 120, 121 20:24-26 129
20-21 123 46:8-27 120 21-22 141
20-22 129 46:28 73 21=23m29
20:1-18 123 46:29 73 21:2 46
21-128 46:34 73,75 22:26-27 53

507
508 Scripture Index

25-31 24 S211 Miss SZ a87

32-34 141 Byiexey ‘hil 4:1 87
SOA ANSNS 4:2 95
Deuteronomy 4:11 205
33 Ini3s
34:6 464 (ASS fehl Seo lim. 27
35-40 24 i35rs3 5:4-5 401 n. 40
2:30=35, 83 6:1 87
Leviticus SHayfeye) 8:33 87
(WSpSIL ilisye} 6:7-9 309 10:6 87
7 lleve, 7 465 n. 45 NEDSS
17-26 134 LOSS 12:6 199
1IETS6 15:12 46 1321 87
20:22-26 421 18 268 19 358
23 134, 135 18:15-19 274 20:45-47 96
PayP, \VSHS 18:15-22 269 20:47 96
23:2-3 135 23:4 92 py iey ee
23:4 135 2412713" 53
23721 34 25:17-19 465 n. 45 | Samuel
23:33-38 134 Meese) i i17/ Ait 7sl* 209
23:39-43 134 27-28 298 7:14 90
Bay AEX: 32:17 94 9:8-9 422
26 298 33 118 10:11-12 276
33:2-3 401 n. 40 14:2 96
Numbers
34:10-12 269 14:16 96
SOs, Wi 15:1-3 465 n. 45
5195138 Joshua
16:14—-31:13 209
6:22-23 48 1-11 80, 465 n. 45 17:45-47 110
6:24 49 1:1-2 268 28 415
6:24-26 48, 212 8:30-35 205
6:27 48 9E205 2 Samuel
12:6-8 300 10 203 1-5 209
13:28 81 10-11 200 4:185 1
1423133 10:28-42 179 4:4 51
PUVA ey? Lst95 6 209
21:2-3 82 TOSS 7 297
21:21-23 91 ibieiss akrAS) 7:5) 280
21:21-31 83 11:18 203 rer 280
21:26 83 1335 203 7:11 280
22 47 15:63, 200 mei y 7:13 280
22-24 274 21:29 46 7:18-29 230 n. 111
DIES OW Pipe ye%l| 7:27 280
22:8-9 94 24 351 9-20 209
2242) 94 2acle205 13 358
22:19-20 94 24:32 205 22:14 348
23-24 118
24 129 Judges | Kings
24:4 47 1 200, 200 n. 116, 203 1-2 209
24:16 47 1:8 200 n. 117 1-11 224
25:3 94 12e2O0mi eel U7 3-11 302
28-29 134 3:5-6 196 3:1 217 n. 46, 217 n. 47
31:16 94 SEY/ RoW 4:32 301
Scripture Index 509

5:1 217 n. 46 18:30-35 230 4-6 243

5:10 217 n. 46 19:15-19 230 n. 111 4:1 256
5:27-7:51 216 n. 37 19:18 230 4:1-3 255
6:1 85, 88 19:34 230 4:4-5 254
7:8 217 n. 47 20:1-11 230n. 110 4:6-11 244
8 213, 471 20:2-3 230n. 111 4:7-23 247, 260
8:22-53 230n. 111 20:6 230 5 247
8:51 217n. 46 20:20 52,227 n91 5:14 247, 254
8:53 217 n. 46 24-25 234 6:3-6 244
8:65 217 nm. 46 Zool 7-10 258
9:15=17 216 25:22-26 232, 234 ULE 242
9:15-19 216 n. 37 25:27-30 210 7:1-10 259
9:16 217 n. 46, 217 n. 47 7:12-26 258
| Chronicles 7:24 251, 251 n. 44
9:24 216 n. 37,217 n. 46,
217 n. 47 1-9 203 n. 126 7:25-26 258
10:26-29 217n. 46 3:18 254 Seog
11-22 210 3:19 247 m. 31, 254 n. 53 8:1-14 258
MET 7 046821 Tims
6:32-39 87 82155258
11:1-13 225
22-29 216 n. 37 8A 7e258
11:1-14:20 214 n. 30 8:24-30 258
2 Chronicles
11:14-40 225 8:26-27 258
3:1-17 216 n. 37 8:33-34 258
Risse 225-1281
4:1-5:1 216 n. 37 9259
11:17-22 217 n. 46
ofl Alloy als ey 10:95 258
11221-5225 081 8:4-6 216 n. 37 10:13 258
iie235225 mn. oi Se 216 mes 7
11525 9225 ne81 10:1-17 223 n. 73 Nehemiah
11:26-40 223 12:1-12 223 2 46
De27 216 ne 37 12:2-3 91 2:8 260
11:40 217 n. 46 12:2-4 226 4 46
12-22" 214 122-9995 5 260
1221-20 9222, 223 ws 13:4-12 223 n. 73 5:4 251
13 457, 457 n. 23 14:9 90, 91 51418 251
14:25-26 55, 223,224, ieyi 0) eh! 5:15 247
226 28822 8ma 99 6 46
18 274 29-32 227n. 94 7 249, 439
22:19 47 32:2-4 52 T2260
32730M52022 nyo" 7:5 249
2 Kings
36:17-20 234 8 258, 259
1-17 210, 214 36:23 234n. 129 9 253 n. 48
3550 9:15-17 81
8:28-29 52 Ezra 10) 2511
14:23—29 227n. 87 1-6 243,255 IPOS e263
14:25 268 1:2-4 243 12:11 242 n. 16
16 228n. 99 1:8 254 n. 54 ile) 45H
17 228 n. 100 1:9-11 243 13:28 264
17:4 90, 91 2 243, 249, 255, 439
17:13 268 34254 Job
18:9-12 228 n. 100 3:1-6 254 PERS) CNS,
18:13 229 Beh Hie) Zelda 00
18:13-19:37 230 n. 110 3:7-4:3 254 7:17-18 326
510 Scripture Index

9:22 300 Sf S55) 98 382 n. 65

17-42 321 59 73D5 S935), 551
22-27 324 60 364 99-100 340
28 324 Ooms o2 a 05 100° 339%:32
23228297, 67 355 101 340
29-31 319 68 382 n. 65 101-4 340
Bho) Svall 68:18 401 n. 40 101-6 339, 340
38-41 301 68:34 300 102-10 340
Shoal PAV 69 338 103° 335) nS
42:1-9 301 [253357558 10334-7279
42:11 321 72:20 334 104 382 n. 65, 383 n. 68
42:12-17 321 (8) Beyceia, MS 104-6 334
42:17 319 73-83 342 LO5e359
74 364 105:25-42 79
Psalms 74:12-14 380 n. 58 106 94, 335, 340, 359,
13347535) 555) Ueno, 74:12-15 79 382 n. 65
33d, Sev! 76 382 n. 65 106:24-26 81
1-8 343 HTb, Bxew sa(ae) 106:28 94
1-150 333 77:15-20 79 106:37 94
2E3 307531, S30; 502 le OD 78 359 107 335, 340
2:12 341 78:12-53 79 107-18 343
Beso 79 364 107-50 342
6 358 80 355, 364 109 338
8 326 82 338 110 338, 382 n. 65
DE3 825552005 82:1 47 111-17 334
19RS 57, 83 338, 364 113-18 338
225356 84-85 342 114:1-4 79
24 113, 382 n. 65 87 338 1187356
PAS) S¥35)a, AS) 87-88 342 L TORS 57
DIES OORSSY ms.OD 88 338 120-34 338, 343, 355
34 357 89 335, 336, 338, 340, 124:6 351
ol 2S 364, 382 n. 65 132,338
oe) SIS) 90 335, 338, 340 135 334, 343 n. 47
41 335 90-94 339 135-50 343
42-43 355 90-100 340 136 359
42-49 342, 343 90-101 340 136:10-16 79
42-150 342 90-106 335-36, 342, 343, 139 343 n. 47
44 364 343 n. 47 141 343 n. 47
45 338, 360 n. 113 90-110 340 143 343 n. 47
46 355, 382 n. 65 912338 144 335, 337
46:7 300 927338 1457335; 336, 337,
47 382 n. 65 935351 343 n. 47
48 382 n. 65 93-99 335 146-50 334, 336
49 295, 314, 355 93-100 339 1505335ini lo, so6,
50 342 94 340 362 n. 120
50:12-14 444 WEY Sake}, SS) ial,Sh
51-72 342, 343 95-100 339 Proverbs
Bs) Saks: 95:9-11 81 1-9 304, 313 n. 127
55:9-11 358 96:10 474 1-24 301, 304
Wey BIS 97 357,382 0. OD (BL ATF Sheil stiles)
Scripture Index Sit

1:1-9:18 304, 310 PPRARTE Fey 40-55 377

1:3 300 22:17-21 301 40-66 381
NOE PASTY) 24:30-31 301 43:1-7 79
1:8 300, 308 24:30-34 301 SyLSS B¥sii
1:10 300 24:32 301 51:9-10 380
1:20-33 298, 299, 300 24:33-34 301 SVT SiSN8)
1278300 25 306 SSS) Sa rine Ales)
2:1-6 299 25-27 306, 312 56-66 242 n. 15, 384, 439
2:1-8 301 PED) ADE SHA SIL) 63:7-64:12 253 n. 48
2:3 300 Poe SOL ol? 313; 66:15-16 383 n. 68
2:6 300 252-27 312
28-29 306, 312 Jeremiah
2:20 300
3:1 300 28:26 296 2:1-6 79
S260296 30 304 7 384
SEW PaSie SOS 301312 1S 19 e1 Siem. 18
3:12 300 30:14 301 l65aZ279
4:1-9 309 30:5-6 301 22:20 300
4:6 300 31 304 DS) HS)
6:23-24 299 S113 01309 28 384
7:4 299 31:10-31 304 Bl Sve
124299 31:27 304 BVP RSD
8 298, 299 34:7 49
Ecclesiastes
8:17 300 aXe) 38)
1=6 "317 36:10-12 280
8:22-31 300
(SIN cul 36:26 280
S23 28299
LEDS ii7 41:4-5 232
8:36 300
1e2=9-82315 41:5 253 n. 48
9:8 300
(Ppa 2e3 Sil 43:1-7 280
O80 297
(eesti sXouib 45:15-19 230 n. 109
10-15 306, 312
3:16 300
10-29 306, 307 4:2 297 Ezekiel
LO: tS3013095312 7 27 ISE2Z7S
10:1-22:16 309, 310,311, TEOLTE Zs 16:8-13 79
Sil, oils) WES. Shi 7/31 y Ske)
10:2 314 12:9-13 301 36-38 378
12:1 300 IDS Bile
12:28 314, 315 12:13-14 297 Hosea
13:24 300 1:2 278
Isaiah
14:12 296 2:14-15 79
14:32 314, 315 1 274, 384 2:16 51
15290300 1-39 384 4 384
S743}. Shi 2:2-5 381
15:30-16:15 313 3 384 Joel
16:1-3 297 4:2-6 381 3 378
16:1-7 309 5:8-10 278
16:1-22:16 306, 312 7 384 Amos
16:8 314 Hale ise22Sen09 1:2 300
16:25 296 24-27 379, 381, 382 3:4 300
17:17 300 Pie “SkelO), Skshl Bes 3:9-15 274
19:8 300 27:2-6 383 5 384
2225296 28:1-6 279 6 384
a Lie Scripture Index

onl 2) Haggai 9-14 338

6:12-14 227 n. 87 Lea 7. Malachi
9:11 280 1:14 247
ZA 35 oro
Micah 2:4 256
Sirach
621 218 Zechariah
AB2 TSA,
Habakkuk 1-8 244, 255
48:17 52
7:1-7 253 n. 48
SEOs
HI AS
3:3-6 401 n. 40

New Cestament
Matthew Romans Galatians
24:24 171 8:19-23 376 Stites

Mark | Corinthians Hebrews

15 356 2A28i na £6 1:1 300
5:14 151 n. 18
; YA aaE ae eae —

UE
3 0100 00014910 6
tec
“The Face of Old Testament Studies is probably the best attempt to describe the
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