JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SUPPLEMENT SERIES
348
Editors David J.A. Clines Philip R. Davies Executive Editor Andrew Mein Editorial Board Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, J. Cheryl Exum, John Goldingay, Robert P. Gordon, Norman K. Gottwald, John Jarick, Andrew D.H. Mayes, Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller
Sheffield Academic Press A Continuum imprint
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Sense and Sensitivity Essays on Reading the Bible in Memory of Robert Carroll
edited by Alastair G. Hunter & Phillip R. Davies
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 348
Copyright © 2002 Sheffield Academic Press A Continuum imprint Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6550 www.SheffieldAcademicPress.com www.continuum-books.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Bookcraft Ltd, Midsomer Norton. Bath
ISBN 0-8264-6049-6
CONTENTS
Preface Abbreviations List of Contributors
ix xv xvii
Parti READING ROBERT CARROLL
MARK BRUMMITT AND YVONNE SHERWOOD The Tenacity of the Word: Using Jeremiah 36 to Attempt to Construct an Appropriate Edifice to the Memory of Robert Carroll
3
Part II READING BIBLICAL TEXTS: BIBLICAL EXEGESIS JOHANNA STIEBERT The Maligned Patriarch: Prophetic Ideology and the 'Bad Press' of Esau
33
JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP Saul and the Mistress of the Spirits (1 Samuel 28.3-25)
49
GRAEME AULD Counting Sheep, Sins and Sour Grapes: The Primacy of the Primary History?
63
HUGH S. PYPER Reading David's Mind: Inference, Emotion and the Limits of Language
73
HANS M. BARSTAD Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah and the Historical Prophet
87
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ALASTAIR G. HUNTER Creating Waves: Why the Fictionality of Jonah Matters
101
PHILIP R. DAVIES The 'False Pen of Scribes': Intellectuals Then and Now
117
HEATHER A. MCKAY Through the Eyes of Horses: Representaton of the Horse Family in the Hebrew Bible
127
JOHN HALLIGAN Unsolved Mysteries: The Second Temple
142
Part III
READING THE READERS: IDEOLOGY AND RECEPTION OF THE BIBLE ROBERT DAVIDSON The Bible in Church and Academy
161
LESTER L. GRABBE 'The Comfortable Theory', 'Maximal Conservatism' and Neo-Fundamentalism Revisited
174
KEITH W. WHITELAM Representing Minimalism: The Rhetoric and Realitiy of Revisionism
194
STEFAN C. REIF Jews, Hebraists and 'Old Testament' Studies
224
JOHN F.A. SAWYER Isaiah and Zionism
246
FRANCIS LANDY Prophetic Intercourse
261
JOHANN COOK The Law of Moses as a Fence and a Fountain
280
Contents
vii
ROBERT SETIO The Text of War in the Context of War: A Functional Reading
289
ATHALYA BRENNER Age and Ageism in the Hebrew Bible, in an Autobiographical Perspective
302
DAVID J.A. CLINES He-Prophets: Masculinity as a Problem for the Hebrew Prophets and their Interpreters
311
Part IV
READING THE SIGNS: THE BIBLE AND CULTURAL STUDIES DAVID JASPER Literature and the Possibility of Theology
331
STEPHEN PRICKETT Polyphonic Carrolling: Heteroglossia, Pluralism, and Editing The Bible
343
GABRIEL JOSIPOVICI Vibrant Spaces
358
JOHN ASHTON Browning on Feuerbach and Renan
374
ALICE BACH Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: A Girl in the Guild
385
CAROL SMITH! What was in the Scripture Knowledge Syllabus at Bertie Wooster's Prep School?
395
WILLIAM JOHNSTONE Interpictoriality: The Lives of Moses and Jesus in the Murals of the Sistine Chapel
416
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Bibliography of Robert Carroll's Writings
457
Index of References Index of Authors
463 475
PREFACE
This collection of essays represents something of the breadth and eclectic curiosity of Robert Carroll's range of interests, not to mention (though several of the participants do) his willingness to explore the finer points of his discipline over a refreshing drink in hostelries on several continents. In arranging the contributions we have attempted a rough categorization which takes account—in broadly chronological fashion—of the development of Robert's interests through what must certainly be recognized as an idiosyncratic, often original and provocative, but in the end arguably frustrated career. Thus we open with the business of exegesis, the fundamental training ground of biblical studies, which takes the text—the Hebrew text—as the fans et origo of all serious work deserving of that title. Whatever we may make of theory, of reception history, of cultural studies, of the whole crazy world of post-modernity in the biblical field, and recognizing Robert's simultaneous suspicion o/yet notable contributions to its development, one thing is clear: he never lost sight of the core truth that the text itself (or texts themselves) are at the same time the starting point of all our work, the destination to which we direct that work, and the ineluctable norm against which that work should be judged. Thus as he himself moved into the exploration of reception history and then cultural studies, and contributed notably to them, so this tribute takes a similar trajectory, ending with what appears at first to be furthest from the text. But in William Johnstone's confident and exemplary treatment of the deep 'interpictoriality' of renaissance art and the Bible, we find ourselves once more immersed in the fascinating detail of the text, at the hands of a skilled practitioner of that same erudition and profound knowledge of the sources which was at the heart of Robert Carroll's power as scholar, teacher and disputatious friend. But this is the point at which we seem to hear the soft Irish tones of an exasperated protest, 'Enough, already. Too much bullshit even the dead should not have to endure!' And the ghost of the professor would surely be right: in our attempts to pay honour where it is due we far too often
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slide into the maudlin and the facile. Robert was, above all, a persistent and astute commentator on both the fine things of life and the many idiocies to which even (especially?) the most intelligent are prone, and it is a shame that he cannot provide his own review of this effort in his honour. Or can't he ... [The following was delivered anonymously to the Editor of the SOTS Book List] The title of this Festschrift—Sense and Sensitivity—is only its most obvious misnomer. I discerned precious little sense in these offerings from the scholarly bottom drawer, and not a \\V\Qpreciousness. But that was ever the way of the Guild: to gild its own lilies and pass off sheep as wolves. And as for sensitivity, I suspect the editors would have done better to stick with Austen's original title than offer a weak pastiche which succeeds only in being a serious misprision of the substance of the essays. Sensibility, in the ironic sense in which Austen deployed it, at least points (for those—a dying breed—who can access the subtleties of her language) in the direction of that self-absorption and overly-developed idea of one's own fragility which is the academic's Achilles' heel. I did, certainly, enjoy occasional references to—and rewritings (already!) of—my personal history (nice one, Stephen!), and I look forward to resuming convivial drinks when the rest of you join me down here. (You've not heard the last of that camel, Frau Professor Doctor McKay!). Since most of the contributors and their work is familiar to readers of the Book List, I will refrain from any detailed comment. But I wonder (and the Editors may wish to take note) whether there is not another work of the incomparable Jane which would have better summed up this collection. I refer, of course, to Pride and Prejudice^. Nevertheless, I wish the publishers success with this well-intentioned tribute to one who scarcely merits it, and whose only wish is that his work might inspire others to seek out the bullshit and erase it from the discipline. Shalom!
To return to planet earth, it is surely fitting to say something here about the extent of Robert Carroll's contribution (details of which can be found in the catalogue of his major publications at the end of this volume) to the discipline which he occupied so comfortably, yet obviously felt so uneasy with. His self-perception of being an outsider looking in, a troubler of Israel pursued by Jezebel and her cohorts, was curiously confounded by those of us who knew him as an absolutely central figure whose groundbreaking studies changed radically the way the prophets are studied. A liminal figure constantly railing against the massed armies of 'eejits' (one of his favourite words), or an establishment guru on the international scene? Both, it seems, and yet neither—for the indispensable nature of his
Preface
xi
three major studies on prophecy in general and Jeremiah in particular (When Prophecy Failed [1979], From Chaos to Covenant [1981] and Jeremiah [1986]) cannot be denied. Scarcely a marginal figure, then; but equally the neglect of his work at the hands of many who have simply ignored his challenge rather than face its profound consequences for cherished academic positions is little short of scandalous. That his major commentary is out of print while the market remains flooded with dubious studies of 'the real Jeremiah' is deeply to be deplored. Robert found himself in recent years heavily involved in University administration, first as Dean of Faculty, and then as a Senate Assessor on the University Court. While he found these posts in many ways rewarding, and his wit and experience were of inestimable value to the University, these duties, together with a heavy programme of guest lectures, book reviewing, external examining and contributions to collections of essays made it virtually impossible for him to free the time to produce the serious monographs which many hoped for. I said at the beginning of this piece that Robert Carroll's career was ultimately frustrated, and insofar as the combination of a sense of being marginalized together with a heightened commitment to supporting the wider academy were detrimental to his scholarly activity, that is undoubtedly true. But the truth of a man (and equally of a woman—but let me not fall into pedantic correctness, something which Robert hated) lies in his whole being, not in his c.v. or status. Words from Robert Burns fit his namesake well: For a' that and a' that, Our toils obscure an' a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that.1
Robert Carroll was true 'gowd' (gold), a man of parts who found time to give support to countless aspiring scholars2 and help to numberless students in varying degrees of stress and distress, and who proved himself over and over again to be a reliable colleague and an inspiring friend. I still recall his (typically understated) encouragement to me when I handed 1. From 'A Man's a Man for A' That' in Robert Burns's Poems and Songs (ed. J. Kinsley; Everyman Paperback; London: J M Dent & Sons, 1958), 423. 2. Two contributors to this volume have particular reason to celebrate Robert's personal support. Alastair Hunter, who was appointed in 1980 as his colleague—the first appointment in Glasgow for which Robert had some responsibility, and Yvonne Sherwood, who was encouraged to come to Glasgow on Robert's advice, and who was in effect his last appointment.
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in my first assignment as a BD student in 1972. Turning round to me in some long forgotten public lecture he said 'Your essay stood up pretty well!' Such was Robert's reputation, even then, that I heard these words as high praise indeed! His voluminous correspondence is eloquent testimony to a man who had time for everyone, and words of encouragement for most—and these were never trite. He always took the trouble to engage with the substance of the other person's thought. He was, in short, a fine reader alike of people and of texts (is there, I mischievously wonder, a difference?), and it is diagnostic of the man that he made his very own a word which few of us had come across before—misprision—to characterize the lazy, sloppy, careless, ill-informed reading which too often passes for biblical exegesis. Which brings me back, full circle, to the life's work of Robert Peter Carroll: a skilled linguist, trained in the rigorous school of Jacob Weingreen in Trinity College Dublin; a voracious reader and fluent writer, with a voice entirely his own; as close to a Renaissance man as the twentieth century would allow (as his vast and wide-ranging library demonstrates); a fine teacher and superlative scholar. But most of all, a mensch—an excellent Yiddish word to describe a true, and much-missed friend. AGH This volume is too long, and its contributors too numerous, for it to make sense to try to summarize them in this preface. The reader, we fear, must read the texts to find their content: we offer no handy shortcut. However, a brief explanation of the distribution of the essays, and of the subheadings, might be helpful. Despite Robert's posthumous reservations, we as editors hope that there will indeed be found both sense and sensitivity in this celebratory volume. The sub- or inter-text, however, is 'Reading Robert Carroll'—not in the sense of a biography, but by way of a continuation of the topics and methods which were his interest. The first Part ('Reading Robert Carroll') has just one contribution, for the simple reason that Brummitt and Sherwood alone have chosen (very effectively) to construct their piece in hypothetical dialogue with Robert (or with the imagined voice of Robert's sardonic comments from the sidelines). It sets the tone of the volume in a fitting way. Part II ('Reading Biblical Texts') has a self-explanatory reference, though it should not imply the essays here are anything but traditional in their treatment. Together they display the range of reading strategies of which Robert was a master himself. We were uncertain whether the last
Preface
xiii
piece in this section should be considered to be a biblical exegesis or an apologia for the equine family (and therefore better placed in another section)—we leave a final decision to the reader. Part III ('Reading the Readers') explores the themes of Ideologiekritik and Rezeptionsgeschichte which formed a major part of Robert's interests in the 1990s. The first five essays in this section (Davidson, Grabbe, Whitelam, Reif and Sawyer) address issues of religious politics covering both the role of church and synagogue in Biblical Studies and the political tensions surrounding the current debate on 'History of Israel'. The remaining five address somewhat diverse concerns, though Setio's piece on the reception of the Deuteronomistic war text in Indonesia provides a fascinating insight into the way that texts are re-contextualized (not necessarily in a benign fashion) to fit the urgent needs of a modern-day community in crisis. The final Part ('Reading the Signs') is clearly the most eclectic. It represents something of the diversity of Robert Carroll's intellectual interests, and its contributors come from diverse fields of discourse. Yet all of them belonged to the circle of his friends, acquaintances, colleagues and collaborators, and express the generosity of his vision. It is perhaps fitting to have been able to include (sadly, posthumously) Carol Smith's essay on the quintessentially English Wodehouse in this volume in tribute to the equally quintessentially Celtic Carroll. AGH, PRD
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ABBREVIATIONS
AB ABD
AOAT ATANT AV BA
BARev BOB
BETL Biblnt BK BN BR BTB BZAW CB CBQ CR:BS ESHM ExpTim GCT HAT HSM HTR HUCA IBS ICC IDB
Int JAOS
Anchor Bible David Noel Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992) Alter Orient und Altes Testament Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments Authorized Version Biblical Archaeologist Biblical Archaeology Review Francis Brown, S.R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907) Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches Bibel und Kirche Biblische Notizen Bible Review Biblical Theology Bulletin BeiheftezurZ4^ Cultura biblica Catholic Biblical Quarterly Currents in Research: Biblical Studies European Seminar on Historical Methodology Expository Times Gender, Culture, Theory Handbuch zum Alten Testament Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual Irish Biblical Studies International Critical Commentary George Arthur Buttrick (ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (4 vols.; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962) Interpretation Journal of the American Oriental Society
XVI
JBL JNES JNSL JSOT JSOTSup JSS JTS NCB NEB
OBO OTG OIL OTP OTS PEQ RHR SBLDS SJT SOTSMS ST TOTC
vc
VT VTSup ZAW
Sense and Sensitivity Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series Journal of Semitic Studies Journal of Theological Studies New Century Bible New English Bible Orbis biblicus et orientalis Old Testament Guides Old Testament Library James Charlesworth (ed.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Oudtestamentische Studiën Palestine Exploration Quarterly Revue de l 'histoire des religions SBL Dissertation Series Scottish Journal of Theology Society for Old Testament Study Monograph Series Studia theologica Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries Vigiliae christianae Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum, Supplements Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
JOHN ASHTON was formerly Lecturer in New Testament Studies, University of Oxford GRAEME AULD is Professor of Hebrew Bible in New College, University of Edinburgh ALICE BACH is Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Religion, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio HANS M. BARSTAD is Professor in the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP is Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame, Indiana ATHALYA BRENNER is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam, and Rosalyn and Manny Rosenthal Distinguished Professor-in-Residence of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas MARK BRUMMITT is a doctoral student at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow DAVID J.A. CLINES is Professor of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield JOHANN COOK is Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient Studies, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa ROBERT DAVIDSON is Professor Emeritus, of Old Testament Language and Literature, University of Glasgow
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PHILIP R. DAVIES is Professor of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield LESTER L. GRABBE is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism, University of Hull JOHN HALLIGAN was formerly Professor of Biblical Studies at St John Fisher College, Rochester, NY ALASTAIR G. HUNTER is Senior Lecturer in Hebrew and Old Testament Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow DAVID JASPER is Professor in Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow WILLIAM JOHNSTONE is Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at the University of Aberdeen GABRIEL JOSIPOVICI is Research Professor of English and European Literature, University of Sussex FRANCIS LANDY is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada HEATHER A. MCKAY is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Edge Hill University College, Ormskirk STEPHEN PRICKETT is Regius Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Glasgow HUGH S. PYPER is Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies and Head of School, School of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds STEFAN C. REEF is Professor of Mediaeval Hebrew Studies and Director of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Unit, University of Cambridge JOHN F.A. SAWYER was formerly Senior Research Fellow, University College of St Martin, Lancaster
List of Contributors
xix
ROBERT SETIO is Lecturer in First Testament Hermeneutics in the Faculty of Theology, Duta Wacana Christian University, Jogjakarta, Indonesia YVONNE SHERWOOD is Senior Lecturer in Old Testament/Tanakh and Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Religion, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow CAROL SMITH was, prior to her death in March 2001, Tutor in Old Testament at Regent's Park College, Oxford JOHANNA STIEBERT is Lecturer of Hebrew Studies, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana KEITH W. WHITELAM is Professor and Head of Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield
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Parti
READING ROBERT CARROLL
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THE TENACITYOF THE WORD: USING JEREMIAH 36 TO ATTEMPT TO CONSTRUCT AN APPROPRIATE EDIFICE TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT CARROLL
Mark Brummitt and Yvonne Sherwood
Read the book, scroll.. .in terms of CRISIS: crisis in authority, crisis of the word... (Robert P. Carroll: from typed notes found in his office) Vainly do we try to maintain, with our words, with our writings, what is absent; vainly do we offer it the appeal of our memories and a sort of figure... life prolonged by a truthful appearance... I know there are the books. The books remain, temporarily, even if their reading must open us to the necessity of this disappearance into which they withdraw themselves... but that does not give us the right to put ourselves in [our friend's] place, nor does it give us the right to speak in his absence... Friendship...passes by way of the recognition of the common strangeness that does not allow us to speak of our friends but only to speak to them, not to make them the topic of conversations [or essays]... (Maurice Blanchot [1997: 289-91] written in response to the death of Georges Bataille)
A Brief History of Our Writing This paper is an imperfect reconstruction (with not inconsiderable embellishment and heightening of tone) of a conversation that began in various pubs in the West End of Glasgow, where the ghost of Robert Carroll can regularly be seen walking with a pint of Guinness in his hand. The writers are Yvonne Sherwood, who knew Robert and can therefore mediate his presence with the authority of a Baruch (see Robert's comments on how 'Baruch lays claim to authority by association and delegation' [1986: 666]), and Mark Brummitt, a PhD student who never knew Robert and can only access the life of Robert Carroll through his public products, his curriculum vitae. It is written out of our frustration that we began our conversations about Jeremiah just four months after Robert died—a fact that seems to vindicate the true and authentic saying of Robert Carroll that
4
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'shit happens', or to gloss Carroll in the words of Freud (from his essay 'On Transience') 'What is painful may nonetheless be true' (Auch das schmerzliche kann wahrsein [1985:274]). Indeed an appropriate epitaph to the work of 'Carroll' may well be these words from Freud, or maybe similar words from Nietzsche (1972: 50): No one is likely to consider a doctrine true merely because it makes happy or makes virtuous... Happiness and virtue are no arguments... Something might be true although harmful and dangerous to the highest degree.1
Of course, Robert's work is well known for opposing apologetic alchemy and promoting the ideological lectio difficilior, though perhaps he had more empathy than he let on with the humanizing, civilizing instinct behind these theological sleights of hand. After all, is it not a fundamental human instinct to turn that which is destructive, wasteful, into something productive, even beautiful? (And of course we're asking ourselves as we write this: Is theological amelioration so very different from our own feverish efforts to make something productive out of Robert Carroll's death, just as language struggles to make death something through the possessive and the noun?) A (Slightly Longer) History of the Writing of a Scroll Jeremiah 36 begins with the commission 'Take a roll of scroll ("ISO H^Q) and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today'—a command to take an object that echoes other commands to take an object: 'Go and buy a linen loincloth' (13.1), 'Go and buy an earthenware jug' (19.1), or even, 'Make yourself a yoke of straps and bars' (27.2). This is to be a text about the production of writing as a theatrical event, a staging of the production of scripture as script, a passage in which the scroll features as key protagonist in one of the many
1. Nietzsche continues:' indeed, it could pertain to the fundamental nature of existence that a complete knowledge could destroy one—so that the strength of a spirit could be measured by how much truth it could take, more clearly, to what degree it needed'it attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted and falsified'. There is less intellectual machismo in 'Carroll' though we confess sometimes too much for our taste. But it says something about 'Carroll' that we feel free to say so, since he was so scathing about posthumous hagiography and would expect his own counter-idealism to be liberally applied to himself.
BRUMMITT AND SHERWOOD The Tenacity of the Word
5
prophetic performances in the book of Jeremiah.2 It is not so much that the scroll, unlike the loincloth and the pot, is to be buried and exhumed, or moulded and smashed—the scroll is cut and burnt but by Jehoiakim, the enemy of the scroll, and the destruction is not directly scripted by God and his word. Rather this prophetic performance takes the previous prophetic performances and oracles and writes them up; in this case it is the writing that is the action, suggesting that 'Israel and Judah and all the nations' are a scroll to be written upon and to be impressed (upon) by the word. There is no new material here, rather, the scroll is a prophetic retrospective: The Collected Oracles of Jeremiah: The Josiah—Jehoiakim Years. The assumption is that words already exist in a space/time prior to and outside writing (orally? in air? in memory or tradition?), like the heavenly Torah scroll that pre-exists its incarnation in the earthly Torah scroll, the Logos that becomes incarnate in Christ, or the Mishnah (the 'repetition') that claims to bring to ink that which has long been passed from mouth to ear. Though the Old Testament/Tanakh should not, as Robert saw, be too readily conflated with the Graeco-German philosophical legacy that Jacques Derrida calls Western Metaphysics,3 here it absolutely mimics the bias of Western Metaphysics by seeing speech as primary and writing as secondary, and by portraying writing as a mere carrier of speech. Indeed, Derrida (who refers to the Bible far more frequently than most people know) actually cites the example of 'Jeremiah subjected to God's dictation ("Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee")' and 'Baruch transcribing Jeremiah's dictation (Jeremiah 36.2, 4)' as a demonstration of the responsibility and anxiety of writing, and a test-case for the question as to 'whether engraving preserves or betrays speech' (1990: 9). Against various disciplinary clichés of'postmodernity' and its now virtual synonym 'deconstruction',4 Derrida does not launch 2. With the exception of Stacey (1990), and Fohrer whom he cites, the analogy between Jer. 36 and other prophetic performances is usually not stressed. Stacey emphasizes that, apart from being functional, the formation of the scroll is also a significant action. 3. As external examiner for my thesis, Robert picked up on the question 'How does a text, originating from the Near East in the eighth century BCE fit into the category of Western Metaphysics?' (Sherwood 1996:251). The question was highlighted, in bold, on the three pages of astute notes and questions that he gave to me on that occasion [YS]. 4. Biblical Studies and Theology now abound with trite descriptions of postmodernity and deconstruction as, for example, 'the critical method which virtually declares that the identity and intentions of the author of a text are irrelevant to the interpretation
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off into the free play of signifiers and dance a nihilistic dance over the corpse of the dead author, whom earnest defenders anxiously imagine turning in his/her grave. Far from being a postmodern gimmick, the contrast between speech and writing is used to explore our nostalgia for pure voice and full presence, a longing which is deeply entwined with issues of responsibility and fidelity. What is at stake in the desire to re-capture speech is the responsibility to transfer what Derrida callspneuma, spiritus or logos, a responsibility which arguably becomes more acute when the voice is the voice of God and the writing Scripture/.EcrzYwre. Quite deliberately, Derrida uses theological vocabulary to describe the desire to overcome distance, to achieve (comm)union with the Other/other, and to retrieve the full presence epitomized by speech. The contrast between writing and speech is another way of evoking the Western Metaphysical, which is also the Christian, story of being human—where scribes, readers, writers and human beings inhabit a middle place somewhere between the fall from the Urzeit and the restoration/redemption promised by the eschaton and the messiah. Even those who consciously reject the metanarrative in its larger Christian incarnation feel that there is something intuitively right about Shakespeare's complaints about 'this poor pen' or postmodern tropes of writing as a 'work of mourning' (indeed we suspect that much of the popularity of postmodernity has to do with the powerfully mythical rewriting of'Western Metaphysical' loss in tropes of Lacanian lack, the desert, exile and writing as an act of mourning, or restless quest). And whatever our conscious relations to the Christian/Western metaphysical myth, all of us repeat its yearnings in miniature when, for example, we pile up nouns about 'Robert the performer, the fellow-drinker, the ironist, the raconteur, the connoisseur, the debunker, the genial and unselfish teacher, friend of the underdog, scourge of the pompous and the eejit'5—
of the text, prior to insisting that, in any case, no meaning can be found in it' (McGrath 1995: 114). Perhaps even more disturbing is the way in which these sentiments are upheld by some of postmodernism's disciplinary defenders. In future work I want to explore how there has been something of a postal failure in the delivery of the term postmodernity to Biblical Studies and Theology, in which a rather thin version of reader-response somehow got short-circuited and annexed to misinterpreted slogans from Derrida (chiefly 'There is nothing outside the text'). For preliminary comments on why deconstruction is not a 'joyful affirmation of the play of a world of signs' see Sherwood 1996: 150-73; 2000: 69-70 [YS]. 5. These words are taken from Philip Davies's tribute at the Memorial Service, University of Glasgow, 24 June 2001.
BRUMMITT AND SHERWOOD The Tenacity of the Word
1
as if writing's very garrulousness and effort could capture the breath and spirit of a friend. When Robert Carroll Died When Robert Carroll died, I discovered for the first time what was meant by the phrase 'an almost tangible silence'—and indeed every other cliché that attends death (managing in their very hackneyedness to convey something of the death's exhaustion—the sense that creativity has been banished and everything has already been said). I went into his room to search for some good words and my first impression was that the papers and books which had always threatened to squeeze him out or bury him altogether had finally achieved their objective. The table was piled with mounds of paper about a foot high, which when excavated yielded old train tickets, obituaries, strange newspaper articles reporting the recent discovery of the ark or one of Moses's sandals, and an advert fromPrzvate Eye telling you how to order your own memorial Princess Diana wax figurine known as the 'Candle in the Wind'. Among it all was so much work: senate papers, manuscripts reviewed and yet to be reviewed, plans for projects in progress, including a new book, Redeeming the Book, and long letters to an (to say the least) eclectic range of friends. If we had been given to allegory, or Tracey Emin-type installations, we could have preserved the room and labeled it 'Man overcome by work'—instead we selected several hundred books from the several thousand and made a library, as if trying to build, in an edifice of wood, glass, and books an appropriate monument to the kaleidoscopic colour of a mind. We photocopied a picture of Robert at work (the same photograph that appears on the cover of this volume) and typed a notice beneath it saying that 'anyone who knew him will know that the best possible memorial is a collection of over-crammed book-cases' and 'anyone who didn't know him will get a sense of him through this eclectic collection of books', and we opened the collection with a fitting university banquet of (as Robert used to say) 'warm white wine and chicken legs'. The Scroll as Object: Attempting to Unravel the Original Scroll within the Scroll Jeremiah 36 presents the scroll as object, chief protagonist in a drama, which could be titled, perhaps, The Tenacity of the Word or The Assured
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Passage of a Passagefrom Breath to Ink. The way in which the word selfconsciously makes an object of the word is strangely similar to contemporary metabooks by John Barth or Thomas Pynchon, or maybe Tristram Shandy's constant attempts to get the reader to use the book as object (thus Tristram tells the reader to use the book as stool: 'Do, sir, sit down upon a set, they are better than nothing'). Closer to its own home in the pages of the Bible, the materialization of the scroll anticipates the gigantic flying scroll in Zech. 5.1-4, which manages to get airborne despite being 20 cubits long and ten cubits wide. Like Jeremiah's scroll this scroll is a word that works its way through buildings and that stands in for the presence of God, almost like the memra of the targums. It is also an incendiary word whose provocation and destruction is epitomized in images of burning—as Zechariah's scroll hovers, threatening the conflagration of the buildings, so Jeremiah's scroll is consumed by and unleashes fire. In Zechariah 5 we see something of the content of the double-sided scroll-within-the-scroll: in contrast Jeremiah 36 allows us only the merest peek at content (in 36.29-30) and that at a distance of several voices down. If we represent the different levels of speech as the word of the narrator, the word of Yhwh, the word of Jeremiah and the word of Jehoiakim, we can see how deeply the word is embedded: The word of Yhwh came to Jeremiah... And concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah you shall say: Thus says Yhwh, You have dared to burn this scroll saying. Why. have, .you. written, m. it. that .the. king. of BabyIon will certainly come. and.destrpy.this.land,.and.will cut off from.it human, beings and.animals?...' (36.29-30)
Though the reading of the scroll is reported we are never permitted to look over the reader's shoulder when it is read. The emphasis is clearly on 'passage' as verb not noun, on process not on content: 32 verses of text yields no more than half a verse of content and this in language found nowhere else in the book of Jeremiah. This does not deter scholars from scurrying off and attempting to reconstitute the Urtext: Holladay's careful scavenging results in the conclusion that it included much of 2.1-6.8 prefixed with an earlier version of 25.1 -7 and rounded off with 7.1 -12. He does, however, concede that the fact that it must have contained oracles 'against Israel and Judah and all the nations' is a rather tenuous piece of evidence on which to build an investigation, and that 'any reconstruction of either the first or the second scroll is to some degree conjectural' (1989: 16-17 [our italics]). Holladay subscribes to, and repeats, the text's claim that the words already existed before being
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transferred to writing—his aim, spectacularly, is to discover 'the order of these oracles in the mind of Jeremiah, "before he dictated them "' (1989: 16 [our italics]). His reconstitution of the scroll expresses the desire to reproduce the scroll with absolute faithfulness, undermined by doubts and caveats as to whether he has been able to be faithful enough. Holladay's conjecture leaves him open to a potentially devastating act of metacommentary: it is not difficult to imagine Robert mocking his attempts to mine the dead prophet's cerebrum, and to tidy up a sprawling prophetic corpus by appealing (against all we have learnt from Freud) to the perfectly ordered, indeed chronologically labeled, archives of a mind. We can guess his starting point at least, for Robert frequently wrote on the excesses of historical literalism in Jeremiah studies—both formally in print: Many scholars read ch. 36 as if it were a straightforward historical account not only of what happened on one particular occasion but as a reliable testimony of how prophetic books, especially that of Jeremiah, came to be written. They extrapolate from 36 a paradigm of the transformation of the spoken word into the written text. How this could be known is a mystery. 36 cannot be used first to demonstrate how prophetic texts were written and then as evidence to confirm that 36 is historically accurate. That is to argue in circles by using 36 as evidence for the truth claims about 36! The story is a fascinating piece of literature and one of the finest in the book of Jeremiah, but its historicity cannot be assumed without serious arguments to support the contention. Its literariness, its connections with 26 and 25.111.. .and its structural parallels with 2 Kings 22 should warn the reader not to read it simply as an eyewitness account of what happened in 605/604/601 (those datings should tell against such simplistic readings of complex texts!) (1989: 36)
and in informal notes: Why cannot [intellectual opponents] imagine that critical reading (critical retrieval of the past) should entail no easy identification with, admiration for, or collusion with the ancient texts? (Robert P. Carroll: from a sheet of A4 paper dated 5 August 1996, written in response to a postcard from a friend reporting that another Jeremiah scholar had accused him of 'having something wrong with him' and 'not even liking Jeremiah')
Robert would of course have smiled wryly at the irony of trying to piece him together from bits of paper as erstwhile scholars have tried to exhume the body and mind of Jeremiah—but then Robert also had at least one eye on his construction for posterity, as piles of typed notes where he speaks
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Sense and Sensitivity
of himself as his third person, paper-self 'Carroll' attest. Strangely disembodied self-references such as 'In response to this Carroll says', seem to have been left around his office for posthumous discovery, intimating his sense that academic selves have to be consciously constructed, renovated and maintained. His constant attempts to write and revise the meanings of 'Carroll' clearly show that, reductive clichés of laissez-faire postmodernity notwithstanding, none of us can happily contemplate 'postal failure', 'destinerrance', or other now hackneyed tropes of loss of communication—at least where words that are important to us (not least our own words) are concerned. This is the anxiety of the scribes of Jeremiah as they try to preserve the words of Jeremiah, and this is our anxiety as we try to embed Robert's words in our words, to extrapolate him in the subjunctive, and to sustain him in the present by writing: 'Robert writes', 'Robert claims', 'Robert says'. What interests us is Holladay's clear awareness of the distance between where he wants to be and the tenuousness of the hypothesis that takes him there, coupled with his absolute inability to give up the quest. And there is something fitting about his tenacity because the concern to retain the closest possible fidelity to the original voice/event is not just in keeping with the implications of the job-descriptor 'commentator' (see Sherwood 1996: 30-31) but is also thoroughly in keeping with the obsessions ofch. 36 itself. Which leads us to our next question: Why is Jeremiah mysteriously absent (or 'prevented') and why are there so many secretaries in this text? Secretaries Jeremiah writes and signs at least four times in the book of Jeremiah: he writes in a scroll (30.20), composes a letter to the exiles (ch. 29), transcribes a scroll of oracles (51.60), and signs his signature on the seal to Hanamel (32.10). But in this particular case, for no apparent reason, the prophet at his own initiative involves Baruch as amanuensis, scroll-carrier and scroll-reader: 'Then Jeremiah called Baruch ben Neriah, and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of Yhwh.. .upon the scroll' (Jer. 36.4). A partial reason for Baruch's involvement is given in v. 6: 'And Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying: "I am hindered 9"ISO ), lam unable to enter the house of Yhwh"'—explaining why Baruch is enlisted as reader and carrier but still not as writer of the scroll. The least interesting question is the historical-literal question of why Jeremiah is restricted
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(of so little importance to the narrative that it does not even deign to elaborate); the important question is 'What does it mean symbolically that Jeremiah is restricted?'—to which an obvious answer would seem to be that the restriction provides a relatively safe way of playing out, by way of a dry run, the question of how to deal with the cessation of'live' prophecy that will attend the prophet's death. Jeremiah's restriction (or proto-death) is a means of testing writing's promise of surpassing the limits of the human body, with its limited vocal chords in life and its endless silence after death. In his Jeremiah commentary, Robert observes how 'Committed to writing, the word has a permanence beyond the exigencies of human existence and can survive the absence of its original bearer' (1986: 668), and glossing Robert's words with the fidelity of a commentator, or secretary, we write that writing is a way of experimenting with the problem of the posterity and fecundity of the word when only script remains. The officials' question, 'Tell us how did you write these words' (36.17), and Baruch's reply, 'He dictated all these words to me, and I wrote them with ink on the scroll' (36.18), is, to say the least, pedantic and peculiarly focussed on form rather than content, rather like Hamlet's answer to Polonius's question 'What are you reading?': 'Words, words, words'. The focus on the mechanisms of writing suggests an inaugural or experimental stage of scripture, by which we do not mean that this was a first piece of writing (we dare not commit sins of historical-literalism in, of all things, a tribute paper to Robert Carroll). Rather we mean that this text seems to come from a context where it is feared that the identification of prophet's word and script(ure) is not yet automatic, which is why the passage of the word is described as absolutely water- or ink-tight, passing from Jeremiah's mouth, to Baruch's ear, via the flow of ink, to the scroll. This obsessive focus on the status of writing goes some way to explaining the curious proliferation of secretaries: there is Gemariah, son of Shaphan the secretary, Elishama the secretary, five references to "ISO in total, and much of the action takes place in the chamber of secretaries and secretaries' descendants, as if the text were staging itself deliberately within the letter, in the place of letters. As Robert astutely notes, though 'editors seldom edit themselves into their texts', Jeremiah 36 may be 'an exception' (1997: 13), suggesting that he sees the textual scribes as mirrors of the scribes who now are writing, and who betray their presence in the barely perceptible postscript 'and many similar words were added to them' (36.32). The sheer number of references to secretaries suggests an
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Sense and Sens itivity
attempt to represent, explore, and legitimate one's own labours—a project in which human beings have been engrossed throughout the centuries, as medieval illuminations of scribes bent over their manuscripts quill in hand, metabooks, metafilms, and docusoaps called Airport, and even Wheel Clampers testify. That the text is produced by a team of secretaries, self-conscious about their scribal profession, is suggested not just by the text's own declamations, but by 'style' (or, more accurately, by the lack of what we would call 'style'). The constant repetition suggests composition by assiduous minute-takers, or perhaps legal secretaries, keen to clarify every detail, and the unembellished prose suggests nothing so much as a report on the successful passage of the passage, in the manner of a scientific experiment: 'We took a scroll, we wrote on it, we had it read by the scribe, then read again, then read again and the message was conveyed, then someone burnt the scroll, it proved combustible, but then the scroll was able to be remade'. When Robert says that the 'story is a fascinating piece of literature and one of the finest in the book of Jeremiah' (1989: 36) we think he is being uncharacteristically too kind to the Bible, though we would agree that the text is fascinating because it represents the triumph of literature in a different sense. Indeed we would argue that the aims of the passage actively prevent it from being a great piece of literature, just as Erich Auerbach claims that the singular aim of Genesis 22 prevents it from being described simply as an instance of literary excellence. According to Auerbach, Genesis 22 does not rhetorically court or 'flatter' us precisely in order impose its authority on us (1953: 15); Jeremiah 36 is similarly concerned to impose authority, but in a different sense. Its purpose is to defend the authority and status of a word fulfilled to the letter and therefore reported in an excessive number of letters, as if the theme of the perfect transmission of the word requires a sacrificial, laboured and selfconsciously labouring style. The narrative is at pains to assure us that what is transmitted is 'all the words' (a phrase that occurs, give or take a definite article, 11 times), and it is as if all writerly ego, all literary elegance, is sacrificed in the service of the words' conveyance. The key protagonist, the scroll, never occurs simply as 'scroll', but carries with it a whole train of details that it has gathered from previous narrative stages, to the point where it is so heavily hampered with subclauses that it can barely drag itself around. Compare, for example, 'And Baruch wrote upon a scroll at the dictation of Jeremiah' (36.4) and 'You shall read all the words of Yhwh from the scroll that you have written at my dictation'
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(36.6); or 'And Micaiah told them all the words that he had heard, when Baruch had read the scroll in the hearing of the people' (36.13) with 'Then the officials sent Jehudi son of Nethaniah son of Shemaiah son of Cushi to say to Baruch "Bring the scroll that you read in the hearing of the people, and come"' (36.14). The ritualistic style reminds us of one of those comic rhymes where the basic pattern expands by increments to ludicrous proportions: Now the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus were just passing by... Now the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus were just passing by... Now the boys who put the powder on the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus were just passing by.. .etc. etc. etc.
By the time we get to v. 23, what we are witnessing, in effect, is the cutting of the scroll that was read by Jehudi that was carried from the chamber of Elishama the secretary, that was read by Baruch to the officials after being reported by Jehudi, that was temporarily left in the chamber of Gematiah son of Shaphan, that was written by the pen of Baruch in response to the words of Yhwh uttered from the mouth of Jeremiah. The incremental repetition gives the passage the air of a firstyear Hebrew teach-text6 and contravenes all scholarly dictums about the Old Testament/Tanakh's famously 'economical' style. That the scroll's first stopover is 'in the chamber of Gemariah son of Shaphan the secretary, which was in the upper court, at the entry of the New Gate of the House of Yhwh' (36.10) is far from thrifty. Even the naming shares in the excess: to have one patronymic might be considered acceptable, to have three, as does the messenger-pawn Jehudi (two more than the king or the officials), seems downright greedy. The need to map the precise genealogies of the scroll and to record the precise patronymics of those who handle it is reminiscent of the ludicrously over-reported events in Tristram Shandy where, for example, Tristram's father takes his handkerchief out of his pocket with his right hand and wipes his brow with his left. Perhaps the coincidence is more than accidental; as Sterne, writing at an early point in the evolution of the European novel reflects (comically) on what a
6. I remember plodding through this in an elementary Hebrew class and thinking at the time how it had the air of a Hebrew teach-text designed to effectively carry all the [basic] words such as 'write', 'read', 'word', 'hand' and 'scribe'. The vocabulary is carried by incremental repetition, usually with little more than one new word for each sentence, and all past vocabulary is recapped in every line [YS].
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Sense and Sens itivity
novel should and should not include, so the scribes of Jeremiah 36, writing at an early point in the evolution of scripture, reflect on what (if anything) can safely be omitted, and conclude that to be safe one must write everything, and then repeat it (just to be sure). The premise of the text is the absolute opposite of frugality: a narrative economy of spend, spend, spend. But the excess is to do with work, and not with pleasure—this is not about the 'pleasure of the text', but about the work of writing—and the assumption is that only by spending yourself in labour and by banking every detail for the future can you be sure that you will have a safe and full meaning return on your text-investment. As meaning is poured from mouth, to ear, to pen, to mouth, to the hearing of the people not a word is lost or unaccounted f or and the very tedium of the passage reinforces the conveyance of a full bucket of meaning with not a single drop being spilt. The effect is like the relay race in Pirke Abot where the word^aton is passed from Moses to Joshua, from Joshua to the elders, from the elders to the men of the Great Assembly (then by implication, from the men of the Great Assembly to the scribes ofPirke Abot, and by the scribes of Pirke Abot to the reader, who is left to marvel at the historical weight/freight of the paper that she now holds in her hands). The textual emphasis on 'all the words' coupled with the actual repetition of all the (same) words testifies to the absolute trustworthiness and competence of secretaries: both Baruch, and the narrative which is a product of the scribal descendants of Baruch, are manifestly able to take dictation well. Fragments from Robert's Writing on Reading, Writing and Work Not surprisingly, there are several references in Robert's self-annotations to labour, for example to the Jeremiah commentary that 'took at least five years of my life'. Looking at the literal mounds of work that he produced, it is hard not to speculate on the motivations that lay behind his labours (those who know his views on the politics of academia in the UK will know that he was definitely motivated by something other than the Research Assessment Exercise). As a counter-idealist, he would have been the last to deny the utilitarian aspect of career-making and building an academic persona, nor would he have denied that papers give one a convenient pre-text to go to Amsterdam or South Africa and have a 'swally' with old friends. But numerous self-descriptions and meta-texts scattered
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around his office suggest alternative reflections on why he wrote and how he wanted to be read: I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one's opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, & to bestow strength and courage on our own side, & to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us. (Lichtenberg 1990: 114 [Notebook C 1775-1776, No. 33]) I ask a favour which I fear will not be granted me: it is that I not be judged for twenty year's work by a reading that takes one minute; & that the whole book, not a few sentences, be approved or condemned. (Montesquieu, cited in M. Blanchot's essay 'Reading' in 1982: 197) At best I would hope to be a limiting case in final adjudications of Jeremiah Studies, to have people examine their presuppositions & lazy assumptions about biblical texts & to have thought afresh about how such texts should be read. Of course I have failed utterly with the senior academics of the Guild, but god is good & I know that I have succeeded with some of the younger & rising scholars across the world.. .& I can relax knowing that my defenders do exist & will incorporate my insights into their work. (Robert P. Carroll) [What I wanted from my readers was] someone who said: that's a good insight & makes connections in the following ways or that's a bad point and it blocks the light here & here. I think I really wanted a reader, a somebody who might say, 'Yes ... Yes ... Yes ... I see what is going on & I hear it & I approve of it & I want more of it, even though this does not go the whole way.. .it is the work begun!' (Robert P. Carroll)
Thus Robert the materialist conceives of his own work as a material edifice: a bulwark or dam to stand against facile assumptions; a legacy for future generations; and a concrete testimony to a certain viewpoint, of sufficient substance, bulk and permanence to counteract those who would too easily characterize his position as 'minimalism', deconstruction, doubt, scepticism, or lack. To many of us, he seems strangely convinced of the flimsiness of the edifice that is 'Carroll', and writes, in part, for self-preservation—and as the scribes of Jeremiah (and indeed the authors of the project that is Israel) know, there is nothing more motivating than the fear that your precious texts are in danger of being cut (off), or consigned to the fire.
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Sense and Sensitivity Labour
To preserve something worth preserving, to write something worth writing takes effort and sacrifice and Jeremiah 36 belabours the sheer effort of its own substantiation. The slow-motion effect and the prosaic repetitions and clarifications make reading this inaugural moment of scripture like watching text being cranked out by an ancient Gutenberg press. The labour of the prophetic action of writing corresponds to the labour of other prophetic actions—think of the literally laborious act of taking a wife of harlotry, having sex, waiting nine months, then naming the child (and repeating this action three times), or trekking 400 miles to the Euphrates and burying a loincloth, then returning to retrieve it after waiting 'many days'. The implausibility of the action creates problems for post-Enlightenment critics—the difficulties that thwart Israel are at least as hard to explain as the miracles that aid them—but the difficulty/implausibility of the action is precisely the (symbolic) point, as we will go on to explain. The repeated emphasis on labour in the Prophets suggests that they could benefit from analysis along the lines of Elaine Scarry's treatment of what she calls the ' Judaeo-Christian' tradition in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Scarry 1985). Delving back beneath layers of philosophy, theology and commentary (at which we are already, she argues, at a highly developed level of already-made culture) Scarry asks two more basic and essential questions: 'How and why do human beings make, far in excess of their need?' and 'What would it mean to read the Bible as a massive piece of -workT Uniquely, Scarry examines the Bible as a monumental edifice expressing culture's thrust towards material self-expression and self-extension; she sees it as at once similar to, but also more foundational than, other material edifices like Hamlet, the pyramids and the Brooklyn Bridge. For Scarry, the Bible is not just the monumental artefact of Western civilization but a monumental description of the nature of artifice: 'product of the human imagination' it is also a 'tireless laying bare of the workings of the imagination' (181) and of the effort and sacrifice involved in giving material expression to God's voice. In a thesis that is striking in its simplicity, Scarry reads the Old Testament/Tanakh from a human vantage point as a testimony to the effort of human beings to extend their influence beyond the small circle of their immediate presence: thus Abraham looks upwards and sees star- and sandsons in the cosmos and is given the promise of expansion, posterity,
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possession of enemy's gates. Conversely she reads it from a divine vantage point as the effort to make Godprae-sens, present, before the senses: the God of Israel becomes tangible, visible, through the labour of the women of Israel (the multiplication of bodies of Israel) and in the physical labour of the men of Israel as they construct altars, arks, tabernacles, temples and texts. As the tissue of the divine body is embodied in the sumptuous veils and curtains and skins of the tabernacle so it is also bodied forth in parchment, scroll and tablets, which body forth the purpose of the heavens in a touchable, handle-able corpus of words. God is also made present through—and this has obvious relevance to the Prophets—symbolic actions: Scarry notes how 'The passage from the verbal and wholly disembodied realm of God to the wholly embodied realm of man occurs through the half-embodied states of moral theatre and mime in which one person devotes himself to being someone other than who he is' (196). Like Derrida, Scarry stops tantalizingly short in her analysis of prophetic literature, but hints at ways in which the analysis could continue in her general description of work and its 'work'. Work is defined in the most general sense as self-sacrifice or controlled discomfort, producing a 'work' that alters the given fabric of the world. Work covers the whole spectrum of world-alteration from the minuscule (the creation of a fishing net or piece of lace where thefe had been none, a sentence or a paragraph or a poem where there had been only silence' [170]) to the grandiose (the Sagrada Familia, polytetraurethane) to an entire revolution in the order of things (cold fusion, Gutenberg, the internet, the Qur'an). Applying this model to prophetic drama, it seems that the symbolic labour of the Prophets is a kind of generic qal we homer, where tiny artefacts (a loin cloth, a clay pot, a piece of scroll) become metonymic of the complete making and breaking of the world. According to a fundamental symbolic logic, since the product, a world-altering, world-redeeming religious vision, is deemed bigger and more significant than any other 'object', its creation must be, symbolically, substantially more difficult to substantiate/achieve. In an amazingly insightful passage, Scarry writes: Sometimes as one reads through the Hebraic scriptures, God's existence seems so absolute and human belief in that existence so widely shared that doubt within the story of any one individual's life or any one epoch seems like only a small tear in the page, a tiny fold in an almost invisible shred of tissue in the heart, the dropping of a single stitch in the endless rounds of woven cloth. God's realness, His presence, seems so steady, so immediately available for apprehension, that the individual person or group that fails to apprehend him seems only an idiosyncratic exception, perversely denying
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Sense and Sensitivity what is obvious. Yet at other readings—perhaps even almost simultaneously—it seems as though what is on every page described in these writings is the incredible difficulty, the feat of the imagination and agony of labour required in generating an idea of God and holding it steadily in place (hour by hour, day by day) without any graphic image to assist the believer. (Scarry 1985: 198 [our italics])
Jeremiah 36 is text and performance (symbolic action) that spells out the process of transference from the 'wholly disembodied realm of God to the wholly embodied realm of man' (Scarry 1985:196). Defiantly the text proclaims the iteration and reiteration of God and his word over and against every opposition or threat of decomposition, just as Israel, stubbornly and impossibly, manages to overcome every opposition and doubt—every moment when its future is hanging on a thread. The laborious delivery of the scroll, its burning and its laborious recreation, fit into a much broader biblical paradigm: the birth of the nation through an implausible sequence of obstacles (the barrenness of the matriarchs; the almost-sacrifice of Isaac; Pharaoh's campaign against the boy-children; God's fury at Sinai; the trope of Moses, Isaiah and Jeremiah almost refusing to take on, and being almost destroyed by, the word)—indeed we can say that it is a symbolic necessity that the scroll is cut and burnt. On a literal historical level (and this is one of the things that Robert was trying, over and over again to reiterate), the levels of apostasy, punishment, disaster and barrenness that beset Israel stretch our historical credulity to the limit, but they make more sense when we think of them in terms of symbolic tropes. The creation of the Bible and the people of Israel has to be more difficult than anything else, because this is more important than anything else—and this makes sense—at least if we read, as Robert did, at the level of symbolic construction, and explore the text as text. Mapping the Journey of the Scroll Close readers of Jeremiah 36 will note that the scroll passes through no less than five locations (Jeremiah's place, Gemariah's chamber, the public arena in the temple, Elishama's chamber in the king's palace, the king's winter chamber) and that it is passed along a lengthy chain of mouths/ hands/ears/pens which basically runs as follows: Yhwh > Jeremiah > Baruch > all the people in the chamber of Gemariah son of Shaphan the secretary (in the upper court at the entry of the New Gate of the Lord's house) > Micaiah son of Gemeriah (son of Shaphan the secretary) > all who are in the chamber of Elishama the secretary (Delaiah son of
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Shemaiah, Elnathan son of Achbor, Gemariah son of Shaphan, Zedekiah son of Hananiah and all the officials) > Jehudi son of Nethaniah son of Shelemiah son of Cushi > the King > brazier [ > Scroll 2].
The purpose of putting the scroll through such a laborious journey seems to be to test the transmission of 'all the words' as they are propelled (as they surely will be in the future) temporally and geographically further and further away from Jeremiah's mouth and from Baruch's pen. The word must be put through a lengthy experiment for the triumph of the word to be worth achieving and for the experiment to be worthwhile. The result, however, is a record of the scroll's adventures that is as stimulating and technical as the coded records of a chess-game, in which the movement of the scroll from the chamber of Gemariah in the upper court to Elishama's chamber reads like the technical reporting of moves: Scroll to B4, Scroll to E5. The analogy is appropriate as the scroll is clearly advancing across a palace grid that is also a political minefield, and progressing slowly, by stages, from messenger-pawns through a hierarchy of court functionaries and officials (knights, rooks and bishops?) to the king, and to the checkmate of the king. The intricate mechanisms of the text, the emphasis on stealth and strategy (scrolls left in the corners of chambers, prophets and scribes in hiding) takes us into the realm of what Robert liked to call 'theo-politics', and indicates something of the secret implied in the work of the secretary (Derrida and Ferraris 2001). The secretaries leave the scroll behind and hide it, as much as they open it out and read it, and seem concerned to keep a protective, secretarial eye on the scroll at every stage of its journey (reporting how 'the scroll was exactly here, and handled by x, and then it was exactly here'). The book in hiding conveys something of the risk to, and the risk of writing, and suggests that writing is always a "ISO and a "ISO H. The literal labyrinth of detail seems to present itself as a puzzle for the dogged reader to entangle, as if it were inviting us to do with space what twisted narrative timelines (such as those of The Good Soldier or Pulp Fiction) challenge the reader/viewer to do with time. Having spent time in the past trying to disentangle 'plots' from 'stories' in undergraduate seminar exercises, we were foolish enough to try (see Figure 1):
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Sense and Sensitivity King's winter apartment
PALACE
Secretary's chamber
TEMPLE
Chamber ofGemariah, son of Shaphan the secretary (in upper court at entry of the New Gate of the Lord's house)
JEREMIAH'S SPACE/PLACE
Figure 1
The result looks frighteningly like a reversion to the excesses of structuralism, or, more pertinently, like those diagrams in New Testament primers that trace the journey of the sayings of Jesus via Q and the Synoptics, or those diagrams in Old Testament/Tanakh introductions that sift out different levels of documentary sedimentation from the silt of the narrative of the flood. Intriguingly it suggests that scripture is already doing to itself what scholars will later do to it, as they try to extract the ur-text or origin. The passage anticipates, and in a sense underwrites the attempts of fundamentalist readers to conflate the original text and the words that we are now holding, but at the same whispers of the more liberal theories of
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supplementation and rolling corpora (which is probably why fundamentalists never in fact use this stirring proof of text as prooftext for their cause). Like the editorial intrusion in Josh. 8.29 to the effect that the ruins of Ai can be seen 'to this day', that innocuous phrase 'And many similar words were added to them' (36.32) intimates (should we even notice it, and it seems to be trying not to be noticed) that the text that we have now comes from a time after Jeremiah and after Baruch's scroll (Scroll 1), and is neither Baruch's scroll nor indeed the scroll which replaces it (Scroll 2). Scroll 2 has already supplemented the first scroll with the oracles against Jehoiakim at the command of Jeremiah at the command of God (36.2931), but that appendix 'and many similar words were added', in the passive, makes the next stage of supplementers invisible and puts them at one further remove from the source. As Robert suggests, at this point we catch a glimpse of the 'Deuteronomists' or other editors, aware that they are making not the first, but maybe the twentieth, or hundredth scroll, and we sense something of their anxiety and defensiveness as they supplement the word as part of a rolling, breeding corpus. The Risk of Writing As Robert knew, when a text protests too much it provides clues to its own anxieties, and here the constant reiteration of the power of writing points to fear about writing's impotence. We don't need to read Derrida or Barthes to know that the economy of writing is not a failsafe economy (Barthes 1988: 154) and that the attempt to catch voice in the net of writing amounts to no more than a 'chasing after the wind'. This ancient text is clearly well aware of the blessing-curse of writing: on the one hand proffering potentially unlimited distribution and the safeguarding of a voice/self for posterity; but on the other unable to underwrite its promises and always involving an element of risk. Writing is dangerous not just because we can never write or say everything (a fear that this text counters by trying to write absolutely everything), but because it does not overcome, but replicates, the trials of mortality: scrolls can be burnt or cut, ink can fade, tablets can get broken, pieces of paper can get lost, and biblical texts are subject to decay, erosion, or editorial processes in which the original words are overlaid. Prophecy contains an extra level of risk, insofar as it deals with the future: words of curse can be changed to words of blessing, as they are for Jonah; or prophecy can fail, which is why the prophet who commits himself to writing subjects himself to risk. Indeed,
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the writing of the oracles of Jeremiah leaves the reader with the conundrum that Jehoiakim does not die horribly as Jeremiah predicted, but 'slept with his fathers' (2 Kgs 24.6), while the plasticity of 36.3 (which can be read both as 'maybe the actual fact of disaster will bring about repentance' and 'maybe the dark words of disaster will bring about repentance') seems to accommodate the possibility that these words may or may not, eventually, absolutely correlate with the events... Jeremiah 36 intimates two particular anxieties about writing: that writing cannot work independently of speech and memory, and that there are potentially infinite ways in which writing can be lost. The first—and most covert—becomes evident by looking at Fig. 1: the three reverse arrows between the temple and the palace seem to indicate that there is considerable anxiety about releasing the word to do its work. In both vv. 11-12 and v. 20 the scroll is left behind and the word is carried on the next step of its journey orally: Micaiah, leaving the scroll and the scroll-carrier behind in Gemariah's chamber goes on alone to the King's palace and reports all the words that he has heard; later the officials leave the scroll behind in Elishama's chamber and move on to the winter palace to report all the words that they have heard. Only after the contents of the scroll have been reported is the scroll fetched (v. 14, 'Then the officials sent Jehudi...to say to Baruch "Bring the scroll'"; v. 21, 'Then the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll...'). Speech goes ahead of writing as the herald of writing, maybe suggesting the testimony of writing alone is not yet trusted, or that, well before the reification of text associated with rabbinic commentary and the Protestant Reformation, revelation is not yet automatically identified with words on the page (and indeed in many religions this tight identification was never made). As the officials quiz Baruch about the ontological status of writing (what is this and where did it come from) so the caution about writing is expressed physically in the scroll's cautious progress, step by anxious step. Ironically, it is the king who makes the equation between script and revelation when he cuts and burns the scroll, presumably believing that by burning the scroll he can effectively eradicate the voice and edicts that the scroll represents. But once destroyed, the scroll can be remade, precisely because it is only the body of a text and not the body of Jeremiah (for which it is in a sense a surrogate and protector)—it can be rewritten only because Jeremiah and Baruch still live to hear and write again. If the whole purpose of the passage is to proclaim the authenticity and tenacity of the written word, it ends by undercutting its own proclamation, for the scroll, which is just scroll, cannot
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remake itself. It is not a magic scroll—like the scroll of Rabbi Akiva, where the letters of the Torah fly up to heaven from the fire. As the word marches on and proclaims its inexorable survival, the scroll still fails to answer the question: 'But what would have happened to the writing if Jeremiah were not simply restrained, but actually dead?' This fear, however, is triumphantly concealed behind the triumphant prooftext (that is, the proof of text) of the passage, where writing survives (and indeed lives to tell the tale) of the double destruction—cutting and burning—of itself. In the climax, which is also the nadir, of the text, Jehudi, at the command of the king, tears off columns of the scroll and throws them into the brazier, in a direct reversal of the process whereby Baruch at the command of Jeremiah laboriously writes the words of the text. As anti-Baruch, Jehudi uses knife and fire, the tools of sacrifice, and throws columns of the text into the brazier 'until the entire scroll [is] consumed' (36.24), but omnivorous writing consumes and regurgitates the fire. In more ways than one, the passage illustrates the passion of writing, and stages the sacrifice of writing in a way that curiously reflects the crucifixion and resurrection of that other logos, Christ. Like Jesus, the scroll has a long authentic (male) genealogy: it is conceived by God, born of Jeremiah, passed through the lines of Baruch, Elishama and Jehudi, just as Jesus son of God traces his lineage back through David, back to Abraham, and is born through an annunciation that is also an insemination of the logos spermatikos entering into the virgin's womb through her ear. As the crucifixion and resurrection show how the Jesus-Word conscripts the worst acts of enmity into its own inexorable purpose, so the scroll consumes Jehoiakim's action completely—surviving it, reporting it—and indeed using Jehoiakim as if he were an unconscious actor in a prophetic drama which the word itself has scripted. By reversing the action of the obedient king in 2 Kgs 22.11, Jehoiakim confirms his own fate and the fate of the nation; by destroying the writing, Jehoiakim powerfully confirms the word. In the scissors, stone and paper game, scissors beat paper, but this is no ordinary paper: the text continues 'Now, after the king had burned the scroll with the words that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah's dictation', the laborious phrasing and recapitulation still affirming, even now the scroll has gone, that every detail still remains. Indeed the scroll is only absent, if at all, for a fraction of a narrative second, for in the next verse, in an understated demonstration of its irrepressible/irresistible power, the cycle starts again ('the word of Yhwh came to Jeremiah "Take another scroll and write on it all the former words which were in the first scroll...
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And concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah you shall say..."' (36.27). The survival of the word is powerfully glossed by Robert's correspondent, George Steiner: King Jehoiakim seizes the scroll dictated by God's clerk and bookkeeper. He cuts out the offending columns and casts the entire text into the consuming flame (governments, political censors, patriotic vigilantes burn books). God instructs the prophet: 'Take thee another scroll and write on it all the words that were written on the first'. The truth will out. Somewhere there is a pencil-stub, a mimeograph machine, a hand-press which the king's men have overlooked. (1985: 21)
(We can't imagine that Robert didn't have questions about the equation between book-burning and fascism, hence between religion and democracy, and we can't imagine that he wasn't itching to make the counterpoint that the Old Testament/Tanakh cannot be so easily annexed to postEnlightenment ideals of democracy and human rights. But for the moment he keeps his silence and allows the eloquence of the words—rather than their political implications—to win). The word not only survives its cutting and burning, but uses its cutting and burning, like a cell which splits to make a new cell or a bush tree that relies on forest fire to re-seed. The triumph is reminiscent of the moment in Harry Potter and the Philosopher 's Stone where attempts to destroy a letter lead to more and more letters 'streaming into the room', and 'bouncing off the walls and floor' (Rowling 1997: 35)—the word not only survives but opens itself to posterity, breeding many similar words. The passage processes the anxiety about the inability of the written word to mediate true presence, and answers that anxiety with a glorious prooftext of an all-surviving, allsubsuming, all-consuming word. The scroll is consumed by fire to prove that 'words are the only survivors in the book of Jeremiah'—to prove that words outlive prophets, dynasties and kings. Words, Robert might say, are not preserved (in Salman Rushdie's sense of being chutnified/pickled), but tend to breed and make more words. Thus Baruch develops from faithful secretary to apocalyptic seer in Second, Third and Ethiopië Baruch and the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah, and the text of Jeremiah goes on breeding a library of books. Two Books that Come from Jeremiah Scroll Among the most impressive books that come from the book of Jeremiah are the twelfth-century Winchester Bible and an 874-page Jeremiah com-
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mentary published by SCM in 1986. The Winchester Bible comprises 486 folios of calf skin parchment mounted in pale oak boards, set with cream leather spines and tobled in gold. The commentary in contrast can only boast the dullness of academic covers—vaguely sketched mountains against what can only be called green-mould background—but its external impressiveness comes more from its size and weight (weighing in at just over 1 kg). The sumptuous Jeremiah manuscript begins (Fig. 2) with an image of the prophet's initial reception of the word in ch. 1, in which God touches the mouth of Jeremiah and, at the same time, gives him a scroll:
Figure 2. The Opening of the Book of Jeremiah in the Winchester Bible (Reproduced by courtesy of the Chapter of Winchester and Winchester Cathedral Library)
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The historiated 'V' of Verba ('words') is a performance within the letter of how God and Jeremiah transmitted this letter and the many other letters that surround it. It is as if within the historiated V the artist (known, poetically, as the 'Master of Leaping Figures'7) gives us a slow-motion performance of the pre-history of that V—a performance within the letter, just as Jeremiah 36 stages its own evolution within the chambers of the scribes (the place of letters). The contours of Jeremiah's scroll follow the exact same curves as the almond tree ("TptÖ) to the left of the picture (at least we take it to be an almond tree despite the bulbous berry-like, fruit) and the almond tree means 'The actualization of my word is in process' or, more literally, 'I am watching over (Tplü) my word to perform it'. The artist welds together Jeremiah 1 and Jeremiah 36 to craft the message 'The Word survives, and survives gloriously' and situates itself—in its preciousness, its weight, its labour—as part of the continuing survival of the word. The commentary is also committed to tracking the survival and the Rezeptionsgeschichte of the word, though it does not situate itself within word, nor cast itself as passive transmitter. The author's views on how to preserve the word (and he is just as interested, in his own way, in the preservation of the word as the illuminators and scribes) would be anathema to the careful secretaries of Jeremiah 36 and the Master of the Leaping Figures. Because he believes that you can kill a word with kindness, he does not surround the letters in gold, or gild them with the praise and over-reverent glosses that are the commentator's equivalent. Paradoxically, it is this close reader who recognizes that the primary agent in the book of Jeremiah is the Word, and not the prophet, and who attempts to shift our attention back to text (or as he put it in later notes, 'hypertext'). The Final Word Here then, is the result of our labours—a few pieces of paper, bound together in a volume (itself an interesting word, implying as it does effort, 7. Walter Oakeshott, who identified different artistic styles represented in the Winchester Bible, named the artists on the basis of their dominant idiosyncrasies: thus we have the Master of Leaping Figures, the Master of Morgan Leaf, the Gothic Majesty Master, the Master of the Apocrypha Drawings and so on. Oakeshott's endeavours are rather like the enterprise of source criticism in biblical studies, with which he shares the desire to approach the personalities who have left their trace/ brush stroke in the text (see Donovan 1993: 6).
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edifice and substance) and dedicated to the memory of Robert Carroll. We like to think that it came, in a sense, from him, suggested as it was by his exhortation to 'read the book, scroll in terms of crisis of the word' and from Mark's remembering of a quote from the Carroll corpus to the effect that 'words are the only survivors in the book of Jeremiah' (which turned out, in fact, to be a misremembering because, when we flicked through the books to find the original, the closest we could find was the statement that words, in Jeremiah 36, are 'King' [1989: 99]). We wanted to build something as a tribute to Robert—that entwined the texts with the specific interests of Robert—which is why we chose this text about Rezeptiongeschichte (or least the early Rezeptionsgeschichte of a piece of scripture in the hands of Jehoiakim and his officials) and why we centred our work on typically Carroll-ish themes. For us the tribute is Carrollish because it combines obsessions with the survival of the word, fundamentalism, biblical authority, the distance between that which we wish for and that which we achieve, not just as a scholarly condition but as a condition of what it means to be a human being (there is something appropriate in making a memorial to Robert, not of stone, but of something as flimsy as paper sheets). All that is lacking (but how much it is lacking) is some little mot juste, or epigraph from Carroll, maybe something allegorical like: The Church and the Synagogue have always, Jehoiakim-like, cut out passages and consigned them to the brazier (as if in tacit agreement with my own sense of discomfort with the more wolfish aspects of the canon) but there are more honest ways of dealing with problematic passages than by consigning them to the fire. (Robert P. Carroll)
Or maybe a caution addressed to those who tend to elide the differences between their own theology/ideology and that of Jeremiah: Do you find anything chilling in this (ur-fundamentalist?) vision of the incombustible, incontrovertible scroll, that brooks no breach to its authority? (Robert P. Carroll)
Or maybe something like: Is a rolling corpus subverted or adjusted by addition and subtraction? (Robert P. Carroll: taken from his notes—a question for future discussion)
To write a paper like this is by definition to feel that you have never said enough or said it well enough and at the same time to want to go on writing because writing suspends the end. Writing a memorial paper makes us more aware than ever of just how far we are fully paid up members of the whole fabric of Western Metaphysics and just how fully we subscribe to
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the belief in infinite distance between full presence and verbal remains. But we are also aware of the way in which the tantalizing promise of writing—which is also the passion and love of writing—promises to bridge the distance, offering in some (unspecified) way to ameliorate, make present, (re-)create. Maybe Robert's most important contribution to the academic arena was that he was prepared to articulate lack, and to resist the temptation to talk up what we actually had/possessed in/of the Bible— but at the same time to use this negative challenge to modernist and faithfilled confidence as a spur to re-make and to recreate. We give the last word to Philip Davies (from some words that he kindly lent us), looking forward to the work that will finally deal fully with the legacy of Robert Carroll (that is always just ahead). There are private memories of Robert and there are shared memories. There are my own Roberts, and there are those that belong to others. Then there is the Robert who confronts the readers of his books, present and future; Robert the author. Like his beloved texts, Robert's life now begins a new phase, one both sadly and joyfully unconfined by a physical presence. He is not here, as we might say. I don't mean this line of reflection as a sentimental consolation in a bereavement. It is, after all, simply a truism. The breadth and vitality of Robert's life, the hours of pleasure and wisdom that he gave, the companionable silences, the gruff wit, the extreme generosity of his time to students and others—all these investments reap an afterlife that few of us will be able to anticipate for ourselves. I wish Robert, all our Roberts, a long and rich life to come.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Auerbach, E. 1953 Blanchot, M. 1982 1997 Barthes, R. 1988
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (trans. W.R. Trask; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). The Space of Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Friendship (trans. E. Rottenberg; Stanford: Stanford University Press [French original, 1971]).
'Saussure, the Sign, Democracy', in The Semiotic Challenge (trans. R. Harvard; Oxford: Basil Blackwell): 151-59. Brueggemann, W. 1998 A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Carroll, R.P. 1986 Jeremiah (OTL; London: SCM Press).
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Jeremiah (OTG; Sheffield: JSOT Press). Wolf in the Sheepfold: The Bible as Problematic for Theology (London: SCM Press).
Derrida, J. 1990 Writing and Difference (trans. A. Bass; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Derrida, J., and M. Ferraris 2001 A Taste for the Secret (trans. Giacomo Donis; Oxford: Polity Press). Donovan, C. 1993 The Winchester Bible (London: British Museum). Freud, S. 1985 'On Transcience' ['Verganglichkeit'], in A. Dickson (ed. and trans.), Art and Literature (Pelican Freud Library, 1; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books [German original, 1915]): 267-90. Holladay, W.L. 1989 Jeremiah. II. A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah Chapters 26-52 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Lichtenberg, G.C. 1990 Aphorisms (trans. RJ. Hollingdale; London: Penguin Books). McGrath, A.E. 1995 Christian Theology: An Introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2nd edn). McHale, B. Postmodernist Fiction (London: Routledge). 1987 Nietzsche, F. 1972 Beyond Good and Evil (trans. R. Hollingdale; Baltimore: Penguin Books). Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (London: Bloomsbury). 1997 Scarry, E. 1985 The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Sherwood, Y. 1996 The Prostitute and the Prophet: Hosea 's Marriage in Literary-TheoreticaL Perspective (JSOTSup, 212; GCT, 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). 'Derrida', in A.K.M. Adam (ed.), Handbook of Postmodern Interpretation 2000 (St Louis: Chalice): 69-75. Stacey, W.D. Prophetic Drama in the Old Testament (London: Epworth Press). 1990 Steiner, G. 'Our homeland the text', Salmagundi 66: 4-25. 1985 Sterne, L. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1987 [original, 1759-67]). Turner, A. 'Professor Robert Carroll', The Glasgow Herald, 27 May. 2000
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Part II READING BIBLICAL TEXTS: BIBLICAL EXEGESIS
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THE MALIGNED PATRIARCH: PROPHETIC IDEOLOGY AND THE 'BAD PRESS' OF ESAU
Johanna Stiebert
I saw Esau Sitting on a seesaw... —Children's rhyme, origin unknown Esau n. M17. [The biblical patriarch Isaac's elder twin son, who sold his birthright (Gen. 25:25ff.).] A person who prefers present advantage to permanent rights or interests. —Oxford English Dictionary
Introduction The patriarch Esau, hirsute twin brother of the more popular Jacob, receives very bad publicity in prophetic literature. More recently, too, his name has become synonymous with short-sighted opportunism. And yet, there is nothing particularly awful about anything Esau actually does (that is, according to a straight-forward reading of the stories about him in Genesis). This maligned patriarch has certainly plunged downwards on the seesaw of interpretation! The argument of this paper is that the negative depiction of Esau in the literature after the Hexateuch belongs to a larger pattern of prophetic inversion and anti-foreign Second Temple ideology. The radical reinterpretation was possibly the upshot of making sense of a world where everything appears to have been turned upside-down. Esau in the Hexateuch Rebekah conceives after a period of infertility but the pregnancy is a difficult one. On seeking an explanation from Yhwh she is told that the reason is proleptic: the twins in her womb are the forefathers of two
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contending nations. These nations will become separated and one—descended from the younger—will emerge as the stronger (Gen. 25.19-24). When Rebekah gives birth, the firstborn son is 'red' (NIV)1 and covered with hair. He is named Esau (12JU).2 All that is said of the second-born son is that he was grasping Esau by the heel ppU)—hence he is named Jacob.3 As the boys grow up, Esau becomes a skilful hunter, while Jacob prefers to stay by the tents. So far, Esau emerges as the more strong, healthy and active of the two. Isaac, we read, loves (from 3HK) Esau because of his taste for game, while Rebekah loves Jacob, the stay-at-home. Unlike in the prophetic text of Malachi, the love of Isaac—while perhaps not edifying (being very much 'cupboard-love')—is reasoned. God's love for Jacob (Mai. 1.2, also from DHN) and hatred for Esau receives no real explanation. In the next scene Jacob, cooking some sort of 'red' (again from D"TK) dish, demands that his famished brother exchange his birthright for food (Gen. 25.29-S4).4 Esau is not mentioned again until the end of the next chapter, where he 'takes' two Hittite women who make his parents unhappy (Gen. 26.35). Possibly, it is the women's foreignness that is at the root of this displeas1. The word is from D~TK, commonly translated 'red' but more probably denoting a broader range of colours, including brown, yellowish-brown, the colour of blood or wine, crimson and pink (Brenner 1982:58-80). In the context of the Hebrew Bible, the connotative aspects of D1S are more often positive: pertaining, for instance, to an attractive and healthy hue of the skin (Song 5.10; Lam. 4.7; 1 Sam. 16.12; 17.42). In all these passages the colour term describes handsome, 'ruddy' males. While words of this root occasionally do refer to inflammations of the skin (Lev. 13.19, 24, 42-43), this does not seem to be at issue in Gen. 25.25. 2. BDB provides no etymology connecting this proper noun with 'hairiness'. Abundant hair does not appear to have a negative connotation in the Hebrew Bible as a whole. On the contrary, with Samson (Judg. 16.17) and Absalom (2 Sam. 14.26) hair seems to signify strength, or virility. 3. The word 2pJJ, literally meaning 'heel', is used in the context of a womanmetaphor at Jer. 13.22b. Here the NIV translates,'... it is because of your many sins that your skirts have been torn off and your body ill-treated' (my italics). The phrase is "f^pfl 101211], very literally, 'your heels have been violated'. Given that tearing off skirts is likely to be a prelude to rape and that 'feet' is occasionally a circumlocution for genitals (e.g. Judg. 3.24; 1 Sam. 24.3), it could be that 'heels' is here euphemistic. Perhaps, Jacob is holding Esau in a compromising manner that aptly foreshadows his practice of gaining advantage by less than sportsmanlike means. 4. A precedent for fraternal conflict has already been set by Cain and Abel (Gen. 4). This theme goes on to become a veritable topos: we need only recall Moses and Aaron, Absalom and Amnon, or Solomon and Adonijah (cf. Prov. 17.17).
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ure. In the next chapter Rebekah and Jacob conspire to trick Esau out of his blessing. Even Yhwh is brought into the scheme: Jacob, pretending to be Esau, in fending off Isaac's question about how he could be back so soon, replies, 'Yhwh your God assisted me' (27.20). The trick succeeds and Jacob obtains his father's blessing. Isaac, though sympathetic to Esau's emotional response (27.34) is powerless to reverse the blessing granted to the impostor.5 So far, Esau is wronged repeatedly while Jacob, soon to emerge as the favoured son, behaves ignobly. Jacob exploits his brother's hunger and exhaustion to trade food for birthright, deceives his elderly father, lies and cheats Esau out of the blessing intended for him. Julian Pitt-Rivers may indeed be correct in his claim that Genesis presents the modern reader with problems 'that can only be approached from an anthropological standpoint' (1977:127). He argues, therefore, that we see here a transition from pure myth—characterized by moral indifference, where matters that may be regarded as wrongful and which do not pretend to furnish recommendations of behaviour (e.g. Jacob's economy with the truth) pay off handsomely—towards moral precepts and clearly enunciated rules of conduct. Central to these are the social value complex associated with honour and shame and, particularly, endogamy. The story of Pharaoh taking Sarai and adultery bringing copious material advantages for Abram and divine punishment for the Egyptian (Gen. 12), together with the repetition of the Sarah-'sister' incident with Abimelech (ch. 20) and the account where Isaac calls Rebekah (his wife and patrilateral cousin) his sister, in order to protect himself against the possibility of sexual rivalry with Abimelech and his men (ch. 26), according to Pitt-Rivers, all explore the uncertainty as to whether sisters should be kept and married within the patriline or given away to foreigners for the sake of political advantage (1977:152). The marriages of Esau and Jacob develop this issue. Esau's marriage to two Hittite women incites his parents' disgust (26.35; 27.46) and Jacob is advised to marry a daughter of Laban, his mother's brother (28.2). This, Pitt-Rivers proposes, suggests 5. Blessings are prime examples of performative language, where the issuing of an utterance is equivalent to the performance of an action (Austin 1961). Here, Isaac, an individual of authority, is invoking God (Gen. 27.28). His spoken words (locutionary speech act) are thereby empowered to perform the blessing (illocutionary act), which in turn has an effect on Jacob, the recipient (perlocutionary act). As Thiselton explains, this is why the blessing cannot be revoked: to do thus would be like saying 'I do' to a second bride (1974: 294-95).
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that Israelites ought to marry within the covenant. Read apart from these considerations, however, Esau's resentment and fantasies of fratricide (27.41) are quite understandable. Rebekah, confident that Esau's anger will subside given time, instructs Jacob to flee for a time to her brother Laban. Isaac, hearing Rebekah's disgust concerning Esau's Hittite wives, instructs his second son not to marry a Canaanite but instead a daughter of Laban (Gen. 28.1).6 Esau, hearing of this, takes a third wife, Mahalath, the daughter of Abraham's son Ishmael (Gen. 28.9). He appears to be making every effort to win his father Isaac's approval. From this point onwards the focus shifts to Jacob. Things continue to go rather well for the renegade: Yhwh appears to him in a dream in which he and his descendants are blessed abundantly (28.12-15) and once in Haran, his uncle welcomes him warmly (29.13-14). Jacob falls in love with his cousin Rachel and—with the hitch that the trickster is tricked in turn by Laban (29.23-30)—takes her as his wife. He is blessed with a number of sons and one daughter and prospers exceedingly. When Laban begins to resent his affluence, Jacob resolves to return to his homeland— again, he does so deviously (31.20): according to the Hebrew text, Rachel steals (from DD3, 31.19) her father's teraphim, while Jacob steals (also from D]3,31.20)—literally—Laban's heart. Eventually, however, the rift between the two men is resolved amicably (31.43-55). Continuing his journey, Jacob prepares to encounter Esau. It appears as though he might have a conscience after all, for he sends messengers ahead to inform his brother of his abundant possessions. (Is this an attempt at sweetening the impending reunion with a gift, or an effort to impress?) On hearing that Esau is approaching together with 400 men, he immediately fears an attack, prays to the God of his ancestor Abraham, reminding him of his promises, and selects a generous gift for Esau. The brothers meet after Jacob's encounter at Peniel. Jacob prostrates himself seven times but it emerges that Esau bears no grudge. Instead, he embraces and kisses his twin, tells him that he has his favour and will only accept a gift upon being pressed (33.4-11). He even offers to accompany Jacob, or, 6. The two designations 'Hittite' and 'Canaanite' suggest a degree of fluidity. According to Westermann, 'when the name "Hittite" occurs in the patriarchal stories it does not admit of any conclusion to a connection with the older Hittite empire or the later (neo-)Hittite states in Syria. The bearers of tradition make use of the general designation known to them, which corresponds to the Assyrian designation of the whole territory between the Euphrates and Egypt as the "land of the Hatti'" (1985: 69).
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alternatively, to leave his servants with him. His behaviour is nothing short of magnanimous and exemplary. The focus remains with Jacob. In the ensuing story, his sons Simeon and Levi prove to bb as capable of deceit as their father (ch. 34). In fact, things are generally going a little more awry for Jacob: his relationship with the peoples of the land is precarious (34.30), he is instructed to remove the foreign gods and purify himself (35.2), Rachel dies in childbirth (35.18) and Isaac shortly after (35.28-29). Esau and Jacob bury him together. In the next chapter Esau comes to prominence once more. He is linked here to the nation of Edom. His Canaanite wives are named. One of them, Oholibamah, has a name closely resembling that of the depraved Oholibah of Ezekiel 23—a similarity that is not, I believe, accidental.7 Esau, like his brother, is prosperous (36.7-8) and has numerous descendants (Gen. 36.10-29). His descendants, the Edomites, furthermore, establish forms of political organization presided over by kings (36.31-39) and chiefs (36.40-43). From here until the end of the book, the primary focus shifts to Jacob's son Joseph—with the exception of Genesis 38, recounting the consequences of Judah's marriage to a Canaanite woman.8 There are a few other isolated references to Esau in the Hexateuch. None of them are negative concerning the patriarch. In Deuteronomy 2 is the description (put in the mouth of Moses) of the journey to Seir. The land is described as belonging to the descendants of Esau and Yhwh gives the instruction not to provoke them to war, because the territory is inviolable (2.5). All food and drink received is to be paid for (2.6), indicating that respect is due them. Shortly after is mention of Yhwh's action on behalf of Esau's descendants when he drove the Horites from their land (2.22).9 7. I have discussed the possible provenance of Ezek. 23 elsewhere (Stiebert 2000). 8. Here the motif of jostling twins is repeated: Zerah pushes his hand out of the womb but it is his brother Perez who is born first (38.27-30). 9. Widening the discussion to include the descendants of Esau, the account in Num. 20.14-21 does reflect badly on the Edomites. Here the Hebrews' (politely requested) permission to pass through Edom's territory is denied and the Edomites threaten with an attack. The prophet Balaam shortly after prophesies the conquest of Edom (Num. 24.18-19). This negative depiction is, however, an isolated occurrence. Deuteronomy, furthermore, while excluding Ammon and Moab from the assembly of Yhwh, instructs that an Edomite must not be abhorred (from "ISO), because he is a brother (Deut. 23.8). Interestingly, Balaam, like Esau, is not remembered kindly by later interpreters, hi the New Testament this prophet, who in Num. 22-24 imparts Yhwh's words, is accused of loving the wages of wickedness (2 Pet. 2.15), of error
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In Joshua 24, Esau is mentioned in a neutral manner alongside Jacob. Again, the territory of Seir is ascribed to his descendants. It is in the prophetic books that the tone of the allusions to Esau changes sharply. Esau and the Prophets Esau is mentioned by name in three prophetic books: Jeremiah (49.8,10 10), Obadiah (w. 6, 8, 9, 18, 19,21) and Malachi (1.2-3). In all three the patriarch is associated with the people of Edom. Jeremiah 49.7-22 is a violent oracle of doom. Disaster is promised to Esau (49.8). While Yhwh promises to protect 'your orphans' and 'your widows', the Edomites will be completely eradicated: Esau's descendants, relatives (literally 'brothers')1 ' and neighbours will all perish. The punishment is not only brutal it is also aimed at inciting humiliation. Yhwh announces that he will strip Esau bare. The verb used here (^Cil)12 is used in other prophetic metaphorical passages to refer to the humiliation of Jerusalem (Jer. 13.26) and Babylon (Isa. 47.2-3). In these passages Jerusalem and Babylon are personified as women who are put to shame for their iniquities. The stripping discloses ]17p ('dishonour') in Jeremiah andilSin ('disgrace') in Isaiah.13 Ezekiel 16 explains that public stripping—the expression here is 'laying bare nakedness' (using the verb ilb^)—is a customary punishment for women who have committed serious crimes such as adultery and bloodshed (Ezek. 16.37-38). The humiliating exposure of a woman, using D2B (cf. Ezek. 16.39), also appears in Hosea (2.5). Again the punishment is aimed at disclosing something shameful (Hl'TO], 2.12).14 The striking (Jude 11) and of teaching Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality (Rev. 2.14). 10. In the LXX of Jer. 49.8 the proper name does not occur. Instead ETroinoEV appears. This indicates a Vorlage using a Hebrew verb of the root ntZJU. 11. BHS suggests that rrm be replaced with l]r« (]^ with the pronominal suffix). Certainly the metaphor becomes potentially misleading here. While TTIK could be intended to refer to relatives of the Edomites, alluding to 'brothers' in the proximity of the name, Esau could all too easily implicate the descendants of Jacob. 12. The Syriac version and Targum appear to be translating a verb not from ^01 ('to strip bare') but from metathetical CSPI ('to search for'). 13. Klopfenstein (1972) provides a detailed discussion of the nuanced vocabulary of shame. 14. The noun is a hapax legomenan. The meaning can be inferred from the general context and the strong possibility that the word n"733 ('disgraceful sin', see Judg. 19.23 and 2 Sam. 13.12) is semantically related.
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difference with Jer. 49.10 is twofold. First, there is no reference to any shameful deed that Edom has committed. While the allusion to the cup implies guilt (49.12) and while pride is mentioned (49.16), the nature of Edom's crime is imprecise and there is a notable absence of shame terminology. Second, the humiliating punishment is not couched in the context of a female metaphor.15 Women probably held a socially inferior status in the society that gave rise to this text. It can be inferred from two statements in the proximity of Jer. 49.10 (namely, 49.22; 50.37)16 that 'being like a woman' is for a man equated with 'being less'. This would mean that the punishment inflicted on Esau (here metonymic of the Edomites) is particularly denigrating, as it places him in a position more often reserved for ignominious women. Obadiah lc-5 has distinct parallels with Jer. 49.7-16. This could mean that one is dependent on the other, or that both draw upon a common source, or a common stock of oracular material. There are also, however, significant differences. Obadiah begins by announcing that Edom will be diminished on account of pride (w. 3-4). The punishment is then expanded upon: Esau (the name is mentioned first at v. 6 and thereafter insistently) will be ransacked (here CSPI is used) and the people of his mountain killed. Following this, a reason is given: Esau is accused of violence against his brother Jacob (v. lOa). The allusion to this close blood-tie, presumably, adds to the horror of Esau's crime. (It must be remembered, however, that the metaphor is not based on an actual violent act enacted by Esau on Jacob: such is not recounted in Genesis.) Obadiah proclaims that Esau will be covered in shame (nCTO, v. lOb). Shame is a relatively common punishment in prophetic literature. It is often associated with the disclosure of iniquity and sometimes incorporated in metaphors, in particular in female metaphors.17 The transgression of Esau is also elaborated upon: he stood by as strangers and foreigners (D'HT,
15. It is true that Isa. 20.4 refers in a non-metaphorical passage to stripping (again from ^tOTI) captives. It is indeed likely that males were among the captives and also that the stripping was aimed at inciting humiliation. Males are not exempted from feeling shame in response to humiliating exposure. The metaphorical use of stripping could, however, suggest that women were more prone both to such feelings and such punishments. 16. The oracle concludes with the words that the hearts of the mighty men of Edom will be like the heart of a woman in labour. The horses and chariots of Babylon, too, will be 'like women' (50.37). Neither simile is intended to flatter. 17. For a fuller discussion see Stiebert 2000.
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D"1"!^) intruded and looted Jerusalem, as though he were one of them (v. 11). Esau is, therefore, accused of a lack of loyalty, or of betrayal. He is told not to look down on his brother on the day of his being a stranger 0"O], v. 12)18 and rebuked for rejoicing and vaunting. The following verses suggest that Esau not only incited the invaders but also took advantage of the siege by looting and actively assisting in the capture of Judeans (v. 13). As in the Jeremiah passage there is a reference to drinking. The subject of the drinking is not stated but the reference is most probably to the Edomites 'getting what they deserve'. In other words, this is possibly a reference to the 'cup of wrath' (Raabe 1996: 203).19 There follows the pronouncement that Jacob will thrive and Esau be exterminated (v. 18). The land of Esau will pass to the people of the Negev and the returning exiles will also receive territory. Malachi, straight upon the heels of the superscription, launches into a prophetic disputation. It begins with Yhwh saying, 'I have loved you'. This statement is met with a question, 'how have you loved us?' The reply is not easy to make sense of: 'is not Esau Jacob's brother?' declares Yhwh, 'but I have loved Jacob; Esau I have hated' (1.2-3). A reason for either love or hatred is not supplied. Of course it could be said that the Edomites 'deserve' to be hated because of their conduct towards the people of Judah when they were under attack and vulnerable (as described in Obadiah). It should not be forgotten, however, that the descendants of Jacob also committed atrocities against the Edomites (see 2 Sam. 8.13; 1 Kgs 11.1516 and, most chilling in its brutality, 2 Chron. 25.11-12). Yhwh's choice 18. It is unlikely that 'his being a stranger' refers to Esau, who is immediately before addressed directly, in the second person. The word appears to pertain, instead, to Jacob, representing the people of Judah. While Esau (representing the Edomites) has become like one of the strangers (v. 11) by colluding with them (if above all passively), Jacob has been made tofeel strange in his own home. Perhaps the word is proleptic: if the siege described in Obadiah is that of 586 BCE, it may be anticipating the Exile. Psalm 137, lamenting the state of geographical estrangement, also alludes to the betrayal of the Edomites. They are depicted as egging on the Babylonians (v. 7). 19. An interesting parallel occurs also in Lam. 4.21 -22. Here the Daughter of Edom is told that the cup will be passed to her. (The LXX has 'cup of the Lord'.) As a consequence, she will become drunk and stripped naked (from mu, v. 21). While the punishment of Zion will come to an end, Edom will be called to account for her guilt ([IB) and her wickedness exposed (from n'PJ, v. 22). The Edomites are here depicted in the form of a woman-metaphor. Again, there is an announcement of stripping and disclosure of shamefulness. The role of the cup appears to be one of executing retributive justice.
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seems somewhat arbitrary.20 Following this there is mention of the destruction and desolation of Esau's land (1.3). Moreover, unlike Judah, Edom will never be rebuilt (1.4). A vitriolic tone is evident also in other prophetic passages where the Edomites are mentioned. In the oracles against the nations, Amos rebukes Edom for ruthlessly pursuing his brother and promises destruction (1.1112). Isaiah 34.5-17 describes the complete destruction and subsequent desolation of Edom in visceral terms—complete with dripping blood, jackals and owls. In Ezek. 25.12-14 Yhwh promises the extermination of Edom's population and animals to punish Edom's revenge on Judah. Ezekiel 35 is a more detailed oracle, again announcing complete devastation. Edom is accused of handing over Israelites at a time when they were vulnerable, of boasting and of hatefulness. Taking all these passages together it becomes clear that we are dealing with a strong anti-Esau/Edom polemic. Something dreadful appears to have been perpetrated by the Edomites when persons identified as the people of Judah, or descendants of Jacob, were under threat. Some prophetic passages are more detailed than others. The strands taken together indicate that the Edomites collaborated with the aggressor when Judah was being invaded. They also gloated and took advantage when Judah was vulnerable. This behaviour is particularly appalling, because the Edomites are descended from the Judaeans' ancestor Jacob's brother. (Atrocities committed against Edom by Israel/Judah are, however, conveniently ignored. And so is the fact that the opportunistic action of the Edomites is not completely dissimilar to Jacob's exploitation of circumstances to acquire Esau's birthright and blessing.) The precise historical situation is not so easy to determine. The Hebrew Bible mentions four invasions of Jerusalem: by Shishak, king of Egypt (1 Kgs 14.25-26); by the Philistines and Arabs (2 Chron. 21.16-17); by Jehoash, king of Israel (2 Kgs 14.13-14), and by Nebuchadnezzar. It is most likely that the majority of the anti-Esau/Edom passages have in mind the final and most devastating invasion, by the Babylonians. (The passage from Amos may be an exception—unless the verses pertaining to Edom are a later interpolation.)
20. This verse is cited in Rom. 9.13 as part of an illustration of God's mercy. Here, as in Malachi, God's extension of love and hatred seems rather wilful.
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The overall picture to emerge is that the Hexateuch represents Esau in a positive or neutral way, while the Prophets depict Esau and Edom in an overwhelmingly negative and morally deficient way. Esau's qualities as recounted in Genesis—the redness of his skin, his profuse body hair, his ability to hunt and his prosperity21—all tend to have positive connotations. His anger at Jacob is depicted as understandable and in a manner that invites sympathy. The one action of his that is explicitly disapproved of is his marriage to foreign women. In the Prophets, however, Esau/ Edom becomes associated in a whole network of features that are conceived of as negative: with the perverse rejection of a brother, with shame, foreignness and women. In my view this about-turn is typical both of a particular ideology that fits best into the Second Temple period context and of prophetic inversion. Regarding the first, to me it seems likeliest that Jeremiah 49, Obadiah and Malachi 1 are all responding to the repercussions of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile. They also reflect, I believe, the Second Temple community's ideology22 of claims to the land. These claims operate within a mindset characterized by hostility to marriage with Canaanite people and Canaanite women in particular, as well as by a more generalized misogyny and xenophobia. In conjunction with this, the land during the time of the Exile is conceived of as having become defiled. While such a polemic is most prominent in Ezra (9.1-2; 10) and Nehemiah (13.23-27), the Prophets, too, promote the idea that there are shades of foreignness. As Robert Carroll points out, the people dispersed by Exile are promised a brighter future (e.g. Jer. 32.37-44), while those who remained in the land 21. The Hebrew Bible's depiction of material possessions is conflicting. See below. 22. Hill writes that 'the oracles of Malachi fit the general stylistic pattern of preaching and teaching common to a "Second Temple tradition"' (1998: 41) in that they appeal to other Hebrew Scripture texts for authority and because of their thematic focus on God, the covenant relationship and the urgency of a wholehearted personal response to the truth claims of the prophetic message. He dates the book between 500 BCE and the complementary ministries of Ezra-Nehemiah (1998: 51). Obadiah is dated variously, from the early ninth century to c. 450 BCE, but most scholars date it later rather than earlier (Raabe 1996:49-51). Carroll's view that 'Much—in some sense all—of the literature of the Hebrew Bible must be regarded as the documentation of the [Second Temple community's] claims to the land and as a reflection of their ideology' (1992: 85) is not, I believe, without validity. I certainly find it to fit much of the prophetic literature.
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belong to the 'desolate waste' identified with Yhwh's anger (Jer. 32.3035). They were, it seems, considered as polluted by, among other things, intermarriage. Alongside this, however, there exists a gap: namely, the offensiveness of the foreignness of Babylonian or Persian wives. Such wives are not, it appears, an obstacle to success at all. Carroll's question, 'Now who could possibly benefit from such an ideology of prohibited relations and permissible marriages?' leads him to this answer: The chances of men from [Babylonia or Persia] having Canaanite wives did not apply to them or their like. I do not want to turn literature into history, so I will simply draw attention to the functions served by an ideology of negative and positive foreignness. Any pressure group in the Jerusalem of the Second Temple period whose roots were in Babylonia or Persia could control land and property there with an ideology which outlawed those with Canaanite wives and which exempted other kinds of foreign wives from such a control (1991: 123).
The Edomites in the Prophets fall into the category of contaminating foreigners. P.R. Ackroyd points out concerning both Obadiah and Malachi that 'Esau' or 'Edom' probably refers not to one ethnic group in particular but rather constitutes a symbol of 'the alien, rejected, evil world outside' (1979: 245; cf. 55).23 He suggests that it is not quite certain that any historical reference is intended in these passages and draws attention to 2 Kgs 24.2. Here, several nationalities whose troops were used by Babylon against Jerusalem are named: Edom, however, is not mentioned. Whether the Edomites actually committed atrocities is less significant than their being foreign and thereby contaminated. Xenophobic undertones are far from uncommon in prophetic reproofs. Often, moreover, Such reproof promises repercussions on the land as a whole. Using Jeremiah as an illustration, apostasy is a prominent criticism fromch. 1 onwards (1.16). Idolatry renders Israel worthless (from bun, 2.5) and detestable (7.30; 32.34-35). Idolatry also precipitates disaster (11.17) and because of it the people cannot remain in the land (25.5) but must leave it desolate (44.2-3). The gods Israel has turned to instead of following Yhwh are, of course, foreign and foreignness throughout is depicted in decidedly pejorative terms. The ^"lU ('Arab'/'nomad') is mentioned in the context of prostitution (3.2) and loving foreigners or foreign gods (D^T) is linked to bestial lustfumess (2.25). Further, the
23. Andrew, too, proposes that Edom is 'an image exemplary of all nations' (1999: 569).
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despicable qualities of idols are described in terms of being worthless and foreign (~Q] ''bin, 8.19) and it may be telling that the root "111 can mean either 'to be a stranger' or 'to be loathsome'.24 Foreignness and shame are linked prominently, again suggesting, I think, an anti-foreign polemic. In terms of how shame language is used in Jeremiah, 'shame' occasionally refers to a foreign god or idol in a concrete sense: such as at 3.24,2511.1326 and perhaps 7.19, where 'the shame before them' could pertain to an actual idol. Making an idol, by association, also occasions shame (10.14;51.17). Disobedience usually pertains to worshipping other gods but can also involve political loyalty to a foreign nation such as Egypt (42.18; 44.12) when loyalty to Yhwh alone is called for. Such misplaced allegiance also transpires in shame (2.36). A topos linking shame and the nations is most prominent in the late chapters of Jeremiah. Here, there is mention of Egypt's irredeemable shame (46.11-12,24) and of Moab's disgrace (48.1, 13, 18, 20, 26, 39). Like Israel, however— 48.13 and 27 draw a comparison between the two—Moab will be restored (48.47). Edom is disgraced (49.13, 17), as is Damascus (49.23); Babylon is put to shame (50.2, 12; 51.47) but unlike with Israel and Judah (50.20) there is no forgiveness (50.35-40) and no remnant (50.40). In one passage Israel's shame (from 2713, ^IPI and D^D) is directly attributed to foreigners: 'because foreigners entered the holy places of Yhwh's house' (miT n'3 •'tflpD^U DHT 183 '3,51.51). Foreignness, then, is depicted as both shameful in itself and as occasioning shame. It is, furthermore, described as contaminating, as capable of polluting the whole land and affecting its fruitfulness (e.g. 23.10) and as defiling the sanctuary. The association of foreignness with pollution, punishment and infertility using shame language appears to be aimed at inciting or enforcing anti-foreign feeling. Edom is decidedly a part of this foreignness. Esau is on the one hand a brother to Jacob but above all he is the ancestor of a defiled nation, who has become foreign. As we have seen, the prophetic Esau passages also contain misogynist innuendo. In Jeremiah 49 Esau suffers an indignity more often reserved for shameful women and Ezekiel at his most depraved ascribes vile 24. BDB (ad loc.) mentions that "TIT II, 'be loathsome', is possibly derived from "1171, 'be a stranger', that is, 'become strange and so repugnant'. 25. BHS textual note ad loc. suggests Vsnn 'the Baal' in place of HEEin 'the shame', in order to stress this interpretation. 26. Here PCQb (absent in the LXX) appears to balance bin1?. Maybe a tradition preserved in the MT identified Baal as 'the shame(ful one)'.
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behaviour to a woman whose name echoes that of Esau's foreign wife. It may indeed be the case that Esau is 'picked on' precisely because of the 'deviance' of his marriage to foreign women. This, we remember, is the act most vociferously condemned by Ezra and Nehemiah. Once again this is characteristic of thfe ideology of the Second Temple period. The figurative language that alludes to women, which is in the proximity of the Esau passages, moreover, is distinctly negative. Malachi 2.11 can be added to the examples discussed above. Here Judah is deplored for abomination and defilement (TQUin, V^FT). The sacrilegious act committed is marriage to the daughter of a foreign god (;NTQ 7UD132N), which alludes once more to the horror expressed at inter-marriage. Women/defilement/shame are intertwined in prophetic writing and sometimes described as having a far-reaching negative effect on the land.27 Esau and Inversion Another feature particularly characteristic of prophetic writing is inversion language. Inversion language abounds, for example, in Isaiah and Ezekiel. In First Isaiah, for instance, the people are described as calling evil good and good evil, mistaking darkness for light and sweet for bitter (5.20). The foolishness of their disobedience is likened to the absurdity of an axe raising itself above the one who swings it (10.15), or a pot saying to its potter that he knows nothing (29.16). All of these inversions transpire in social upheaval and calamity. In Deutero-Isaiah there is also another, more complex, inversion in the form of the anti-hero of the Servant Songs.28 The inversions of Ezekiel tend towards the bizarre: the prophet, spokesperson of Yhwh, is silenced (3.26) and immobilized (4.8); Yhwh instructs him (a priest!) to use (highly defiling) human excrement for fuel 27. It is interesting to note Sherwood's observation regarding an extended metaphor linking adulterous woman and land in Hosea: 'Gomer gives birth in quick succession, and her fertility is emphasized, but conception is ascribed to her lovers, just as the land's fertility is accredited to Baal. Yhwh threatens to "strip her naked.. .and set her like a parched land" (Hos. 2.3), and equates the demise of the woman with terrestrial aridity. Threats to punish the oversexed female merge with threats to cut off material provision and to "lay waste her vines and her fig trees" (2.13), and in 9.14 the threat is repeated in terms of female sterility and miscarrying wombs and dry breasts' (1996: 206 n. 253). 28. I have discussed prophetic patterns of inversion in more detail in more detail elsewhere (Stiebert 2002).
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(4.12) and reveals that he has issued statutes that are 'not good' (20.25). Most peculiar of all, perhaps, is ch. 16. Here we find Sodom, Samaria and Jerusalem restored prior to any intimations of reparation. Following a detailed and obscene account of Jerusalem's sinning, we read that she is atoned for and then feels shame. I would agree with Carroll that the restoration of Sodom stands as one of the most perplexing and subversive of intertextualities. As he puts it, 'Sister Sodom is saved by sister Whorusalamin's whorings!' (1996: 81). Where wealth is described in the Prophets inversion is again prominent. According to the dominant voice of the Hebrew Bible, gold and silver have positive denotations and are valuable and desirable in both a concrete and figurative sense. Gold is associated with the splendour of God (Job 37.22), with his tabernacle (Exod. 25.3, 11, 24) and temples (1 Kgs6.20-22;2Kgs24.13). Gold is the possession ofkings(l Kgs9.28; 20.7) and a blessing God confers on his chosen ones, such as Abraham (Gen. 24.34-35). In terms of figurative usage, a good name is said to be better (Prov. 22.1), wisdom greater (Job 28.17), the ordinances and law of God more precious (Pss. 19.10; 119.72) and his commandments should be loved more (Ps. 119.127) than gold. Gold also symbolizes the righteousness of Job (Job 23.10). All of these examples suggest that gold is very precious, possibly even the most precious, among material goods. There is a negative end to the spectrum: gold may lead people astray (Deut. 8.13-14). For this reason, the king is implored not to accumulate too much gold and silver (Deut. 17.17) and Job denies having put his trust in riches (Job 31.24). The Torah and Psalms also associate gold with idols (Exod. 20.23; 32.31; Deut. 7.25; 29.17; Pss. 115.3; 135.15). This topos, however, is most pronounced and vociferous in the Prophets (Isa. 2.7-8, 20; 30.22; 31.7; 40.19; 46.6; Hos. 8.4; Jer. 10.8-9; Hab. 2.19). Here gold is associated with shame, with foreigners and with idolatry. In First Isaiah, for example, Israel is rebuked for being 'full of the East', for practising divination 'like the Philistines' and for having dealings with foreigners (D'~lD], Isa. 2.6). Ensuing verses describe that the land is full of silver, (D'-Dl gold, treasures and idols. Given that the humbling of the arrogant and lofty is announced shortly after (2.9,11-17)—a humiliation which brings about the abandoning of idols (2.18,20)—this abundance of riches seems to be indicative not of reward and honour but of something that is regarded negatively. In Deutero-Isaiah (chs. 40-48) this topos is particularly prominent and here shame language appears repeatedly. As in ch. 2, the power and glory
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of Yhwh are stressed (2.10-21; 40.5-31) and contrasted with the ignominy of idols (40.18-20). Again, the idols are associated with foreigners (41.2, 7) and described as costly: they are decorated with gold and silver (40.19; 46.6). Furthermore, neither Babylon's religious practices (47.9, 12-13), nor her wealth can assist her and she is shamed (47.3). At Isa. 30.22, too, the idols of silver and gold are depicted as repulsive. Here, however, the pejorative tone is struck not with reference to foreigners, excess or arrogance but by alluding to an unclean thing: mi. This word pertains to menstruation in the purity laws (Lev. 15.33;20.18) and most probably refers here, too, to something that is polluted and defiling. A similar web of connections between riches, defilement and shame, which appears to be characteristically prophetic, is evident, too, in Ezekiel. Here we read how, during the outbreak of panic attending the siege of Jerusalem, the people in their shame (i~!27Q) throw their silver into the streets and consider their gold repulsive (PHD, 7.14-22). The word i~!"t) is also associated with menstruation (Ezek. 18.6; 22.10; Lev. 12.2, 5). The prophetic depiction of Esau is a further example of inversion. Here the patriarch of Genesis is reconstructed. He is not behaving as a brother should—certainly not like the Esau who welcomed and embraced the returning Jacob; he is not a relative but one of the foreigners; his very masculinity is compromised by the treatment accorded him. Conclusion Esau, the patriarch who according to the story of Genesis was maligned by his own brother, is wronged yet more in the prophetic literature where he receives very bad press indeed. He epitomizes all that is within the parameters of Second Temple ideology detestable: foreignness, defilement and shamefulness. His fraternal feeling (evident in the Genesis account) is here utterly corrupted; his kinship with Judah/Israel has become so diminished that he is numbered among the abhorred foreigners; even his masculinity is undermined. What has Esau done to deserve this? It could be that his exogamy became the target of ideologues, seeking to find explanations (and scapegoats) for the violent turbulence of the relatively recent past. On the basis of Esau's depiction in the Hexateuch, the reinterpretation of him in Jeremiah, Obadiah and Malachi is not 'fair' and consequently draws forceful attention to damaging ideological subtexts.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackroyd, P.R. 1979 Andrew, M.E. 1999 Austin, J.L. 1961 Brenner, A. 1982 Carroll, R.P. 1991
1992 1996 Hill, A.E. 1998
Israel under Babylon and Persia (The New Clarendon Bible, Old Testament, 4; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn). The Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand (Wellington: Deft). 'Performative Utterances', in Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press): 220-39. Colour Terms in the Old Testament (JSOTSup, 21; Sheffield: JSOT Press). 'Textual Strategies and Ideology in the Second Temple Period', in P.R. Davies (ed.), Second Temple Studies. I. Persian Period (JSOTSup, 117; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 108-24. 'The Myth of the Empty Land', Semeia 59: 79-93. 'Whorusalamin: A Tale of Three Cities as Three Sisters', in B. Becking and M. Dijkstra (eds.), On Reading Prophetic Texts (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 67-82.
Malachi: A New Translation -with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 25D; New York: Doubleday). Klopfenstein, M .A. Scham undSchande nach dem Alten Testament: Eine begriffs-geschichlliche 1972 Untersuchung zu den hebraischen Wurzeln bos, klm undhpi (ATANT, 62; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag). Pitt-Rivers, J. The Fate ofShechem or the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of 1977 the Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Raabe, P.R. Obadiah: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 24D; 1996 New York: Doubleday). Sherwood, Y. The Prostitute and the Prophet: Hosea 's Marriage in Literary- Theoretical 1996 Perspective (JSOTSup, 212; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Stiebert, J. 'Shame and Prophecy: Approaches Past and Present', Biblnt 8.3: 255-75. 2000 'Riches in Isaiah and Ezekiel: An Example of Prophetic Inversion', Concil2002 iitm 2002.1:33-40. Thiselton, A.C. 1974 'The Supposed Power of Words in the Biblical Writings', JTS 25: 283-99. Westermann, C. 1985 Genesis 12-36: A Commentary (BK; 3 vols.; Minneapolis: Augsburg).
SAUL AND THE MISTRESS OF THE SPIRITS (1 SAMUEL 28.3-25) Joseph Blenkinsopp
I
The narrative more commonly known under the title 'Saul and the Witch of Endor' is one of the longer and more readable of the non-annalistic narratives in the Deuteronomistic History of the Kingdoms (hereafter 'the History' and its author 'the Historian' tout court). No critical reader supposes that, in describing the seance with the anonymous female medium, the Historian was transcribing a source handed down over a period of at least half a millennium, or that the dialogue that takes up much of the space is a stenographic report of what was said on that occasion. If this much is conceded, it would be of interest to enquire how an educated Judaean, writing let us say in the sixth or fifth century BCE, would have gone about putting together a narrative of this kind. What models were available? How was the model adapted to the historical narrative into which it was grafted? How was it put to work in the service of the writer's agenda and ideology? All commentators have noticed that 28.3-25 disturbs the orderly account of the Philistine campaign, and some have concluded from this that the seance narrative is 'secondary' or 'post-Deuteronomistic'.1 This is one possibility, but the many points of contact with the Saul narrative as a whole, and with the ethos and style of the History, allow for the alternative possibility that the Historian has himself constructed the story of Saul's visit to a female shaman on the basis of a familiar type-scene and
1. H.P. Smith, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Samuel (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1904), 238; H.W. Hertzberg, Die Samuelbücher (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2nd edn, 1960), 176; P.K. McCarter, Jr, I Samuel (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 422-23; J. Van Seters, In Search of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 261-64; B.B. Schmidt, Israel's Beneficent Dead (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1994), 205-208.
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inserted it into the more annalistic account of a campaign. Creating variations on a type-scene is the way stories were generally constructed in antiquity inclusive of ancient Israel. The present example is easily recognized. The model in question is a visit, solicited or unsolicited, from a revenant, one recently or not so recently deceased, the prototype of the ghost story which is generally thought to have come into its own only in the nineteenth century. The visitant can be the bearer of good news or good fortune, as in the well-known topos of'the Grateful Dead', but more frequently the news is not so good, and this is clearly the case with the revenant Samuel. I propose first to read through and comment briefly on the story as told by the Historian before attempting an initial characterization of the typescene or 'story skeleton' around which the narrative is constructed.2 This should make it possible to ask how the model was accommodated to the place which the story occupies in the History and what part it has to play in the ideology it is meant to promote.
II First, then, the mise-en-scene described succinctly by the Historian. The following translations are my own: Samuel died, and all Israel mourned him. They buried him in Ramah, in his own town. Now Saul had expelled from the land those who trafficked with spirits and ghosts. Meanwhile, the Philistines had concentrated their forces and set up camp at Shunam, while Saul had mustered the Israelite levy and camped at Gilboa. At the sight of the Philistine camp Saul was afraid; his heart trembled with fear. He tried to consult with Yahweh, but Yahweh gave him no answer, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets. So he said to his attendants, 'Find me a woman who is a mistress of spirits. I will go to her and make enquiry through her'. They told him that there was such a woman at Endor. Saul disguised himself by putting on different clothes. He went to the woman at night accompanied by two men. 'Consult a spirit for me', he said to her, 'and summon up for me whomsoever I shall name to you'. The woman answered, 'You must know what Saul has done, how he has driven from the land those who traffic with spirits and ghosts. So why are you setting me up to get me killed?' But Saul swore an oath to her by Yahweh,
2. The term 'story skeleton' is used by Gordon Hall Gerould, The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000 [first published 1908]), xiii.
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'As Yahweh lives, you will incur no punishment on this account'. The woman then asked whom she should summon up, and he replied, 'Summon up Samuel for me'. (28.3-11)
Like all good stories, this one begins by stating what must be known for what follows to make sense: that Samuel was dead and buried. We will be reminded of the opening of Dickens' A Christmas Carol: 'Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that'. This first notice repeats in a slightly abbreviated form information given earlier in the History (1 Sam. 25.1). The other necessary piece of information is that, prompted by religious zeal, Saul had enforced observance of the Deuteronomic-Mosaic law by putting mediums and wizards out of business (Deut. 18.11). We should not be surprised that the woman is familiar with this prohibition. Throughout the History all kinds of people seem to be well informed about Israelite laws and customs, including such rank outsiders as Philistines (1 Sam. 4.8), Gibeonites (Josh. 9.9-10) and Jericho prostitutes (Josh. 2.8-11). In these opening sentences the narrator is preparing us for the encounter with the woman by situating it within the ambiguities of the hero's spiritual history, his problematic relationship with Samuel and David, and the Philistine crisis. Saul's career has been on a downward spiral for some time, and the visit to the medium is (to switch metaphors) the last throw of the dice. The history up to this point has already prepared us by the skilful presentation of Saul as prey to occult forces—the evil spirit from Yahweh that comes over him (1 Sam. 16.14,23; 18.10; 19.9), the contagious delirium of the dervish bands in which he was caught up (19.23-24), his extreme susceptibility to music and percussion (16.15-23; 18.10; 19.9-10). The night scene of encounter with the dead is a fitting climax. The emphasis on Saul's religious zeal right at the beginning is of course intended to highlight his violation of the law by visiting a medium for necromantic purposes. We can detect a parallel with Samson, another flawed but ultimately tragic hero (Judg. 13-16). The Samson story is constructed on the basis of the three prohibitions of the nazirate vow—the consumption of alcohol, shaving the hair of the head, and contact with a cadaver—all of which Samson violated.3 It is structurally irrelevant that the vow was made on Samson's behalf by his mother, while Saul is
3. Argued in J. Blenkinsopp,'Structure and Style in Judges 13-16', JBL 82 (1963), 65-76; see also J.L. Crenshaw, Samson: A Secret Betrayed, a Vow Ignored (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1978).
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presented as solicitous in religious matters on his own account—fasting before battle (1 Sam. 14.24), sacrificing (15.15), insisting on kosher food (14.31-35), and, in the present instance, cleansing the land of spirits and their controls. We note further how both tainted heroes have contact with marginal women, both speak of sudden loss of strength, and both their stories end in a climax of defiant words and self-inflicted death (Judg. 16.30; 1 Sam. 31.4). The Historian's stereotypical way of describing military matters ("The Philistines gathered their forces... They camped at such a place...') is in evidence as the narrative gets underway. That the story of the nocturnal seance has been inserted into a campaign narrative is apparent from the resumptive verse 1 Sam. 29.1 which takes up the account from 28.4: 2TDN -IDK'1 DmnQ-bD DTUZfrB 1S2|T1. The Historian may not have noticed that the military dispositions described in 28.4 anticipate those described in 29.1, where the Philistines are just beginning to gather their forces at Aphek far to the south for the final big push. But since the Philistine camp at Shunem lies between the Israelites at Gilboa to the south and Endor to the north, the point may be that Saul had to pass through enemy lines to meet with the woman. This would be another reason for the disguise (KSfl, hithpael), reminiscent of Ahab's futile attempt to save his life by donning non-royal clothes in battle (1 Kgs 22.30), and therefore presaging Saul's own death in battle.4 Saul's attempt to enquire of Yahweh (*71N2) bNiZT 1, v. 6) is in line with the extraordinary frequency with which the verb h$V) ('ask, enquire') occurs in the account of Saul's career. It fits the Tendenz of the History by keeping the focus on Saul's frustrated attempts to seek divine guidance, in contrast to David for whom the various media for consultation worked like a charm every time.5 The final repudiation of Saul seems to be anticipated in the second of the two accounts of condemnation by Samuel. The poetic finale of this account may be translated as follows: 4. R. Coggins, 'On Kings and Disguises', JSOT 50 (1991), 55-62. 5. Saul's lack of success is recorded at 1 Sam. 14.18-19, 37-42; 23.6-12; 29.15. David was invariably successful: 1 Sam. 22.15; 23.2-4,9-12; 30.7-8. Consultation by Urim (1 Sam. 14.37-42) is closely related to if not identical with consultation by the priestly ephod (1 Sam. 23.2-4,9-12). On comparable techniques elsewhere in the Near East see M. Cogan, 'The Road to En-dor', in D.N. Freedman and A. Hurvitz (eds.), Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 319-26.
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Does Yahweh takei pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obedience to Yahweh's voice? Obedience is better than sacrifice to take heed better than the fat of rams; for the sin of divination is rebellion, and the evil of idolatry is obduracy. (1 Sam. 15.22-23)6
The first two couplets could have been taken practically unchanged from Hosea (6.6), but the reference to divination (ODp) and idolatry (D^SHf!, 'spirits of the dead') cannot be explained with reference to Saul's behaviour up to that point It could therefore be a conscious presaging of the DDp at Endor (28.8)] the final turn of the screw for Saul. Accompanied by two anonymous retainers who have a small walk-on part at the beginning and end of the action (vv. 8,23),7 Saul goes by night to the woman. She is introduced with her full professional title at the beginning—mUTlblD r\&k, a woman who controls a spirit, or perhaps is possessed by one—but thereafter is referred to simply as 'the woman'. The fact that Saul asks to consult a woman suggests that such mediums and controls were more often than not female.8 The role of female prophet (TWnD) is attested (Exod. 15.20; Judg. 4.4; 2 Kgs 22.14; Neh. 6.14), and some forms of gender-specific prophecy were not clearly distinguished from divination (Ezek. 13.17-23). Sorcery (D1 SCO), including the ability to inflict physical and psychic harm, was also regarded as primarily a female domain (Exod. 22.17; 2 Kgs 9.22; Isa. 47.9,12; Nah. 3.4), though we will bear in mind that the information comes to us filtered through immemorial prejudice.9 After Saul swears his oath and makes his request, the seance begins: When the woman saw Samuel she screamed, and said to Saul, 'Why have you tricked me? You are Saul!' 'Have no fear', the king replied, 'What is it that you see?' The woman answered, 'I see a supernatural being coming 6. Reading in the final verse liJSn D'Sinn |1«1 with LXXB for MT D'Bim ]1«1 nUSH; see the commentaries. With lUSH (hiphil "USB); cf. 28.23 emended text. 7. No longer anonymous in the midrash where their names are Abner and Amasa. 8. Since tTQR and On]li?T can refer to both the spirit entities and their human controls, where the text clearly alludes to the latter (e.g. Lev. 20.27), the reference will be to female mediums and male wizards. 9. For the association between the occult and sexual transgression see the presentation of Jezebel in 2 Kgs 9.22, the sorceress in Isa. 57.3-13, and the evil counterpart of Hokma in Prov. 1—9. 10. Hebrew DTI^N, a term used for the dead, and dead ancestors in particular, at 2 Sam. 14.16 and Isa. 8.19-20. The DTI^N to whom the Israelites sacrificed at Shittim
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Sense and Sensitivity up out of the underworld'. 'What does he look like?' Saul asked. She answered, 'Like an old man1! coming up, wrapped in a cloak'. So Saul knew it was Samuel. He bowed down and did homage, his face to the ground. Samuel addressed Saul: 'Why have you disturbed me, making me come up?' Saul answered, 'I am in dire straits. The Philistines are waging war against me, and God has turned away from me. He no longer answers me either through prophets or dreams. So I have summoned you to make known to me what will happen'. 'And why do you ask me', Samuel replied, 'now that Yahweh has turned away from you and become your adversary?12 [Yahweh has treated you as he foretold through me. Yahweh has wrested the kingdom from you, and has handed it over to David, your companion, because you did not obey Yahweh, executing his wrath upon Amalek. That is why Yahweh has done this to you. Moreover, Yahweh will deliver the Israelites who are with you to the Philistines.] Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me, and Yahweh will also deliver the Israelite camp to the Philistines.' (1 Sam. 28.12-19)
We come to the crux of the narrative at this point, just as the seance is getting underway. The questions that continue to perplex commentators are: Why did the woman, who was a professional, and therefore presumably not doing this for the first time, react in alarm and terror? And how did she penetrate Saul's incognito just at that point? One suggestion, with a long history in the commentary tradition (e.g. Perles, Budde, Nowack), is to emend 'Samuel' to 'Saul' following a few Greek MSS. But this has the disadvantage of imposing on the verb !"IN~I ('to see') the unattested sense of 'to see through a disguise'. Hertzberg wisely sets this aside, but then makes the equally implausible proposal that the text should be emended to read 'When the woman heard the name "Samuel" she screamed'.13 No less arbitrary is the suggestion that vv. 1 l-12a have been spliced into the (Num. 25.2) are called DTID, 'dead', at Ps. 106.28. On this extended meaning of the term see M. Mutter, 'Religionsgeschichtliche ErwagungenzuDTlbs in 1 Sam 28.13', BN 21 (1983), 32-36; H. Niehr, 'Ein unerkannter Text zur Nekromantie in Israel: Bemerkungen zum religionsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund von 2 Sam 12,16a', UF23 (1991), 301-306. The Targum paraphrases DTT^K with 'the angel of the Lord'. The original rabbinic explanation of the plural form was that Samuel thought it was the Last Judgment, and therefore brought up Moses with him as an advocate; see b. Hag. 4b. 11. McCarter (/ Samuel, 419) reads *]pT ' erect (cf. LXX 6p61 ov) for MT ] pT, but it is not clear how the erect posture of the revenant would help Saul recognize it as Samuel. 12. MT "pi? is frequently emended to ~[IH OS, 'with your companion' (LXX pi£Tcc TOU irAnaiov oou), but this duplicates what is said in the following verse; it is preferable to retain MT and read "IB as an Aramaicizing form of "IIS. 13. Hertzberg, Die Samuelbiicher, 178.
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narrative, thus obscuring the fact that she recognized Saul by means of the oath.14 Many commentators have pointed out, finally, that if the woman knew of the close relation between Saul and Samuel, seeing Samuel appear would alert her at once to the identity of her client. But this will not do. She had been commissioned precisely to conjure up Samuel, and her knowing this would not in any case explain why she reacted in fear and terror.15 The solution to the dilemma is so simple that it is surprising that few exegetes have adopted it.16 The woman was terrified because neither on that nor on previous occasions of the kind did she expect to see anything. The crucial factor in these seances was that only the medium was expected to have a visual experience; the client heard a voice, but saw nothing. Hence Saul has to ask her what she is seeing (v. 13). Our information on these conjurations is sketchy at best. Leviticus Kabbah 26.7 sums it up succinctly: 'She did what she did, and she said what she said, and raised him'.17 But such consultations must have been as frequent in Israel as in the ancient world in general—as indeed spiritualistic seances still occur frequently in today's world. It would have gone something like this. The client approached the medium with a request to do a qesem, to make contact with a person deceased, often an ancestor; he or she named the one to be contacted, and presumably paid the going rate. The conjuration took place typically at night, which had the advantage that the client would tend to be more suggestible and the activity of the medium more difficult to observe. Perhaps it was common to fast before such encounters, as appears to be the case with Saul (vv. 22-23). The medium 'brought up', that is, conjured up, the spirit of the deceased (the verb DTT^KHiphil), from the underworld,18 the conjuration no doubt accompanied with a certain 14. McCarter, /Samuel, 421, 423. 15. This explanation for the revelation of Saul' s identity often appears in commentaries, e.g. Smith, The Books of Samuel, 241; R. de Vaux, Les Livres de Samuel (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1961), 136. W.A.M. Beuken, 'l Samuel 28: The Prophet as "Hammer of Witches'", JSOT 6 (1978), 3-17, suggests that it was the spiritual power of Samuel that terrified her, but this is an idea imported into the story; there is no hammering of witches here. 16. P.R. Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 214, comes close in assuming that the woman found herself confronted by something beyond her control. 17. On rabbinic interpretations of the incident see K.A.D. Smelik, 'The Witch of Endor: 1 Samuel 28 in Rabbinic and Christian Exegesis till 800 A.D.', VC 33 (1979), 160-79. 18. Ynn,Exod. 15.12; Isa. 8.21; 29.4; Jon. 2.7; Ps. 71.20.
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amount of mumbo-jumbo. The entrance to and exit from 'where they come from' was perhaps represented by a pit.19 The place of death does not seem to have been important. In this instance the conjuration took place in a house (there is a couch or bed, v. 24) in Endor, whereas Samuel died in Ramah about 100 kilometres to the south. The client would hear a voice 'like a whisper from the dust' (Isa. 29.4), the sense of which would be given an interpretation appropriate for the occasion by the medium. The most important skill required of the medium was that of throwing the voice; hence the term syyaoTpiuuSoc, 'ventriloquist', that is, one who, literally translated, 'speaks from the stomach', used in this passage and elsewhere in LXX for this type of practitioner. The solution to the crux of the story I have proposed gives a richer texture to the narrative and deepens its ambiguities, somewhat analogously to those of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. On this reading, the woman did not believe that she could in reality bring back the dead. Saul and the population at large thought she could, which made it possible for her to make a living. But there are ambiguities when we ask what the author thought about it. He certainly believed that a prophet had the power to return for a time from the dead, but we note that the prophet's ghost attributed the return to Saul not to the woman (v. 15). Maybe he just was not sure. If the reading proposed is correct, it is astonishing that the anonymous woman made the connection with the king and recovered her composure so quickly after seeing a real ghost. Saul did not have this problem; the important thing for him was to be sure that the elohim was indeed Samuel. There is another layer of meaning here, for the cloak in which the ghost is wrapped is the means by which Saul knows it is Samuel (cf. 1 Sam. 15.2728), and it is also the dead prophet's shroud. As the conversation between the living king and the dead prophet begins, the author's high opinion of prophets led him to disregard the conventions of this particular type-scene according to which the dead speak only when spoken to. Virgil, we recall, could speak only when addressed by Dante, and the same constraint applied to the ghost of Hamlet's father on the parapet at Elsinore. That the ghost is relatively loquacious and repetitious is also unusual, but the problem disappears if we agree with most of the commentators that w. 17-19a 19. On the interpretation of the 31» as a pit see H.A. Hoffher, "OB', TDOT, I, 130-34, and J.H. Ebach and U. Riitersworden, 'Unterweltbeschworung im Alten Testament: Untersuchungen zurBegriffs- und Religionsgeschichte des 'ob\ UF12 (1980), 205-20.
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have been added to connect with the rejection scene in ch. 15.20 But it is in keeping with the conventions that Samuel, like most literary ghosts, was unhappy at being disturbed;21 witness the unhappy ghost of the murdered man in Thelyphron's no doubt tall tale in Apuleius, Metamorphoses 2.29.22 We are not told how and when the apparition disappeared. But it did disappear, and Saul, the woman and, in the background, the two retainers, return to the everyday world: Terrified by what Samuel had said, Saul fell at once full length to the ground. He had no strength left, for he had eaten nothing all that day and night. Seeing that he was greatly disturbed, the woman came to Saul and said to him,23 'I listened to what you had to say and put my life on the line; I heeded the request you made of me. So now, you listen to what I have to say. Let me set a bit of food before you. Eat it, and get your strength back; you have a long wiay to go.' But he refused; 'No, I won't eat', he said. But when his retainers insisted together with the woman he heeded them, got up off the ground, and sat on the couch. The woman had a stall-fed calf on the premises which she quickly butchered. She set it before Saul and his retainers, and when they had eaten they left that same night. (1 Sam. 28.20-25)
What is interesting here is the fulfilment of the universal need to establish a semblance of normality after an extraordinary, an extreme experience. For this to happen, the woman, who has already demonstrated remarkable resilience and resource, must come to the centre, which she does. At this point of his history, Josephus (Ant. 6.337-42) launches into a eulogy of the philotimia (generosity) of the woman who did not resent Saul for having condemned her profession but, poor as she was, slaughtered her one and only calf to fix him a meal.24 In the modern commentary tradition rather too much has been made of this meal. By accepting the woman's 20. As A.R.S. Kennedy, I and II Samuel (ICC: Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1905), 179-80; Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, 179; Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel, 215; McCarter, I Samuel, 423. 21. The verb DTT^K used of the dead also at Isa. 14.9; perhaps a quasi-technical term. 22. For a modern parallel we might take the ominous warning to the over-curious in M.R. James' masterpiece Count Magnus: 'There are people walking that should not be walking; they should be resting, not walking'. 23. Literally, 'Your maidservant listened.. .what your maidservant has to say'. 24. This addition to the story may have been inspired by Nathan's parable (2 Sam. 12.1-6). On Josephus' mostly positive evaluation of Saul see L.H.Feldman, 'Josephus' Portrait of Saul', HUCA 53 (1982), 45-99.
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offer Saul was not entering into a covenant with her against Yahweh,25 it was not a Passover meal,26 or a mantic sacrifice to the spirits of the dead,27 and it is a bit fanciful to represent Saul as becoming a child again and being fed by 'mother'.28 The meal was not kosher, but nothing is made of it. If it had a ritual character at all,29 it would have been the kind of ritual that surrounds the last meal before execution of a person on Death Row. The woman's invitation to eat is faultlessly worded, and ends with wrenching pathos: 'You have a long way to go'. And so the king and his companions eat in silence and go out into the night. Ill
The grid on which the Historian has constructed his narrative of Saul's visit to the Mistress of the Spirits was of a type familiar in the ancient, as it is in the modern world. All that remained for the writer to do was to fill in the names and adapt it to the larger narrative context. In the modern ghost story the visit of the revenant is usually unsolicited, and that is sometimes the case in early examples of the genre. The visit of the murdered Caesar to Marcus Brutus prior to the battle of Philippi, taken almost verbatim by Shakespeare from Plutarch's Life of Caesar (69.6-11; Julius Caesar Act IV Scene 3), is unsolicited, as are the appearances of most of Shakespeare's ghosts, an interesting exception being the conjuring up of a spirit by Bolingbroke in Henry VIPart II (Act I Scene 4). The ghost that failed to impress the philosopher Athenagoras in Pliny the Younger's well-known story of the haunted house in Athens appeared unbidden,30 as did the ghosts to whom prominent roles are assigned in several of Seneca's tragedies.31 But more commonly the dead are unwilling to be disturbed and must be coerced to appear by the mediation of a specialist and the application of certain necromantic techniques. 25. Beuken, 'The Prophet as "Hammer"', 13. 26. S. Frolov and V. Orel, 'Notes on 1 Samuel', BN 74 (1994), 15-24. 27. P. Tamarkin Reis, 'Eating the Blood: Saul and the Witch of Endor', JSOT13 (1997), 3-13. 28. R. Preston Thomas, 'The Heroism of Saul: Patterns of Meaning in the Narrative of the Early Kingship', in J. Cheryl Exum (ed.), The Historical Books (The Biblical Seminar, 40; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 133. 29. S. Reinach, 'Le souper de la sorcière', RHR 42 (1923), 45-50. 30. Letters 7.27, to Licinius Sura. 31. In Octavia, we have an interesting complication of the familiar topos when the ghost of Agrippina enters unbidden with a flaming torch and sees her husband's ghost.
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One or two examples must suffice to make the point.32 In The Persians of Aeschylus, the queen-mother Atossa offers libations and the chorus summons Darius from Hades, his e'l'ScoAov rises from the earth, and he predicts disaster on Xerxes' expedition. Herodotus (Histories 5.92) has a typically tall story about Periander, tyrant of Corinth, who tries to consult his deceased wife by consulting the oracle of the dead (VEKpopavTEiov) at Threspotia on the River Acheron. He is anxious to get his hands on a deposit of treasure, but she is naked and cold in Hades and refuses to tell him the location of the treasure until he has remedied his neglect of the appropriate burial customs. In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (2.28-30), Thelyphron tells an equally tall story of an Egyptian prophet who brought a corpse back to life long enough for the murdered man to reveal the circumstances of his death. In several of his comedies, Aristophanes refers to necromantics who claim to summon up the dead. In his consultation with the seer Teiresias, Odysseus makes it possible for the shades of his mother Antikleia and of Elpenor to appear by digging a pit, pouring drink offerings, and providing blood for them to drink, a motif familiar from the Vampire legends (Odyssey 11.23-43). It appears from the Mesopotamian omen series that unsolicited encounters with the dead, whether visual or auditory, could have serious and even fatal consequences. Quite detailed accounts of necromantic practices have survived from ancient Mesopotamia, featuring apotropaic incantations, magical concoctions reminiscent of the Witches' brew in Macbeth, and divination by means of a skull. When summoned, the ghost was believed to enter into the skull and speak through it, a not too difficult effect to bring about by a practiced ventriloquist, one suspects. Finkel noted that this old idea, and perhaps also the corresponding practice, persisted into the Amoraic period in Jewish circles; b. Sank. 65b speaks of conjuring up the dead by incantations and by consulting a skull.33 Not surprisingly, much of the surviving evidence has to do with the ruler and the court. One example, of admittedly uncertain interpretation, refers to a communication to Esarhaddon from the ghost (etemmu) of his recently deceased wife reported to him by a diviner.34 32. See I. Trencsenyi- Waldapfel, 'Die Hexe von Endor und die griechisch-romische Welt', Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 12 (1961), 201-22; J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London: Routledge, 2002), 71-83. 33. I.L. Finkel, 'Necromancy in Ancient Mesopotamia', 4/029/30(1983/1984), 117. 34. Finkel, 'Necromancy', 1,3; Schmidt,Israel'sBeneficentDead,207; idem, 'The
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Associated with the basic type-scene of the solicited encounter with a ghost are certain subsidiary topoi familiar from modern examples of this narrative genre. Few if any such encounters take place during daytime; the story reported by Tacitus of Curtius Rufus who encountered a superhuman being in broad daylight in an African shopping mall belongs more to the category of vision than of ghostly encounter.35 The revenant must therefore depart before dawn, as the ghost of Thyestes in Seneca's Agamemnon pointed out, and as Hamlet's father explained before returning to the purgatorial flames. Samuel's displeasure at being disturbed, commented on earlier, is also a common feature of the genre. How much did these restless or disturbed dead know? It is not clear how far Samuel's knowledge of the future extended beyond the outcome of the battle on the following day. Those who cross over from the realm of the dead are by no means omniscient. Like Samuel, Darius in Aeschylus' Persians predicts disasters in the near future, but he has to be briefed by Atossa about the current state of affairs at the Persian court. In other respects those who return, whether coerced or not, are not conspicuously different in character, habits and disposition from the way they were in their pre-mortem existence. Samuel is recognized by his cloak, he is apparently at the same age as when he died, he can speak and understand Hebrew, neither his agenda nor his general disposition seems to have changed much, and his detestation of the Amalekites is as strong as ever.
IV It remains to note that the type-scene in question was chosen as an apt vehicle for the writer's ideological agenda in preference to the consultation of an oracle before battle by means of one of the accredited techniques. This routine feature of military campaign narratives is what one might have expected at this juncture (cf. 1 Sam. 23.2-4; 30.7-8; 2 Sam.
"Witch" of En-Dor, 1 Samuel 28, and Ancient Near Eastern Necromancy', in M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (eds), Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001), 111-29. On the subject in general see J. Tropper, Nekromantie: Totenbefragung im Alten OrientundAlten Testament(Neu\órcher^Vluyn:Neukirchener Verlag, 1989). 35. Tacitus, Annals 11.21. Moreover, the species muliebris supra modum humanum gives him good news about his future promotion in rank; the incident is also reported, with variations, by Pliny the Younger, Letters andPanegyricus 7.27.
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5.19,22-25).36 The adoption of the revenant type-scene allowed the writer one final and climactic encounter between king and prophet, combined with one further occasion for Saul's reprobation, namely, his violation of a cardinal point of Deuteronomic law (Deut. 18.9-11). All of the material for filling in the basic narrative grid or articulating the story skeleton was already present in the History: the death of Samuel (1 Sam. 25.1), the means for recognizing him when he appeared (8.1, 4-5; 15.27-28), the Philistine campaigns (13-14; 29.1), and Saul's previous unsuccessful attempts to solicit the guidance of Yahweh (14.18-19, 37-42; 23.6-12). We saw that the charge of practising divination was hinted at earlier (15.22), and the teims in which the post-mortem Samuel pronounced judgment on Saul (vv. 17-19a) replicate the earlier condemnation in ch. 15 using much the same language. We can watch the narrator at work filling in the narrative gaps or fleshing out the skeleton more clearly in this than in most of the other extended non-annalistic narratives in the History. We can also see without undue difficulty how the choice of this particular type-scene contributed to the Tendenz of the History as a whole. The Deuteronomic law provides the criteria according to which rulers are evaluated either positively or, more commonly, negatively in the History; and the evaluation is communicated by the prophet who stands over against the ruler as the guardian of that law (Deut. 18.15-19). It was Saul's misfortune that, as the first in the series, he had to serve as a paradigm for the failure of the monarchy in both kingdoms, but especially in Israel, to live up to the Deuteronomic ideal of kingship as laid down in Deut. 17.14-20. Here and elsewhere the Historian achieves evaluative emphasis by contrast between positive and negative moral paradigms. No alert reader can miss the heavy ideological slant in the counterpoint between Saul's failure and David's spectacular success in winning God's favour, the first of several alternations between good and bad kings (Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Josiah) throughout the History. But the Historian's ideological agenda does not entirely succeed in covering over what must appear to most modern readers the morally perplexing reasons for Saul's condemnation—offering sacrifice after Samuel failed to appear (1 Sam. 13.8-15) and sparing the life of a defeated king (15.1-35). David, guilty of adultery and cold-blooded murder, received the divine forgiveness at the
36. Suggested by Walter Dietrich, David, Saul und die Propheten (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1987), 155.
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hands of a prophet which was denied to Saul. The story of Saul and the Mistress of the Spirits was intended as a contribution to the negative historiographical tradition about Saul,37 yet it points beyond itself, and in spite of the ideology, to engage our sympathies and to remind us of the ambiguities of the theology underlying these narratives.
37. The tradition is traced in J. Blenkinsopp, 'The Quest of the Historical Saul', in J.W. Flanagan and A. Weisbrod Robinson (eds), No Famine in the Land: Studies in Honor of John L. McKenzie (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), 75-99.
COUNTING SHEEP, SINS AND SOUR GRAPES:
THE PRIMACY OF THE PRIMARY HISTORY?
Graeme Auld
The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. Sheep shall again pass under the hands of one making a tally.
I
Sour grapes hardly seem the most suitable memorial offering for a good friend sorely missed—but they belong in a saying shared only by Ezekiel and Jeremiah; and Robert Carroll will long be remembered for his rich contributions to the understanding of the latter book. In this tribute I want to explore some elements of an ancient discussion: differing voices within Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Chronicles and Samuel-Kings, as each sought to come to terms with the troubling story of David numbering Israel at divine instigation—and its baneful aftermath. That first saying cited above is quoted, only to be set aside, in Jeremiah (31.28-30): 'In those days they shall no longer say, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge". Instead each shall die for his own guilt.' The proverb is quoted also in Ezekiel 18 and treated at much greater length there; but other biblical books are silent on such a saying. Sheep are a familiar topic—indeed a familiar image—in many biblical books, including Jeremiah and Ezekiel. However, while the book of Ezekiel also contains in ch. 34 a major discussion of sheep and their shepherds, with much talk of wandering, scattering, gathering, and pasturing, Ezekiel's shepherds are never said to 'count' their sheep. Those in Jeremiah do count sheep. This is quite obvious in 33.12-13 (also cited above). However, I want to argue that the shepherds featured earlier in the book (in 23.1-4) are blamed, no less explicitly, for not keeping count of their flock. My attention was caught by these passages as I completed a study of the importance within the books of Samuel of David's count of his people in
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2 Samuel 24, and turned to explore echoes elsewhere. In this earlier study,11 argued that many portions of Samuel resonate with—even better wrestle with—the perplexing census narrative at the end. That story itself leaves many issues unresolved. The strength of the rest of the book is that it ventilates these problems in advance, rather than suggesting where closure might be found. And I suggested that several themes in other biblical books are also attempts to cope with this classic and mysterious tale of the divinely incited danger faced by David, his house, and Israel. I want to advance that exploration here.
II The immediate verbal link between David's census and the promise of restoration in Jeremiah (33.10-13) is the relatively uncommon verb HDQ. 'Numbering' is the express content of the divine incitement of David (2 Sam.24.1//l Chron. 21.1). Now, numbering (H]Q) and sheep (]N!i)are not directly related in that verse as they are (uniquely in the Bible) in Jer. 33.13. However, David's appeal to Yhwh later in the story, that only he should suffer for his own sin and not his people, is significantly expressed: 'these sheep, what have they done?' (2 Sam. 24.17//1 Chron. 21.17). It is worth pausing to allow each of these texts to influence our interpretation of the other. I suspect that the remarks of Robert Carroll,2 here in the company of many commentators, come short of the image in Jeremiah of flocks in the towns of the Shephelah, and the Negev, and the land of Benjamin, and round about Jerusalem, coming over to3 the hands of one making a tally. That was not, or was not just, a literal promise of pastoral life restored to a broken land. It was instead (or also) a promise of human population in the towns ofJudah under the control of a royal 'shepherd'. The Targum transposes v. 13b into an expectation that the people will join themselves to the words of the Messiah. And the substantial MT plus in 33.14-26 concerning a restored house of David has understood and developed this royal image at the close of the parent text.
1. A.G. Auld, 'Bearing the Burden of David's Guilt', in FSSmend (forthcoming). 2. R.P. Carroll, Jeremiah (OIL; London: SCM Press, 1986), 636. 3. This more satisfactory rendering is based on LXX; 'passing under the hands', widely adopted in English translations and commentaries and also cited at the head of this discussion, is an odd translation of n T ba ~QU.
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As for the census story, the count is no sooner complete than David quickly covers himself in abject apology: 'sinned greatly.. .iniquity.. .been very foolish' (2 Sam. 24.10, recapitulated in 24.17). We readers are left unclear as to the nature of the offence, and wonder whether David was similarly in the dark. However, when he uses in v. 17 the familiar image of sheep for his people, we may ask ourselves whether he has moved on to questioning—implicitly and delicately—the justification for the divine anger: what could have been more natural than a (royal) shepherd tallying his (human) flock? The (royal) shepherds of Yhwh's flock are roundly condemned in Jer. 23.1-4. They have destroyed, scattered, driven away his sheep; and the series of complaints ends DflN DJIlpS Nvl. The punning divine response is nrr^UD irrn« Drrbu IpB 'inn, where the keyword Tp2 is resumed and U~l ('evil') plays on the DT~I ('shepherds'). Yet what precisely does IpB mean, or at least mean here? The RSV, explicitly adopted by Carroll,4 renders '.. .and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil doings'. And McKane,5 though freer, is very similar:'.. .and have failed to take care of them. I will not fail to take care of your evil deeds'.6 It is arguable that the census story helps here too. David had charged his lieutenant Joab to number (HDD) his people. After traversing Israel, what Joab brought to David is called, in different terms, IpSQ "ISDDTIK DUTl—'the total of the count of the people'. In itself, this second expression seems somewhat pleonastic: either ~ISDD or IpSQ would have sufficed on its own. And yet in the overall rhetoric of the narrative, three terms expressing David's guilt (see above on 2 Sam. 24.10) and choice between three possible divine punishments (2 Sam. 24.12-13) may be appropriate responses to three terms for counting recorded in three separate terms. I suggest therefore that in Jer. 23.2 (and in very many other biblical passages) 'count' is a more precise translation of IpS than 'visit' or 'review' or the like. In this instance, we should render as follows: '.. .and did not count them. See, I am counting against you the evil of your deeds.' Yhwh's response to the situation complained of in Jer. 23.1-2 will be to gather what is left of his scattered flock and return them to their home, where they 'shall be fruitful and multiply' (23.3). He will 'set shepherds 4. Carroll, Jeremiah, 443. 5. W. McKane, Jeremiah (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986), I, 553. 6. Cf. W.L. Holladay Jeremiah (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), I, 613-14:'tend...attend to...'
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over them who will shepherd them, and they will not fear any more nor be broken' (23.4). To these words shared in the common Jeremiah tradition the MT, but not LXX, adds llpS"1 8*71. Both Carroll and McKane appeal here to the meaning 'be missed' for the niphal conjugation ofTpB. David's absence from Saul's table (1 Sam. 20.18-19) is widely—yet I suggest wrongly—recognized as providing the clearest example of this usage. In fact, a similar rendering is preferable there too: Jonathan says to David, 'you will be counted/noted [as missing], because the place where you sit will be counted/noted'. Here in Jer. 23.4 too, using the same rendering "IpB niphal as simply the passive of the qal verb just used has the further merit that it explicitly resumes the theme of quantity in the last words of v. 3 about the increase of the flock: 'they shall multiply ... and they shall not be [able to be] counted'. And yet, whatever the precise sense of the shared term IpB, this one thing is clear: it is undeniable that royal shepherds are blamed in Jer. 23.2 for not doing exactly what future royal shepherds of 33.13 will do, but what David reproached himself in 2 Samuel 24 for having done. In Jer. 23.5-6 (both MT and LXX) this future shepherding will be the business of a 'righteous branch' of David; and the major MT plus in 33.14-26 opens by recapitulating this promise from 23.5-6. Separately, and even more strongly together, these portions of Jeremiah—the only two passages in the Hebrew Bible to talk explicitly of the responsibility of shepherds to count sheep—underscore our puzzlement over what David did wrong. Not only so: the repetition of the theme within Jeremiah and the very similarity of the language used in Samuel and Jeremiah (especially the choice of the rare itJQ in the second passage) signal that the tradition in Jeremiah is deliberately encouraging reflection on that mysterious conclusion to the story of the first David. The divine remedy promised in Jer. 33.6-8 includes cleansing from guilt, sin, and rebellion—all appropriate to David's own self-diagnosis (see above on 2 Sam. 24.10, 17). Ill
The more detailed of the two discussions of parental responsibility in terms of eating sour grapes is in Ezekiel 18. This chapter is located between two chapters with an explicitly royal theme. Ezekiel 19 is a 'lamentation for the princes of Israel'; and in ch. 17 the prophet is asked to 'speak an allegory to the house of Israel', which is then explained (vv. 11-21) in terms of the behaviour of Judah's last kings towards their
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Babylonian masters, and their fate at their hands. Jehoiachin and Zedekiah are not actually named in Ezekiel 17; however, the chapter does make use of the brief report of Zedekiah's rebellion, which Kings and Chronicles share, to underscore that his behaviour alone was sufficient to explain the Bablyonian reaction—there was no reason to follow the book of Kings and blame Manasseh. And Ezekiel 18 may reinforce this point by suggesting that the last kings of Judah, like Manasseh in Chronicles, could have repented and saved themselves and their people. In their turn, Ezekiel 17-19 develop the argument of ch. 16 that royal Jerusalem had proved even more wicked than her wicked sisters Samaria and Sodom. Since kings are never explicitly mentioned in ch. 18, it has been easy for readers to assume that the argument there is a generalized one, about all human conduct. And yet there are these several indications from the immediate context that kings were in mind. The position developed in Ezekiel is very like that of the Chronicler: each is judged by his own conduct, and each can deliver himself or condemn himself by a change in his ways. In the earlier study of the books of Samuel, I argued that the puzzling lack of closure in the account of the census and its aftermath functions to leave the reader of Samuel, or indeed of Samuel and Kings together, uncertain as to the extent of the malign entail of this episode. In the terms of the proverb cited by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, David had eaten sour grapes: how many of his descendants would have their teeth set on edge? Kings and Chronicles at their end imply different assessments in the matter of parental responsibility. Kings blames the Babylonian assault on Jerusalem in the days of Jehoiakim (2 Kgs 24.3-4) on the failings of Manasseh three generations earlier (2 Kgs 21.11-16). Chronicles portrays Manasseh very differently: he had been able, like every other king in Jerusalem, to repent and enjoy the benefit of his repentance (2 Chron. 33.12-20)—and he is not mentioned again in this book, except as father of Amon. Ezekiel and Jeremiah participate in the same discussion as Kings and Chronicles over which king in Jerusalem was responsible for bringing the kingship of David's line to an end.
IV The indications already mentioned of a debate in these books over rival claims are strengthened by further examples of shared terminology which seem hardly coincidental. The verbs NOH ('sin') and 7J7Q ('act treacherously') found together in Ezek. 18.24 are also significantly linked in the
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summarizing note of the Chronicler's presentation of Manasseh (2 Chron. 33.19). Manasseh, as we have seen, is a key figure in the debate between the books of Kings and Chronicles over responsibility for Jerusalem's collapse. While the Chronicler adds his distinctive charge of ^UQ to the verdict of KOP! shared with Kings (and no other king of Judah is so negatively evaluated as in that shared judgment), this only underscores his insistence that repentance can be operative for any king, however wicked. Then the sole use in Ezekiel of "1SD (conventionally rendered 'atone'), outside the vision of restoration in chs. 40—48, is in Ezek. 16.63, on the very threshold of chs. 17-19. We find it used quite as significantly in the story of David, Saul, and the Gibeonites (2 Sam. 21.1-14), which the books of Samuel use as a curtain raiser for the scene of David's census. And, if there is point in that comparison, then all the more striking is the fact that terms found in the critique of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 16-17 are also at the heart of each element in the triple explanation, at the very beginning of Samuel, of the end of Eli's house: 1. ~)ED used again in 1 Sam. 3.14 2. ITD, rare in Samuel of despising Yhwh (only Eli's sons in 1 Sam. 2.30 and David in 2 Sam. 12.9,710, are so charged) and used in Ezekiel only in 16.59 and 17.16, 18, 19, of despising Yhwh's oath—and in 22.8 of his holy things; 3. the even rarer and very obscure piel of ""^S shared by 1 Sam. 2.25 and Ezek. 16.52.8 In the light of these links, another interesting correspondence between Ezekiel and Samuel is worth recording. Ezekiel is quite the largest user of ^tOttf1 rVQ ('the house of Israel') in the Hebrew Bible (83 times), followed by Jeremiah (20 times). The seven instances in Samuel (1 Sam. 7.2, 3; 2 Sam. 1.12; 6.5,15; 12.8; 16.3) and only two in Kings (1 Kgs 12.21; 20.31) may seem trivial in comparison. However, the phrase is never found in Chronicles, which uses simply b^~lET blD in 1 Chron. 13.8 and 15.28, the synoptic verses corresponding to 2 Sam. 6.5, 15; and ^"l^1 alone in 2 Chron. 11.1, which corresponds to 1 Kgs 12.21. The three rVDpluses in Samuel-Kings as compared with Chronicles share the usage— may indeed have been adjusted towards the usage—of the six instances of 'the house of Israel' in material unique to Samuel and Kings.
7. 8.
In v. 9, LXX attests miT only; MT reads mrr "Of. Elsewhere, only in Gen. 48.11 and Ps. 106.30.
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V I have proposed that IpS should be rendered 'count' more often than is generally recognized appropriate.9 I have suggested that the book of Jeremiah engages with the puzzling story of David's census as told in both Samuel and Chronicles, both by reaffirming that it is the business of shepherds to count and by limiting the entail of one generation's guilt to that same generation. We have observed that the much fuller treatment in Ezekiel of the entail of guilt is part of a discussion which includes an extended survey of the last years of the Davidic monarchy in Jerusalem. We have noted that, in these portions, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are ideologically closer to the presentation of Judah's kings in Chronicles than in Kings.10 And we have detected several links in unusual terminology between Ezekiel 16-17 and portions of Samuel not shared with Chronicles. There is a thesis lurking under these minutiae.11 The first history of the house of David, which we can (at least partially) recover from the narratives in Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, talks of sin against Yhwh in connection with only two members of that house: David himself and Manasseh.12 Neither of these is explicitly blamed for the fate of the house; and yet readers of the history could hardly be blamed for asking whether this record did hold the one or the other responsible. The book of Ezekiel takes a close interest in the royal moves associated with the fall of Jerusalem; and insists that each generation lives and dies to itself. The book of Jeremiah shares this conclusion at one portion, but without extended argument; yet it also—and even more briefly—does point a finger of blame against Manasseh (15.1-4). The interpretative move shared by Ezekiel and Jeremiah is also adopted by the Chronicler: despite adding his distinctive charge of 7I7Q to the inherited complaint about the 'sin' (KC3FI) of Manasseh, he is still able to portray Manasseh as penitent—and as drawing benefit from his penitence. Then, though the 9. This is of course its prevailing sense in the book known as Api9uoi in LXX, and since. The sense 'appoint' will result from a semantic development similar to that of HJD piel. 10. Jeremiah 15.4, however, mentions Manasseh in terms much more like Kings. 11. An aspect of my work which occasionally drew (oral) comment from Robert Carroll. 12. On recovering this first history of the house of David, see A.G. Auld, Kings without Privilege (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994). For Manasseh and 'sin', note especially 82-84.
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charge of 7JJD is used in a distinctive fashion in Chronicles, it is also true that both verb and noun are a feature of the book of Ezekiel (14.12, 13; 15.8; 17.20; 18.24; 20.27; 39.23,26). The first of the instances in the chapters of interest to us in this study is precisely a charge of treachery by Babylon's puppet in Jerusalem against Yhwh (17.20).
VI Re-reading Kings and Chronicles after Jeremiah and Ezekiel encourages the reflection that, as the period since the fall of Jerusalem lengthened, readers of these competing accounts of the end of the monarchy had been less and less interested in the whys and wherefores of the fate of kings of the past, or even in a possible future for kings, and more concerned about their own status before God—the kings in story became illustrative of any person. It is in reflecting on the last kings of Judah that Ezekiel draws general conclusions about guilt and the generations. And it is with Ezekiel's conclusion about 'everyman' that the book of Samuel begins. The threefold evaluation there of the house of Eli starts in the most general of terms, even though the house of Eli is its target: 'If a person sins against a man.. .but, if a person sins against Yhwh...' (1 Sam. 2.25) and continues 'who honour me I'll honour, and who despise me shall be slighted' (2.30). However, it moves on in a terrible culminating divine oath to threaten (the several generations of) a whole house: 'the guilt of the house of Eli shall not be cleared/paid/atoned ("ISSfT 87) by sacrifice or offering forever' (3.14). Has the author of Samuel a fundamental objection to the teaching about forgiveness, or is he simply pointing to notable exceptions: the house of Eli? the house of Saul? the house of David? Other biblical books may be silent over the pithy saying about sour grapes which Ezekiel and Jeremiah consigned to the past; but many of them are no less interested in the issue. Jeremiah 23.1-4 neatly links divine '[accounting' to human/royal failure to 'count' while Jer. 31.28-30 quite as neatly states that all eaters of sour grapes are responsible for their own dental discomfort. However, the puzzle of David's census still haunts us. Inasfar as he was guilty, punishment by the deity was appropriate—and sheep do pay for the inattention of their shepherd. And yet he had arranged a count of his sheep—and so why was he guilty?
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VII The precise terms of the expression in Jer. 23.1-4, 'counting against you the evil of your deeds', are unique in the Hebrew Bible, yet closely related to 'I will count [its] evil (ill?"!—here the more common fern, form) against the world' in Isa. 13.11. The debits for which the deity more often holds persons to 'account' are more often specified as 'guilt' (D2JK), as in Lev. 18.25; Isa. 26.21; Amos 3.2; Lam. 4.22;13 or 'sin' (TINBn), as in Exod. 32.34; Jer. 14.10; Hos. 8.13; 9.9;14 or 'rebellion' (PCS), as in Ps. 89.33. Jeremiah's restatement (32.18) of the familiar topic (~bK fTDK ]1U nbCQl DiT"l!"fN DiT]H pTl, 'but repaying fathers' guilt into the lap of their sons after them') rather confirms the appropriateness of rendering IpS by 'count': 'repaying' presupposes having kept a 'reckoning'. In a further four familiar contexts, all in the Pentateuch, we find it stated that Yhwh 'counts fathers' guilt against sons...' (Exod. 20.5; 34.7; Num. 14.18; Deut. 5.9), and in each of these passages the entail of the father's guilt stretches to the third or fourth generation. It is often suggested that this arose from the simple observation that all the members of an extended household would suffer from penalties imposed on their head. However, the specification these passages offer does also meet the case of Manasseh's sin and the fall of Jerusalem a few generations later. Indeed we might extrapolate from Ezekiel's arguing from the story of the late kings to general rules, and suggest that these Pentateuchal texts had drawn on the alternative story of the late kings in the book of Kings for their generalized rules. In none of these four Pentateuchal texts does this statement stand unqualified. In the near-identical versions of the decalogue, a concluding 'of those who hate me' limits the provision; and it is immediately followed by the positive 'but acts loyally towards thousands: those who love me and keep my commands' (Exod. 20.6//Deut. 5.10). Then in Num. 14.17-18, the arrangement of these points is different. Here the statement of Yhwh's loyalty towards thousands follows the claim that he is slow to anger, and is itself followed by the cautionary note that 'making outright clearance' is not how he behaves (Hpr tfb HpD); and it is in explanation of that point that it is recalled that he 'counts fathers' guilt against sons...' 13. There are two further instances in MT of Jer. 25.12 and 36.31; however, in both cases LXX attests only the vb. IpS, but not the related obj. DIDN. 14. In Jer. 14.10 and Hos. 8.13; 9.9, we find DPNan IpS1! DDIJJ TIDr, and so 'count/reckon' is suitable forlpS.
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Quite who is [not] cleared is left unstated in MT—we owe the addition in English of 'the guilty' to the LXX interpretation, although the explanatory TÓV EVOXOV added there is more strictly 'the liable'. Finally, in the closely related Exod. 34.6-7, a further phrase—'lifting guilt and rebellion and sin' (DTT^K DTT^K DTT^K)–appears between 'loyalty towards thousands' and 'not making a clearance'; and this addition sets up an explicit tension in understanding the divine character between 'lifting guilt' and the following 'counting guilt'. VIII Since first proposing it-publicly in a paper which Robert Carroll gave warm support,151 have developed much further the thesis that Kings and Chronicles were joint beneficiaries of a shared but puzzling inheritance. Each 'solved' the inherited riddles differently. The story they shared had reported David as confessing his sin, and used 'sin' in its evaluation of Manasseh; but it had also reported a long prayer of Solomon in which he asked his god to forgive sin when confessed in prayer. The Chronicler grasped at this remedy and rebuilt Manasseh as penitent sinner. But the author of Kings on the other hand took the report of Manasseh as sinner as his explanation for the ultimate fall of his house. This article has suggested how Jeremiah and Ezekiel may have contributed to these separate developments of the royal tale. In so doing, it develops a further element of that 1983 paper: prophets before Moses. Not only did Prophets precede Torah in many important respects, but some Latter Prophets had also preceded Former Prophets in their musings about guilt. 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge' had been current before it was criticized in the books of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. The Chroniclerwas influenced by their rethinking. However, the formula familiar from the Ten Commandments may have been a reactionary restatement of the older principle, informed by the account in Kings of Manasseh and the fall of Jerusalem.
15. A.G. Auld, 'Prophets through the Looking Glass: Between Writings and Moses', JSOT21 (1983), 3-23; R.P. Carroll, 'Poets Not Prophets', JSOT27 (1983), 25-31.
READING DAVID'S MIND: INFERENCE, EMOTION AND THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE*
Hugh S. Pyper
'What is this thing you have done?' say David's servants to him in 2 Sam. 12.21. Well might they be puzzled. While his infant son has been lying sick, David has gone through all the motions of the most extreme mourning—fasting, praying, lying on the ground for days on end—only to get up, dress and sit down to a good meal once he hears the child is dead. Their bafflement is reflected in the range of the reactions of commentators to this text. Indeed, part of the peculiar interest of this episode is that here we have what might be called a mise en abyme of incomprehension. Within the text itself, the difficulty of reading David's actions is registered and the royal servants stand like a Greek chorus voicing a bewilderment shared by the reader.1 David's reply to their challenge only compounds the mystery: 'While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, "Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?" But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me' (2 Sam. 12.23). David's speech consists of questions, not answers. At its core is a repetition of the central question of interpreting actions and motive, this time raised by David in respect of * This article leads off in a different direction from aspects of the doctoral work I did under Robert Carroll's supervision (see Pyper 1996). In the context of work on fathers and sons, and on the communication of emotion, it is a pleasure to record my debt to his unstinting support and encouragement to me and so many other academic proteges, and to the depth of feeling and commitment to his friends and to a true appreciation of the Hebrew Bible that he at times hid beneath his unique brand of iconoclastic Irish wit. 1. Robert Alter sees this passage as one that 'powerfully manifests that human capacity for surprise, and for paradoxical behavior, that is one of the hallmarks of the great biblical characters' (1999: 261). In the same vein, Baruch Halpern entitles the first chapter of his David's Secret Demons 'The Surprising David' (2001: 3).
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God. The scene ends there, with no indication as to the reaction of his servants to his explanation. His enigmatic statement is left dangling with no indication as to whether it lessened or heightened the disquiet of his entourage. This pregnant silence has provoked commentators into a plethora of conflicting interpretations. At one end of the spectrum, we find Brueggemann's heroic picture of a David who now knows that 'the issues of his life are not to be found in cringing fear before the powers of death' (1969: 491). A writer of a much older school called it 'a moment of clear spiritual vision' vouchsafed to David when he pierced the veil of dim anticipation of the Old Covenant and gained a conviction of the existence of a future world (Krummacher 1982: 378-79). These writers agree in seeing this sentence as an affirmation. An entirely different tone is heard by Alter, however. He reads the 'stark simplicity' of these words as indicating that David has a newly vulnerable sense of his own mortality as for the first time he speaks 'not out of political need but in his existential nakedness' (1999: 262). This interpretation contrasts in turn with Würthwein's severe condemnation of David as one who 'knows neither God nor commandment' (1974: 26) in his cynical abandonment of human decency. His David callously takes the death of his own son as a cause for rejoicing. This potentially shocking inference is given plausibility by readers such as Hertzberg (1964: 316) and Gerleman (1977) who point out that the death of the child can be construed as a positive benefit to David. It is an indication that the transference of David's sin to the child which Nathan predicts in 2 Sam. 12.14 has occurred and therefore, by implication, David is no longer himself in peril from God's punishment. Once the child has died, David knows he is in the clear. In a similar vein, Halpern sees David's response as an indication of his 'modernity' and his 'practical approach to the question of petitions to God' (2001: 37). Noll sees this reaction as part of a pattern of 'pragmatic optimism' which characterizes David's later career (1997: 61). Other readers stress the ambiguity we are uncovering. Perdue asks specifically, 'Are these the words of a grief-stricken father, or of a callous ruler realizing he had failed to negate Nathan' s prophecy predicting trouble from the king's own house, a prediction whose initial sign was the death of the child?' (1984: 77). Whybray wonders,'.. .was this genuine piety, or was it a calculated attempt to impress his followers?' (1968: 36). Ackerman, who points out that the narrator leaves the reader no option but
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confusion, sets out the dilemma as follows: 'Is the story depicting a cool calculating relationship to God? Or does it show David's resilient faith that accepts the child's death as divine judgment after his pleas for divine mercy have had no effect?' (1990: 45). Whether in praise, condemnation or puzzlement, commentators react to this text, and react strongly. There are least two features of this episode which may prompt this: first, its explicit signal that the readers within the text, David's entourage, are themselves baffled; second (perhaps the two are related), the fact that it involves a father in the death of his son and a God who takes an innocent child's life in place of his murderous parent's. There is an explicit gap of comprehension in the text and an explicit gap over what I shall later argue is a peculiarly involving theme for the reader of the Bible, the relations between father and son. More immediately^ we can turn to explore the fact that most of the explanatory and evaluative comments above are couched in terms of David's motivation, but that depends on reading the emotional colour of his remark: What was David thinking or feeling, and do we approve? But David is just a set of black marks on white paper, when all is said and done. Any question of motivation for a literary character arises from a complex process involving the creation of a sophisticated virtual entity in front of the text of which questions of motivation and psychological state can be asked, built on tacit assumptions about the coherence of speech and action, language and mental state. In this process, such a verse operates rather like the familiar optical illusion of the cube which may seem as if it pushes into or sticks out beyond the plane of the paper, whereas it consists of a simple pattern of lines in a plane. For the human interpreter, the latter is the hardest way to see it and we are left in a state of bafflement because there are no cues to disambiguate its orientation, no shading or shadows. By interfering with our inferential construction of David, the verse can bring that process of construction to the fore. We are forced to consider what is happening when we ascribe mental and emotional states to any character. The Language of Emotion in the Hebrew Scriptures In this case, as is common in biblical narrative, it is notable that the narrator never claims to offer us a glimpse of David's inner reactions. David's emotions are not explained. Rather, his actions are described. This distinction, however, is itself problematic. The vocabulary of emotion in biblical Hebrew is a vocabulary not of inner states but of public display and
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bodily change. We do not hear what David felt about the death of his son; we are shown him weeping, tearing garments, fasting and harming himself. Mourning is about public display, not inner grief, in these texts. It is telling that the verb bon ('weep, mourn') often appears in its hithpael form, which most often implies 'putting on a display' of the action of the verb. In 2 Sam. 14.2, this form of the verb is used when Joab inveigles the wise woman of Teqoa into 'acting the part' of a mourner. Not only is the focus here on David's actions rather than what we would call his emotions. The general vocabulary of what we construe as emotion in Hebrew itself draws on bodily change and disturbance: nostrils smoke, kidneys are wrung, hearts are pierced. In his study of some aspects of this phenomenon, Mark S. Smith concludes that it reflects 'an ancient association of emotions with body parts where these emotions are felt' (1998: 434). If we ask what David's emotional state was in distinction from his physiological reactions and overt acts, is this a question that the author of the text could answer? Could it even be formulated? It is not clear to me how such a question could be posed in Biblical Hebrew. Yet we may need to go further than Smith in this regard if we pay heed to the work of the cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley (1992). He propounds a theory of the emotions as reactions to the alteration of the individual's plans and perceptions. Bereavement, for instance, he argues, provokes a massive emotional reaction because it faces the survivors with an irreversible and unfamiliar change to the 'plot' of their lives. Furthermore, he points out that there are cultural differences in how such reactions are construed. Conveniently for us in our exploration of biblical material, he makes an explicit use of fictional narrative in his study, drawing the analogy between narrative emplotment and the life plans which patients construct for themselves. Intriguingly, one of his case studies is of the emotional reactions of the heroes of the Iliad. He argues that the Greek perception that human destiny, the plot of one's life, if you like, is in the hands of the gods is reflected in an absence of mental categories in Homeric descriptions of emotional scenes. Homer describes a physical, bodily reaction without abstracting from it a psychological reaction. In Oatley's words, If it were possible to strip the text of anachronistic retrojections, would we find that ancient Greek mentality was different from ours? Could preclassical people even be so radically different as to be not conscious at all and not burdened with existential anxiety? The evidence is thin but suggestive. (1992: 235)
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To regard ourselves as minds which have feeling states which are expressed through the body is, he suggests, a modern interpretation. 'Mind, it seems, was not always an aspect of human experience', he writes. Rather, mind was 'a discovery. Only once it was made did it seem self-evident. In its discovery it brought itself into being' (1992: 226). Although the notion of mind may seem self-evident to us now, there have been and are other ways of construing the impact of events on the human being. Oatley's work raises the question whether even the most cautious interpretation of the Hebrew vocabulary of physiological events in terms of mental states does not leap several stages of questioning. We might ask, for example, what the Biblical Hebrew word for 'mind' is. The word usually translated this way is the word also used for the heart as a physical organ. Are we to conclude that Hebrew lacks a word for 'mind', or that it uses the word for 'heart' as a metaphor for mind, or that these are anachronistic distinctions and questions? Likewise, if we attempt to enquire what David 'felt' about the death of his son, are we addressing a question to the text which is based on alien cultural and psychological presuppositions? Is it an anachronism to take phrases such as 'smoking nostrils' as metaphorical expressions of emotional states? Metaphors for what? Could David have answered even if he had a vocabulary to use in these matters? Did David have a 'mind'? Note that this is not to say that David was some sort of automaton or subhuman, or that he did not have the range of experiences and reactions that we have, but to raise the question of whether we can assume that his self-understanding was the same as ours. Nor does this prevent a modern reader from seeking to infer a character's emotions and feelings. We do, however, need to be aware of what we may be assuming. One reason the text of Samuel may seem to us ambiguous is because we ask it questions that are not in its conceptual universe. Yet for modern readers these questions insist on being asked and the servants' question, whatever answer they might have expected, hangs over the text. However it is interpreted, there is a puzzle here which David's speech only deepens. So how do we proceed to deal with its ambiguity? David and Death Like all readers, we cast around for context. The obvious move is to investigate how David is displayed as reacting to death at other points in his story. For example, the nearest indication of David's reaction to a death
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is in 2 Sam. 12.5 where he makes a strong spontaneous response to Nathan's parable of the death of a sheep and to the deprivation of a poor man. Does his fasting and lying on the ground represent a similar outburst at the news of the child's sickness? On the other hand, his cynical dismissal of the death of his crack troops in the siege at Kabbah which leads to Uriah's death with the callous phrase 'the sword devours now one and now another' (2 Sam. 11.25) lends force to the argument that 2 Sam. 12.23 represents the same disregard of the emotional consequences of death. Such an impression is all the stronger as there is a similar rhetorical balance to the statements which may indicate the trite application of a stock phrase. To use Oatley's terms, there is no adverse consequence for David's own life-plan in these deaths. In the immediate context, then, ambiguity persists. But the problem spreads further. Throughout the books of Samuel, David is depicted in a puzzling variety of responses to death. It is a commonplace to observe that the major scenes of mourning in which he is involved are for figures whose death might on the face of it seem to be a benefit to him. His great lament over the deaths of Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1 mourns the loss of one who had sought to kill him and one who might be seen as an obstacle to his claims to the throne. The Amalekite messenger, we infer, expected a somewhat different reaction when he brought the news of their deaths to David. In 2 Samuel 3, the extended scene of mourning for Abner son of Ner, the erstwhile head of the rival Saulide camp, also holds aspects which are puzzling. David's mourning is public and theatrical with a seemingly staged ritual where the people urge him to eat and he publicly refuses. The point is explicitly made that this pleased the people, and that they then understood David was completely blameless in this matter. Is this the noble-hearted king acknowledging the death of a worthy adversary and a potential ally? A more suspicious reading might wonder how far all this is convenient to the king, or to the image of the king. One might also see a veiled criticism in the very explicitness of the account as it appears here in 2 Samuel. The wide-eyed acceptance of the king's innocence goes beyond what might be expected, raising the doubts that superfluous assurances always raise. By the conclusion of the episode, David ends up with a rival eliminated and the blame placed on Joab's personal vendetta. The leader of the still-disaffected tribes is removed in a way that leaves David as a viable candidate to step into his place. A very similar point might be made over the death of Ishbosheth, which explicitly provokes the declaration of loyalty of the tribes of Israel at
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Hebron. Here, too, there is a rare example of an explicit flashback in biblical narrative drawing the analogy between David's treatment of the Amalekite messenger in 2 Samuel 1 and his execution of the messengers in 2 Samuel 4. In turn, this may lead us to question whether David's mourning over Saul and Jonathan is not itself more for public than personal consumption. Over all these episodes of mourning, then, there hang for us unresolved questions of emotional motivation. David and the Death of Sons If David's response to death in general is hard to determine from the text, then what about the more specific matter of the death of sons? Several such events are recorded in 2 Samuel. His eldest son Amnon is killed by his half-brother Absalom, and Absalom himself dies at the hand of Joab. In addition to this, David is told in 2 Sam. 13.30 that all his sons save Absalom have been killed. Can we gather anything from the way in which these stories are told, remembering all the while that the verse we are dealing with precedes all these in the narrative sequence? His reaction to the death of Absalom, coming as it does at the climax of one of the most masterly pieces of narrative suspense in the Hebrew Bible, is the heart-rending cry, 'O Absalom my son, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!' (2 Sam. 18.33) Its incoherent repetition catches the authentic note of unmeditated grief, which it would tax even a master of deception like David to fake, but in addition we are not left totally without help in disambiguating his reaction this time. For once, the narrator explicitly tells us that the king was 'seized with trembling' (um) i or 'violently agitated', or, as the RSV would have it, 'deeply moved'. Once again, what we have here is a verb which describes action, visible bodily convulsion, not a word which necessarily conveys an inner mental state. What, importantly, this word does seem to imply is that this action is involuntary; David is not in control of this reaction as he could be over his fasting or his falling to the ground. If this is so, then where now is the stoicism or faith which commentators profess to find in 2 Sam. 12.23? We should recall that here the people's reaction is not the approbation they felt over the mourning for Abner, but a pall of mourning is laid on them which Joab interprets to the king as a potential disaster for his public relations. Now the king has to dissimulate in earnest, putting a brave face on his grief and going to sit in the gate.
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Dissimulation is certainly in his repertoire, both here and in the episode where he pretends to be a madman in the court of Achish. The more David's mourning for Absalom is depicted as genuine and heartfelt, however, the less convincing is his reaction to the death of Bathsheba's son. As we have seen, the most favourable interpretation of his reaction there is a steadfast confidence in the face of death. Has this hardwon attitude over the death of the infant collapsed, or is he in fact only now confronted with what it means to lose a son?2 In either case, the other passage where David reacts to the death of sons might throw some light on the matter. The passage in question is 2 Sam. 13.30-39. It comes at the end of a chapter which is mysterious throughout if we try to delve into David's motivation for his action, or inaction. Why did he do nothing to his eldest son Amnon after he rapes his half-sister Tamar? Why does David decline Tamar's brother Absalom's invitation to his feast, two years after the event? What are we to infer from the fact that he himself raises the question with Absalom as to why Amnon should go? Is this suspicion? If so, why does he consent to Amnon and the rest of the royal sons going? Are we to read this in the context of those other cases, discussed above, where he can be interpreted as letting another remove an obstacle from his path? Two announcements of the death of sons occur in this chapter. When David in 2 Sam. 13.30 is told of the rumour that all his sons are dead, he tears his garments and falls to the earth. The consummate cunning with which the narrator has Jonadab then announce that Amnon alone is dead serves to make what could have been a devastating announcement seem softened by contrast. But we may then take leave to ask how devastating an announcement the death of guilty Amnon would have been. Far from clarifying this point, the rest of the passage becomes beclouded with ambiguities. After Absalom flees, we read that David 'mourned for his son' (2 Sam. 13.37). Which son: Absalom or Amnon? The sentence bears both interpretations, and again what does it tell us about David's inner disposition? These problems are compounded as we move into ch. 14. The chapter begins by intimating that Joab, David's general, has noted that the king's heart (or mind!, db) wasbv his son Absalom, who is in self-imposed exile after killing his brother Amnon. Immediately we hit on 2. In his novel Le Roi David, Guy Rachet (1985:421) expands the account of the death of Bathsheba's child by putting in David's mouth a prayer of thankfulness that God has taken the unnamed infant before he has grown attached to it, rather than exposing him to the horror of the loss of a mature son.
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an interpretative crux which is not resolvable by textual criticism. The problem of interpretation here is due to the fact that the preposition ^U is intrinsically ambiguous in a way that is not reproducible in English. Was David 'for' or 'against' his son? The decision between the two positions depends on how the previous verse, 2 Sam. 13.39, is interpreted, but it too is ambiguous. At this crux of the story the phrase expressing David's attitude to his son is capable of radically different interpretations. In 2 Sam. 13.39, this is partly due to a problem in the syntax of the MT, but this merely emphasizes the point that the interpretative decisions by commentators as to whether the king is hostile to his son or not have to depend on judgments not reached on linguistic grounds. As a result of these various possibilities, translations of this verse cover at least the following range: And the spirit of the king longed to go forth to Absalom; for he was comforted about Amnon, seeing he was dead. (RSV) King David's heart ached to see Absalom, but he was consoled by now for Amnon; what was the use, seeing he was dead. (Rosenberg 1997: 82) And David gradually began to lose his abhorrence of Absalom, for he was comforted about Amnon seeing he was dead. (Hertzberg 1964: 328) And David's urge to sally forth against Absalom was spent, for he was consoled over Amnon, who was dead. (Alter 1999: 274) David longed intensely to march out against Absalom, for he was grieved about Amnon that he was dead. (Jongeling, cited in Fokkelman 1981:126)
The fact that such different translations are possible indicates graphically that the decisions made reveal more about the assumptions about the dynamics of such relationships that the various commentators bring to the text than they do about the text itself. Each translator has come to a decision on the question of the emotions behind David's relationship to his sons on very fluid textual evidence. Is David reconciled to Amnon's death or does he resent his murder? Does he long for Absalom or seek to attack him? Is 'going out' to one's son an expression of loving longing, or of military aggression? This brief review of such textual evidence as there is for the narrative's handling of the theme of David's mourning, and in particular mourning for his sons, serves, I would submit, to emphasize rather than to reduce the tension between the possible interpretations of David's enigmatic actions after the death of the anonymous child.
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So how far does this comparative material take us in disambiguating or coming to terms with the verse from which we started, 2 Sam. 12.23? The attempts of commentators to do so, more or less convincing as they are, reveal as much about the attitudes and assumptions of the commentators on the text rather than anything to do with the construction of the character of David. My own contribution is to argue that what is highlighted here is that there is a wider issue of David, death and the death of sons and that this verse, in its ambiguity, brings an issue over the nature of biblical narrative and commentary upon it to a head. The remark 'I shall go to him, but he will not return to me' contains in itself a sense of the unidirectionality of narrative and plot. In his Reading for the Plot (1992), Peter Brooks explains the tension of narrative in terms of Freud's notion of the death drive, which stands in constant opposition to the drive of survival. What keeps us reading a narrative, he argues, is a paradoxical tension between the desire of closure, for the story to reach resolution, and a desire for delay so that we can experience the excitement of anticipation and uncertainty for as long as possible. The art of the great story teller is to hold these in an exquisite balance so that he can spin out his tale, holding out both the promise of closure and the allure of incident. Most of us know the excitement of reading with mounting excitement toward the end of a novel, anxiously counting the pages to the end both in impatience to reach the denouement and a dread that the experience will be over. Once the story is over, we can experience a kind of bereavement. The paper people who have become our mental companions are now seen to be bounded in their fictional world, and their fate is sealed, fixed in one narrative form. The reader, any reader, reads any text in a sense as a survivor, as the one who observes the twists of the plot, powerless to step into the story to intervene and yet one who, however traumatic the tale, walks away at the end and puts down the book. Death is at the heart of narrative, on this account, and part of the seduction of narrative is that it activates that drive in us. In the story we have been studying, the death is that of a son. David has survived his own son and is put explicitly in the place of interpreting the story as he reacts to the servants' whispering. He overhears their conversation, a conversation in which they are debating the advisability of communicating the fact of his son's death to him, and interprets not the content of their speech, but
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the act of secretive speech itself. 'When David saw that his servants were whispering together David perceived that the child was dead; and David said "Is the child dead?" They said, "He is dead'" (2 Sam. 12.19). Note the order of the narrated events here. David first perceives the death of his son and then asks the question, which cannot then be a search for information. The perlocutionary effect of his remark is to demonstrate to the servants that he has understood the death of the child merely from the fact that they were whispering. It is not what the servants said, but the way that they said it that David picks up on. David reads, if you like, the secret of death from the reticence of his servants. This serves again only to heighten the sense of the inadequacy of the bare report of David's reaction to disambiguate the reaction which we as readers have to the text. And his reaction at one level echoes the reaction of any reader to any story, returned to the plot of his own life. The books of Samuel have a peculiar interest in this regard because they are about survival predicated on genealogy, family, monarchy. The survival of the political entity of Israel is mapped on to a family saga and the tensions between father and son are heightened when the son occupies the ambiguous position of being the hope of the survival of the dynasty and yet also the constant reminder that his kingly father is mortal. The indispensable heir can so easily become the threatening rival, as Absalom proves. The Poetics of Child Sacrifice The work of the psychoanalytic critic Bennett Simon would suggest that this particular problematic has direct implications for the poetics of the narrative. This may imply that, far from being an anomaly, the enigmatic nature of the verses we have been examining is to be expected. Simon draws an explicit parallel between tragic power, the death of children, and the problems of narrative. His thesis is that tragic drama is 'fueled by the problematic of the birth and death of the family' (1988:3). Simon goes on to argue that stories where this continuity is threatened manifest an anxiety over the process of narration itself: 'an anxiety and concern about generating and propagating stories' (1988: 4). This anxiety, he then goes on to explain, can be manifested in the formal distortions and silences of tragic texts: 'Twisted and interrupted narration, including silences, signifies and is consonant with twisted and interrupted generational relationships' (1988: 8) In the Greek dramatic
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literature, the death of children is one particular event which language fails to encompass. Simon cites in particular the reticence of the chorus in its account of Iphigenia's death in Aeschylus' Agamemnon. After describing the pathetic sight of Iphigenia on the altar, the voice of the chorus falters: 'What happened next I saw not, neither speak it' (1. 248). Such faltering is also to be found in the Hebrew Bible. Here the reticence of the text of Judges over the death of Jephthah's daughter (Judg. 11.39), the horror of Israel at the Moabite king's sacrifice of his son (2 Kgs 3.27), Saul's confrontation with Israel over the threat to Jonathan (1 Sam. 14.45) and the diffidence of the messengers who bring the news of Absalom's death (2 Sam. 18.28-32) fall into place. Most directly relevant to our present considerations, however, is the 'whispering' of David's servants about the death of the child (2 Sam. 12.18). Quite explicitly, they are afraid to speak the news of the child's death aloud. It is David who has to bring the issue to open speech, but it is David who also is the focus of the textual silence brought on by the abrupt cessation of the narrative, which is unable to respond to his enigmatic verdict on the place of death in his own story. What these faltering stories also have in common is the notion of sacrifice, the idea that the child killed will by his or her death ensure survival for others. This is transparently clear in the King of Moab's sacrifice, but Jephthah's daughter's death is the price of Jepthah's victory and so of the survival of Israel. Saul makes out that his willingness to sacrifice Jonathan is to avoid God's wrath otherwise falling on the people. The whole thrust of Joab's argument with David over Absalom which ends in Joab's breach of David's command by killing the trapped prince, is that this one death will save the kingdom for his father and preserve the people. In the same way, the death of the unnamed child ensures David's survival, and, we learn later in the story, makes way for the birth of Solomon who is to be the successor of David. Yet Simon also points out the fallacy of this solution from a clinician's point of view. 'The act [of sacrifice] generates so much guilt, desire for revenge and dread about who may be sacrificed next that there is a propensity to commit violent extrusion again whenever a new threat arises, from within or outside the family' (1998: 24). This certainly seems to be borne out in David's household, and in the subsequent history of the kings of Israel and Judah. The death of the child is only the beginning of a series of deaths among David's sons which lead to a sad story of conflict within and between ruling families in the later kingdoms. These sacrifices
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do not bring peace, but a heightened anxiety as each individual deals with the possibility that he or she may be required to be the sacrifice to end the next round of conflict. David's ambivalent statement in 2 Sam. 12.23, then, can be read as a symptom of the unease of the narrative at the disruption of succession, of the need for the death of a child to ensure the life of the family, and yet the threat to the Davidic line that the possibility of this death makes manifest. David's enigmatic words accept through their rhetorical questions the inevitability of his life journey, which he may seek to evade but cannot escape. The silence of the text in response to these words, the silence the commentators strive to fill, is certainly a silence of death, the child's death and proleptically David's death. It is also a silence of life. David and David's dynasty live through the death of his son. This hiatus, whether accident or contrivance, lays bear the anxiety over succession intrinsic to narrative.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackerman, J.S. 1990 'Knowing Good and Evil: A Literary Analysis of the Court History in 2 Samuel 9-20 and 1 Kings 1-2', JBL 109: 41-64. Alter, R. 1 999 The David Story: A Translation with Commentary ofl and 2 Samuel (New York: W.W. Norton). Brooks, P. 1992 Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Brueggemann, W. 1969 'The Trusted Creature', CBQ 3 1 : 484-98. Fokkelman, J.P. 1 98 1 Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel. I. King David (Assen: Van Gorcum). Gerleman, G. 1977 'Schuld und Suhne: Erwagungen zu 2. Samuel 12', in H. Donner, R. Hanhart and R. Smend (eds.), Beitrdge zur alttestamentlischen Theologie: Festschrift fur Walter Zimmerli zum 70. Geburtstag (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Halpern, B. 2001 David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Hertzberg, H.W. 1 964 / and II Samuel trans John Bowden (London: SCM Press). Krummacher, F.W. 1 982 [ 1 868] David, The King of Israel (Grand Rapids: Baker Books).
86 Noll, K.L. 1997 Oatley, K. 1992 Perdue, L.G. 1984 Pyper, H.S. 1996 Rachet, G. 1985 Rosenberg, D. 1997 Simon, B. 1988 Smith, M.S. 1998
Sense and Sensitivity The Faces of 'David (JSOTSup, 242; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Best Laid Schemes: The Psychology of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). ' "Is there anyone left of the house of Saul. . .?" Ambiguity and the Characterization of David in the Succession Narrative', JSOT30: 67-84. David as Reader: 2 Sam. 12:1-15 and the Poetics of Fatherhood (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Le Roi David (Paris: Editions Denoe'l). The Book of David (New York, Harmony). Tragic Drama and the Family: Psychoanalytic Studies from Aeschylus to Beckett (New Haven: Yale University Press). 'The Heart and Innards in Israelite Emotional Expressions: Notes from Anthropology and Psychobiology', JBL 117: 427-36.
Whybray, R.N. The Succession Narrative: A Study of II Samuel 9-20; 1 Kings 1 and 2 (Lon1968 don: SCM Press). Wiirthwein, E. 1974 Die Erzdhlung von der Thronfolge Davidstheologische oder politische Geschichtsschreibung? (Zurich: Theologische Verlag).
PROPHECY IN THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH AND THE HISTORICAL PROPHET
Hans M. Barstad
One of several, lasting impacts of Robert's Jeremiah research, for instance in his commentary (Carroll 1986: 55-64), has been the attempt to bring some sophistication into the discussion about the 'historical' Jeremiah. Whereas Philip Davies appears to regard biblical prophecy as a purely literary phenomenon (Davies 2000), Carroll may suggest that 'The "historical" Jeremiah may still be there hidden by or weighed down under the additions and interpretations of countless editors and transformed beyond recognition, so that we cannot now rediscover him with any assurance' (Carroll 1986: 64). And, notwithstanding his overall interest in the final form of text, Robert may still write: 'But the problems of the composition and editing of the book remain the key to the interpretative approach to Jeremiah' (37). In the present contribution, I intend to take a closer look at prophecy in the book of Jeremiah in the light of ancient Near Eastern prophecy. I am also interested in to what degree views of prophecy in the Jeremiah scroll may throw some light also on the problem of 'historical' prophecy, including the question of the 'historical' Jeremiah. Prophecy and Divination New insights into the nature of ancient Near Eastern divination have contributed considerably to our understanding of biblical prophecy also. A summing-up of comparative studies within this field may be found in a recent volume edited by Nissinen (Nissinen 2000). One insight from recent research is that the former, strict division between 'prophecy' on one side and 'divination' on the other, is blurred. It has gradually become more and more likely that we are dealing with different—sometimes even overlapping—ways of accessing the divine will
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rather than with totally divergent or conflicting systems (Grabbe 1991: 151;Nissinen 1998: 6,167-69; Bowen 1999:419; Miller 2000: 174,18586; Thelle 2002). All over the ancient Near East various forms of religious specialists (priests, prophets, diviners) were called upon when it was considered convenient to get access to the divine will. Perhaps the most important consequence of the new developments for biblical studies concerns the relationship between the kind of prophecy described in historiographical texts and what is found in the prophetical books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve). Not many years ago, it was commonly thought that these two different corpora contained (more or less) two distinctly different types of prophetic activity. Whereas the former was more 'primitive', and dominated by oracles of salvation, the kind of prophecy found in the latter (e.g. Jeremiah), represented a more developed and theologically more acceptable phenomenon, dominated by oracles of doom. There were several reasons behind such opinions. From an evolutionary viewpoint, prophecy was regarded as a phenomenon that had developed through stages. From a (Protestant) theological angle the great prophets of doom were thought to represent the very height of ancient Israelite religion. Also, many scholars misunderstood the cognitive status of the rhetorical and poetic prophetic words of doom, and felt that these were too harsh to be taken conditionally. Whenever there were glimpses of hope or oracles of salvation for Israel to be found in the prophetic books, such statements were often regarded as 'later additions' to the texts. Religious specialists would give their answers, which were believed to come directly from the deity, whether negative or positive. These assurances of success, or statements of ill-luck, could be directed towards the enquirer, or they might involve a third party. Divination was accomplished in various ways (auditions, visions, dreams, or other techniques), but always through an intermediary, a 'seer' or a 'prophet'. To define 'prophecy' more closely is, as we know, notoriously difficult (Blenkinsopp 1995: 123-29; Nissinen 1998: 5). The use of conventional terminology like 'words of judgment' and 'words of salvation' is strongly oversimplifying the matter. Moreover, such language usage reflects the idea that hardships and misfortunes are regarded as punishment from the deities whereas prosperity and success are interpreted as divine reward. For the sake of simplicity, I shall, nevertheless, retain these terms. Especially in times of national crisis, it was vital to contact the gods in order to know the outcome of a disastrous situation. Characteristic are the
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words of lament in Ps. 74.9: 'We do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long'. Among the several disasters where mediators were needed was drought (Barstad 1984: 67-73 and passim). Lack of rain for longer periods would lead to a breakdown of the agricultural economic system. When the worst came to the worst the result would be famine. Since lack of precipitation, moreover, was explained theologically as punishment from the gods, it could also be the role of the intermediary to ask the deity for rain. In the book of Jeremiah, consequently, it is clearly stated that it is Yhwh who provides the rain (Jer. 3.3; 5.24; 14.22; cf. also Amos 4.7). In Jeremiah 14, we find a (Deuteronomistic?) description of a disastrous drought. The schematized narrative in Jeremiah 14 also contains confession of sins (v. 7) and prayer for God's intervention. Jeremiah, however, who functions as intermediator between the people and God, refuses to help (Jer. 14.11-12): 'The Lord said to me: "Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and cereal offering, I will not accept them; but I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence"'. According to the 'common theology of the ancient Near East' the deities not only ruled the course of history and provided prosperity and happiness, but they could also withdraw their blessing and punish their worshippers if they violated the divine laws (Barstad 2001: 67 and passim). This 'common theology of the ancient Near East' is richly attested also in the book of Jeremiah. In classic, Deuteronomistic(?) variations, we find the concept formulated in Jer. 9.12-16 and in 16.9-13. Against the background of the above, we shall have to disagree with Philip Davies, who asks: 'What, then, is the connection, or what are the connections, between social intermediation and the production of the prophetic literature—if any?' (Davies 1996: 49). His answer is that there are no connections. Davies, in my view, has asked the correct question, but has provided the wrong answer. If, for instance, we accept that 'intermediaries' were active in Iron Age Palestine, we shall have to assume that they were of a similar kind as those found 'everywhere else' in the ancient Near East in this period. And if what information about prophecy that we may come across in the Jeremiah scroll corresponds to a 'common pattern of mediation', this cannot be irrelevant to the problem of historical prophecy, or even to the 'historical' Jeremiah.
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It was above all in times of war that the need for divine intervention was felt most urgently. On the whole, the impact of war on ancient Near Eastern society can hardly be overestimated. Since war was so very much a part of daily life, it is not so extraordinary that its repercussions are felt 'on every page' also of the Hebrew Bible. In the Jeremiah scroll, as we know, the main narrative is the story of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. It should come as no surprise, then, that consultation through intermediaries so as to get access to the divine will occurs also in the book of Jeremiah. We may read, typically, in Jer. 21.1-2: This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur son of Malchiah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah, saying, 'Please inquire of the Lord on our behalf, for King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon is making war against us; perhaps the Lord will perform a wonderful deed for us, as he has often done, and will make him withdraw from us'.
As mentioned above, answers from intermediaries could be positive or negative. In the book of Jeremiah in its present form (see below!), they are mostly negative: 21.1-2 ends with a word of doom against Jerusalem, as do 14.11 and 15.1. A similar situation to that in Jeremiah 21 is depicted in 37.3, another passage that describes the siege of Jerusalem: 'King Zedekiah sent Jehucal the son of Shelemiah, and Zephaniah the priest, the son of Maaseiah, to Jeremiah the prophet, saying, "Pray for us to the Lord our God"'. Also this text ends with a word of doom against Jerusalem. In Jer. 38.14 also, King Zedekiah asks Jeremiah directly about the situation (cf. also 37.17). Jeremiah's answer is that if the king surrenders to the Babylonians, his life and the city of Jerusalem will be safe. If not, the king will be killed and the city burnt. Again, we notice how close prophetic activity comes to that of a military advisor. It is understandable, then, that some of Jeremiah's compatriots accused him of deserting to the enemy (37.13), and kept him locked in during the siege (32.3). Also on this occasion, the prophetic request for the divine will ends with a negative answer to the people of Jerusalem. In Jer. 42.2 the 'commanders of the forces' and 'all the people from the least to the greatest' (42.1) ask Jeremiah to pray for them (42.2-3): 'And they said to Jeremiah the prophet, "Let our supplication come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all his remnant (for we are left
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but a few of many, as your eyes see us), that the Lord your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do"'. Here, too, the outcome of the intercession is a word of doom against the Judaeans for not obeying the word of God, telling them to remain in Judah and not to go to Egypt. In Jeremiah 42-43, we find the word of judgment in the form of a word against Egypt. Because the fugitives from Jerusalem moved there, Egypt shall be destroyed. Normally, words of doom against the nations are at the same time words of salvation to Israel. In chs. 42-43, we have one of the examples where a word against another nation functions also as a word of doom against the people of Israel, as these sojourn in the country in question. Examples from Outside Jeremiah There are many examples in the Hebrew Bible where God is asked for help during battle. For instance, in Isaiah 7-8, in the story about king Ahaz and the prophet Isaiah during the Syro-Ephraimite war, we find a most illustrating story about prophetic activity in war times. However, in the light of the views presented above, where it is assumed that the relationship between the 'former' and the 'latter' prophets should be regarded in terms of continuity rather than discontinuity (most recently, Otto 2001: 221), it would, in the present context, be more interesting to choose examples from the historiographic literature of the Hebrew Bible. An interesting text is found in the book of Judges. In the story of the war against the Benjaminites in Judges 20 the priest Phinehas asks the deity (20.28): '"Shall we yet again go out to battle against our brethren the Benjaminites, or shall we cease?" And the Lord said, "Go up; for tomorrow I will give them into your hand".' Compare also the rest of the story in 20.18-27. In this text, we have both a word of salvation to Israel and a word of doom against the enemy, in this case the tribe of Benjamin. If God had given the opposite advice, and the Israelites had been told not to go up, this would, indirectly, have functioned as a word of doom against one's own people. Another illustrative example is found in 1 Kings 22, in the story about the kings Jehoshaphat and Ahab and the prophets. We read in vv. 5-6: 'And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel: "Inquire first for the word of the Lord". Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them: "Shall I go to battle against RamothGilead, or shall I forebear?" And they said, "Go up; for the Lord will give
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it into the hand of the king".' What we have here is a word of doom against Aram (genre: 'Words against the nations'), and, at the same time, a word of salvation to Israel. Later in the story, we learn how Micaiah, the son of Imlah, as the only one, prophesies differently (v. 17): 'And he said: "I saw all Israel scattered upon the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd; and the Lord said, 'These have no master; let each return to his home in peace"". This prophecy, then, represents a words of doom to Israel and (indirectly) a word of salvation to Aram. In principle, there is no difference between what is described in the texts above and what we may find in the book of Jeremiah when Jeremiah warns the inhabitants of Jerusalem that they must surrender to the Babylonians and not fight in vain against the superior force. We read in Jer. 21.9 (compare also 27.11-13 and ch. 38): 'He who stays in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and surrenders to the Chaldaeans who are besieging you shall live and shall have his life as a prize of war'. The Book of Jeremiah Strongly Edited There are several indications, both internal and external, that the book of Jeremiah is heavily edited. Within the Jeremiah corpus itself, I am thinking not only of the fact that Jeremiah 52 is identical with 2 Kgs 24.18-25.30, but also of the multitude of doublets found throughout the Jeremiah Scroll (Macchi 1997). The texts from Qumran have been useful in helping to understand the nature of the various processes that led to the standardization and canonization of the Masoretic text (Ulrich 1999). One, well known, example from the book of Jeremiah is highly illustrative. When comparing the LXX translation of the Hebrew Bible with the MT, we find that the assemblage of 'Oracles against the nations' is located in different places in the two versions. In the LXX, the collection is placed, quite adequately, after Jer. 25.13. In the MT, on the other hand, we find the words against the foreign nations towards the end of the Jeremiah scroll, followed only by ch. 52. We know from Qumran that there were, at least, two different versions of Jeremiah. The fragments 4QJera and 4QJerc correspond to MT, whereas 4QJert> and 4QJerd match LXX (Abegg, Flint and Ulrich 1999: 382). Here, we have an illuminating exemplification of how collections of prophetic words were changed in the course of editorial processes.
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We can no longer reconstruct the processes that once led to the formation of the final form of the book of Jeremiah. If we have learnt anything at all from the efforts of various so-called historical critical methods it must be that such conjectures are highly insecure. In view of the circumstantial evidence, however, this uncertainty should not lead us to deny that any diachronic developments took place at all. Words Against the Nations As I mentioned above, prophetic utterings might, somewhat superficially, be divided into two groups: 'words of judgment' and 'words of salvation'. When taking a closer look at prophetic words in the Hebrew Bible, as well as in the ancient Near East (e.g. Mari), we soon realize that further, rough distinctions may be made. It is, for instance, possible to divide prophetic words of doom into words against one's own people and words against foreigners. The latter represent, at the same time, also words of salvation for one's own people. Also prophetic words of salvation may be divided into two groups: oracles for one's own people and oracles to the nations. Words of salvation to foreign nations are, at the same time, words of doom against one's own people. That words against the nations must have been regarded as very important in ancient Israel may be seen from the fact that editors of prophetic texts have chosen to include them also in the latest editions of their books. It is regrettable that much recent research has disparaged the oracles against the nations. However, the discussion of these texts should not be separated from that of the prophetic message of which they form an inherent part. We find edited collections of oracles against the nations in all prophetic books but Hosea. In the major prophets we may think above all of Isaiah 13-23, Jeremiah 46-51 and Ezekiel 25-32. In the 'Book of the Twelve', Amos 1.1-2.3 is commonly referred to. It is important to be aware of, though, that texts like Obadiah, Jonah, andNahum consist almost exclusively of 'oracles against the nations'. The original Sitz im Leben of words against the nations was, most likely, that of war. In ancient society everyone's life situation was determined by war in a way that it is impossible for us to conceive today. The closer circumstances of oracles against foreign nations have been discussed a lot (see most recently Weyde 2000: 78-79 and Albertz 2001: 145-58). It is not improbable that asking the deity belonged formally within a cultic context like, for instance, the public lament. However, with
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such a broad definition of 'words against the nations' as the one I have used in the present context, we must also reckon with other possibilities. It would be unlikely for kings and other persons of consequence to ask for prophetic help in urgent situations in a cultic context alone. However, at the time of the final editing of the prophetic texts, wars with the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and with other surrounding nations had come to an end. This is the reason why words against the nations could be relocated in separate collections within the various prophetic scrolls. It is not unreasonable to assume that the perhaps most important form of prophetic activity in Iron Age Palestine concerned the enemy in war. Clear reminiscences of this are found also in the much later Jeremiah scroll. The importance of the role of Jeremiah vis-a-vis the nations maybe gleaned already from the call story. In Jer. 1.5 God says to Jeremiah:'.. .1 appointed you a prophet to the nations'. Likewise, in the continuation of this story, we may read in v. 10: 'See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant'. Another interesting text is found in the Hananiah episode, in Jer. 28.8: 'The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms'. In general, the editors of the book of Jeremiah, similar to those of other prophetic books, did not approve of words of salvation for Judah. Consequently, in the final, strongly edited, form of the Hebrew Bible, words of salvation to Israel are systematically played down. Such a procedure was felt quite 'natural' in the Deuteronomistic history, a historiographical work whose purpose it was to view the history of the people of Judah from the perspective of decay and apostasy, eventually leading to God's ultimate punishment in the form of the 'Babylonian captivity'. The very same strategy is used also by those responsible for the editing of prophetic books. Here, the punishment aspect is even more dominant. Yet the editors did not remove completely the oracles of salvation to Judah that were handed down as part of the prophetic tradition. Also, as words against the nations are at the same time words of salvation to Judah, the long sections of words against the nations in the book of Jeremiah balance the meagre occurrences of salvation oracles to his own people. We find the following oracles against the nations in the book of Jeremiah: against Egypt (46.2-28), against the Philistines (47.1-7), against Moab (48.1-47), against Ammon (49.1-6), against Edom (49.7-22), against
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Damascus (49.23-27), against Kedar and Hazor (49.28-33), against Elam (49.34-39), and, finally, against Babylon (50.1-51.64). Further Parallels I have pointed above to the phenomenon of parallels between ancient Near Eastern and biblical prophecies. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are many parallels between the book of Jeremiah and other Near Eastern texts (cf. also Weippert 1981), beyond the war and drought scenes that I have referred to. In an important study comparing biblical and NeoAssyrian prophecy, Nissinen concludes that relevant parallels are mostly to be found in the historiographical parts of the Hebrew Bible, in the book of Psalms, and in Isaiah 40-55, whereas the pre-exilic 'classical prophets are practically silent' ('die vorexilischen "klassischen" Propheten so gut wie schweigen': Nissinen 1993: 249). Obviously, this conclusion cannot be upheld any longer. When we compare Neo-Assyrian 'prophecies' to what we find in the book of Jeremiah, it appears that the latter abound in parallels with Neo-Assyrian prophetic texts. I am here not only thinking of the overall relationship between war and prophecy in the Jeremiah scroll which I have dealt with in some detail above. In Neo-Assyrian prophecy, too, there is a close relationship between prophecy and war (Nissinen 1998: 164-65 and passim). However, further parallels should also be taken into consideration. We may take as a starting point the monograph by Nissinen that I have just mentioned. Here, the author refers, in passing, to SAA 9.1, a large assemblage of Neo-Assyrian prophetic words (Nissinen 1998: 94). The collection consists often prophetic oracles delivered during the highly dramatic year 681 BCE, the year that Esarhaddon fought for the throne against his elder brothers, after one of them had murdered his father. Central to all of these oracles, according to Nissinen, are the rightfulness of the king, his divine election, the legitimacy of his rule, the defeat of his enemies, and the durability of his reign. It is apparent that we are here dealing with well-known ancient Near Eastern motifs related to kingship (Barstad 2001: 62-66; Lemaire 2001). The defeat of the king's enemies belongs within the larger context of war, and has been treated in some detail above. The big difference between the Jeremiah texts and the Assyrian ones is that the latter are positive towards the king whereas those in the book of Jeremiah are, mostly, quite negative. As explained above, however, this dissimilarity is primarily a
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result of editorial activity. We should not be led to believe, though, that 'words of doom' are only to be found in the Hebrew Bible. Ancient Near Eastern prophecies in general can be negative or positive. From ancient Mari, for instance, we know of prophetic words that are negative towards the king. The theme of the rightfulness of the king is also found in the Jeremiah corpus (Jer. 22.3-5): Thus says the Lord [to the king of Judah]: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. For if you will indeed obey this word, then through the gates of this house shall enter kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their servants, and their people. But if you will not heed these words, I swear by myself, says the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation. (Cf. also vv. 13-17)
The theme of a 'messianic' king of justice is found in many places in the Hebrew Bible. Seethe following texts: Isa. 9.1-6; 11.1-10; 16.5; 32.1-2; Jer. 30.9, 21; 33.15-16 (= 23.5-6); Ezek. 34.23-24; 37.24-25; Mic. 5.1-5; Zech. 9.9-10. Another central issue of the oracles in SAA 9.1 is the divine legitimacy of the king. Again, we are dealing with a well-known feature of the Hebrew Bible and, in fact, the presupposition of much prophetic activity, including what we find described in the book of Jeremiah. It may be well worth noticing how God takes his authorization away from the Judaean kings and bestows it upon Nebuchadnezzar. We read in Jer. 27.6-8: Now I [God] have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant... All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson... But if any nation or kingdom will not serve this Nebuchadnezzar... I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, says the Lord... (Cf. also Jer. 28.14; 43.10-13; 46.13, 25.)
Yet another important concern in SAA 9.1 is the question of the durability of the king's reign. This issue, too, is found in the Jeremiah scroll. Since so much space is taken up by words of doom to the kings of Judah, we are here, too, dealing with a major topic. One may compare, for instance, the words of doom against Jehoiakim (Jer. 36.30), against Jehoiachin (22.24-30), and against Zedekiah (24.8; 29.16; 32.4-5; 38.17). For a concrete example, I may mention Jer. 22.30. In this word of doom against
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Coniah/Jehoiachin, we read: 'Thus says the Lord: Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days; for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah'. Some commentators do not see the full implications of this text. It is, for instance, not sufficient to say that 'Verse 30a suggests instructions to the census takers' (Holladay 1986: 611). Even if census image may be used, to 'write this man down as childless', rather alludes to the writing down of the prophetic word of doom, proclaiming the end of the Davidic dynasty. We have here, consequently, another example of the taking down in writing of the prophetic word (see below). A contested 'durability of reign' oracle is found in the Hananiah episode in Jeremiah 28, where the prophet Hananiah claims that Jehoiachin shall return within two years (28.3). The Writing Down of Prophetic Oracles The last parallel between the book of Jeremiah and ancient Near Eastern prophecy to be mentioned here, concerns the 'writtenness' of prophetic oracles. This important trait should not be underestimated. The NeoAssyrian oracles of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal were written down and filed in the royal archives (Nissinen 1998: 4,94). Something similar may have been the case also with the original, now lost, Jeremiah oracles. In the scholarly discussion, the matter of writing down has somehow been overshadowed by the futile discussion whether the Baruch of Jeremiah 36 actually existed, or whether or not he could have behaved in the manner he did. If a prophet Jeremiah was active during the siege of Jerusalem, he might very well have used a scribe to take down his message. We do know that scribes did that sort of thing in the Near East (Barstad 1993: 59-60). A more productive approach, consequently, would be to claim that if words of a prophet Jeremiah had not been taken down in writing during the siege of Jerusalem, there would have been no Jeremiah scroll. Quite another, and much more problematic matter, concerns the relationship between the original prophetic words and what we find in the book of Jeremiah today. This, however, is less important than we are inclined to think. Following the vast amount of similarities that do exist between the present shape of the book of Jeremiah and ancient Near Eastern prophecy in general, it is safe to conclude that the phenomenon of prophecy found
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in Jeremiah would be fairly similar to the kind of prophecy that existed in (say) Iron Age Palestine. The writing down of prophecies is attested not only from the book of Jeremiah (29.1; 30.2; 36; 45.1; 51.60), but also from other prophetic books. However, this phenomenon cannot be dealt with here in any detail. One important text is Hab. 2.2: 'And the Lord answered me: Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets, so he may run who reads it'. And in Isa. 30.8, we find the following exhortation: 'And now, go, write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever'. It is fascinating to ponder that it is purely by coincidence that so many prophetic words were handed down to posterity. If Mari had not been completely destroyed by Hammurabi in the first half of the second millennium BCE the extremly rich archives would have been lost for us. The Mari oracles were most certainly not intended to be kept for the future (van der Toorn 2000: 229-30). One thing that we may assume for certain, though, is that what we do have available, in Mari and elsewhere, is only the tip of the iceberg, and that prophecies must have been widespread, as well as regarded as highly important, in many cultures and during many periods in the ancient Near East. Conclusion Increased knowledge of ancient Near Eastern prophecy has led to a better understanding also of biblical prophecy. The present work takes a closer look at the book of Jeremiah against the background of Near Eastern prophetic texts. Even if most of the prophetic material from Iron Age Israel was later lost, and everything that did come down was reused and changed, the comparative evidence demonstrates beyond doubt that the prophetic phenomena that are described in the book of Jeremiah are of the same nature as those found in ancient Near Eastern texts. The truth value of (large parts of) the book of Jeremiah resembles the truth value of historical novels. We cannot claim that what is described there actually did happen. What we can assume is that quite a few of these things might have happened. The basic message of the original Jeremiah, originating during the siege of Jerusalem, has been reworked and edited to the degree that it would be
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meaningless to attempt to look for any ipsissima verba. We have only indirect access to the 'real' prophet Jeremiah. If we assume that there were a prophet Jeremiah active in Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege, the descriptions of prophetic activity in the book of Jeremiah give us good indications of how he could have behaved. This, I am afraid, if the closest we can get to the 'historical' Jeremiah. In loving memory of Robert Carroll. He, too, 'walked in the ancient paths'.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Abegg, M., P . Flint and E. Ulrich (eds.) 1999 The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark). Albertz, R. 2001 Die Exilszeit. 6. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Biblische Enzyklopadie, VII; Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer). Barstad, H.M 1984 The Religious Polemics of Amos: Studies in the Preaching of Am 2, 7b-8; 4,1-13; 5,1-27; 6,4-7; 8.14 (VTSup, 34; Leiden: E.J. Brill). 1993 'No Prophets? Recent Developments in Biblical Prophetic Research and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy', JSOT51: 39-60. 2001 'Deuteronomists, Persians, Greeks, and the Dating of the Israelite Tradition', in L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (JSOTSup, 317; ESHM, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 47-77. Ben Zvi, E., amd M.H. Floyd (eds.) 2000 Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy (SBLSS, 10; Atlanta: SBL). Blenkinsopp, J. Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient 1995 Israel (Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press). Bowen, N.R. 1999 'The Daughters of Your People: Female Prophets in Ezekiel 13.17-23', JBL 118:417-33. Carroll R.P. 1986 Jeremiah: A Commentary (OTL; London: SCM Press). Davies. P.R. 1996 'The Audiences of Prophetic Scrolls: Some Suggestions', in S.B. Reid (ed.), Prophets and Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker (JSOTSup, 229; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 48-62. '"Pen of Iron, Point of Diamond" (Jer. 17.1): Prophecy as Writing', in Ben 2000 Zvi and Floyd (eds.), 2000: 65-8 1 . Grabbe, L.L. 1995 Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages: A Socio-Historical Study of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International).
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Holladay, W.L. Jeremiah. I. A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah Chapters 1986 1-25 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press). Lemaire, A. (ed. ) Prophetes et rois: Bible et Proche-Orient (Paris: Cerf). 2001 Macchi, J.-D. 'Les doublets dans le livre de Jeremie', in A.H.W. Curtis and T. Romer 1997 (eds.), The Book of Jeremiah and its Reception (BETL, 128; Leuven: Leuven University Press): 119-50. Miller, P.O. The Religion of Ancient Israel (LAI; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John 2000 Knox Press). Nissinen, M. 'Die Relevanz der neuassyrischen Prophetic fur die alttestamentliche For1993 schung', in M. Dietrich and O. Loretz (eds.), Mesopotamica-UgariticaBiblica: Festschrift fur Kurt Bergerhof zur Vollendung seines 70. Lebensjahres am 7. Mai 1992 (AOAT, 232; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker; Kevelaer: Neukirchener Verlag): 217-58. References to Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources (SAAS, 7; Helsinki: The 1998 Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project). Nissinen, M. (ed1.) Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and 2000 Arabian Perspectives (SBLSS, 13; Atlanta: SBL). Otto, R.E. 2001 'The Prophets and their Perspective', CBQ 63: 219-40. Thelle, R.I. Ask God: Divine Consultation in the Literature of the Hebrew Bible (BBET, 2002 30; Frankfurt: Peter Lang). Toorn, K. van der, 2000 'From the Oral to the Written: The Case of Old Babylonian Prophecy', in Ben Zvi and Floyd (eds.), 2000: 219-34. Ulrich, E. 1999 The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origin of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Weippert, H. 'Der Beitrag ausserbiblischer Prophetentexte zum Verstandnis der Prosare1981 den des Jeremiabuches', in P.-M. Bogaert (ed.), Le Livre de Jeremie: Le prophete etson milieu; Les oracles et lew transmission (BETL, 54; Leuven: Leuven University Press): 83-104. Weyde, K.W. Prophecy and Teaching: Prophetic Authority, Form Problems, and the Use 2000 of Traditions in the Book ofMalachi (BZAW, 288; Berlin: W. de Gruyter).
CREATING WAVES:
WHY THE FICTIONALITY OF JONAH MATTERS*
Alastair G. Hunter
The book of Jonah was a particular favourite of Robert Carroll's, and his documents include a considerable number dealing with that most idiosyncratic of'prophets'. Indeed, this had become something of a performance piece for Robert, as a series of unpublished papers delivered to a variety of academic and church audiences reveals. One of his unfulfilled projects was a contract to write the Jonah volume in Sheffield Academic Press's Readings series—and it is to be hoped that the replacement for that now sadly unrealizable book will be able to make some use of his work. In the circumstances, and given that (for quite independent reasons) I have recently become interested in aspects of Jonah, I have decided to make this the subject on my own contribution to this Festschrift. The essay that follows was written for a conference on 'The Truth of Fiction and the Fictionality of Truth'—and one can only speculate as to the kind of acerbic comment Robert might have made on such a simultaneously trite and pretentious theme—but it provides a convenient trigger for an approach which I hope would not entirely disappoint my late colleague. Defining the Problem It has long been well-established that Jonah is one of the most intertextually sophisticated of all biblical books. From Jonathan Magonet's pioneering study (1983) to Yvonne Sherwood's compelling Rezeptionsgeschichte volume (2000), and in the works of numerous commentators, this must be one of the few truly assured results of biblical scholarship—a discipline notably lacking in such luxuries. * A version of this paper was read at the third binannual conference of Studies in Cultural Meaning at Chantilly, France, February 2002.
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In a recent paper (Hunter 2001) I explored the connections between Jonah 2 and the particular expression of the exodus myth in Exodus 15. The conclusion was that, to anyone familiar with the Hebrew text of Exodus in particular, and with the conventions of the myth of the exodus in general, the psalm which Jonah is supposed to sing from the belly of the big fish (DTT^) is clearly a version of that salvific legend. Whether it is used ironically, parodically or paradoxically is another matter, related to the wider question of what Jonah1 may be about; but it certainly suggests that in reading Jonah we have every right to be alert both to possible connections with significant elements of Torah and Nebi 'im, and to the expectation of subversion or deconstruction of these.21 am therefore encouraged to undertake an exploration of a further motif—that of creation— in Jonah to see in what ways it explicitly relates to Genesis, and what might be said about both themes in consequence.3 Questions about truth and fictionality have a special relevance to Jonah, whose lack of historical content is now agreed by all but the most conservative of readers. These must include serious reflection on the role of fiction in the presentation or construction of truth, since what the text does is to force its religious readers4 to confront important questions of justice, forgiveness, tolerance, mercy and individual integrity (to mention a few) in terms of a story whose central character, key events and historical details are all manifestly unreliable against the touchstone of factuality. It is of more than passing significance that it is in the context of purely fictional accounts that the most serious questioning of theodicy takes place in the Bible (other striking examples are the Akedah5 and the book 1. To save unnecessary explanation, the reader should assume that the name Jonah in this essay usually refers to the book, not the character of that name. 2. Two further examples of this familiar pattern are (1) the book's use of the motif of the merciful God (4.2), to which I shall refer later, and (2) its appropriation (4.3-9) of the scene in 1 Kgs 19 where Elijah longs for death. 3. In an earlier study, Gerda Elata-Alster and Rachel Salmon (1989: 52-57) discuss a possible interpretation of Jon. 4 as a reworking of the myth of Adam's expulsion from Eden, in which the creation and destruction of the gourd emulates the conditions first of Eden then of the world of weeds and thorns outside Eden. 4. I single out religious readers because it is within the canons of Judaism and Christianity that the book has been most solemnly and portentously exegeted, and in Christian discourse that its anti-semitic possibilities in the form of an 'intolerant' Jonah have been developed (thus Sherwood: 2000, passim). 5. Could Gen. 22 be counted as historical? Is it more or less likely to be historical than, say, Elijah's contest with Ahab, Jezebel and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kgs 18?
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of Job). Where the matter ought to be raised—in the midst of such possibly historical accounts as the eradication of non-Israelite tribes (1 Sam. 15) and the murder of an Israelite man and a Midianite woman in the name of divine mercy (Num. 25.6-18)—the text is stubbornly silent. What appears to emerge is on the one hand a discussion of divine justice at a theoretical level hand in hand (glove?) with an insouciant neglect of the matter in practice. Does this, perhaps, constitute evidence of an approach which knowingly subverts the seriousness of the issues? This is not a essay on justice or theodicy (ceci n 'estpas unepipe), but these concerns connect curiously to the subject we are engaged with: the factuality or fictionality of creation. The connection is simple enough: if God did indeed 'make' the world, in any cause and effect sense, then theodicy is a question we cannot fail to ask, since whoever creates must carry the can for how that creation functions. If, however, 'God the creator' is a metaphor then nothing of a post hoc ergo propter hoc nature flows from such a statement. The mere fact that there is a world carries no ethical import, and in that case who or what God is forms part of the givenness of the world rather than its giving-ness. The importance of this fundamental question may be seen in the fact that whole religions have developed quite differently from those of the Abrahamic traditions on its basis. Neither Hinduism nor Buddhism need confront the theodicy question in quite the same way that Judaism, Christianity and Islam must, since their infinite (re-)cyclings of the universe provide similarly infinite possibilities for both forgiveness and forgetfulness, moksha and nirvana. It follows, I suggest, that if there is any way in which the playfulness and carelessness of Jonah as regards questions of history has a bearing on Genesis, there may be profounder theological implications than are normally drawn from the former. The argument that follows is not a strictly (or even approximately) logical one. Neither Genesis nor Jonah stand in any kind of binding causal relationship to the other, and I in no way wish to make a historical or textcritical case out of whatever intertextual networks may exist. Whoever wrote Jonah was free to do whatever s/he wished with the materials s/he found, without prejudice to whatever motivated whoever wrote the opening My response is that in the latter there is at least a historically plausible context with some verifiably historical characters, and the legendary detail of the burning of the altar does not affect the likelihood of a bloody disposition of rival prophets given the opportunity. And, interestingly, in this case also no overt questioning of the rough justice involved takes place.
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chapters of Genesis. S/he likewise (of course) was free to shape her/his sources to suit her/his own concerns. Nor does my analysis rest on any presumption about who borrowed from whom, whose work came first.6 But what I do want to insist upon is that the reader, in ignorance both of the intentions of the authors and the reliability (in historical, scientific or epistemological terms) of their work is forced, short of an arbitrary rejection of one book or the other, to read them together. The bizarre creative activities of Jonah deconstruct the seemingly solemn business of Genesis 1 just as surely as the profundities of Genesis 1 force a similarly portentous reading of Jonah. We cannot laugh at Jonah 4 unless we are prepared to chuckle also as God manipulates the vast canopies of the heavens like so much celestial wallpaper; but neither can we stand in awe ofpKH n»1 Q-'nOn H* DTI^N 813 JTIftm at the beginning of Genesis without keeping some of that numinous feeling in reserve for the }T1p'1p and the nubin at the end of Jonah. A classic case, surely, of the undecideable in Derridean terms.7 Lexical Parallels The aspects of Jonah under consideration are those 'pertaining to the theme of creation, which is where my main focus will be. However, there is one motif—that of water and dry land—which belongs equally to the exodus and creation themes. Inevitably, therefore, there may be some overlap with the discussion in my 2001 paper; but since the biblical traditions themselves morph the two themes at various points, this is 6. Since no-one has more than the vaguest idea when Jonah was written, and the best guess about the opening chapters of Genesis is that they were the last to be composed,the chronological question is in fact much more open than a naive deduction from the relative positions of the two books might suggest. It is not outrageous to surmise that Gen. 1-2 could be later than Jonah! My point is simply that it does not matter that much. It is interesting if Jonah is in fact dependent upon a collection of written scriptures which predate its composition; but the fact of intertextuality does not in itself resolve the question of priority. Nonetheless, the range of other traditions with which Jonah interacts does strongly suggest a particular direction of dependence. 7. Sherwood (1996: 177-78): 'The important feature of undecideability is not an overdetermination or plurality of meaning, but a hinged, double and opposite meaning which allows (indeed invites) the reader to read the text against the grain of its main argument. Peggy Kamuf describes the double action of the undecideable brilliantly: "It enters the dialectic from both sides at once (remedy-poison, good-bad, positivenegative) and threatens the philosophical process from within".'
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hardly surprising.8 Creation-destruction-recreation represents a rather familiar biblical cycle, whether we view it in terms of the traditional Heilsgeschichte theology of the biblical theology school, or as an aspect of the more general Urzeit-Chaoskampf-Endzeit literary and mythological pattern. My argument in this essay is by no means along these linear tracks: I shall essay a more deconstructive approach which rejects (or better, declines) the seeming closure offered by the straight road. The connections between Jonah and (in the main) Genesis 1 are to be found both in terms of motifs and specific semantic usage. The overall effect is to produce a set of resonances which persuade the reader to take seriously the possibility of a shared milieu, a common deployment of items, motifs and themes from what in all likelihood was a well-known body of myth.9 In this section and the next I shall describe these, dealing first with Jonah's use of lexically similar language, and then with its treatment of related themes. TVfcT: Jonah 1.9, 13
This noun, presumably from the common verb ED"1 ('to dry, dry up') has an interestingly limited semantic range, unlike its parent root. In Gen. 1.9, 10 and Ps. 95.5,10 it belongs to the language of creation, representing the dry land which Yahweh creates by dividing the waters. Its other principal use is in occurrences of the other 'dividing of the waters' theme—the Red 8. See, e.g., Isa. 43.1-21, a passage which deploys both of the verbs of creation (N"Q and ~1!T) in the context of creation, escape from the waters, and re-creation, and Pss. 74.12-17 plT in v. 17) and 89.6-15 («13 in v. 13). 9. Psalm 8 is another familiar instance. Most commentators perceive some kind of link between the second half of the psalm and the Genesis creation myth, but precise linguistic dependence is hard to establish. Similarly, Qoheleth's reflections (3.18-21) on the identical fate of men and animals, and some of his ruminations in the next chapter, have an affinity with the material in Gen. 3.14-19 and 4.1-16. hi none of these cases is direct textual dependence likely; but the analogous example of Ben Sira, who does indeed seem to have worked with something like the Jewish scriptures later listed by Josephus, might point interestingly to a prevailing interest in creation myths which was to a greater or lesser extent informed by a body of written material. See also Deut. 4.14-19 and Hab. 1.14, discussed below, which also appear to refer to an explicit formulation of the image/creation complex. There is a strong post-exilic, second temple indication in this interlinking of texts which might be some evidence for Davies' idea (1992: 94-113) of a school of scribes creating a body of 'scripture' for the Ezra/ Nehemiah theocracy. 10. Strictly speaking, here it takes the unique form ntST.
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Sea and the Jordan—in Exod. 14.16, 22, 29; 15.19; Neh. 9.11; Ps. 66.6, with respect to the former, and in Josh. 4.22, where the Israelites' crossing of the Jordan is clearly presented as a reprise of the exodus experience. Apart from Jonah, the only other occurrences of these words is in Exod. 4.9 (twice) and Isa. 44.3. It does not seem unreasonable to attribute to Jonah a certain awareness in its use of this highly specified word. The fact that Jonah's sailors (1.9) fail to reach this kind of dry land, with its creative and redemptive echoes, is arguably no accident; nor is it a coincidence that the desired goal is reached only when a rapport with Yhwh is achieved, and the waters stilled. The theme of life-threatening waters is, of course, a major one in the primeval narratives of Genesis—and we shall return to it shortly. But it might be worth noting that, just as Noah sacrificed after the flood, so do the sailors on the dry land which represents their salvation. I shall argue below that there is evidence of an anti-creation motif in some of the terms to be explored; the use of the word in Exod. 4.9 (in the plague narratives) might figure as part of that destructive tendency—a possibility which would (remarkably) imply that only once does this word find a use other than in the themes pertinent to Jonah/Genesis. mi, n: Jonah 2.1 (twice), 2, 11
At first sight it would seem unlikely that the regular word for 'fish' would carry much specific semantic weight; but surprisingly we find that both the masculine and feminine forms of the word are rather narrowly deployed. Since there seems to be no semantic significance to the text's choice between the two forms, for the purpose of this brief survey I have simply aggregated the uses. There are some 34 instances in total, of which only six are used with reference to fish in a semantically neutral manner (that is, without some pointers to theological or mythic motifs).11 A further four occur in the proper name 'the Fish Gate',12 leaving 24 in which we are forced to take note of motifs beyond the purely physical signified 'scaly creature which swims in the sea'. All of these remaining instances fall under one of two headings—creation or anti-creation—which may be regarded as oppositional in traditional logico-critical terms, or undecideable in Derridean terms. Most are, I believe, attributable to these categories in a fairly straightforward way, 11. Num. 11.5,22; 1 Kgs 5.13; Job 40.31; Eccl. 9.12; Neh. 13.16. 12. Zeph. 1.10; Neh. 3.3; 12.39; 2 Chron. 33.14.
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though one (Deut. 4.18) provides the interesting exception which tends to deconstruct the simple opposition. Thus to the category 'creation' we can apply the four Jonah instances (since they refer to the creature which Yhwh specially 'appoints'13), the Genesis references (1.26,28; 9.2), and Ps. 8.9. Ezekiel 47.9,10 (twice), is part of a passage describing the sweet waters of the new Jerusalem—a 'new creation' motif—and Job 12.8 refers to the fish of the sea as part of a catalogue of created things which can testify that 'the hand of the Lord has done this' (12.9). The 'anti-creation' category takes off from the plague narratives of Exodus—specifically 7.18, 21, but see also the use of nET in Exod. 4.9, which was noted above. All of the other instances of this motif, bar one in the Psalms, are found in the prophetic literature. Some refer to the plagues (thus Isa. 50.2 and Ps. 105.29, directly; Ezek. 29.4 [twice], 5, indirectly), and the remainder to a kind of general destruction of God's work which will result from humankind's sinfulness (Ezek. 38.20; Hos. 4.3; Zeph. 1.3). There is a remarkable twist to this fishy tale in Hab. 1.14 which threatens wicked humankind with the fate of becoming 'like the fish of the sea, like creeping things which have no ruler'—a remarkable disintegration of creation for at least some of those born (according to Genesis) to rule.14 The deconstructive possibilities in the last reference bring me nicely to Deut. 4.18, which warns of the dangers of making any image (70S) of a list of creatures—including fish—quite obviously quoted from Gen. 1.26. The closeness of the reference to Genesis makes the use of a different phrase for image in Deuteronomy striking, as if the writer is taking particular care not to imply that Yhwh's process of image-making is in any way reprehensible. But why give such a detailed list? Why draw the reader's attention to that other tradition which brings together the idea of the imaging of the superior by means of the inferior and the relationship of power between the two? What is the Deuteronomist afraid of? Why is
13. Part of the discussion of the Jonah material will centre on just what is implied or may be drawn from the use of the verb H3D which seems to rule out the straightforward conclusion that Yhwh made the various items which manipulate the story and Jonah. The verb seems to have something to do with the timing of what is happening as well as the appearance 'out of a hat', as it were, of these convenient apparatus de deo. 14. There are several very suggestive links between Hab. 1.14 and Gen. 1.26 which make it quite probable that the former is a deliberate undermining of the latter. For example,Hab. 1.14:13 ^KTK1? taimvmQt«ntol;Gen. l^D'H^K IDK'l
"bDm parr^Dm nnnrrn D'ocn *pim n:n_nrn Tm i:imcrn iiobm DTK nroj p«rrbu rain tscnn.
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the potential hierarchy of imaging to be truncated at the first (and highest) level? One response might be that, since Genesis authorizes only one mimesis, for humans to create further images is to undermine creation—to enter, as it were, the mode of anti-creation, since (pace Dorothy Sayers's recognition15 of human artistic creativity as the true meaning of Gen. 1), it is not safe to permit the idea that what God did, humankind may also achieve. The ban on human emulation of divine powers is, of course, one of the readings which flows naturally from both Genesis 2-3 and the legend of Babel in Genesis 11. On this interpretation, Deuteronomy's deliberate use of 70S may be designed to ensure that whatever humans may do is categorically distinct from what God did at the beginning. But what is so fretfully banned may point to a real fear, not of the worship offish and beasts, but that when humans make images they pretend to be God— and further, that there is more to this than pretence. A considerable quantity of rhetorical energy in the Old Testament is devoted to the rubbishing of any idea that we may have creative powers like those of God. Dorothy Sayers' idea poses no problem—artistic creation is only a metaphor. But the vehemence of Yhwh's assault on Job in chs. 38-41, and the coarseness of Isaiah's parody of the idol-maker who worships half his wood and burns the other half to cook his food (Isa. 44.12-17; compare 40.18-20), surely testify to a real fear.16 In short, when Deut. 4.18 (and other passages linked to the Decalogue ban on idols17) use the word ^DS they conceal 15. Sayers (1941: 17): '...had the author of Genesis anything particular in mind when he wrote [that man is made in God's image]? It is observable that in the passage leading up to the statement about man, he has given no detailed information about God. Looking at man, he sees in him something essentially divine, but when we turn back to see what he says about the original upon which the "image" of God was modelled, we find only the single assertion, "God created". The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.' It should be acknowledged in passing that Sayers' little book is still worth reading as an interesting exploration of the meaning we might attach to 'God the creator' viewed not as a quasihistorical description of cause and effect, but as a metaphor which might be elucidated in terms of human creativity. 16. One possible correlation is the occasional phrase OTl^K I'N (N1?), which is usually (defensively?) placed on the lips of the fool, the wicked or (what amounts to the same) the Assyrians (Isa. 37.19; Jer. 2.11; 16.20; Pss. 10.4; 14.1 [=53.2]). The first and third of these are close in spirit to Isa. 44, and the Psalms passages seem to indicate an incipient atheism among the wicked and the foolish. Jer. 2.11 contrasts the loyalty of other nations to their 'no-gods' with the fickleness of Judah. 17. Proscriptions associated with the Decalogue are to be found in Exod. 20.4 and Deut. 4.16, 23,25; 5.8; 27.15. In Isa. 40.20 and 44.9,15, and in the similar passage in
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within it God's more potent act of creation and imaging (D^U, mm, 1.26,2718) whose absence compels our attention and ironically makes us aware of that hidden human potential which all of the Abrahamic traditions have been so determined to denounce preemptively—the potential actually to create living things in our image which, through recent developments in the fields of genetics and cloning, has now become a live [sic] issue. It may well be that when 'ethicists' and 'moral leaders' are wheeled on by the media to denounce (predictably) the latest developments in this area they are in fact acting out the role of the Deuteronomists of old and perpetuating a superstitious prohibition which derives not from real moral concerns but from an ancient myth belonging to the pre-scientific legends of Genesis. We should not discount a further troubling implication, which is that if imaging is a means of representing the superior through the inferior in such a way as to identify the two, then representations of non-human living beings presumably indicate continuity of the life-force throughout the animal kingdom. Once again, this possibility counters the rhetoric of Genesis, which first appoints humans to rule (mi) over the animals (1.26, 28) and subsequently (9.2-3) puts the fear of death in animals as a result of the divine go-ahead for meat-eating. Yet it conforms nicely to recent movements in the direction of animal rights—or more accurately, respect for animals as being similar in essence to ourselves—and relates to the sort of interpretation of genetic evidence which forces us to recognize a continuity of evolution from the most basic one-celled life forms to our own complex physical structure. To sum up this excursus, we find that Deut. 4.18's efforts to protect the special nature of Yhwh's creative action lead paradoxically to an exploration of an alternative: the denial of the special creation through an affirmation, on the one hand, of human powers to create, and, on the other, of continuity within the various created orders, once seen as distinct categories, but now, through modern scientific discovery, demonstrably of one
Hab. 2.18-20, the element of mockery of idol-makers is present. There are two instances of a general condemnation of D'^DS in Nah. 1.14 and Ps. 97.7, and mention of Manasseh's image of the Asherah in 2 Kgs 21.7 (= 2 Chron. 33.7). But, just to confuse the issue, the seeming approval of a ^DS is to found in Judg. 17-18. 18. Cf. the same pair in 5.3 referring to Seth's birth 'in the image and likeness of Adam', which might suggest that humankind is authorized to create in the suspect sense.
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kind in essence. In other words, both creation and anti-creation are bound together in this seemingly straightforward proscription. The origins of the mind, the soul (if it exists), personal identity and consciousness of course remain uncertain. Given the insurmountable subjectivity of any discussion of these, they are likely to remain mysterious. Perhaps, religiously, the best we can say is that God appointed (TIDD) the human species for some particular purpose. But given Jonah, I would not be confident that any such purpose is likely to be altogether serious! DTI, nQTin: Jonah 1.5, 6 One of the most interesting direct linguistic connections between Jonah and Genesis is in the verb used to refer to Jonah's innocent sleep in the hold of the ship. Once again, like the terms for 'fish', this might at first seem insignificant; but it turns out that the verb and its associated noun are for the most part used in the context of divinely-induced sleep, or sleep leading to visions.19 To the former category belong Gen. 2.21; 15.12; 1 Sam. 26.12; Isa. 29.10; Ps. 76.6, and to the latter Job 4.13; 33.15 and Dan. 8.18; 10.9 (and again Gen. 15.12). There are two uses of the root to indicate laziness (Prov. 10.5; 19.15), and it occurs finally in the macabre story of Jael's murder of Sisera when he was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion (Judg. 4.21). Apart from Proverbs, it is clear that this kind of sleep has profound— sometimes fatal—consequences. Jonah's sleep, had it not been interrupted, would no doubt have been of that kind, just as Sisera's was, and (arguably) Saul's in 1 Sam. 26; this is the import, too, of the usage in Psalm 76. But the sense of laziness and dereliction of duty is also pertinent—Isa. 29.1020 has a special resonance: For the Lord has poured on you a spirit of deep stupor; he has closed your eyes (that is, the prophets), and muffled your heads (they are the seers).
No doubt this is a curious and obscure text, yet it has an aptness to Jonah that tempts me to make a connection: the 'deep stupor' (ilDTlfi mi) sounds very like Jonah's senseless [sic] behaviour in the hold of the ship. If we then make the further connection to Genesis, and note also that the hold signifies the womb, as does the fish, we discover that the text intro19. Magonet (1983: 67-69) discusses HOTin, but in the context of a parallel with Elijah's sleep in 1 Kgs 19.5. 20. This and other biblical quotations are from the Revised English Bible.
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duces at least two fascinating subversions of the creation legend. Jonah's sleep is that of laziness and ignorance, where Adam's is divinely induced; and Jonah moves from womb to womb in a reversal of the Genesis episode in which the man becomes (uniquely) a womb while asleep in order to give 'birth' to the woman who will henceforth have sole claim to the power to give birth. m~\: Jonah 1.4; 4.8 Obviously the ubiquity of the word m"l makes it difficult to attach any specific significance to its individual occurrences. We can hardly claim that Jonah uses it in direct reference to its role in Genesis. Nevertheless, its use in the primeval narratives of Genesis is quite restricted. We find it used twice in relation to water: first to describe the agency of creation (1.2) and then of re-creation, in the dissipation of the flood waters (8.1). Otherwise, it occurs in 6.3, 17, and 7.15, 22, with reference to the life of God in both humankind and animals where, in an interesting anticipation of Eccl. 3.19-21, each shares the one spirit: "7118 mi.21 The two instances in Jonah, then, take on a certain disruptive importance in that they both refer to the undoing of creation—the storm which threatened the sailors in 1.4 and the scorching wind burning Jonah in 4.8—and a serious threat to the life of both Jonah and those around him.22 Non-Lexical Parallels Let me conclude this formal analysis by listing three further themes that link Jonah and Genesis, though without a lexical identity: the creation of vegetation (Gen. 1.11-12, compare the jVp^p or 'gourd' in Jon. 4.6), the creation of creeping things (Gen. 1.24-25, compare the nUTin or 'worm' in 4.7), and the verbs for the act of creation itself (^13 and "11T in Genesis, HDD in Jonah). 21. There is one further occurrence, describing the weather as Adam and Eve strolled in the garden: DVH ITnb (3.8)—a phrase often translated 'the evening breeze' which would be more accurately rendered 'in the day's wind'. 22. In conversation with me when this paper was first presented, Gerda Elata-Alster pointed out that another significant lexical connection is to be found in the root Dip, which occurs three times in Jon. 4 (w. 2, 5, 8) referring to his haste in fleeing to Tarshish, his sitting to the east of Nineveh to view events, and the hot east wind which beat down upon him. The same root, of course, is used three times in the famous phrase 'east of Eden' (Gen. 2.8; 3.24; 4.16).
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The first two add to the sense of pastiche or subversive humour which hovers always over the surface of Jonah—like the DTPK mi of Gen. 1.2, but in Jonah's case ready to bring chaos out of order, just as Yahweh caused turmoil in Jonah's (previously uneventful?) life by demanding the impossible. Compare, in this context, the opening of Jonah (""131 TP1 n]V~bn miT, 'the word of the Lord came to Jonah') with the first move in creation (DTT^N "ION1"!, 'God said'). In the former case the divine word sets in train a series of events which produce mayhem all around, in the latter order emerges from choas (irm l!"in). The faintly preposterous nature of the scene at the end of the book, with strange appearances and disappearances designed seemingly for the sole purpose of irritating the prophet, and the concluding bathos of'and also many animals', confirms what the non-pious reader might already have suspected: that the big fish has a similarly ludicrous part to play. The final connection—or rather, disconnection—lies in the refusal by Jonah of the expected terms for create, and the use instead of a term which really has more to do with portions, allotted shares and the like. It is hard to resist the inference, given the explicit pointers to the wider creation tradition, that this is a deliberate twist. These bizarre nonce-works are sent, in a parody creation, to be Jonah's fate, his lot—to force him into the realization that the God whom he thought he had sussed and whose ways he understood was in fact even more fickle and playful than his worst fears. Jonah feared that God was the kind who would show mercy to those who (in Jonah's estimation) did not deserve it. In the event God turns out to be one who does indeed forgive the undeserving,23 but, just to rub salt in the wound, that same God further heaps misery on those who believe themselves to be faithful—as Jonah himself, who protests (2.8-9): Those who cling to false gods may abandon their loyalty, but I with hymns of praise shall offer sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I shall fulfil. Victory is the Lord's!
Of course, this protest is itself an aporia in the book, since everything else we read directs us to the conclusion that Jonah (the character) is precisely the opposite of everything implied in that pious winge! We would do well 23. But, as Clint Eastwood taunts Gene Hackman at gunpoint in the motion picture Unforgiven, 'Deserve's got nothin' to do with it'.
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to reflect on the level of hypocrisy involved here, and to consider whether God's taunting of Jonah in ch. 4 was not a rather appropriate 'victory' in the circumstances! Truth, Fictionality, Creation and Disintegration
Having set out in some detail the shape of Jonah's intertextual interplay with the creation mythology of Genesis and other related passages, I shall in the final part of this essay reflect on the implications of that interplay for the seriousness or otherwise of our reading of both Jonah and Genesis. At the heart of Jona^h lies a real moral dilemma which is belied by the style of the book. It is this: what sort of justice can humans expect, and what sort of God is it that we have to deal with? It appears that Jonah's own system was programmed for a rough and ready syllogism of the form (Israel = good) + (Nineveh = bad) + (God is good) (God punishes Nineveh)
Unfortunately, as Jonah himself is aware, there is a further premise which contradicts that simple programme: God is gracious and compassionate, long-suffering and slow to anger, full of love and willing to forgive.
This doctrine is fine so long as it can be restricted in scope, as it is (presumably) in Exod. 34.6; Num. 14.18; Neh. 9.17; Pss. 86.15 and 103.8—in all of which the beneficiaries seem exclusively to belong to Israel. What is intriguing is the implication of Jon. 4.1-3 that the whole book is based upon a rejection of that narrow application while at the same time expressing an intense bitterness at the consequences of its own logic. There is only one other occurrence of the doctrine in question, and it is significant that it seems to support Jonah's reading: in Ps. 145.8-9 the application is to the whole of the creation: The Lord is gracious and compassionate, long-suffering and ever faithful. The Lord is good to all, his compassion rests upon all his creatures.
In the context of the themes explored in this essay, that reference to creation takes on an additional significance, for it suggests the source of the moral dilemma and a context for the subversive approach to creation which Jonah deploys. If it is not possible to deny the truth of Psalm 145,
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we might explore what happens when the other term in the equation is undermined—that is, when the familiar understanding of 'the creator' is deconstructed. As we have seen in the detailed study above, over and over again the terms of Genesis's creation myths are both adopted and deconstructed in Jonah. The effect is to introduce two key oppositions which affect our understanding of God as creator. The first is what we have called anticreation—the deliberate reintroduction of chaos or death24—and the second is best described as a quality of arbitrariness or (dare I suggest in a deconstructive context) playfulnessswhich questions the ordered precision of Genesis 1. When these undecideable pairs (creation-disintegration, order-disorder) are set alongside the one which instigated this study— namely, the fiction-fact pairing—we find that the outcome is perplexing in the extreme. The fictional account—Jonah—describes the activity of God in terms which, however much of a caricature we may feel them to be, nevertheless do relate to our sense of how the world too often is. Random events and things impinge unpredictably on our stuttering progress through life, the best laid plans (as the Scottish poet25 put it) 'gang aft agley', and the links between ought and is, merit and reward, justice and suffering are difficult if not impossible to discern. By contrast, the supposedly serious and theologically deep religious myths of Genesis 1-3 offer a puzzlingly and disconcertingly unreal picture of how it actually is for most of the human race. If, as we are taught, God is perfect and God's creation is 'very good ('DTT^K)', )',26 it ought to follow that the God of Exod. 34.6 is similarly good—that is, trustworthy. But such is not the case in any way we might try to understand it. Jonah's complaint is not just that God proved to be universalist in respect of Nineveh, it is that God proves to be inconsistent even at that most generous level. Yhwh manipulates creation quite cynically, forgives wholly arbitrarily, and destroys what Yhwh has made without a thought. As a result, it could be argued that the most theologically profound observation in Jonah occurs when God challenges him: 'Are you right to be angry over the gourd?' and Jonah
24. Of course Gen. 3 deconstructs its own myth of creation in a way by condemning Adam and Eve—but this is a logical and ordered consequence of a deliberate choice by the couple, not some random scything by the Grim Reaper. 25. Robert Burns, 'To a Mouse'. 26. Is it of significance that this phrase occurs only once in the whole of the Tanakh, in Gen. 1.31. Was it something too daring—or too implausible?—to be repeated?
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replies, 'Yes! Mortally angry!' For who can trust a God who is so careless over the least of the creation (4.9)? How is the matter to be resolved? If God's existence and nature are in conformity with Genesis 1, God's actions seem to be either intolerable or incompetent and God's promise in Exod. 34.6 is shown to be either empty or cynical. On the other hand, Jonah, far from endorsing the belief that God is a logical and consistent creator, by deconstructing creation itself shows that the very idea of creation is illogical and inconsistent. It forces us into indefensible positions on theodicy and suffering because it assumes the kind of cause and effect with which we are familiar in both logic and scientific study. But if the world is not of this kind, if the undecideability of what is constitutes the closest we can reach to the truth, what Jonah offers is a kind of peace: what is, is; what happens, happens—but not as purely meaningless activity. God cannot be blamed, for God is what creation indicates rather than its first cause (in the mediaeval sense), and to blame God for injustice would make no more sense than blaming a volcano for its devastating effects. Elata-Alster and Salmon (1989: 54-55) argue that one way to read Jonah 4 is in terms of the prophet's ignorance. Unable to accept or understand what has happened, Jonah persists in the vain hope that something else will take place to restore his own faith in the way things are and the way God works. They draw a parallel with the snake in Eden, which similarly talks as though it knows the mind of God, but is fatally mistaken. My point is the opposite: that Jonah, whatever the character knows or does not know, is—as a text—disturbingly knowing in its rejection of the neatness of traditional theodicy and its acceptance of a darker, but at the same time more truthful, vision of reality. In the end, Jonah reminds us that all the meanings we construct are of no use if they cannot make room for those 'who cannot tell their right hand from their left, as well as many cattle'! Despite my modest disagreement with Elata-Alster and Salmon, I would like to conclude by repeating their own final words (1989: 57) since they elegantly sum up what I believe to have been the puzzle at the core of this essay, and they too address (though in different terms) the problem of theodicy raised by Exod. 34.6:
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Davies, P.R. 1992
In Search of 'Ancient Israel ' (JSOTSup, 148; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Elata-Alster, G,., and R. Salmon 1989 'The Deconstruction of Genre in the Book of Jonah: Towards a Theological Discourse', JLT 3.1 : 40-60. Hunter, A.G. 2001 'Jonah from the Whale: Exodus Motifs in Jonah 2', in J.C. de Moor (ed.), The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as Historical Person, Literary Character and Anonymous Artist (OTS, 45; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 142-58. Magonet, J. 1983 Form and Meaning: Studies in Literary Technique in the Book of Jonah (Bible & Literature Series, 8; Sheffield: Almond Press). Sayers, D.L. 1941 The Mind of the Maker (London: Methuen). Sherwood, Y. 1996 The Prostitute and the Prophet: Hosea 's Marriage in Literary-Theoretical Perspective (JSOTSup, 212; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). 2000 A Biblical Text and its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
THE 'FALSE PEN OF SCRIBES':
INTELLECTUALS THEN AND Now
Philip R. Davies
Robert Carroll's cultural repertoire embraced the Bible (of course), theology, history, the arts (classical and modern), philosophy, music of nearly every kind, and 'theory' of all shades (some of which he loathed). He knew more than enough to trump most of his opponents in any of these areas, but rather than display his erudition in peacock fashion he preferred to debunk pretension, hypocrisy, ignorance and stupidity, something for which his chosen career gave him scope enough. Not least of his qualities was an affection, loyalty and care for students, his own and others', whom he tried to educate into both scholarship and humanity and for his friends, with whom small talk and the pleasures of a drink gave as much if not more pleasure. The profession of which he became a member offered him scope for all these kinds of delights, and is much poorer for his absence. He was not, to be honest, the typical intellectual: too much a deliberate outsider in his own mind; too little interested in his own reputation, with too much time for other people. And too complex for any more statements like these. But without doubt, one of the real intellectuals. Intellectuals Ancient and Modern
Over the last decades biblical scholars have been taking explicitly into account the obvious fact that the creation of a collection of literary works in the traditional language(s) of Judah, namely a canon, was the work of a literate class, and was directed partly by its own intentions and partly by the intentions of the rulers it served. This canon was not, and is not an index of the beliefs or practices of an ancient agrarian society, whether of Judah or of its northern neighbour, but of the intellectual elite that formed a very small part the population. The canon does not tell us what the average ancient Israelite or Judaean thought or did, but what their intellectuals
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described theni as thinking and doing, ideally. These same intellectuals, monopolists of Judaean literary culture, responsible for its creation and preservation, are the authors of the Bible, and the real answer to the question 'Who Wrote the Bible?'.1 The gradual influence of this canon, and its ideas, to the point where it became the scriptures of the religion, 'way of life' or philosophy (however best described) that we call 'ancient Judaism(s)' is a illustration, precisely, of how an intellectual class created an ideology which exerted, in stages, a hegemony over all Jews. To understand the authorship of the Bible means to understand, not 'ancient Israel', however that be defined,2 but the scribal class and its social and intellectual world. I have deliberately used the word 'hegemony' to invoke the thought of Antonio Gramsci, probably the most creative Marxist thinker of the twentieth century. Central to his intellectual agenda was the classic Marxist relationship between economic infrastructure and cultural superstructure and his major contribution was an insistence that the influence was not unidirectional. The proletariat could, in fact, be hindered from their historic uprising by the application of ideology. They could also be aided in their struggle by intellectuals who would provide them with an ideological focus. So Gramsci saw the intellectual as playing a key role in Marxist theory. Intellectuals, by formulating ideological systems and their control of the communication of ideas could enable rulers to rule and also to be overthrown.3 There is a strong temptation to apply Gramsci's insight of the two-way relationship between economic structure and cultural superstructure to the history of a pre-capitalist society such as ancient Judah, even if such an exercise has primarily a heuristic value. We are clearly not speaking of a
1. The derivative and backward-looking answer to this question by R.E. Friedman (1987) marks a belated epitaph to an earlier agenda. 2. Too many times to document, I read myself being accused of denying the existence of ancient Israel. Those who have read In Search of 'Ancient Israel' (Davies 1992) with any attention will know that the 'Ancient Israel' of the title, complete with quotes, refers to the scholarly construct achieved by blending the various biblical 'Israels' with historical and archaeological data. I have never had any interest in denying the historical existence of an ancient Palestinian kingdom called (among other things) Israel, which is documented in contemporary records, as is the state of Judah. 3. Gramsci's ideas are presented primarily in his miscellaneous writings from prison (see Gramsci 1991, 1994). The most lucid presentation I have encountered of the progress of Gramsci's thought is Bellamy and Schecter 1993.
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capitalist world nor of atheistic authors. Yet the question of the intellectual's role and place is one that spans both ancient Judah and early twentieth century Italy. In the world of ancient Israel and Judah, the space between the ruler and the ruled and between tradition and reaction was also the land of the intellectual. And as for hegemony, what literature has exercised its ideology more powerfully on its own society, which it helped to shape—and far beyond? These ancient intellectuals, being dead, still speak, even if their voice is misheard as God's, or Moses', or some other ancient pious construct. For Gramsci, ideology can be exercised in the direction of either action or reaction. And indeed, the Jewish scriptural canon contains monuments of both radical and reactionary thought; whose different directions are sometimes mixed within the same literary text, let alone the same literary corpus. This feature of the intellectual's space certainly makes the canon as a whole somewhat contradictory, and therefore open. Aside from the vagaries ofRezeption, such contradiction, such openness, is the outcome of the different interests and political stances of individuals and groups of intellectuals who authored and transmitted the texts, and this of course in turn is due partly to the different contexts, the Sitze in Leben as form critics understand it, and the audience or readership, of particular compositions. But the contradictory nature of much of the discourse of the Bible is primarily a symptom of the ambiguity inherent in the nature of a social class whose members are simultaneously servants of the state, preservers of a culture of literacy, and accumulators of knowledge (hence articulators of a state ideology about which they were at the same time curious and critical). 'Beware of rulers' the Mishnah advises its sages, 'for they invite no-one except for their own needs' (m. Abot 2.3). But the writers of the canonized literature of the Bible certainly did not, could not, and would not do so. Yet their professional allegiance to their masters was balanced by a commitment to their own class values and an attraction to ideas. They are close in this respect to Gramsci's Western European communist intellectuals as the ancient world can offer, except perhaps for a commitment to the struggle of the proletariat, which was an idea and a reality, like atheism, well beyond their time. Rather than generalize further, however, I want to look at a self-portrait of this class, drawn directly from one piece of writing from the literary canon that it produced. The one book that above all combines the characteristics, or elements, of the rural, domestic, royal and scribal worlds, is the book of Proverbs.
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The popular origin of the proverb in general is widely asserted. These short statements are often regarded as folk wisdom, and much of the book of Proverbs itself has even been interpreted as originating from the nomadic or the village life of Israelites and Judaeans, in which the father and the mother bring up their children with the aid of simple maxims, in a traditional kinship-based society where social norms are regulated by custom and social approval and enforce where necessary by the verdicts of elders.4 At the other extreme, and creating an apparent paradox, the collecting and writing of proverbs was, in the ancient Near East, typically associated with either kings or persons close to the king. In the Hebrew Bible Solomon has the monopoly here, though the book of Proverbs also cites the 'men of Hezekiah' and a certain unknown 'King Lemuel' (someone that I am sure before long will turn up in an inscription or on a bulla somewhere in Israel). I said just now 'apparent paradox'. The perceptive critic will, however, quickly see how the co-option of a popular genre, and implicitly the popular values that it encapsulates, the 'wisdom' of traditional society and of its elders, by a king is part of the process in which he consolidates his hegemony. He is their elder, their chief, their wise man. And the 'men of Hezekiah' are none other than our scribes, the intellectuals of their day. They, too, as I will explain, appropriate 'wisdom' to their own ends, but ends which do not coincide with either traditional society or royal propaganda. Let us observe how 'wisdom' was endowed with distinct meanings. For the traditional society 'wisdom' was collective experience and knowledge, passed on by parents and family, but at the wider social level concentrated in those 'elders' who acted as the guardians of social order. For the king, or on his behalf, it was a divinelyendowed, or perhaps inherited, gift that constituted part of his right, as a 'wise ruler', to make laws, fight wars, collect taxes, and in such ways 'shepherd' his people. For the intellectual it was something attained by personal observation, by thought, by reason and by speculation. It was, indeed, sophia, and its pursuit was philosophy. 'Wisdom' is not an innocent term or value: it enshrines a claim to power. As a consequence, the book of Proverbs is more than a collection of sayings, more than a collection of royal pseudepigrapha. It is a scribal 4.
For a discussion of proverbs as popular literature, see Fontaine 1982.
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document that articulates a philosophical theory about the moral structure of the world, and about the structure of society in particular. In that sense especially, it is uniquely a book of the scribal class. And I shall argue that this theory is a perfect illustration of what Gramsci means by hegemony. In Proverbs what is developed is essentially an ideology of the status quo. But if we move to other books of 'wisdom', to Job or Qoheleth, or even certain Psalms, we can easily see that ideology challenged and even reversed by the same class that created the book of Proverbs. The ideology of Proverbs can be reviewed by observing (as is well known) that the implied reader of Proverbs is an adolescent male, the pupil scribe. In the social world of the traditional village society the recipient of the proverb may be any boy. In Proverbs he is fictionally the son of Solomon, the child of a king. But below the surface the child is the future scribe. What virtues does such a person need to learn? Should he not be introduced to the permanent and depressing realities of diplomatic compromise, to the necessity of hypocrisy, flattery and the devious machinations of the court? Well, up to a point. But prior to these are the virtues that will lay the foundation for success. So, for instance, of the utmost necessity are iTEJn andHQTQ... ('soundness, calculation', 3.21), the need to accept nrOlfl ('discipline'); to speak straight, think straight, make no enemies of powerful people, keep silent rather than speak quickly, plan ahead rather than act on impulse, keep the right company and stay away from idiots (such as the 'babbling fool' of 10.8). Talk is preferable to fighting, moderation of appetite highly advisable, charitable behaviour towards the poor most seemly. Be righteous and fear God, of course: but that goes without saying—it is a platitude. It is the ethos of the scribal school and the scribal class and its profession that will constitute the young man's formation. As we shall see, this ethos is also represented in the literary canon (and especially by the great scribe ben Sira) as divinely ordained, as divine torah, though not at first in the sense ofmishpatim. That meaning has to come later, when the scribes have another agenda to deal with, be that reflecting on the integrity of their canon as a whole, countering the effects of Greek philosophy, controlling the emerging definition of 'Judaism' or whatever. Proverbs can be seen, then, as a scribal book, both in terms of pedagogy and also of philosophy. The important point about pedagogy is that it does not immediately transmit the learning of the mature scholar. Elementary education comes first, and this introduces the pupil, in ways that can and must be grasped, onto the path that leads to true scholarship. In Proverbs
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two important pedagogical devices are used. One can be summed up as follows: 'There are two ways of doing everything: a right way and a wrong way'. Now this is clearly pedagogically sound, but no experienced scribe will ever have died with that belief. The second pedagogical device is actually a specific form of this dualistic pedagogy. Good pedagogy starts from where the student is. So, what thoughts typically exercise the mind of a young male at the time when he is fit for professional and moral instruction? What other than sex, indeed! (According to a claim repeated by one of my colleagues, these thoughts occur today every six seconds.) And so the virtuous and the depraved way of life, once separated according to the dualistic pedagogical rule, are represented by women. Rather unconvincingly to this particular modern reader, Proverbs recommends the superiority of a woman who invites you to a meal over one who invites you to a good time of another sort. The good woman does offer serious wealth, of course (8.18-21) if she means this literally and not figuratively. She represents by far the better investment in the long term, which is what wisdom is all about. It is obviously intellectually respectable in ancient Judah to seek money, honour and status rather that the short-lived joys of illicit sex. It seems that intellectuals in Gramsci's day and ours are not necessarily what they used to be. The 'wisdom' that the reader of Proverbs is encouraged to gain is not the practical knowledge of subsistence farming, of making ends meet, of hard manual labour, of the social relations of everyday village life— though there are several rural metaphors in play in the proverbs themselves. It is the 'wisdom' of kings, rulers, governors, judges, people with the opportunity to acquire wealth, people who have and wish to maintain 'respectability', 'influence', gravitas. We are firmly within the social and ethical world of the establishment intellectual. So much for pedagogy. But Proverbs is also a work of philosophy. The practical lessons themselves need to be supported by some explanatory theory. And this theory is introduced, rather neatly, by developing the metaphor of the good woman. Wisdom personified as a woman is much more than a metaphor for the right wife, or the right behaviour and values. Dame Wisdom, indeed, has a pedigree of her own. The theology of the scribes behind the Hebrew Bible is firmly monotheistic (here again we depart radically from Gramsci), even though they are aware of non-monotheistic cultural relics (and diplomatic niceties as well, no doubt), and equally aware of the problems caused by such a system. One such problem, for example, is the notion of a chosen people, and this the scribes
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have excluded from their theology: no-one profits or suffers as a result of racial origin, only as a result of birth, social status and a good scribal education. Another example is the origin of evil (which indeed has never satisfactorily been resolved). But if Yahweh is now single, he has always had, and still has, a Significant Other, a Female Presence, not a part of him, but something 'beside' him; his erstwhile bride perhaps, but now his personal assistant. This Wisdom woman is responsible for the way the world is. She is both the mother and the bride, the Madonna, the patron/ matron of all good scribes. For in a brilliant synthesis of ethics with metaphysics, the philosophy of Proverbs sets the scribe in the best of all possible worlds, where learning how the system works, seeing and exploiting the inevitable nexus of cause and effect, delivers an ethical code. This philosophy excludes the need for further divine action because the acts of humans themselves deliver the consequences. God not only rested on the seventh day, but has rested ever since, the management of the world taken care of forever. Because reward and punishment is built into the fabric of creation, the wicked suffer, the righteous blossom, the indolent starve, the foolish come to grief, the wise prosper. This philosophy has major advantages to the privileged scribal class: it justifies the status quo, a system in which the haves deserve their having and the poor are poor because they are not wise but foolish. It also marginalizes all those who think God can be called upon to act, to change things, to right wrongs (have we almost left Gramsci behind now?). It is very much a theology of the elite, the well-off. That intellectuals believe or are told to believe in this philosophy is not to their credit, but perhaps we can understand that it would be very unwise to publish under the name of King Solomon anything suggesting the contrary (or wait for the writer of Qoheleth). The scribe of Proverbs is what Gramsci would call a 'traditional intellectual' who justifies the establishment, rather than an 'organic intellectual' who espouses a new cause. The philosophy has its drawbacks, of course. The main disadvantage is that the intelligent scribe does not for a moment privately believe in it, however convenient it is to do so. Well, perhaps he does, in a nostalgic sort of way. In theory, perhaps, that is how things are. But in reality, things are not so. Proverbs offers an official theology, and has all the virtues of almost anything that is official. It is half-baked. It is better than a theology that says being good is doing whatever God commands (but this too some other 'Deuteronomistic' intellectuals tried), but not all that much better. The writers here are displaying the ambiguity of an intelligent
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person thinking to order, trying to convince himself, or a young successor, that the world they are in is a stable one. That justice and order reign. That the world is as it should be. This is a logical consequence of a belief in one good god, but hardly any intelligent person will believe it corresponds to reality. Intellectuals are as easily bought, or compromised, as anyone else, and where their economic interest are concerned, they are perfectly corruptible. Let me take my own case. I feel very strongly about the vast majority of people in the world who earn less in a year than I do in a week, who have no chance to read philosophy, live to old age, wine and dine well. I give some of my earnings to good causes. I do not, however, make any serious attempt to change the world which has done me rather well. I think in this respect I am like the majority of first world intellectuals. Some fight harder for real causes, and these people I applaud. But nearly all of us are morally ambivalent. As intellectuals we see that the world needs changing, but equally as intellectuals most of also want to find a way of living in it coherently. The second goal may be less important to the wellbeing of humanity as a whole, but it is certainly easier and potentially within our own grasp. Following the thought of Karl Marx, whom Gramsci followed, though in his own way, this ideology of status quo, of justifying a relatively affluent and secure lifestyle on the grounds of virtue rather than privilege, might be interpreted as an instrument for convincing the poor to remain passive within a system that forced them to supply a surplus to feed a small elite and condemned them to either death, some form of slavery, or charity in the event of a poor harvest. An opiate for the masses. Religion famously does this: the belief in a better life hereafter has certainly been used for this purpose for two thousand Christian years. But although I do not make the mistake of thinking ancient farmers or poor people are incapable of thinking as well as anyone else, I doubt that the book of Proverbs was written for them, or that it was read out publicly at festivals, as is often suggested for parts of biblical literature. I rather think that it was what the scribes told themselves (and their rulers too, of course), and precisely as a way of masking the unease they may well have felt at the moral ambiguities of their situation. In suggesting this, I am not making the mistake, I hope, of burdening these people with the insights of later centuries. They almost certainly believed that poverty was endemic and had no basis in laws of economics; and that the stability of society depended on gifts from rich to poor and
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not an as yet undreamt-of system of economic redistribution through welfare for all. They did not read the thoughts of their great successor, the Jewish philosopher Karl Marx. But they knew the system was leaky. We know because we read these sentiments in the Psalms, in Qoheleth, in the book of Job. The Psalms expect God to repair the leak; Job says all sorts of things, including 'who knows?'; Qoheleth says 'don't hold your breath (hebel)'. In a sense, though, the philosophical problem was one of the scribes' own making. To whom, after all, do we assign the responsibility for the development of a monotheistic religion in Judah? To the Assyrians or Persians?5 Perhaps, to a degree; though we cannot be sure what Zoroastrianism was, exactly at this time, whether monotheistic or dualistic, or how far anyone under the Persians was obliged to follow it. To a preexilicJudaean tradition? That tradition is the chauvinistic one of small kingdoms. It does not develop a truly universalistic theology. For this something like an imperial ideology and an imperial strategy, if not an imperial reality, is needed. I blame the ancient intellectuals. These are the people who care how many gods there are. For the farmer, religion is a precarious matter: one does not risk offending the bringers of rain and of fertility; one pays due tribute to them all (and this we can be fairly sure the ancient farmers of Israel an Judah did; their female figurines tell us as much). But the number and nature of gods matters to intellectuals for whom life affords the time to think about such matters. They could criticize the farmers in their writings for acting like 'Canaanites' and pursue the task of creating a more satisfactory theology. As a result of their intellectual efforts, whether or not these were prompted by the devotees of Asshur or Ahuramazda,6 a new religion began to emerge in Judah: Yahwism, Judaology, Judaism. One righteous creator god. According to Proverbs, not a national god, because that was a non sequitur. The god was too big for that. Other scribes might, and did, disagree, and these developed a different philosophical system in which there would have to be an end of history and time, getting rid in some way of all other nations through destruction or absorption. But the Proverbs system needed no such solution, and despite its obvious faults, it tells us much about the mentality of the scribal class. And it 5. For the Assyrian origins of Near Eastern monotheism, see Parpola 1993; on the Persians, see Yamauchi 1990, but the evidence rather than the preverse conclusion. 6. Or Baal? See Niehr 1990. Perhaps monotheism was an international conspiracy of intellectuals...?
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surely prompts the scholarly (intellectual) reader to ask: are we not, really, rather like these people? Or do we think we are better? They had at least the sense to doubt the wisdom of their answers, and keep asking.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bellamy, R, and D. Schecter Gramsci and the Italian State (Manchester: Manchester University Press). 1993 Davies, P.R. In Search of 'Ancient Israel ' (JSOTSup, 174; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic 1992 Press). Friedman, R.E. 1987 Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Summit Books). Fontaine, C.A. 1982 Traditional Sayings in the Old Testament (Bible & Literature Series, 5; Sheffield: Almond Press). Gramsci, A. 1991 Prison Notebooks (ed. J.A. Buttigieg; trans. J.A. Buttigieg and A. Callari; 2 vols.; New York: Columbia University Press). 1994 Letters from Prison (ed. F. Rosengarten; trans. R. Rosenthal; 2 vols.; New York: Columbia University Press). Niehr, H. 1990 Der hochste Gott : alttestamentlicher JHWH-Glaube im Kontext syrischkanaandischer Religion des 1. Jahrtausends v. Chr (BZAW, 190; Berlin: W. de Gruyter). Parpola, S. 'The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and 1993 Greek Philosophy', JNES 53: 161-208. Sassoon, A.S. 2000 Gramsci and Contemporary Politics: Beyond Pessimism of the Intellect (Innovations in Political Theory, 4; London: Routledge). Yamauchi, E.M. 1990 Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House).
THROUGH THE EYES OF HORSES: REPRESENTATON OF THE HORSE FAMILY IN THE HEBREW BIBLE*
Heather A. McKay
Introduction: Moving from Human-Centred Analysis of the Texts All analysis is perspectival and it is only recently, following the rise of feminist and post-colonial criticism, that the human-centredness of literature and literary criticism has been fully recognized (Baker 1993; Zwart 1997; Fudge 2000). Using insights gained from the Animal Rights movement that deal with the appropriate use of animals in the physical 'real' world and the appropriate use of animals in literature and other forms of representation (e.g. art, advertisements, safari parks and zoological 'gardens'), I will attempt to probe deeper the use—or is it abuse?—of horses and asses in the Hebrew Bible. I will, therefore, ask: Can an animal be abused by the pen of a human writer, or the mind of a human reader? I believe I will prove that they can and that they are so abused more often than we realize. Using the term for a living being as a metaphor—whether complimentary or insulting—is a form of commodification that is unsavoury when applied to persons of disfavoured gender. I hardly dare give an example, but we can all think of terms of abuse applied to men, and to women, that are feminine in origin and grammatical form; feminist scholars have drawn our attention to these and their (ab)use. I similarly do not want to give voice to racist language, but all of us have heard examples. Recently, however, black feminist criticism and post-colonial criticism have drawn * I have written this paper to celebrate the contribution of Robert Carroll to my understanding and appreciation of the Hebrew Bible, of a wide range of other literature, of all sorts of words and ideas, and of life itself. Another reason is that he used to deliver innumerable witticisms at the expense of my horse riding and less frequent forays on camels.
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the demeaning operation of such language to our attention and our eschewal. Should not the same type of judgment apply to protect the being of animals from those who have and exercise the power of speech? For, to quote Alan Read (2000: iv), 'Since humans have named animals, animals have been subjected to any number of humiliations by humans'. So, I present this essay as an ideological critique of the representation of horses (and other equids) in the Hebrew Bible. And, because this type of ideological critique has not been applied to the Hebrew Bible previously, I will begin by assembling the basic data about the use of the horse family in the Hebrew Bible. 1. Occurrences of Asses, Horses and Mules in the Hebrew Bible Asses (donkeys), horses and mules, or stallions, mares, foals and colts typically occur in particular scenarios within the biblical narratives. These are generally concerned with the animals' role in the economy of the human community. These roles can be summarized as follows. Asses Asses might be working: carrying burdens in trade or agriculture, for example, grain (Gen. 42.26) or mixed provender (1 Sam. 25.18); or they might be used for riding by rich people, mainly men, for example, Abraham (Gen. 22.3), Balaam (Num. 22.22), and also some women of note: Abigail (1 Sam. 25.20), Caleb's daughter (Deut. 15.18//Judg. 1.14) and a Shunammite woman of substance (2 Kgs 4.24). In times of famine, an ass might even end up as food—as is implied in 2 Kgs 6.26. Asses were the most basic of economic assets, and could be a gift, for example, Jacob to Esau (Gen. 32.13-15). Sometimes, an ass might carry a corpse, for example, that of the man of God from Judah (1 Kgs 13.29) or of an unnamed concubine (Judg. 19.28). In a more kindly vein, asses were listed among those who were to rest on the sabbath (Exod. 23.12; Deut. 5.14), allowing a valuable recovery time for sores on back or legs. Characteristics of Asses Asses were regarded as unthreatening. Riding on an ass was a peaceable means of approaching one's destination. Asses had nothing of the splendid and quelling aspects of warhorses. Moreover, asses are strong and resistant to dehydration and they were renowned for their determination.
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There is also the story of the ass that survives as an unscathed bystander when a lion kills the man of God from Judah (1 Kgs 13.24) and Balaam's ass (Num. 22), to whose extraordinary behaviour we shall return. Both these asses seem to stand as witnesses to the wrong-headedness of humans and their ensuing punishment or enlightenment. Horses Texts that speak of horses refer to them in the following ways: they are used in war because of their speed and their power to transport the mounted warrior rapidly, with his hands free to use weapons (Isa. 5.28); they are strong enough to pull wagons full of merchandise (Gen. 45.19). However, horses are not generally used for simple transport, but rather to enhance the prestige of the rider (Gen. 41.43; Esth. 6.8) or as a valuable trade object of exchange (1 Kgs 10.28; Ezek. 27.14). They might have been used in some unorthodox religious ceremonial in Judah, for 2 Kgs 23.11 states approvingly that Josiah removed the horses, whether live or sculpted, from the entrance to the house of the Lord. Characteristics of Horses Horses bring prestige to their owner, a certain height and presence in a throng, along with an indication of opulence. Solomon is reported as having paid 150 shekels for each horse that drew his 600-shekel chariots from Egypt (1 Kgs 10.29//2 Chron. 1.17). Horses, however, are rarely described in the Hebrew Bible. They are depicted in colours in Zechariah's visions (Zech. 1.8; 6.2-6), but their physical qualities are specified in only a few texts: the horses of the Chaldeans are described as being swifter than leopards and fiercer than wolves (Hab. 1.8), and the voice of God (Job 39.19-25) outlines the might and impressiveness of war horses in vivid rhetoric. God harangues Job as follows: Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with strength? Do you make him leap like the locust? His majestic snorting is terrible. He paws in the valley, and exults in his strength; he goes out to meet the weapons. He laughs at fear, and is not dismayed; he does not turn back from the sword. Upon him rattle the quiver, the flashing spear and the javelin. With fierceness and rage he swallows the ground; he cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet. When the trumpet sounds, he says 'Aha!' He smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.
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These aroused warhorses are described in a powerfully positive way as both indicative of military force and as constituting a magnificent spectacle. Similar understandings of the power and fearsomeness of horses in war are given elsewhere: The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan; at the sound of the neighing of their stallions the whole land quakes. They come and devour the land and all that fills it, the city and those who dwell in it. (Jer. 8.16) At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his stallions, at the rushing of his chariots, at the rumbling of their wheels, the fathers look not back to their children, so feeble are their hands. (Jer. 47.3)
These horses cause panic in those who hear their thundering approach and apparently fear their 'devouring' teeth, though this is, of course, a wholly irrational terror since horses are confirmed herbivores. Mules Mules are those sterile hybrid members of the horse family bred from a male ass and a mare; they may be the size of a donkey or as tall as a horse. For mules we find the following activities: they might be used for riding by the royal court and aristocracy, mainly by men, for example, David and Solomon (1 Kgs 1.33) and Absalom (2 Sam. 18.9); or work for their owners by carrying burdens (2 Kgs 5.17). They might also function as valuable trade object in exchanges (1 Kgs 10.25; Ezek. 27.14). Characteristics of Mules Mules have value, prestige and usefulness at a point somewhere between those of asses and horses; they have no particular distinctiveness in the biblical narratives. Conclusion to Part 1 In all the above settings, the equids are seen as objects to be used and manipulated instrumentally, whether in the real world or in the world of the text. For the Hebrew Bible the human control of animals is as unproblematic as it the patriarchal control of women. But there is less implication of any 'partnership' with animals. 2. The Difficulties of Working with Representation of Animals Humans consistently define themselves over against animals; human selfidentity is to a large part constituted by means of named differences from
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animals, for example, overly aggressive humans are described as being 'animals', humans rendered speechless under oppression are spoken of as 'dumb animals' or as being like 'sheep led to the slaughter'. Furthermore, human records of their dealings with animals are focused around their use, edibility, training and exploitation. Any writing about animals is consequently read through humans and from their perspective (Fudge 2000: 1-3). Moreover, in spoken and written English, the situation is at its most extreme—as far as the horse is concerned—for the word 'riding' as applied to a horse implies a relationship of human dominance over the horse (Elgin 2000). Other languages express that conjunction differently. One of the native American languages, Navajo, describes the relationship in terms of the horse 'animating about with me' while the Japanese form of words would best be translated along the lines of the place where a person was 'on-ahorse' and in another Native American tongue, Hopi, the person would have been riding around 'with a horse' just as the person might be 'eating soup "with a spoon'" (Elgin: 55). Through considering these unfamiliar expressions of the riding relationship, the process of defamiliarization allows us to see how embedded cultural understandings and unreflective use of language in both British and American English lead to the acceptance of the subjugation of horses as 'normal'. Humans in other cultures recognize a different process of co-operation between human and horse. This deep cultural conditioning is something that we, as practising scholars, should be alert to. We should try to observe and understand our culture of representation in the same way that anthropologists would study a foreign culture. We should try for cultural distance from ourselves (Baker 1993: 6), at the same time appreciating that, however hard we try to achieve scholarly distance, we will always view the world through the lens of our own cultural experience. At this point it will be valuable to reconsider Roland Barthes' concept of 'naturalization', whereby every culture typically diverts its members' attention from certain things by ascribing unworthiness or triviality to them and reserving the powerful (often white and male) gaze for objects of study designated 'important' and 'scholarly' (Baker 1993: 8,15). It is my contention that appreciation of horses' concerns alongside our own has suffered from this type of cultural obscurity. We gaze at horses, but we do not 'recognize' them (Baker 1993: 11). We do not create discourse space for the equine way of being in the world.
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'Disnification' is Baker's term for the many ways by which our culture portrays animals so that it can determinedly avoid treating animals seriously (Baker 1993: 165-82). Only relatively coincidentally does this term resonate with 'Disneyfication', its stronger resonance being with the antithesis of signification': rather than making sense of something, disnification involves making nonsense of it. Animals are disnified, Baker claims, by being used as pets, or as models for fluffy toys, or by being depicted in grossly neotenized forms—having the 'cute', disarming features of baby animals—on greetings cards and advertisements. They are used in such representations to engender the 'Aaah!' cast of mind in the reader/observer. Zwart (1997) regards this aspect even more seriously and claims that by defining animals objectively as machines (following Descartes), or as organisms (following Kant) or as beings who dwell in an—apparently— restricted world of experience (following Heidegger), humans lose the possibility of more profound encounters with animals (Zwart 1997: 378). To encapsulate this distinction, he refers to the tale of Mr Gradgrind, the fact-delivering schoolmaster of Dickens's novel Hard Times, who asks Sissy, a horse-breaker's daughter to define a horse. She is unable to answer at all, since she cannot reply in the expected 'herbivorous quadruped' mode, for, to her, horses are so much more than facts (Zwart 1997: 377); indeed, to her, they are all individual beings. Human representations of animals often treat them as humorous, for example, the animated cows in advertisements for butter or the curious hermaphrodite cow/bull who advertises beer.1 The animals are, in each case, unfairly distorted by those representations, for animals can make their own 'humour'2 and care for their young without human direction. Besides, if from the human perspective the animal's world appears 'impoverished' there are absolutely no means by which that view could be tested; the animal's world might be infinitely richer than the human world, but remain quite 'other' and quite unknown. An improved relationship could, however, be created by shedding our human-centredness and encountering each animal as 'a living being commanding our astonishment' (Zwart 1997: 390). 1. These characterizations were used in recent advertising campaigns on British television. No doubt similar portrayals appear on TV screens around the world. 2. Crows may often be observed playing and being thrown into disequilibrium in the air through flying into gusty winds and powerful up currents and horses have their own sense of humour that functions through employing believable ruses to gain their own way or to get the better of another horse.
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3. Ideological Analysis of the Texts The range of ways in which horses and asses are referred to in the biblical texts can be grouped together in ways that indicate the implications of those uses.3 Figurative Use of the Term for an Ass The unit of capacity, the omer, describes the load that may be carried by an ass, what we might call an 'assworth' or an 'ass-full', and the tribal chieftain Hamor (Gen. 33-34) is also named after an ass. Given the nature of his role as the dupe of Dinah's deceptively 'outraged' brothers, Robert Carroll averred that the name was likely to be a nickname, something after the fashion of 'asshead'.4 Figurative Use ofEquines Themselves Figurative uses of the horse have been listed by Thompson (1962:646-48), but as we shall see, analyzing these is not as simple as at first appears. I have divided the figurative uses of the horse—those similes and metaphors that highlight an allegedly common feature of humans and horses— into three types of comparisons. Type A. Comparisons that intend to be merely descriptive: 1. The rejoicing of the Chaldeans over plunder is like the neighing of stallions (Jer. 50.11). 2. Locusts are similar to horses in appearance, leaping and running (Job 39.20; Joel 2.4). 3. The wicked go their way like a horse plunging into battle (Jer. 8.6). 3. As it is unnatural for horses to run on rocks, so the people have perverted justice into poison (Amos 6.12). Type B. Comparisons that intend a compliment: 1. The female lover of Song of Songs is beautiful like a mare of Pharaoh's chariots (Song 1.9). 2. The steady tramping of the Israelites in the wilderness was like the surefootedness of horses (Isa. 63.13). 3. The Lord rides a chariot with horses, figures of power and majesty (Hab. 3.8). 3. Mules do not have the full range of figurative uses that appear for horses and asses. 4. Robert Carroll, personal communication.
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Such comparisons imply that physical beauty is an important part of female attractiveness, and that horses are more surefooted than humans and that God should be conceived of as a mighty king, such as Pharaoh. These comparisons, while not necessarily pejorative of animals, are, however, open to question. Type C. More negative comparisons are: 1. Men should not be like horses, that are in need of restraint by a bridle (Ps. 32.9). 2. 'Evil' men of Jerusalem lust for their neighbors' wives like neighing stallions (Jer. 5.8). 3. The sexuality of stallions is a picture of the 'evils' of Egyptian religion (Ezek. 23.20). In these texts, horses are depicted as naturally unruly and wilful, and their natural mating habits are given a negative cast by being likened to illicit human sexual activity. Non-Figurative Use of Horses Sadly, horses seem often to be expendable, for in none of the retellings of the story of the escaping Hebrews' crossing of the Reed Sea is regret expressed over the drowning of Pharaoh's horses, along with his horsemen (Exod. 15.1,4,21;Deut. 11.4; Josh. 24.6; Neh. 9.11). Similarly, in situations of crisis, God counsels Joshua to hamstring the enemies' horses (Josh. 11.6-9), or demands the death of enemy families and their domesticated animals, including asses (1 Sam. 15.3) or of the enemy horsemen and their horses (Hag. 2.22). David also hamstrung his enemy's horses (2 Sam. 8.4//1 Chron. 18.4). Such tactical destruction of other people's horses implies ruthless treatment of the animals in question. Non-Human-Centred Analysis of the Texts I will now attempt to distance, or decentre, the human readers from their 'human-ness' and locate them within their undifferentiated 'animal-ness' where horses and humans share the same environment and are 'permitted' to observe it, interact with it, to observe each other and interact with each other, each in their own mode of being-in-the-world. This is not, however, the nonsensical world of Dr Dolittle where the animals may speak and be understood in their own languages by the unique doctor who speaks their tongues, but are, alas, also easily convinced to donate their gifts and
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powers towards furthering (mainly) human ideals by (mainly) human means (Lofting 1925). Rather it is a world where humans surrender the automatic right to control both discourse and events and make a thorough and positive response to Engels' insight that the first act of violence is not enslaving another, but assuming one has the right to do so (Engels 1969: 190-93).5 The Use of the Horse as Decoration Over and over again, horses appear in the expected role of means of transport of people or goods, but they crop up more frequently as a means of attribution of wealth, power and military might. The beauty, strength, power, control, and elegance of the horse become shared with and transmitted to the human owner/rider. Observers believe in the bond between horse and rider and honour both in the creating of that bond. However, apart from those instances where the depicted asses or horses serve their depicted human owners as beasts of burden or are used by them as means of transport—for we must remember that none of these are 'real' animals or 'real' people—we find that the authors of the texts make more shameless use of the equines. The authors annex the stereotypical features of horses to create images of wealth or power through which to portray the actions of rich farmers, generals and kings. Horses add height, associated movement and noise to anyone riding them, and this feature has suited the purpose of the ruling classes throughout the centuries. Mediaeval knights took pains to dress extravagantly in clothes that could be displayed to best advantage while moving about publicly in parades, for example (Lingis 2000). They set about being monstrously glamorous, generating ceremonious gestures and statuesque postures. These affectations allowed them to hold the eye of their followers and command respect and obedience at a greater distance. And doing so from a mounted position enhanced the figure of the knight even more. Their horses could also be richly caparisoned in colours to match the rider's coat of arms and to create an enlarged unity to which loyalty was owed by the observers. A parallel representation of the horse as provider of height and status to those (men) who required it is to be found amongst George Wither's sixteenth-century collection of 'emblems'. There we find a dwarfed man 5. The argument is worked out against the background of the island where Robinson Crusoe assumed that Friday would be his slave; he told Friday that his 'name' was 'master'.
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on stilts looking at himself in a convex mirror and comparing his image with that of riders in the terrain behind him (Fudge 2000: 31-33). The irony of the 'emblem' is that the dwarfed person realizes the falseness of his added height—the stilts—but the riders—using horses' legs—do not.6 Such self-aggrandizing behaviour is duplicated by kings and warriors in the Bible narratives; a beautiful, eye-catching, white and becrowned horse is the set-piece gift from Ahasuerus to 'he whom the king chose to honour'. Mordecai is feted by the provision of royal robes, which the king had worn, and a crowned horse which the king had previously ridden (Esth. 6.8). But the sad truth is that these animals are included in those representations—as in real-life royal occasions—not for their own qualities but for the stamp of status they give to their owners. Similar attributions of status, in these cases the accolade of divine favour, are evidenced by the appearance of'supernatural' horses: Elijah is taken up to heaven by a chariot and horses of fire (2 Kgs 2.11); Elisha's servant sees chariots and horses of fire around them (2 Kgs 6.17); Zechariah sees angelic horsemen on horses of different colours (red, sorrel and white) who patrol the earth (Zech. 1.8) and later sees four chariots drawn by red, black, white and dappled horses respectively (6.2-6). Here, those horses, being supernatural, give a supernatural 'decoration' to the characters in the texts. But, in both forms of use of the horses, the animals portrayed are not 'real'; they are performance items or narratological trimmings. The Ass as 'Bad-Ass' I believe I can identify comparison with asses being used to denigrate male characters. Certain men are referred to by means of equine metaphors, metaphors that do not compliment, or if they do, do so in one part and insult in the other. Who would relish either of the following descriptions applied to themselves? Ishmael is predicted to become 'a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him', dwelling 'over against all his kinsmen' (Gen. 16.11-12). No less harshly, Issachar is described as a 'strong ass' who 'bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a slave at forced labour' (Gen. 49.14-15).
6. Modern riders who are aware of these factors and deploy them to their advantage are the mounted police present where crowds assemble (Lawrence, cited in Baker 1993: 27).
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Our usual question is, What do these statements say about the men? They say that Isaachar will settle for a protected working life and that Ishmael will always be independent minded and troublesome throughout his life. But if we are even-handedly critical, we will ask: What do these texts say about the author's view of asses and of how much freedom he has to malign them? Would asses who behaved in either of those two ways be 'bad' asses or, rather, typical asses? They seem typical to me. So, should they bear the narratological work of criticizing these two men? Especially if it redounds to the discredit of asses? The Image of the Horse as Role Model Only very occasionally is the horse metaphor used as a compliment. Certainly equine power, sheen of coat and rippling muscles are attractive, and as we saw above, human female beauty can be likened to that of a mare. In parallel to this, a confirmed trait of masculinity is sexuality and sex appeal (Clines 1995:214). For males, then, the lustiness of the stallion could be a quality to be desired. But not in the mouths of the biblical narrators: They were well-fed lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor's wife. (Jer. 5.8)7 Though you rejoice, though you exult, O plunderers of my heritage, though you are wanton as a heifer at grass, and neigh like stallions. (Jer. 50.11)
Here, the stallions' natural drive to produce offspring is cast only in a negative light. If, however, proud and strong stallions did not behave like that, the ensuing herd would become weak and puny. This would suit no one's interests, human or equine. Horses Compared Favourably to Humans In just a few texts, humans are reminded that they may be 'less' than a horse or ass. In Jer. 12.5 the listeners are confronted with the unpleasant conclusion, that if they cannot run at the speed of men, they could not possibly hope to compete with horses. Those 'horses' are used as a metaphor for some challenge that the people cannot prove equal to, perhaps the more powerful and better organized Babylonians.
7. This text is one that Robert Carroll drew to his students' attention, praising its coincidental use of a pun in the English versions.
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Asses as Characters in the Text Two asses function as characters in the Hebrew Bible text: one a silent, unscathed witness to the death of a disobedient prophet (1 Kgs 13.11-30) and the other a vociferous participant in the re-alignment of the behaviour of a disobedient prophet (Num. 22). The silent ass belonged to the old prophet of Bethel and we encounter it first as a mount for the old prophet when he hurries after the man of God from Judah. He, then, persuades the man of God, by means of a lie about a divine word, to come and have a meal with him. When remorse strikes the old prophet, he sends the man of God on his way, riding on the self-same ass, which now becomes the mount for the man of God. A lion waylays the traveller and kills the man but leaves the ass untouched. Thereafter, during the time it takes for passers-by to carry the tale to the old prophet and for him to saddle another ass and reach the site of the calamity, the first ass remains standing by the body of the man of God, in the company of the lion, which continues to disregard the ass. Finally, the old prophet places the corpse of the man of God on the ass that originally took him to the place of his death and takes it home for burial in the old prophet's own grave. The two asses function to create the story's symmetry (Mead 1999); they point to parallels in movements of characters, warnings from God, meetings and partings, lying and truth-telling. From Mead's analysis of these features, he deduces that Jeroboam is made parallel to this donkey, this inactive observer; the narrator is indicating to the reader that Jeroboam is an 'ass' (Mead 1999: 202). In a more subtle and more complex way than we have noted before, the biblical narrator uses an obedient ass to make a fool of an inept king.8 But most interesting of all is the story of Balaam's ass who appears as a speaking character in a powerful story, a she-ass who proves to be not at all asinine. When male characters are shown to behave like animals—or, as Balaam, to be less wise than a she-donkey—we wonder what is going on. We know that the text is not straightforward; in fact, we suspect it to be particularly devious. We are intrigued, enticed to consider it. Generally, however, we do not consider the literary harm that is done to the ass. She is made a carnivalesque figure that suddenly has voice, memory and 8. In a similar vein, the lion obeys the injunction to avoid eating that God had laid upon the man of God for the duration of his mission, while the man of God had broken it. The lion—as much as the ass—is used in this story to show up the human characters in their folly (Mead 1999: 204).
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familiarity with her 'owner' and we treat the story as we would treat any story in which animals talk—as a fable. And any human who misreads a fable is at least as stupid as the animals portrayed therein—in fact, he/she is an animal (Fudge 2000: 65). Throughout literature, and especially in the book of Proverbs, speech 'is the handmaiden of wisdom, and its proper use is crucial in determining one's lot in life' (Savran 1994: 33). Balaam's ass is well-equipped to display her wisdom in wise counsel as the best of human friends would do. But sight is also important and we know from physiological studies that horses have an enormous field of vision (Williams 2000: 30), only three degrees short of all round vision; their eyes are the largest of any land mammal. What better animal than an ass to see more clearly than a human 'seer'? Treating the sensory powers of equines more seriously and allowing autonomy to the equine performers, modern studies of performance (Williams 2000) and the integrated use of horses in theatre, by innovative circus artiste Bartabas in his Theatre Zingaro, prove that the horse is capable of amazing sensitivity of perception. Horses, in fact, have supremely detailed perception of human beings 'in terms of an ability to apprehend the micro-details of expression, mood, shifts in skeleto-muscular tension, thermal skin patterning, olfaction, and so on'. As a result of these skills, 'a horse's perception of the real is so much finer' than human perception. I conclude with Williams that 'the horse is a superior observer' and that, in general, a horse's '"dumbness" is a measure of...human..."deafness"' (Williams 2000: 33). So, with our perspective of hindsight and twenty-first-century science, along with the insight into equine performance, we may note the double irony of this fable whereby the author of the Balaam narrative endows the ass with just those qualities that she actually has—save voice alone. It is truly fitting, then, that an ass should 'see' and 'hear' and 'perceive' the angel more readily than Balaam, whose concentration is being portrayed as very probably elsewhere. Another genuine feature of horses—one that is immortalized in Jonathan Swift's eighteenth-century novel, Gulliver's Travels, in particular to the land of the Houyhnyhnms, those horse-like beings who were wiser and more civilized than humans—is 'that they are unable to say "the thing which is not (for they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood)"' (cited in Williams 2000: 35). Horses are renowned as truth tellers.
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So, we find that the narrator of Balaam's story is doubly vindicated in his choice of the ass as the truth teller in his tale of a wilful seer's blindness and political dissimulation that are brought to public utterance by his she-ass, in the presence of the angel, thus forcing the seer to reconsider his words and course of action, that is, to see more clearly what his role and task must be. Moreover, the ass speaks to Balaam sharply and directly as if she were a familiar of his, in fact without circumlocution or the use of self-lowering or other-raising phrases, which indicates her perception of self as being equal in status to her interlocutor (McKay 1998). No longer is he the master and she the chattel; she upbraids him as an equal partner in their joint enterprise, haranguing him as the one who is really making a mess of things. She knows that she is every bit as important a participant as he, even if he does not know it. The different and reversed powers of seeing and truth-telling that Balaam and the she-ass display throughout the story point to the perspectival nature of all-seeing. Evidence is always only what one can recognize as evidence, what one has learned to look for and 'see'. Balaam, the 'seer', has chosen to shut his eyes and distort his words; the she-ass has not. Balaam chooses to shut his mouth and God opens hers. Conclusion Because of the persistent human valorizing of the distinguishing features of humans over against animals, namely, speech and rational thought, animals in the Hebrew Bible are frequently represented as other than they are in order to parody or warn foolish humans. Except for the single story of the she-ass accompanying Balaam and keeping him 'on the right track', the equines are demeaned by their perceived 'lack' of human qualities and their appropriate equine qualities are purloined to warn or insult humans. Other of the animals' qualities that could be admired, respected and emulated are ignored, except, perhaps in a double irony, of which the author was very probably unconscious, in that one story of Balaam's ass. BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, S. 1993
Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
MCKAY Through the Eyes of Horses Clines, D.J.A. 1995
Elgin, S.H. 2000 Engels, F. 1969 Firmage, E. 1992 Fudge, E. 2000
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'David the Man: The Construction of Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible', in idem, Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 205; Gender, Culture, Theory, 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 212-43. The Language Imperative (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books). Anti-Diihring (Moscow: Progress Publishers). 'Zoology: Animal Profiles', in ABD, VI: 646-48. Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (London: Macmillan).
Lingis, A. 2000 'Quadrille', Performance 5.2: 1-10. Lofting, H. 1925 Dr Dolittle 's Circus (London: Jonathan Cape). McCullough, W.S. 1962a 'Ass', in IDE, I: 260-61. 1962b 'Mule', in IDB, III: 45. McKay, HA. 1 998 ' She Said to Him, He Said to Her: Power Talk in the Bible, Or Foucault Listens at the Keyhole', BTB 28.2: 45-51. 1999 'Writing the "Wrongness" of Women: A Literary Device to Teach Men to be Better?', in Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Division A. The Bible and Its World (Jerusalem: Magnes Press): 1 15*27* (English section). Mead, J.K. 1999 'Kings and Prophets, Donkeys and Lions: Dramatic Shape and Deuteronomistic Rhetoric in 1 Kings 13',VT49: 191-205. Read, A. (ed.) 2000 Performance Research: On Animals 5/2 (London: Routledge). Savran, G. 1994 'Beastly Speech: Intertextuality, Balaam's Ass and the Garden of Eden', JS077 64: 33-55. Thompson, J.A. 1962 'Horse', in IDB, II: 646-48. Williams, D. 2000 'The Right Horse, The Animal Eye—Bartabas and Theatre Zingaro', Performance 5.2: 29-40. Zwart, H. 1997 'What is an Animal? A Philosophical Reflection on the Possibility of a Moral Relationship with Animals', Environmental Issues 6: 377-92.
UNSOLVED MYSTERIES: THE SECOND TEMPLE John Halligan Robert Carroll and I became fast friends more than a decade ago for a variety of reasons, some of them scholarly. We discussed the topic of this essay while standing by some bookseller's exhibit during the 1990 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. We agreed to do a joint paper for an upcoming meeting of the International SBL in Rome 1992. He did his half on the temple in the prophets, later published as 'So What Do We Know About the Temple in the Prophets?'.1 The following essay emerged four years later. I may be hard pressed to find a third person as convinced as the two of us that there was no Second Temple prior to Herod's magnificent achievement. So this should be read in tandem with Robert's work. Mysteries
Several mysteries surround the 'Second Temple'. For example, there is no physical description of it in ancient sources, yet there are of Solomon's and Herod's, even the imaginary ones of Ezekiel and the Temple Scroll. Why does the temple attributed to Zerubbabel seemingly evade all attempts to verify its existence? In part this is due to the inability of archaeologists to excavate the holy sites now occupying the current Temple mount; in part, to the fact that if Herod really did scrape clean the bedrock before 'remodeling' then there is no hope of finding its remains. And what if this was a 'temple' of proportions quite different from its 'predecessor' or 'successor'? What, even, if the Second Temple were built by Herod from scratch?
1. R.P. Carroll, 'So What Do We Know About the Temple in the Prophets?', in T.C. Eskenazi and K.H. Richards (eds.), Second Temple Studies. II. Temple and Community in the Persian Period (JSOTSup, 175; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 34-51.
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What, on the other Jiand, if it were but one of several competing temples? What if a single 'Second Temple' in Jeusalem were an ideological pretension? To begin my investigation I have drawn up a 'laundry list' of conditions I believe were necessary for reconstruction of a 'Second Temple' in Jerualem to have taken place. They are as follows: 1. Persian permission. 2. A royal clearance for funding from provincial revenues. 3. A plan by qualified architects for reconstruction with skilled engineers. 4. A labor pool of surplus manpower within Yehud. 5. A central authority for decision making. 6. Access to available materials. 7. Stable economy which could support basic needs of the populace, meet demands of external trade, and satisfy financial obligations to the crown simultaneously. 8. An ideology that would solidify diverse segments of the community in a sustained and tedious effort. 9. A reward system to maintain the effort. 10. Freedom from any other duty imposed by Achemenid rulers, such as military service or corvee in another part of the empire. This is not an exhaustive list but one that includes those items crucial for completing a task of state design. To examine each of these in detail would exceed the limits of space, yet each presents a subset of unanswered questions which contribute to the mystery of the' Second Temple'. I limit myself therefore to three mysteries: What was the physical appearance of Zerubbabel's alleged temple and who built it? What was the cult practiced prior to the arrival of the DTT^Kond and by what priesthood? What is the nature of the texts which speak of the building of the temple? Unsolved Mystery: The Physical Temple The Hebrew version2 of the Cyrus edict notes: (1) how Yahweh caused the success of Cyrus, (2) the permission for the return to Jerusalem of the
2. J. Weinberg regards the Hebrew version as 'an oral call to the exiles'. Cf. Weinberg's The Citizen-Temple Community (trans. D.L. Smith-Christopher; JSOTSup, 151; Sheffield: JSOTPress, 1992), 111.
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Jews, (3) that the temple vessels are sent back.3 In addition, the neighbors of the n'nTirHIQ would assist by giving 'gold, silver, goods, cattle, together with freewill offerings' prior to departure (Ezra 1.4), and, finally, the returnees would donate silver and gold of their own in massive amounts. The Aramaic version is explicit about both the site of the temple in Jerusalem and its dimensions, and also that the temple vessels are returned. Size of the Building Our only source for a physical description of the temple of Zerubbabel is the text of Ezra 6.3: In the first year of King Cyrus, King Cyrus issued a decree: The house of God in Jerusalem. The house is to be rebuilt as a place for offering sacrifices and bringing burnt offerings. Its height is to be 60 cubits and its width 60 cubits.
This odd description, with height and width but lacking length, has been deemed corrupt by all modern commentators. Common sense demands that the building be three-dimensional. Had its length also been 60 cubits (the minimum), it would have been six times the size of Solomon's. Assuming that 'height' is an error and the measure is that of the length we still arrive at a square of 60 * 60 cubits. It is peculiar though that the term nCDI"! appears only once in Ezra and "plN not at all. In Ezekiel's great imaginary temple plan, the temple itself is of modest proportions and quite similar to Solomon's in length, width, and height. The Temple Scroll, also an imaginary temple plan of the grandest size, gives a temple of reasonable dimensions. The mystery cannot be eliminated by selecting the height or the width and then devising a building proportionate to that of Solomon's. If the height as 60 cubits is used as a basis, the length must be 120 and the width 40: eight times that of Solomon; if the width, then the length is 180 cubits and the height becomes 90 cubits, resulting in a temple 27 times that of Solomon's. Obviously structures of these sizes were beyond the scope of even a Solomon; Herod did not attempt it. So, we are left in the dark as to the appearance of a temple built in five years by persons of limited skill, time and resources.
3. 1 Esdras 4.44 implies that Cyrus took the vessels out and set them aside but that they never returned to Jerusalem.
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What else is to be known about this temple? Haggai and Zechariah appear actively promoting the restoration during the days of Zerubbabel. Haggai makes the comment that the poverty of the land and its people was due to their neglect in restoring the house of God. With enthusiasm he tells of all the riches God will pour into the house from kingdoms all over the world. He lauds Zerubbabel as the chosen one, the anointed one, who will reign when the temple is complete. Zechariah also sees Zerubbabel's time as the dawn of the new age of prosperity and peace for the post-exilic community. These comments suggest a building of some substance. In Ezra 3.10-13, however, a feast to celebrate the completion of the laying the foundations of the temple is had. Here, importantly, the hosannas are equalled by the laments, because those who could remember the first house were saddened by the sight of a relatively poor replacement. Josephus paraphrases the description well: Now the priests and Levites, and the older members of the families, recollecting how much greater and more sumptuous the old temple had been, seeing now how much inferior it was to what had been built previously, on account of their poverty, considered how much their happy state was less than what it had been of old, as was the temple. But the wailing of the old men and the priests over the deficiency of this temple, in their opinion, compared with the one that had been demolished, exceeded the sounds of the trumpets and the rejoicing of the people. (Josephus, Ant. 11.4)
Thus the sources other than Ezra 6.3 concur that the temple was less in stature to that of the first; none, however, provides a simple description such as one finds inl Kgs 6.2 for Solomon's. Requirements for Building a Temple Solomon's Temple. There are conflicting statements concerning the composition of Solomon's workforce. 1 Kings 9 is emphatic that no Israelite was a part of the forced labor; 5.27-29, in providing a list of the laborers, makes no bones about Solomon's conscripting 30,000 men to load timber in Lebanon in shifts of 10,000 a month. He had 70,000 carriers of materials, 80,000 stonecutters and a crew of 3300 foremen under the eye of Adoniram. Sidonians were hired to cut the timber, Gebalites to dress the stone and finish the wood. Historical or not, the passage is realistic about the kind of logistics required for the enterprise. Herod's Temple. Herod's workforce numbered in tens of thousands, including experienced architects, engineers and skilled tradesmen from
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previous building projects. Manual laborers were drawn from labor pools augmented by fewer hands needed to farm because of improved agricultural technology and increased population due to peace and lack of natural disasters. Jews were required to work alongside Gentiles. Zerubbabel 's Temple. Carter provides an important review of population estimates for Achemenid Yehud which have a bearing on how much manpower might be raised realistically for the building project. The information from Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 suggests a total of 50,000 returnees, but archaeological data does not support such a high figure. He concludes that Jerusalem near the end of the Persian period had a population of 1500 out of a total provincial figure of 17,000. This would suggest that a total number of 10,850 for the early Persian period in Yehud would yield a Jerusalem population of 977 to 1080.4 Jerusalem in Herod's day had a population of 150,000-200,000 to draw on for a workforce, including the entire territory of Judah, Samaria, and Galilee—to mention only Palestine. Weinberg projects a figure of 200,000 for the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, taken from a literal reading of the Deuteronomic History and Ezra-Nehemiah, Albright speaks of 20,000 and Blenkinsopp is closer to this than Weinberg. Broshi is more conservative with an estimate of 4500.5 If one agrees with the most recent scientific surveys and methodological analysis of population, then serious doubts arise concerning the feasibility of the Jerusalem community of Yehud erecting a temple of Solomonic or less than Solomonic proportions. With respect to Zerubbabel's workforce two groups are mentioned: 'the remnant', the n^n^n-^n (Ezra 1.4; 6.16; 9.8,14,15; Hag. 1.12,14; 2.2; Zech. 8.6,11-12), who rolled up their sleeves and pitched in, and the 'outgroup', the people of the land, the fHKiTDl?, who did not enjoy the exile but stayed home and were subsequently disallowed participation in the rebuilding. Haggai cajoles the jHKiTDU to join in the restoration and they seem to comply eventually. Ezra 2 contains a list of returnees who not 4 . C.E. Carter, 'The Province of Yehud in the Post-Exilic Period: Soundings in Site Distribution and Demography', in Eskenazi and Richards (eds.), Second Temple Studies. II. Temple and Community in the Persian Period, 106-45 (134-35). The figure for early Yehud is my use of Carter's formula for reaching 1500 in a base population of 17,000. See more recently, idem, The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period (JSOTSup, 294; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). 5. These alternatives are cited and reviewed hi Carter, 'The Province of Yehud', 135 n. 79; idem, The Emergence of Yehud, 195-205.
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only contributed their valuables to finance the project but also gave of time and talent. The composition of the DTT^Kmdis a difficult but fascinating issue within the macroworld of Persian imperial economics. The Murashu documents of Nippur provide us with structure of fiefs through which the crown rewards loyal citizens and received a steady and predictable income. The exiled Jews integrated into this economic structure during the Babylonian rule. When the opportunity of returning to Yehud presented itself, certain members of the Jewish groups were prepared to do so. A key to its composition is the list in Ezra 2, Nehemiah 7 and 1 Esdras 5. In Nehemiah this list follows the notice that Nehemiah has appointed his brother Hanani to administer Jerusalem, and Hanaiah to command the citadel after the city had been restored but lacked people. Nehemiah called three groups, the nobles, the officials and the common folk to register them. He produces a list, purportedly of the first families who had returned to Yehud after release from captivity (there is no mention of the Cyrus edict as the cause of the release). The list is followed by the reading of the law by Ezra to an assembled group called Israelites. In 1 Esdras 5 the list supplies information concerning the caravan organized in response to the directive of Darius I after he was overwhelmed by the wisdom of the third youth, Zerubbabel, who reminded him of his vow to the King of Heaven to complete the promises of his predecessor Cyrus to return the sacred vessels stolen by Nebuchadnezzar and allow the people of Yehud to return to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. The chapter concludes on the note that the local people in Yehud interfere with the restoration project. The list is utilized for quite different purposes in Nehemiah and Esdras and yet again in Ezra where it is linked directly to the Cyrus edict and the return of the sacred vessels to the Jews who are recipients of a quick collection to support their trek back. It is clear from the outset that there is only a literary tie between the list and its context. Each author conceived of a new setting and purpose for what must have been an inventory of groups made for diverse reasons. Nehemiah refers to it as an instrument of registration, that is, of census taking. Ezra and 1 Esdras emphasize its usefulness as a roster. It was customary in the archives of Nippur that the titles to property were recorded and kept by the office of registration. The texts of the Murashu firm presuppose such a registry of property and ownership existed so that pledges of collateral, if the loan went into default, could be validated and transfer of the use be secured. Such a registry would be a condition of land tenure and of public access. Negligence on
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the part of the owner could be penalized and public order maintained. It would seem that the general environment of law and administration suits the interpretation of the list as a registry of property and ownership. The families are listed, next the generic men of specific towns, and then a clerical listing. A Sitz im Leben such as this would well suit the scribe Ezra or an administrator like Nehemiah. A public record for Persian tax purposes would be kept of the fiefs created in Yehud. The various patronyms, Parosh, Zattu, Azgad, and so on, refer to the recipient of the allotment and the 'sons of refers to the descendants who hold the land and work it. Thus a degree of continuity of names would be kept from Ezra to Nehemiah to 1 Esdras because the list was public. These fief-holders would have regarded themselves as a privileged class because, even though the allotment may have been minuscule, it was a royal grant. Administration of the fiefs may have fallen initially to the Sheshbazzar/Zerubbabel figure whose affinity to the work on the temple was of more significance to the intent of Ezra/Nehemiah than the fiscal governance of the new provincial district of Yehud. Some commentators have concluded that the purpose of the list was not the names but the numbers. The grand total of 42,360 would indicate the depth of the rush of piety that sent these groups westward to Jerusalem in the early years of the Achemenids. Censuses have been taken from time immemorial for the same two reasons: taxation and military service. It was perhaps no different with the Ezra list. The list's origins had to do with property being registered so that owners could be taxed; the numbers supplied population bases for conscription into the Persian forces serving Yehud. The hand that granted the land wanted a record kept of those who were liable for the revenues and service. If Hoglund is right concerning the increase of Persian military in Yehud then the list would have furnished the fiefs and their numbers. Bickerman has cited the case of Gedaliah, a Babylonian Jew volunteering for Persian service with the prospect of gaming a fief of his own.6 The families so named earned their holding while still in Babylon. The list purports that they had a common heritage of a time spent in Babylon in exile. That was radically changed by their presence in Yehud and registry members of the DTT^Kmd, , the corporate term for those who were the power in Persian Yehud. 6. E. Bickerman, From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: The Historical Foundations ofPost-BiblicalJudaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1962), 177.
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The racial diversity apparent in the highest echelon of leaders in Ezra 2.2 complicates the notion of racial purity as a criterion for inclusion in the n7l~niT"']3. Babylonian and Persian names such as 'ZerubbabeF and 'Bigvai' appear alongside traditional Yahwistic names as 'Jeshua' and 'Nehemiah'. Even in the priestly clans one finds an Egyptian name, 'Pashur'; among the doorkeepers there are the Babylonians 'Ater' and 'Akkub'; the D^lfl] include Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, Arab, Aramean, Edomite, Ishmaelite and possibly Hittite as well. The list argues against the assumption that those uprooted by Nebuchadnezzar in 596-586 BCE and deported to Babylon were from the same families who marched back to Yehud to resettle the land and rebuild the temple-city. Who, then, does the list record? Those who earned the right to hold land in the district of Yehud, be they Jewish or whoever. A common acceptance of the god Yahweh may be argued but it is not a prescription in the text. Of real interest to the Persian administrator responsible for the expansion of the commercial network in Yehud would be the work experience of those settlers. To collect a band of naive religionists eager to hurry home to rebuild a cult center, to outfit this group with treasures from the royal storehouse, and to issue a blank check to underwrite expenses from the royal treasury would be classical folly. The responsible administrator, and the Murashu texts give ample witness to fiscal prudence, would need a plan, experienced personnel, and sound funding for the new enterprise. Thus those who qualified for the opportunity to go to Yehud would have been those with land management know-how, or proven market skills in moving products, or a good history of fiscal responsibility, or an ability to motivate others, secure capital, and loyalty to the crown. These then were the characteristics of the H TlTirri]D. The n17Tnrr'lJ3 were therefore created from those Babylonian families that had these qualities and had the political channels to communicate with the royal court in case of need. Ezra and Nehemiah were two answers to the needs of the n171Tirri']D long after the initial groups had arrived. For such a group to be commissioned to Yehud they would need to be a bonded entity, that is, an insurance agreement pledging surety for financial loss caused by the act or default of the nblTn"^ or by some contingency would be drawn up between the crown's representative and those
of the nbnarr'n. This hadru-like corporate body was the land-holding, tax-paying, and no doubt the military-supplying group in Achemenid Yehud. Their chain of command probably included figures corresponding to the massenu, the
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saknu, and thepaqdu. These were Persian appointees who maintained the flow of tribute to the royal treasury. Before long a local treasury alluded to in Neh. 7.58-73 came into existence in conjunction with the cult. Lacking any documentation from the transactions of such a financial agency it is hard to press comparisons with the activities of the Murashu House. Yet the fiscal destitution of rural Yehudim reported in Neh. 5.1-5 indicates mortgage conversions and a spiraling indebtedness leading to indentures similar to the Nippur texts were taking place. The n17]TirH]3 derived its identity from a common experience, much like a Veterans of Foreign Wars group; only later did family continuity with pre-exilic lines become a criterion. They formed the new social class, commissioned by the Persian authorities, empowered to organize, develop, and secure the province of Yehud. They comprise the alleged ancestors of those who wrote the text of Ezra. Myers has noted in his opening comments on Ezra 2 that 'no one has yet come up with a completely satisfactory explanation of the purpose of the list'.7 So my remarks may join the parade of unsatisfactory explanations. Recalling the perspective that Persia engaged in the strategy of rebuilding temples for the purpose of restoring market centers, it is clear for the moment that renewing cults was not a primary target.8 Indeed, the prospect of rebuilding an international chain of lucrative market-centers, all under Persian command, was the most attractive prize of the Achemenid conquest. This strategy implied a reciprocity of investment and 'returnon-investment' that was well calculated.9 The biblical text portrays a generalized reciprocity whereby there is giving without a demand for a return; that is a biblical fact. What I see is balanced reciprocity whereby there is investment with an expectation of a quick return. Thus, Ezra 2 may be a list of a segment of the Jewish population and others in Babylonia permitted to return to engage in the reconstruction of a market-temple center because they could offer the collateral necessary to be released. 7. J.M. Myers, Ezra-Nehemiah (AB, 14; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 14. 8. J. Blenkinsopp, 'Temple and Society in Achemenid Judah', in Davies (ed.), Second Temple Studies. I. Persian Period, 23-24. 9. M.D. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine Press, 1972), 185-246. Social interaction was rules by the requirements of balanced reciprocity. Sahlins notes that there were three forms of reciprocity: (1) 'generalized reciprocity' or giving without specific demand in return, (2) 'balanced reciprocity' or giving with an expectation of quick recompensation, and (3) 'negative reciprocity' or taking something, sometimes with force, without giving anything back.
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The crown would advance them the matching or proportionate capital to commence building, and instruct the regional treasurer through letters of credit to assist financially and materially. If the royal treasury guaranteed the regional treasury then a greater burden of securities would have been placed on the returnees by the crown. If not, then the returnees would be directly obligated to the regional treasury to secure the goods. The text's appeal that only those of demonstrable priestly lineage were permitted to return emphasizes a cultic concern but obscures the reality that priests were skilled workmen with an income guaranteed by religious sanctions. Upstart priestly groups or families of recent Babylonian history would be excluded for reasons of religious propriety and financial advantage. A civil ruler, a governor—some have assumed Sheshbazzar,10 others Zerubbabel11—decided who was fit to return. The nature of this figure's origin (whether Persian or Jewish) has been disputed; his authority too has been contested. Accordingly, there is little danger in suggesting a compromise. The KflETin was a Persian royal commisioner—Nehemiah wore this title (7.65,69; 8.9; 10.2)—whose function was to judge the qualifications of candidates for return to Jerusalem. Given the primary Persian interest in fiscal matters, it would be reasonable to assume that a foremost condition would be financial ability. I am not suggesting that the official was Persian—the house of Murashu includes Jewish financial officers. In fact, it would be more appropriate that someone in the Jewish community who knew a candidate's ability acted as the judge of who could return and who was a risk. Reference in v. 64 to the Alp has the ring of a cultic community rather than a simple combination of persons of diverse occupations. It may very well be derived from a time in which the returnees were a cultic community.12 Further confusion arises as one compares Ezra 2 to Nehemiah 7 regarding details of the lists and the order of events. I am inclined to agree with Williamson that Ezra has drawn fromNehemiah here.13 Then the list of draft animals makes good sense in forming the necessary work groups. Galling had suspected this is consistent with a group that would not be 10. L.W. Batten, Ezra-Nehemiah (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1913), 94. 11. Myers, Ezra-Nehemiah, 20. 12. J. Barr sees the term bnp as simply an 'assembly' or 'group' without any reference to a cultic community (The Semantics of Biblical Language [London: SCM Press, 1962], 120-28). 13. H.G.M. Williamson, Ezra-Nehemiah (Old Testament Guides; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 41.
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reliant on outsiders to assist in the rebuilding program.14 In conclusion, it seems to me that if we are to understand the meaning of the existence of the Second Temple we must put aside the template of the Solomonic structure. Unsolved Mystery: The Cult Ezra 2.68 supplies a second mystery of the Second Temple: When they arrived at the house of the LORD in Jerusalem, some of the family heads made free-will offerings for the house of God, to rebuild it in its place.
Commentators have assumed for ingenious reasons that the order in the verse is mistaken. The returnees could not have arrived at a temple which had not been built yet. On the other hand, a literary not topographical use of the phrase 'the house of the Lord in Jerusalem', would permit the author to indicate it is the ambient within which the altar for the free-will offerings may be found. Eskanazi has suggested that in post-exilic literature, specifically Ezra-Nehemiah, the extension of the term 'the house of God' was used to include whatever was within the walls of the city. In fact, it may have become synonymous for the holy mount.15 With the deportation of the cult personnel in 597, the Solomonic temple stood open for popular religious use. The biblical text is silent except for certain obscure scenes in Ezekiel 8 in which he is sub somno tranported to Jerusalem in 592, midway between the fall of the city and the demolition of the temple. Ackerman finds evidence of possible worship of a god that would provoke the jealousy of Yahweh, a ritual banquet within temple walls, celebrating zoomorphic deities, women wailing over the death of the Mesopotamian fertility god, Tammuz, men prostrating themselves before, possibly the Babylonian sun-god Samash.16 This popular religion is already attested in Jerusalem in the sixth century in chs. 7 and 44 of Jeremiah, where women bake cakes for the Queen of Heaven; this cult did not go into exile, its personnel remained and the 14. K. Galling, The Gola-List according to Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7', JBL 70 (1951), 155. 15. T.C. Eskenazi, In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra—Nehemiah (SBLMS, 36; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 71-73. 16. S. Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth Century Judah (HSM, 46; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 79-99.
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j*~lNi~rDU cult took ascendancy.17 This was a cult of the losers for they did not get to write history. The 'Yahweh-alone' faction, be it Deuteronomic, prophetic, or priestly, collected themselves to compose the texts which came to form the canon. The text of Isa. 57.3-13 catalogues numerous forms of popular cultic mischief: child sacrifice, a death-cult wherein food and drink were provided for the deceased, the practice of fertility rites on the temple mount itself. The author paints and personifies Jerusalem as a harlot inviting these degrading and disgusting attempts to emulate and stimulate the gods of fecundity.18 In Isa. 65.1-7 these themes are renewed and the burning of incense to gods other than Yahweh is added. The illicit cult happens on flSH JT1DD near Jerusalem within the valley of Hinnom (cf. Jer. 7.31), perhaps to Asherah.19 'Dreaming dreams in secret places' may refer to necromantic seances conducted for the purpose of gaining a sign from the deity. Typically, a supplicant would offer a sacrifice to the deity, sleep in the sanctuary/temple, and find a sign/answer to their question in the morning. Solomon did this at Gibeon on the great HQD and then upon his return to Jerusalem decides the case of the two women arguing about the true motherhood of a baby in 1 Kgs 3.4-15. Eating pig flesh is a violation of the holiness code of Leviticus 11 and therefore endangers the entire community.20 Ackerman notes that the bulk of the population remained in Judah and the popular religion thrived not on the fringes of society but in the very heart among all groups and all classes. One group had women baking cakes for the Queen of Heaven and wailing for Tammuz at the gate of the temple. Another group, aristocrats not deported, held a marzeah banquet dedicated to a god other than Yahweh within the bounds of the palace walls. And yet another constituency, possibly clerics not tagged for exile, bowing down to the sun-god Samash while standing before the temple at the altar of Yahweh himself. Finally, Isa. 65.1-7 implies that almost the entire nation, irrespective of gender and social status, worshiped Yahweh alongside Asherah at the niQ3 throughout the land.21
17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
Ackerman, Ackerman, Ackerman, Ackerman, Ackerman,
Under Under Under Under Under
Every Every Every Every Every
Green Green Green Green Green
Tree, 34-35. Tree, 101-102. Tree, 169. Tree, 194. Tree, passim.
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In the Deuteronomic perspective the royal chapel of Solomon was the glory of all Judah, and the Jerusalem site had to be elevated above all cult centers. When it was destroyed, the pain of the 'empty socket' was felt and the desire to rebuild was ignited. Memory and desire were stronger in the nDTT^Kmd than those remaining in Babylonian Judah.22 Nature abhors a vacuum and into the vacuum of the empty ruined temple swept the existing but outlawed cult of the non-Levitical priesthood.23 It was the cult of the high places purged in the Josian reform but restored
22. R.P. Carroll, 'Textual Strategies and Ideology', in Davies (ed.), Second Temple Studies. I. Persian Period, 108-24. Commenting on the notion of the empty-land myth Carroll writes: 'Implicit in the concept of the land keeping sabbath while the people suffer in their enemies' lands is the notion of the empty land of Israel. The entire populace of aliens and sojourners is removed from Yahweh's land to foreign lands and the emptied land keeps sabbath! We have here yet again an allusion to the myth of the empty land which appears to be behind so much of Jeremiah and other ideological readings of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. This is the logic of the assertion that the owner of the land is Yahweh and not the people of Israel. So there can be no land claims by the people. Aliens in their own land and prey to invading forces they are but sojourners with Yahweh in his land and subject to instant dismissal from that land if they do not heed his commandments.' 23. B.A. Nakhai, 'What's a Bamah?', BARev (May-June 1994), 19-29, 77-78. Nakhai discusses in detail the widespread existence of rural sanctuaries throughout the two kingdoms from Dan to Beersheeba. Deuteronomic opposition to the non-Levitical priesthood did not exterminate what had been a long local tradition. In oblique terms the competitive nature of cult supremacy is given in the Deuteronomic history going back to the proliferation of cult sites in pre-monarchic days: mysterious Gilgal, an early resting place of the Ark, and where Saul was proclaimed the first king of Israel 'before Yahweh'; the highland 'house of Yahweh' at Shiloh, a place of annual tribal meetings and home of the Ark; Mizpah, the watchpost, where Samuel and Saul called 'upon the name of Yahweh'; Gibeon, the greatest of the high places where Solomon sacrificed more than 1000 bulls in gratitude for his accession to the throne of Israel; Ophrah where Yahweh showed himself and hallowed the ground and Gideon replaced the altar of Baal; Dan, a private shrine of Micah who gave it to the care of his son and then a passing Levite. Bethel, staffed by Jereboam, Nob of Abiathar, the terebinth of Mamre near Hebron, the sanctuaries at Beersheba and Arad, all attest to the multipicity of sacred spaces, legitimate at one time or another. All of the above sites were used for Yahwishtic cult by approved priests, prophets, or kings. Although most are located in what became the separate kingdom of Israel and of these, most are relative to the period of the Judges when no cult in Jerusalem had been established, there were sites in the territory of Judah in use during the time Jerusalem was functioning.
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in the days of all his successors to the time of the fall of Jerusalem. Deuteronomic eyes blamed such cults for the very exile itself and the apparent abandonment of Jerusalem by Yahweh. Competition existed from temples at Lachish, Arad, and, in the last days of the monarchy, at Elephantine in Egypt; later, competition also came from an Oniad temple at Leontopolis also in Egypt, a Tobiad one east of the Jordan, and a Samaritan sanctuary on Mt Gerizim. The reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah illustrate the limited appeal and authority of the Solomonic temple, while the reinstatements of Manasseh show the popular dependence on the 'alternative cults'.24 Staffing of the temples was a royal prerogative practiced by Solomon, Jereboam and their respective successors. Royal need to improve its fund of power, the cult, necessitated control of centers and the Jerusalem priesthood would seek authority to control legitimate priesthood and cult. This practice in Persian, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid periods has not been fully explored. Mystery: The Nature of the Literary Texts Relating the Building of the Second Temple Philip Davies believes texts are media for reaching the ancient world but warns that one should be wary of mixing the perspective of the text with the reality it reveals. He writes: It is possible to extrapolate a world from a text, from archaeological data, and from social-scientific modelling. Even so, as Carroll says, 'texts are not photographs of social reality, but complex social constructions generated by such reality in conjunction with various ideological factors controlling their production', yet the effort to bring together the ideological constructs of ancient texts and those of the modern scholar into a common focus of 'social reality', however philosophically vulnerable, is preferable to confusing the ideological construction of the text with that 'reality'.25
What then of the texts which tell the story of the rebuilding of the Second Temple? Hurowitz studied temple-building stories from Mesopotamia and Northwest Semitic literature and found a consistent literary pattern that
24. Carroll, 'So What Do We Know About the Temple in the Prophets?', 47-51. 25. P.R. Davies, 'Sociology and the Second Temple', in idem (ed.), SecondTemple Studies. I. Persian Period, 11-19 (13).
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reappears in biblical temple-building stories.26 Divine sanction authenticates the entire undertaking so that any opposition is automatically antireligious and liable to divine punishment.27 Was there a similar temple-building story for Herod? Josephus reports that Herod made a speech to his subjects informing them of his decision to erect a temple worthy of God and in keeping with the magnificence of Solomon's. They are well aware of his many building achievements within Palestine and should have confidence that he can successfully bring this project to completion to the glory of their God and nation. He has the authority to command them because '...I am now, by God's will, your governor' (Ant. 15.11.1.387). There is no prophetic oracle, no visionary experience alluded to, simply raw authority.28 Zerubbabel was an appointee of the Persian crown. The tale in 1 Esdras which accords Zerubbabel the position as a result of his winning a wisdom contest is edifying but hardly likely. He is charged with governing a group of Persian subjects of alledged Jewish stock who were voluntarily returning to their homeland. This is a change of locus not a change of L political status for the nVnmn !"ll71Tirr''3!3. The nn'Tnrnn ?T"nrH3I3 are the only authorized segment active in the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Zerubbabel, they are 'the remnant'. As a vassal of the crown he had an agenda to complete, and foremost among the items was the organization of the sub-district of Yehud within the satrapry of West-of-the-Euphrates. Zerubbabel's author26. V. (Avigdor) Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in the Light of the Mesopotamian and North-Semitic Writings (JSOTSup, 115; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 109. Hans Borstaad has indicated to me in conversation that his Doktorvater A.S. Kapelrud was the first to note the literary character of the biblical temple texts and the striking similarity to the non-biblical material. 27. The rejection of David's plan to build and subsequent approval of son Solomon's comes in a text subject to strenuous intertextual analysis and yet to be decided. Nevertheless the Nathan text, even if it contains both ancient and later sentiments concerning temple-building, is the basis for establishing Solomon's decision as in accord with a divine plan. Israel was at a moment in its history during which it enjoyed freedom from any external aggressor. 28. The Jews were under Roman power but this was mitigated through the appointment of 'one of their own' as local tetrach/king. Herod was an able politician who had served his Roman superiors well through Antony and Octavian to enjoy relative freedom in governing the territories alloted him. The Jews were quasi-free religiously in that the Romans were wise enough to permit local religious freedom but retained control of appointments to leadership positions within the community. Herod exercised his preogative of appointing high priests to the Jerusalem temple.
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ity is derived from his appointment by Darius I; Darius I has authority as the legitimate successor of Cyrus whose deeds were directed and sanctioned by Yahweh himself as foretold by Jeremiah and Isaiah. This is the circuitous chain of divine approval argued by the text of Ezra. Prophetic involvement may be ascribed to Haggai and Zechariah but it is not by way of revealing the divine command to build but rather the divine impatience that his command has not been attended. The text of Ezra gives us an ideological construct not consistent with the socio-economic factors present in the early years of post-exilic Yehud. If the writing of Ezra is considerably later than the fourth century,29 then it reflects a world in which a temple may have existed. The textual temple was built by a messianic fizzle, Zerubbabel, and a n71~Drr%l]3 of pure ethnic lines. Such a temple is of no concern to Nehemiah. After Nehemiah 6, Ezra, the priest and teacher of the law of Moses, appears to settle matters of the law and ethnic purity. The textual temple is merely a backdrop to his more important functions as lawgiver. Can one attribute the absence of any polemic against a high place cult that may have filled the gap from the destruction of Solomon's temple down to the building of an authorized Herodian temple to a lack of fact, or memory, or interest? Were the people of the land, jHKrTDU, simply generic occupants of the empty land? Or were they linked to the rural peoples of the hills and villages displaced by the ravages of conquest but recipients of orchards and lands from the Babylonians? What was the cult of the flKrrnr? Was it that of the HICQ? Is the disregard for physical description a further sign of distance of text from time? Or does it signify that no temple of authorized shape and size, tended by a Levitical priesthood, functioned until late in the Persian period?30 29. See P.R. Davies, Scenes from the Early History of Judaism', in D.V. Edelman (ed), The Triumph of Elohim (Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology; Kampen: Kok, 1995), 145-82 (157-63). See also the more cautious, but well-documented reservations in L.L. Grabbe, Ezra-Nehemiah (Old Testament Readings; London: Routledge, 1998), 125-53. 30. L. Ritmeyer, 'Locating the Original Temple Mount,' BAR (March-April 1992), 25-45, argues better for the location and size of Solomon's temple mount than he does for that of Zerubbabel's. Utilizing literary sources such as m. Middot and Josephus places one in a precarious hypothetical for evidence on either Solomon or Zerubbabel' s temples. The continuing inability of archaeologists to recover material from Zerubbabel's temple hinders support for the historical certitude of the text of Ezra. A kind of smokescreen is created by Ritmeyer over the historicity of the temple of the post-exiles. He painstakingly plots the parameters of the original mount, examines the eastern wall
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Carroll observes that 'narratological texts in the Bible are doing something other than giving architectural information. Those texts describe buildings that never were: grandiose, ideological constructions with no real existence outside the text. '31 What the text wishes the reader to assume is that at the time of its composition there was a legitimate temple in Jerusalem which was the rightful successor to the Davidic model,32 and, further, that this temple had been there since the first decades of the return because that is what Yahweh decreed through Cyrus and his descendents. The text then is surely propaganda for that power group within Yehud who could wield the temple as a self-authenticating icon. The temple which was the object of this group was not recognized as legitimate by other groups powerful enough to establish and maintain temples equally legitmate. The Elephantine temple was built in the late days of the monarchy and rebuilt nearly a century later. Leontopolis was the result of a fallout among factions vying for the high priest's seat. The Tobiad temple arose for similar reasons. The story in Ezra is the only one that reached canonical status which gives it a finality it never enjoyed in the early Second Temple period. The text is a window into the group that represents the dominant faction of the period.
for changes in masonry, notes blocks of apparent Persian-period design normally ascribed to the repair work of Nehemiah, and moves quickly to Herodian features. It is clear there is a presumption of a temple between Solomon and Herod, or at least the Hasmonaeans, but the hard evidence for a Zaerubbabel temple is still missing 31. Carroll, 'So What Do We Know?', 47. 32. The Temple narrative was composed at a moment when it was important to establish that the Jerusalem temple was the authentic one above all others. One may wonder if the narrative of the destruction of the Solomonic temple was a cleansing prerequisite for the rebuilding of the new temple? Was it a temple disgraced by the popular cults as pictured in Ezek. 8.6: 'They are doing great abominations here in order to distance themselves from my sanctuary (qados). But you will see still greater.'
Part III READING THE READERS:
IDEOLOGY AND RECEPTION OF THE BIBLE
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THE BIBLE IN CHURCH AND ACADEMY Robert Davidson
Cardinal Newman is on record as saying, 'Till a man begins to put down his thoughts about a subject on paper, he will not ascertain what he knows and does not know, and still less will he be able to express what he knows'. He was being unduly optimistic. I have read some books, not least theological books, which have left me wondering what the author knows and does not know, books which moreover are far from being evidence that the author is able to express what he knows. That was never true of Robert Carroll. What he wrote, he wrote lucidly and challengingly. It was always possible to disagree with him, but at least you knew with what you were disagreeing! What I offer in grateful memory of a cherished colleague is going to be 'confessional' in more senses than one. It is very much coloured by my own experience and by that of the University or Universities in which I have been privileged to teach. It has a peculiarly Scottish slant, which has given certain answers to the relationship between Church and University over the past 150 years. When the Disruption of 1843 split the church, giving birth to a Free Church alongside the established Church, it immediately posed the question of what kind of theological training was necessary for the future ministry of that Free Church, and in what context was it to be provided. At the laying of the foundation stone of New College, Edinburgh, on 3 June 1846—the first of the post-Disruption Free Church Colleges to come into being—Thomas Chalmers declared: There is no substantial difference between the theology taught in a College and the theology taught in a Church. Only in the preparation of ministers.. .it is necessary that it should be taught in the form of a science, and receive an academic treatment at the hands of academic men... The great object, then, of an education here, is that people may learn to understand the Bible, and to handle it aright by plying the hearts and the consciences of men. (Quoted in Wright and Badcock 1996: 169)
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Some argued at the time that this New College should become the Free University of Edinburgh rather than simply a theological college, but that ambitious concept foundered. Within a comparatively short time there were similar Free Church Colleges established in Glasgow, Trinity College, and in Aberdeen, Christ's College, though not in St Andrews. In the inaugural lectures at the opening of New College in 1850, delivered by the appointed Professors in all the major theological disciplines, 'statements were made which either explicitly affirmed, or indeed in so many words did not contradict the plenary inspiration and verbal infallibility of the Bible' (Cheyne 1983: 7). The ethos of the college was therefore intended to be unashamedly church-centred and confessional. Nevertheless it was such church colleges which were to play a leading role in the acceptance of critical method and historical scholarship, as the basis for a new understanding and theological approach to the Bible within the Church. The academic integrity of many of those who taught in these colleges can hardly be questioned. New College, for example, was to have among the ranks of its Old Testament Professors A.B. Davidson and A.C. Welch, while Trinity College had George Adam Smith. That such academic integrity could lead in certain circumstances to tension and conflict with the Church was to be vividly illustrated by the case of William Robertson Smith, deposed from his chair in Christ's College Aberdeen in 1881, and by the abortive attempt to try George Adam Smith for heresy in 1902 (cf. Johnstone [ed.] 1995). The dual approach to theological teaching adopted in the post-Disruption churches—candidates for ordination in the established Church trained in the traditional degree-awarding Faculties of Divinity in the Universities, and candidates for ordination trained in the newly established, nondegree-awarding colleges—was to last for some 80 years. In the aftermath of the Union of the Churches in 1929, the University Faculties and the Colleges were merged after complex discussion between the Church and the Universities, a merger enshrined in the University Act of 1932, which, inter alia, set up a Board of Nomination to Church Chairs, the Board to consist of six Church representatives and six University representatives, in each University. Much water has flowed under the bridges of both Church and University since then. The Board has now become a Board of Nomination to Theological Chairs with a more restricted and flexible membership, but the basic approach to theological training remains intact. The Church of Scotland has no theological college of its own. It chooses,
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instead, to entrust the academic training of its candidates for ordination to the four traditional Faculties of Divinity in the Scottish Universities. It does this believing that its candidates for ordination are spared the 'ghetto' complex of a church seminary. They find themselves today studying alongside people from different church traditions, and alongside many others who have no vocation to ordination but are studying theology in its different disciplines as an academic subject in its own right. They are also increasing taught by Professors and lecturers who represent different religious traditions and those who make no profession of religious faith. Granted the totally different ethos and historical background, this approach echoes Newman's understanding of the role of theology in The Idea of a University (Newman 1873). The study of theology, he claims, ceases to be a liberal study when it 'becomes an art or a business making use of theology for the specific practical purposes of the catechism and the pulpit'. Not that Newman could ever be accused of undervaluing theology for the church, but he stresses that when theology is studied in a seminary or a catechetical college in that way, students are not receiving a theological education, but a theological training. For in such a context 'the primary object is not that students should learn to think about theology, but that they should apply certain given theological information and skills to meet certain concrete demands and situations' (Ker 1988: 392). It is this learning to think about theology, learning indeed to face their own inbuilt theological assumptions and prejudices, not least about the Bible, which provides the rationale for the Church of Scotland's approach to the theological education of its candidates for ordination. Such a theological education only fails, I believe, when a student exits from the course with exactly the same beliefs as he or she had on entering. Not that that always works. It is sometimes more difficult to convince certain students that the Bible is 'The Wolf in the Sheepfold' (cf. Carroll 1997) than to get them to accept that they are not being taught by Wolves in the Sheepfold! There are, however, still church seminaries in Scotland, one of them, the Calvinist Free Church College, sitting next to New College on the Mound in Edinburgh. One of its most stimulating theologians, a man with a razor sharp mind is Professor Donald McLeod, recently appointed to an Honorary Professorship in the Faculty of Divinity in Glasgow, a man who in recent years has suffered at the hands of the conservative, inquisitorial elements in his church. He sums up the dilemma facing such a seminary in the following words:
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This is a clear statement of the tension which has existed and continues to exist, not least in biblical studies, in an approach to the Bible which claims to be confessional and church-centred, and a more liberal humanist approach characteristic of departments of biblical studies which have no church affiliation. McLeod is clear that there are prejudices to be faced on both sides of this coin. Many years ago R.H. Pfeiffer in a book published postumously in 1961, put the issue, as he then saw it, in the following terms: The point of view and method of the historian are radically different from that of the theologian and the philosopher. The historian arranges his findings chronologically, not systematically: he searches for actual historical reality, not for normative faith and doctrine valid for all time. With serene objectivity he will present impartially what is religiously obsolete and what is still alive, either a passing phase or an eternal truth, an ancient superstition or an intuition of an abiding article of faith. His own faith does not color the presentation of his findings, or at least it should not. (Pfeiffer 1961:9)
Per contra, he continues: A statement of the religion of the Bible from the point of view of faith and dogma would inevitably reflect the faith of the researcher and the doctrines which he defends: a Jew, a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, a Unitarian and a Moslem would differ widely in their presentation of the religion of the Bible from the point of view of their particular faith and doctrinal beliefs.
I have often wondered whether I am entitled to take comfort from the fact that a Presbyterian does not appear on his list. A similar basic distinction was made in the seminal article by Otto Eissfeldt (1926) when he argued for two different and quite distinctive approaches to the Old Testament: the scientific, critical approach and the theological—the one characterised by history and reason, the other by revelation and faith. It was a seminal article, which Eissfeldt himself did not follow up, but it lay behind some of the issues grappled with in later attempts to write an Old Testament or a Biblical Theology (cf. Barr 1998).
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Now this distinction can be welcomed for two different reasons: (1) by the academic who wishes to pursue a liberal-humanist approach to the Bible, uncontaminated by confessional prejudice (the approach that lay behind Pfeiffer's presentation of the case, though few today would accept his touching faith in the 'serene objectivity' of the historian); and (2) by the Church and by theologians who do not wish to run the risk of having their faith stance compromised by the work of academics, pursuing literary and historical questions. To parody words of G. von Rad (1975, I: 108), while the historian agonises over what may be legitimately accepted as a critically assured minimum, the theologian simply states his theological maximum. When we cannot with any assurance say what actually happened in the history of ancient Israel or in the life of Jesus, it is at least comforting from the standpoint of faith to be able to say, 'Well, at least it was an act of God!'. More recently Philip Davies (1995) argues the case for the recognition of two different approaches to the Bible or Bibles: (1) the approach from within the canon, which evaluates its subject matter in a way that is predetermined to be ultimately positive: in this reading, where bible equals 'scripture', the critical job is not to evaluate from a disinterested perspective (or set of perspectives) the value of the text, and ultimately to affirm these, in however many different ways; for the contents of the bible are a Good Thing... The goal.. .is.. .to enhance the function of the literature as scripture. Whatever critical problems this agenda may also wish to serve, it is ultimately serving a confessional purpose... (11-12)
and (2) the approach from outside the canon, which regards the collection and transmission of the contents as part of the reception history of the literature which was given various kinds of authority through time by the actions of humans... What is excluded from this approach is the assumption of a privileged status that the object of study is held intrinsically to merit, and the assumption that the scholar may confine his or her discussion to those who are prepared to make this assumption. (12)
Davies argues for two separate disciplines, Biblical Studies (humanist in approach) and Scripture (theologically orientated). Church and academy, he claims, do not on the whole share a common discourse or common interests. Academic theology has its own validity, but theology and the church are not the same thing, and 'the issues of church and academy should not be confused with the issue of humanistic scholarship versus
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theology'. All who have wrestled with the church's failure to take theology seriously as well as with theology which refuses to take the church seriously should have no difficulty with this distinction, nor with his verdict: 'Difference of interest between church and academy is, in my opinion, not really a problem to either side—or need not be' (20). What then of those of us who seek to combine these differences? Davies suggests that there are three possibilities for the individual scholar who is a member of the church: (1) there are some who feel no conflict and move easily from one to another; (2) others seek to keep the two approaches separate, because they are keenly aware of the difference between them; (3) others live with 'ongoing tension.. .neither entirely at ease with the contiguity and the interpenetration of two discourses they feel to be basically incompatible'. I am not sure that I see myself fitting neatly into any of these categories. To keep the two approaches entirely separate would be for me an impossible act of intellectual and spiritual schizophrenia—though I have known colleagues who have lived comfortably with that approach, content publicly to embrace and proclaim the traditional faith of the church, even when it sat uneasily with their scholarly conclusions. I am, however, sometimes conscious of conflict in moving from one to the other. There have been occasions when I have sat in church on Sunday and cringed at the way in which the Bible was being expounded to the congregation in total ignorance or in total disregard of some of the fundamental insights of academic scholarship. Such cringing is not conducive to meaningful worship! There is tension, but I believe it can be a creative tension which does not need to accept that the two disciplines are basically incompatible. Let me try to explain what I mean by reflecting on Philip Davies' comment: 'As a general principle scholarship does not make a better religious believer, nor religious belief a better scholar' (Davies 1995: 20). As a general principle I believe this to be a valid statement, but I want to qualify it. Scholarship may not make a better religious believer, but it may make a different religious believer. My own religious beliefs developed in narrowly conservative circles which held strongly to the infallibility of the Bible as originally given—whatever that means. I remain indebted to such circles because of what they gave me spiritually at a certain stage in my religious pilgrimage. But I remember when the break came, during my time as a student in St Andrews specializing in Old Testament Studies. A well-respected representative from these conservative circles came to warn me of the dangers to which I was being exposed by the type of
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critical scholarship I was being fed. He named a certain member of the academic staff, and said, 'How can you accept that he is a Christian, when he does not believe that Isaiah 53 was written as a deliberate prophecy of Jesus?'. The member of staff to whom he referred, however, was in my experience an outstanding example in the Faculty of someone whose life was characterized by Christian faith and commitment. I was faced with the choice of wrestling with the ambiguities of the biblical text or of accepting, superimposed upon it, a highly judgmental framework, which was inviting me to sacrifice both spiritual and intellectual integrity. The choice was clear. When I am harangued, as I have not infrequently been, by people within the church who assert that biblical criticism is destructive of faith, I can only reply that it was biblical criticism which enabled me to retain a meaningful faith and to reach out creatively into new realms of faith, based on a different understanding of the Bible. I may not be a better religious believer than I was in my student days, but my beliefs are certainly different and I think more exciting and liberating because of biblical academic scholarship. On the other hand, I would never wish to claim that religious belief makes a better scholar. There is something to be said, however, for claiming that it makes a different kind of biblical scholar. Here we enter into the muddy waters of the canon or canons as a factor in biblical interpretation. While I have the highest respect for the contribution Brevard Childs has made to biblical scholarship, I have never been and am not convinced that Canonical Criticism, as proposed and practised by him, and others, is the tool for bridging the gap between the church and the academy. It raises valid questions for the church in its approach to scripture, but it provides little in the way of convincing answers. The diversity of interpretations of biblical material claiming to be the fruit a canonical critical methodology are just as perplexing as those produced by classical historical methodology, and, in my opinion, no more satisfying intellectually or spiritually. It seems to me that Childs's Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Childs 1985) is basically little different in either form or content from earlier or subsequent Old Testament theologies which have been written without the imprimatur of Canonical Criticism (see Barr 1999: 388). Nevertheless there remains the curious fact that a richly diverse collection of books, differing widely in date and authorship, has come down to us in the canonical form or forms which we have. Because of this James A. Sanders is right, I believe, in insisting that the Bible is 'a mirror for the identity of the believing community' (Sanders 1972: xv).
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Such a believing community or communities predates the canon in any of its fixed forms and only the existence of such a community can adequately explain the strange phenomenon which is the Bible. I do not see how a more objective approach to the Bible is guaranteed by ignoring or denying this. How we are to define the function of the Bible as scripture within such continuing communities is another issue. John Barton's stimulating People of the Book? (Barton 1988), seems to me one of the most helpful discussions of this issue: The authority of the Bible for faith is not to be conceived of after the model of a code or a text book to which we can appeal to guarantee the truth of our beliefs, but rather after the analogy of a trusted friend, on whose impression and interpretation of an important event we place reliance... The Bible is human reflection on the mystery of God, sparked off indeed by a fresh divine imput into the human situation in ancient Israel and in the first century Mediterranean world through Jesus and his first disciples, but still remaining through and through a human book. (45-46)
Now it is perfectly legitimate for anyone to believe that 'the mystery of God' is no more than a nonsensical phrase, and that talk of a 'fresh divine input into the human situation' is no more than a statement of theological assumptions, but what cannot be denied is that this is what the Bible claims to be about. In handling the Bible it is possible to work with a different set of philosophical and sociological assumptions, and this will provide a different approach. What cannot be claimed, however, is that such assumptions necessarily provide a better or a more disinterested way of understanding the Bible. Certainly no finality can be claimed for such approaches. We all throw into the academic pool and stir around our own particular insights which are different from the insights of 50 years ago and will assuredly be different from those of 50 years hence. We are who we are, bringing to the Bible if not theological assumptions, then psychological, sociological and intellectual assumptions current in our own day and context. Both church and academy face the same problem here. I am never quite sure of what is meant by the 'confessional approach' to the Bible. All I know are confessional approaches which are remarkably diverse. Origin and Luther, Erasmus and Desmond Tutu may stand within the Christian tradition, but their approaches to the interpretation of Scripture are richly varied, as varied indeed as the stances of those who object to a confessional approach. It is in the context of such diversity that we learn from
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each other both in the church and in the academy. I can see nothing incongruous in the academy, qua academy, handling the Bible as scripture, since this is but to recognize the genesis of the Bible and the nature of the Bible which, as such, has provided a rich and varied intellectual feast across the centuries. One does not need to sign on the dotted line of Christian dogma to be able to do this. It is possible to empathize with a religious tradition without being committed to it and in the context of such empathy to handle it with intellectual insight and integrity. Let me turn now to two issues in which I believe the academy and certainly critical biblical scholarship can play an important role in helping the church to handle scripture responsibly. First, it has been claimed that 'The Bible comes alive when authentic religious experience coincides with texts which are themselves testimony to authentic religious experience: the past strikes a spark off the present or the present off the past, and both are illuminated' (Gerd Theissen, quoted in Barton 1988: 66). The key question raised by this statement which demands some kind of answer is: What constitutes authentic religious experience in the present and in the biblical past? Saul, according to the biblical narratives, becomes a different person when 'the spirit of God possessed him and he fell into a prophetic frenzy' in the company of a band of prophets (1 Sam. 10.9), and according to 1 Sam. 19.23-24 strips off his clothes and lies naked 'all that day and all that night'. Is this authentic religious experience simply because it is recorded in scripture, as some would argue, and can it then be taken to justify as authentic religious experience some of the more outlandish phenomena associated with the Toronto Blessing? Or can an orthodox Serb believing that he belongs to the chosen Christian race in Kosova claim that he is responding to authentic religious experience when he seeks to justify ethnic cleansing of the non-chosen Muslim Albanians? Why not, when according to Deuteronomy 7 the Hebrews were commanded by God to pursue just such a policy of ethnic cleansing when they entered their promised land? It is not surprising that in recent years Palestinians have identified strongly with the Kosova tragedy, seeing in it a rerun of what happened in 1948 when over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed, with justification sought by some on biblical religious grounds. There are many thoughtful people today who cringe at what is described as authentic religious experience in the Bible, and who are finding for themselves authentic religious experience not within the church or in any religion claiming to be rooted in the Bible, but in, for example, Buddhism.
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Not only is there, as has been claimed, 'no sound theological reason why critical study should be deemed damaging to religious perception' (Barr 1999: 83), but there are many sound reasons why such critical study should be embraced by theology enabling certain religious and moral assumptions in the Bible to be subjected to critical analysis. The lack of such critical study can only leave us with a biblicism which is both spiritually and morally bankrupt. Second, if, as I have indicated earlier, I have questions to ask about a non-theological understanding of the Bible, I have even greater questions to ask concerning what I can only call a Trinitarian Imperialist approach. Not only does such an approach sidestep what Jewish scholarship has to contribute to biblical studies, but in the interest of what is believed to be Christian orthodoxy, it often seeks to imprison the Bible within a theological straightjacket. This approach can be presented with impressive erudition as, for example, in Francis Watson's Text, Church and World (Watson 1994). The end result, however, is to sacrifice biblical criticism on the altar of theological orthodoxy, and to neuter much of what the text is capable of saying. 'Perhaps Jesus', Watson claims, 'has been riveted for centuries to the stoney rocks of historical critical scholarship and perhaps ecclesial doctrine is needed to restore him to life and movement' (256). Perhaps.. .but I believe a stronger case can be made out for arguing that Jesus was riveted for centuries to the stoney rocks of ecclesial doctrine, and that historical critical study was needed to restore him to life and movement, to life and movement which, for example, have led to serious questioning of the antisemitic and patriarchal elements in Christian ecclesial tradition. If that is true of Jesus, how much more is it true of our understanding of the Hebrew Bible as a whole? I am not sure what is meant when it is claimed that 'The actions of Jesus, as narrated in the gospels, must be interpreted not as isolated events but against the background of the soteriological, christological and eschatological claims of the narratives as a whole' (Watson 1994:241). The Gospels can hardly be claimed to present us with one unified view of soteriology, christology or eschatology. The christology of John's Gospel, for example, is significantly different from that of Mark. What is to be taken as definitive in interpreting the actions of Jesus, provided we can be sure what these actions were? Nor am I convinced by the working out of this theological framework in the exegesis of specific passages. Take, for example the narrative of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac in Mark 5.
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No attempt is made to correlate this with the much shorter version in Mt. 8.28-34, which features two demoniacs, nor with Luke 8. The link is made with the preceding story of Jesus stilling the storm, and we are invited to see Legion and the pigs as corresponding to the armies of Pharaoh, drowned in the sea which the Israelites have safely crossed (Watson 1994: 250). This neatly sidesteps many of the questions, critical and theological, which need to be asked of the narrative. It also ignores the fact that in terms of intertextuality, the stilling of the storm incident, particularly in its Lukan form, has stronger links with Ps. 107.23-32 than with the Exodus tradition. Qoheleth is discussed at some length (Watson 1994: 283-87). The verdict: this wonderful book is of considerable hermeneutical and theological significance. Nowhere else in the whole of scripture is there so forthrightly set out an' alternative' version to that of the gospel, a rival version to the truth... The canonical significance of this book lies precisely in its challenge to the belief that underlies so much of the rest of holy scripture. (284)
But is Qoheleth the only such challenge within the Bible? What is 'the truth' to which it is a rival vision? What is its function as an alternative vision within the canon, when, if it had occured outside the canon, such an alternative would have in all likehood have been condemned as heresy. The text of Qoheleth in its canonical form and the history of the interpretation of the book in both Jewish and Christian circles across the centuries provides ample evidence of the way in which Qoheleth has been capable of becoming all things to all men, including as some have argued an exemplar of orthodoxy! Robert Carroll (1997: 146) claimed that: At some level, theology and the Bible operate on opposite sides of a divide which cannot be overcome permanently. The diversity of scripture will generate competing theological interpretations, and theology will never be able to develop all these different viewpoints into one grand theory. Nor should it need to do so. The multitudinous number of churches and religious communities in the world today which use the Bible at various levels is ample evidence of the diversity of scripture.
I welcome that diversity as exemplified both in the academy and in the church. Indeed a recent Church of Scotland Panel on Doctrine report on The Interpretation of Scripture (Church of Scotland 1998) was pleading
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for such diversity. And the reason for such diversity? 'The book is too untidy, too sprawling, and far too boisterous to be tamed by neat systems of thought... But if you can tolerate contradiction and contrariety and can handle hyperbolic drive and chaotic manipulation of metaphor, then the Bible will bum your mind' (Carroll 1997: 147). Sadly, the Bible too often fails to burn the mind in the life of the church, because it has been theologically domesticated. The academy has an important role in showing the church how it may be set loose again. No one did that more challengingly than Robert P. Carroll whose colleague in Glasgow I was privileged to be for nearly 20 years. BIBLIOGRAPHY Barr, J. 1999 Barton, J. 1988 Carroll, R.P. 1997 Cheyne, A.C. 1983
The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (London: SCM Press). People of the Book? The Authority of the Bible in Christianity (London: SPCK). Wolf in the Sheepfold: The Bible as Problematic for Theology (London: SCM Press, 2nd edn). The Transforming of the Kirk: Victorian Scotland's Religious Revolution (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press).
Childs, B.S. 1985 Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (London: SCM Press). Church of Scotl and The Church of Scotland General Assembly, 1998 (Edinburgh: St Andrew 1998 Press). Davies, P.R. 1995 Whose Bible is it Anyway? (JSOTSup, 204; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Eissfeldt, O. 1926 'Israelitisch-judische Religionsgeschichte und alttestamentliche Theologie', ZAW44: 1-12. Johnstone, W. ( ed.) 1995 William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment (JSOTSup, 1 89; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Ker, I.T. 1988 John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Newman, J.H. 1873 The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (London: Routledge/ Thoemmes [repr. 1994]).
DAVIDSON The Bible in Church and Academy Pfeiffer, R.H. 1961 Sanders, J.A. 1972 Von Rad, G. 1975 Watson, F. 1994
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Religion in the Old Testament: the History of a Spiritual Triumph (ed. C.C. Forman; London: A. & C. Black). Torah and Canon (Philadelphia: Fortress Press). Old Testament Theology (2 vols.; London: SCM Press).
Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark). Wright, D.F., and G.D. Badcock (eds.) Disruption to Diversity: Edinburgh Divinity, 1846-1996 (Edinburgh: T. & T. 1996 Clark).
'THE COMFORTABLE THEORY', 'MAXIMAL CONSERVATISM' AND NEO-FUNDAMENTALISM REVISITED
Lester L. Grabbe
Robert Carroll had a way with words. Two incidents come to mind in which this was well illustrated. The first was at a conference in Edinburgh about a decade ago. A prominent scholar had presented a paper arguing that the exodus from Egypt had some support from Egyptian sources. In the discussion period afterward, Robert seemed to become more and more frustrated by the lack of any serious attack on the thesis. Finally, he stood up and asked the speaker, 'Does the word "absurd" occur in your vocabulary?' The second was at the 1988 Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Sheffield in which a reader response paper was acted out with the two authors alternating in reading the text. I am told that many in the audience found this approach fascinating, but I was far from convinced and left the room just as Robert was also making his way out. He turned to me with the succinct observation, 'When I was a student, we called that eisegesis'. Some of Robert Carroll's best work was on Ideologiekritik. A number of scholarly issues fit well into the ideological determinism that Professor Carroll had pinpointed and was dissecting so effectively. That these ideological afflictions are alive and well and pervade scholarship as firmly as ever can be well illustrated, and it is to some of these that I address this paper. The Comfortable Theory In one of his last published articles, 'Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity: The Question of the Comfortable Theory', Samuel Sandmel gave a classic treatment of'the comfortable theory' (Sandmel 1979). What he pointed out was the extent to which we as scholars—and despite our implied adherence to critical thought—tend to gravitate toward those
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theories or views that we find most congenial: 'A comfortable theory is one which satisfies the needs of the interpreter, whether theological or only personal, when the evidence can seem to point in one of two opposite directions' (Sandmel 1979:139). To give my own spin to Sandmel's thesis, the comfortable theory is not a disinterested search for the 'facts', the 'truth', or whatever term one wishes to use, but a means of maintaining our position with the least amount of effort. One of the standard arguments that we all use is the appeal to a consensus. This is not surprising. There are many areas of scholarship where critical study has led to positions that are widely accepted. If we agree with this consensus we hardly want to waste time rehearsing all the arguments which are thought to be compelling. To start with a clean slate each time and have to go back over all this material would place an impossible burden on anyone writing up a study. And when a non-scholar who does not understand the arguments—or even a maverick scholar whose views are widely thought to be eccentric—comes up with an alternative theory, we all tend to dismiss it with an appeal to what 'the vast majority' of scholars believe. We have no intention of expending valuable time on what we regard as a clearly unfounded view. We have better things to do than debate with those who do not know what they are talking about. It saves a lot of time, and it can be a legitimate defence. We have all done it. Furthermore, it is heady feeling to be on a bandwagon. It is so easy when one finds oneself a part of a large group with everyone heading in the same direction. The herd instinct affects scholars as much as anyone else. Cognitive dissonance can be as traumatic to scholars as to the great unwashed,1 and the tendency when a radically new interpretation comes along is to follow the herd, especially if it is to rubbish the new ideas. Sandmel (1979: 139) readily admits, 'All of us gravitate to comfortable theories. I must own up to guilt here too.' The dangers should be obvious, however. Eccentric views are not necessarily wrong, and history shows that a scholarly consensus has often been unjustified or misplaced. When I was a PhD student, there was a strong consensus at least among North American scholars that the Albright theory of a unified conquest was right. Other views were around, and all 1. Robert Carroll was known for his application of the theory of cognitive dissonance to biblical study (Carroll 1979). Unfortunately, after this seminal study he shifted to other concerns and did not return to develop his work further in this area. For more general works on cognitive dissonance, see the pioneering studies of Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1956; Festinger 1957.
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students had to learn about at least one other position, that of the Alt-Noth school. Yet it is fair to say that it was easy to get a sympathetic hearing among one's fellow scholars of the Hebrew Bible if one defended the Albright position. Three decades later and that consensus has crumbled to dust. It is extremely difficult to find anyone willing to defend the Albright thesis (but see below), even though it is usually discussed in student texts. A scholarly consensus needs to be respected, but it is only after the consensus is challenged that its true solidity can be established. A consensus can grow up because an idea has captured the imagination of an age or has been adumbrated by a dominant scholar or even for less substantial reasons. Appeal to a consensus has weight, but it should never be elevated to a fact. This is why progress often requires a new generation of scholars, because it is frequently the old guard who helped establish the consensus and the natural tendency will be to defend it to the death(!) in a selfinterested way. Although I do not consider myself a 'minimalist', I cannot help feeling that a lot of the attack on the minimalists is nothing more than a self-satisfied refusal to consider new ideas. In some cases, of course, critics have brought careful arguments and examination of the evidence. This is the proper way to react.2 But when critics do little more than peddle abuse or adhominem accusations—which is all too frequently the case—the comfortable theory has triumphed.3 A good example of this arises out of the recent debate on the dating of the Siloam tunnel. It has conventionally been dated to the time of Hezekiah. However, J. W. Rogerson and P.R. Davies challenged this consensus and argued for a redating to the Maccabean period (Rogerson and Davies 1996). They might be right or they might not, but their arguments—which
2. One of the main reasons for my founding the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel's History was to establish a dialogue between the so-called minimalists and those of other points of view. The majority of active members of the Seminar are not minimalists, and some are very critical of the minimalist positions, but the important thing is to deal seriously with the issues, not just call names or assert dogmatically that certain positions 'can be safely ignored'. 3. One cannot help wondering if there may be another reason as well. I think that some have not forgiven Thomas Thompson and Niels Peter Lemche for their part in undermining the old consensus about the Patriarchal Period and the Conquest, even though the critics themselves have accepted that the old positions can no longer be maintained.
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cover a number of areas—need to be answered in detail.4 Yet what we find is a collection of individuals, including Frank Cross and a number of his students, responding under the tendentious rubric of 'pseudo-scholarship' .5 The headline was probably written by the editor of Biblical Archaeology Review but, if so, I am not aware that any of those whose names follow have disavowed this title. Rogerson and Davies may be wrong, but they are not dealing in 'pseudo-scholarship'. Some of the articles do indeed respond seriously to the arguments of Rogerson and Davies (particularly those of Lemaire, Eshel, and Hurvitz), but the tone of others—even if their arguments should be correct—is of condescension, gang mentality, and a 'aren't we oh so clever' smugness. A term that one occasionally sees is 'hypercritical'. It is usually applied to views that express scepticism about a particular theory and serves chiefly as a put-down label.6 The expression 'hypercritical' sounds scholarly until one thinks a moment, at which point the essentially meaninglessness of the word becomes obvious. To be 'critical' is what we all try to be as scholars. The term implies neither affirmation nor scepticism; it means simply to weigh and judge. For example, a critical examination of one particular source may lead one to feel that it is reliable, whereas a critical scrutiny of another may lead to the opposite conclusion. In both cases, the decision entails critical judgment. To label a negative conclusion about a source or event or theory as 'hypercritical' is to misapprehend the meaning of the term 'critical'. It is as bad as the old fundamentalist misreading of the term 'higher criticism' to mean that scholars want to set themselves above the Bible and tear it down. Another example concerns a seminar relating to the Persian period in which several papers were being read and discussed. In my paper I noted that the authenticity of the Gadatas inscription had been challenged by some researchers (though others are strongly convinced of its authenticity: 4. Some studies that did attempt to give a proper scholarly scrutiny include Hendel 1996 and Norin 1998. 5. See Hackett era/. 1997. 6. It seems to be a favourite device of Frank Cross, who likes to use it of views that disagree with his. For example, I criticized one aspect of his well-known article on the reconstruction of the Judaean restoration (Grabbe 1987b). My criticisms went unanswered for many years, but recently Cross has responded in a revision of his article (Cross 2000). I submit that he has not in any way dealt with the detailed arguments I advanced but has attempted to dismiss them by use of the label 'hypercritical'. For others who have also voiced objections to or reservations about Cross's theory, see Schwartz 1990; Williamson 1992; Gropp 2000.
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see Grabbe 2001: 107-108). My aim was not to deny that it could be authentic but to draw attention to the difficulties of using it, because of this uncertainty. One of the papers coming after mine also mentioned the Gadatas inscription. While reading the paper, the author added the oral aside that the vast majority of scholars thought the inscription was authentic, with the implication that this settled the question. Now, I do not know whether the Gadatas inscription is authentic, and if anyone wants to use it after carefully weighing the problems, I accept that. But I think this illustrates the 'comfortable theory' well. The scholar in question may at some point have done a careful evaluation of the problems and arguments but, if so, this investigation has not been published. What is important to notice is that this scholar began with the assumption of its usability and supported this position by appealing to the 'vast majority' of scholars. It should be obvious, though, that this appeal to the 'vast majority of scholars' is basically worthless because the 'vast majority of scholars' are not in a position to pronounce on the inscription's authenticity one way or the other. They do not have the philological knowledge or expertise to be able to make an independent evaluation of the question. Therefore, this appeal to a consensus is irrelevant as an argument. It is simply a lazy way of supporting the comfortable theory. At the 2001 Society of Biblical Literature meeting there was a paper entitled 'The Synthesis of the Torah' (Friedman 2001), in which the current questioning of major theories was bemoaned. Whatever the merits of some of the examples offered, the reader chose to spend much of his paper on the Documentary Hypothesis. The Documentary Hypothesis may or may not be correct, but his rehearsal of the standard arguments that most of us learned in Old Testament 101 was hardly helpful. You either find these arguments convincing or you do not; in any case, simply rehearsing arguments well-known since Wellhausen by no means established his point. More importantly, he ignored the doubts cast on the standard form of the Documentary Hypothesis by some fairly eminent scholars, which may be wrong but cannot be simply bulldozed out of the way.7 Even though he had every right to defend what he thought was the correct view, his paper had all the hallmarks of clinging onto the 'comfortable theory' without due consideration of other possibilities. 7. See, for example, Rendtorff 1977; Whybray 1987. Both these scholars represent the mainstream of critical scholarship, and neither can be considered a particular radical in this area. It is possible, of course, that Friedman dealt with these works in his footnotes, but I did not hear any reference to them in the paper as delivered orally.
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Maximal Conservatism and Neo-Fundamentalism The term 'maximal conservatism' was coined by James Barr (1977:85-89). He notes that instead of advancing a dogmatic approach, conservative evangelicals will often adopt a position that can be defended from a critical point of view but which is the one that is closest to the biblical picture. A 'maximal conservative' interpretation may be adopted by someone who is not a true fundamentalist. The old fundamentalism was generally easy to identify because it was blatantly and unequivocably apologetic about the Bible. Indeed, it was not unusual for the tone to be anti-intellectual. Neo-fundamentalism is just as fundamentalist, but it tends to cloak its defence of the Bible in the rhetoric of scholarship. A truly fundamentalist approach will usually show itself by the assumption that the Bible is inerrant in the autographs, whereas a 'maximal conservative' approach will usually have moved away from such a stance.8 However, in practice it is not always easy to tell the difference between the two. The neo-fundamentalist will often adopt a maximal conservative approach without admitting the true guiding principle of his or her work in biblical studies. I want to give some examples of what is certainly a maximal conservative approach and, to my suspicious mind, may be examples of neofundamentalism. For convenience, I shall focus on the Israelite conquest of Canaan, as outlined in Joshua. Several essays touch on the subject in Faith, Tradition, and History, a collection of essays arising from a symposium of conservative evangelicals at Wheaton College (Millard, Hoffmeier and Baker 1994). This will serve as a convenient jumping-off point for the discussion that follows. The collection begins with an article by Edwin Yamauchi who surveys 'The Current State of Old Testament Historiography'. A significant portion of the article relates to the 'conquest' of Canaan by the Israelites. Much of Yamauchi's article is devoted simply to describing the various theories. However, he is always careful to counter a particularly telling argument with a quotation that seems to defend the biblical text—even if the quotation is from a fellow conservative evangelical. Where he cannot 8. Barr does not seem to make a distinction between a 'maximal conservative' position and a fundamentalist one, just as he seems to equate 'conservative evangelical' with fundamentalist. His position makes discussion simpler, and the end result may not be much different, but in my own experience there is a distance between those conservatively inclined (perhaps because of growing up in a fundamentalist environment) and the true fundamentalist who believes in 'the inerrancy of the scriptures'.
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do that, he refuses to come to the obvious conclusion that the biblical text might be wrong. Thus, after listing the archaeological problems with a conquest by Joshua and a variety of opinions from archaeologists that the conquest model cannot stand up, he states without evidence or argument, 'In summary, I conclude that the archaeological evidence for the Conquest and the origins of Israelite Settlement is at present mixed and inconclusive' (Yamauchi 1994: 17). On the contrary, the archaeological evidence as presently known, far from being 'inconclusive', is decidedly against a conquest under Joshua. At the end of his article Yamauchi gives 13 conclusions, worded in some cases as the conclusions of critical scholars that he wants to refute. They are too long to list here in detail, but they include statements to the effect that the Hebrew Scriptures have been rejected as historical sources 'because their composition is later than the events they purport to describe', or 'where there is no external documentation or corroboration', or 'because they involve the intervention of a deity', or 'where they are viewed as ideologically conditioned'. However, his final point is classic: 'The absence of archaeological evidence is not evidence of absence'. As Robert Carroll has pointed out (1998: 72; 2001: 98-101), this saying has become the mantra of those who refuse to accept an argument—except where it ceases to serve their purposes: It is a principle only invoked when its invocation can align itself with ideological positions already held... However, when it suits people to make absence of evidence an evidential claim then the absence will be the key factor in the argument, but when it suits the same people to make absence a neutral factor in the argument—or even perhaps a hint of a positive contribution to their claim in the sense that although currently absent there are no grounds for thinking that such evidence may not yet turn up—then it will be factored into the argument accordingly... Whatever the evidence it will always be manipulated in such a way that whether there or absent it will support the case ideologues wish to make. (Carroll 2001: 99)
More on this below. One of the editors of the volume, Faith, Tradition, and History, was Alan Millard, a Near Eastern scholar of no mean reputation. I have regarded his article on scriptio continua in the Semitic scripts as a classic from the time it first appeared (Millard 1970). But when it comes to the Bible, his views are clearly quite conservative at the very least. In this volume, Millard has only a passing comment or two on the Israelite settlement.
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However, his article is devoted to a defence of the biblical text, and he is quite quick to draw on Near Eastern parallels to buttress his statements. He seems to be saying that the same allowances should be made for the biblical text as for the Near Eastern texts, but that is not his ultimate position. On the contrary, Millard is willing to allow errors, exaggerations, and the like in the Near Eastern texts. He is not willing to allow such for the Bible. Or, if he is, I have been unable to find any examples of it. For instance, he states that for the most part, 'biblical stories are uncorroborated. .. There is no way, therefore, to prove the nature of them as either historical or fictional' (Millard 1994: 50). He then sets out three criteria 'that may guide in evaluating their role for a modern re-creation of the history of Israel'. However, I see no indication that he seriously considers any criteria sufficient to falsify or cast doubt on the biblical statements. This is demonstrated by his second criterion: Imaginary or fantastic elements will prove that the story stands some distance from reality, but these should be truly imaginary, such as gem-bearing trees or flying horses, not phenomena that are explicable, like the voices Joan of Arc heard... (Millard 1994: 50)
This may sound reasonable, until we see what is excluded from Millard's category of 'imaginary or fantastic elements'. Note the following statement a bit earlier in the article: When the compiler(s) of Kings included the incident of the iron axhead that floated, they were plainly not interested in the mechanism that brought about the unexpected, only in recording the event (2 Kgs 6:1-7). If their record reads like a legend today, that may be due in part to the brevity of the account and in part to the conditioning of the modern reader... The inability of modern man to do as Elisha did is no basis for denying the ancient report, any more than the inability of most people today to divine for water proves that it is impossible. (Millard 1994: 43-44)
Most of us would regard this story of Elisha's floating axehead as an example of the 'imaginary or fantastic', but not Millard. One then wonders whether any story in the Bible will ever contain anything 'imaginary or fantastic' in his view. Now, a number of the points made by Millard and Yamauchi are, in isolation, quite reasonable. In other contexts I have made similar points, occasionally perhaps even the same points. However, it is not the parts but the whole—and especially the whole underlying philosophy—that is important. Indeed, what is really important is the unstated assumption: the
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integrity of the biblical story must always be defended. Statements such as 'discarding should be the last resort' and 'we must keep an open mind' are mere window-dressing and, I doubt, are meant at all seriously. For the theoretical position that the biblical text might be wrong is never admitted in fact. Another person contributing to this collection who has also made a substantial contribution to Near Eastern studies is Richard Hess, and it is far from me to denigrate his work in this area. Nevertheless, he periodically ventures into the area of biblical history, and it is always to defend in some way or other the picture in the biblical text. His article in Faith, Tradition, and History is an example of this (Hess 1994), but Hess's approach can be seen even more clearly in a couple of other writings (Hess 1996; 1999). Hess describes the various theories about the Israelite settlement and even comments that 'the biblical evidence does not perfectly coincide with any of the models proposed' (Hess 1999: 503). However, it is quite evident that he is not willing to give up the picture of Joshua 1-12, though he clearly wants to harmonize this with the picture found in the later chapters of Joshua and in Judges.9 What Hess first does is to read the text with a blind eye. It is possible to harmonize the various statements in Joshua and Judges only if one is willing to overlook the plain sense of the individual passages. No one reading Joshua 1-12 for what it says can be left with any impression other than that Israel under Joshua's leadership scored a great victory over the Canaanite tribes, defeating 31 kings and taking city after city, often massacring the inhabitants, men, women, and (presumably, though this is never stated) children. Nothing is said about pockets of Canaanites being too strong for Joshua or cities escaping the Israelite juggernaut. By Josh. 13.1-6, the only areas remaining to be conquered are those in the territories of Philistia and Phoenicia (areas we know that historically remained outside Israel). A series of statements leave no doubt in the reader' s mind:I0
9. 'An alternative way of viewing the Biblical accounts in Joshua and (especially the first chapter of) Judges is to see them as reflecting two perspectives on similar events' (Hess 1999: 505). What this exercise in harmonizing cannot do, however, is deny the clear biblical picture of a unified conquest in a short space of time—unless one is prepared to accept that Josh. 1-15 got it wrong—a scenario that I have not yet seen Hess agree to. 10. Biblical passages in this article are cited from the JPS translation (Tanakh 1985).
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Joshua waged war with all those kings over a long period. Apart from the Hivites who dwelt in Gibeon, not a single city made terms with the Israelites; all were taken in battle. For it was the Lord's doing to stiffen their hearts to give battle to Israel, in order that they might be proscribed without quarter and wiped out, as the Lord commanded Moses. (11.18-20) Thus Joshua conquered the whole country, just as the Lord had promised Moses; and Joshua assigned it to Israel to share according to their tribal divisions. And the land had rest from war. (11.23) The Lord gave to Israel the whole country which He had sworn to their fathers that He would assign to them; they took possession of it and settled in it. The Lord gave them rest on all sides, just as He had promised to their fathers on oath. Not one man of all their enemies withstood them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hands. Not one of the good things which the Lord had promised to the House of Israel was lacking. Everything was fulfilled. (21.41-43)
Yet this idealized picture is contradicted by a number of passages in which the Canaanites were not conquered, in which cities and territory were still in Canaanite hands, or Canaanite military might was too strong for the Israelites (Josh. 13.13; 15.63; 16.10; 17.12-18; Judg. 1). Hess does briefly address the problem in one section of his commentary (Hess 1996: 284-86). But recognizing the problem is not the same as resolving it. The impression left by the rather inconclusive discussion is that somehow God is faithful and keeps his word, but humans are frail and weak. True, perhaps, but what that has to do with the statements made in the text is never explained. Harmonizing is a slippery slope: it is not long before the harmonizer has forgotten what the text actually says and pretends that it says something else. A good example of this is found with regard to Ai. Archaeology has indicated that the city was destroyed about 2400 BCE, a good thousand years before it was supposed to have been attacked by Joshua, and remained a ruin until the Iron Age when a small, unwalled settlement was there.11 Hess addresses the question in a short excursus (1996: 157-59). He lists four explanations, though more or less dismissing the first three. The final one, which he seems to favour, is that Ai was indeed 'an unoccupied ruin' in the time of Joshua but
11. For a convenient summary, see Callaway 1993.
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The harmonizing fever has so got the best of Hess here that he fails to notice what the text actually says:12 1. Ai was a city of 12,000 inhabitants (or more if children were counted?) (8.25). 2. Ai had its own king (8.1-2, 23,29). 3. The city was burned, an act which should have left remains in the archaeological record (8.28). 4. The text distinguishes between Ai and Bethel at several points by recognizing that Ai was near Bethel, i.e., not to be confused with Bethel (7.2; 8.9,12). Bethel was defeated on another occasion (no such defeat is described in Joshua, but the king of Bethel is listed separately from the king of Ai as one of those conquered in this list in Josh. 12.16).13 Ai was no ruin taken over as a temporary defence for the inhabitants of Bethel—at least, not if you take at all seriously what the text of Joshua says. A point carefully avoided by Hess is the fact that Joshua assigns Jerusalem to separate tribes: Judah (15.63) and Benjamin (18.28). The dexterity with which he dances around the contradiction makes one want to clap with admiration—he moves like the Baryshnikov of biblical harmonizers. The latter passage (18.28) is handled the same way that Hess deals with all the place names in the section on Benjamin (and the other tribes) by simply listing Jebus/Jerusalem in a table (Hess 1996: 267). So 12. Hess seems to have got this explanation from A.R. Millard in a book not available to me (Millard 1985). I cannot say how Millard treated the subject, but if it is anything like Hess's treatment, my strictures apply equally to his work. 13. The only passage suggesting otherwise is Josh. 8.17 which states that the men of Bethel also went out after Israel. This is a puzzle because it is the only passage so much as to hint that Bethel was involved in the fight against Ai. Although the textual history of the LXX is somewhat complicated in Joshua (see the discussion in Jellicoe 1968: 278-80), the phrase 'and Bethel' appears to be missing from the main manuscripts. Thus, it may be redactional or even just a copyist's error (cf. Noth 1953: 46: a 'thoughtless addition \gedankenloser Zusatz]' caused by the mention of Bethel in w. 9 and 12). The commentary by Boling suggests that it is a reference not to the place name Bethel but to the sanctuary within the city of Ai (Boling and Wright 1982: 240).
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far, so good. However, the first passage (15.63) is not listed as part of a table but is dealt with by a comment in the commentary (Hess 1996:256): The observation that the Jebusites of Jerusalem were not dislodged (Jos. 15:63) appears as a note attached to the end of the allotment, just as the observation concerning the Canaanite towns that Manasseh was unable to occupy appears after the allotment of the Joseph tribes (Jos. 17:11-13).
This is very clever. Hess has avoided listing Jerusalem in the list of place names that constitute the territory of the Judahites, while his commentary makes no mention that Jerusalem is here assigned to Judah—this despite the fact that the biblical text of Josh. 15.63 is explicit: 'But the Judites could not dispossess the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Judites dwell with the Jebusites in Jerusalem to this day'. One who follows Hess's commentary but is not reading the text very carefully would easily pass by the contradiction without noticing it, thanks to Hess's deft footwork. In trying to find archaeological evidence for Joshua, Hess discusses the supposed altar on Mt Ebal (Josh. 8.30-33; see Hess 1999: 506-508; 1996: 174). He notes a stone structure on Mt Ebal dating to about 1200 BCE which might be an altar, according to one archaeologist. Many bones of sheep and cattle, animals suitable for sacrifice, were also found there. This is taken to be possible evidence that Joshua' altar has been identified. But another archaeologist thinks the structure is a watchtower, and the bones include many of fallow deer—an animal not allowed for sacrifice in the Israelite cult, if you accept the biblical text. So what has Hess demonstrated? Absolutely nothing. It is an example of press-ganging into the service of fundamentalist apologetics the slightest possible evidence of the truth of biblical statements. What Hess does not seem to recognize (or, more likely, he conveniently ignores) is the fact that a large body of people14 coming into a territory and conquering it in the space of five years will leave a mark. We can quibble about details, but if Joshua 1-12 has any claim to validity, there would be a good deal of evidence in the archaeological record. This is precisely what an earlier generation of scholars claimed. The Albright school could argue for the 'conquest model' precisely because they thought they had evidence for it—abundant evidence, as they argued. That evidence has now disappeared. 14. The biblical text is quite clear that this had to be several million. See Grabbe 2000.
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The classic argumentum e silentio states that the absence of evidence is significant when we should see evidence. That is, if the event or situation indeed took place, we should expect evidence; if there is no evidence, it did not happen. Apart from the fact that some still persist in not understanding what an argument from silence is,15 it is never absolute because there is always the remote possibility that new unexpected information will turn up. But it can nevertheless be a strong argument. Joshua's picked troops numbered 30,000, while the two and a half Transjordanian tribes supplied 40,000, which means his main force was well over 100,000 (Josh. 4.13; 8.3). If he attacked with such a force and burned, pillaged, and slaughtered up and down the country of Canaan, there should be archaeological evidence of it. To say that it happened but left no archaeological traces is like saying the English Civil War could have left no traces in the archaeology of Britain.16 The impression given is that critical scholars are being unfair in their treatment of the Bible. The frequent expression, delivered in slightly hurt tones, as if more in sorrow than anger, is that what is allowed for in other texts is not tolerated for the biblical text. Scholars just seem to want to find fault with the Bible; they are being hypercritical; they have an antibiblical bias. The contrary is the case, of course: critical scholarship developed in biblical studies when the Bible was no longer treated as special but was approached critically like another literature. What Millard, Hess, Yamauchi, and others are not willing to admit is that it is they who are treating the Bible as special, as different from other literature. Yamauchi writes: 'Modern biblical criticism has been characterized by anti-supernaturalism' (1994: 5). This is a strange statement because I am unaware that Yamauchi allows supernatural considerations to affect his perception of non-biblical history. As far as I can tell he has a strong 'anti-supernaturalistic bias' against non-biblical sources. I am not aware that he wishes us to take at face value, for example, the events of the Homeric poems, especially the deeds of Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, et al. Now, perhaps my suspicious mind is wrong. Perhaps the individuals in 15. One still surprisingly sees the statement made that a theory to explain the lack of evidence is an 'argument from silence'. Not at all—it is only a theory to explain the silence. It is in fact the opposite of an argument from silence. 16. Interestingly, the armies fighting in the English Civil War were actually rather smaller than those alleged for Israel in Canaan. At the first encounter beween Royalists and Parlimentarians at Edgehill, there were fewer than 15,000 troops on each side. By the end of the conflict, the Parliamentarian army numbered only about 30,000.
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question genuinely accept that the Bible could be wrong. But if so, why is it so difficult to find examples where this is admitted in fact rather than just in theory? The attempt to defend the Bible regardless, but without admitting one's presuppositions, is the essence of neo-fundamentalism. The neo-fundamentalist approach, so often encountered these days in spite of the wide acceptance of critical scholarship, follows a fairly standard formula which can be outlined as follows: 1. Where there is evidence that might support the Bible, however tenuous, it is pressed as far as it can go, as if the mere possibility of the biblical text being correct in some fashion or other is sufficient to salvage it. 2. Where the evidence is unsupportive of the biblical text, and especially where it contradicts it, the evidence and arguments may be acknowledged in an apparently open-minded way, but there will then usually be a citation of someone who seems to give an alternative point of view which supports the biblical text. The opinion cited will often be of another conservative evangelical writer; however, if it is from a mainstream critic, the citation may well be taken out of context; the fact that the critical scholar may disagree profoundly with the fundamentalist interpretation will not usually be noted. 3. There will usually be a series of statements (which may or may not be accompanied by examples) that the earlier sources are not necessarily the most accurate, that bias in a text by itself does not invalidate its contents, that lack of corroboration does not invalidate the biblical text, and that the 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. 4. The criticisms, reconstructions, and interpretations of critical scholarship will be labeled 'theories'—as if the biblicist reconstruction was not also set in a theoretical framework which was just as hypothetical and interpretative as those of the biblical critics. 5. The impression may well be given that the Bible is being singled out for particularly negative treatment, that in neighbouring disciplines (Near Eastern studies, classical studies, etc.) texts comparable to the Bible are treated with respect and their contents taken at face value, and that the critical methods used in biblical study are considered suspect or rejected by Orientalists, classicists, etc. 6. Where the critical evidence against the Bible is widely accepted, the fundamentalist conclusion will consist of statements to the
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On the other hand, a fundamentalist approach does not have to be confined to the Bible believers. A dogmatic scepticism that continually looks for a way to reject or denigrate the biblical text can be as 'fundamentalist' in its own way as a refusal to allow the Bible to be wrong. This attitude was well addressed by Hans Barstad in his essay on 'bibliophobia' (Barstad 1998). I cite one example which strikes me as a dogmatic position, that of the Mesha stela. Most scholars have no problem with the conclusion that the Mesha stela relates to and partially supports the situation described in 1 Kings 16 and 2 Kings 1-3. The precise relationship and the exact history behind the two texts are topics for legitimate debate, but there seems little reason to question the natural assumption that a King Omri of the Mesha stela is to be identified with the King Omri of the biblical text. Yet N.P. Lemche and T.L. Thompson have done just that. Lemche gives a cautious discussion, noting the absence of Ahab, the 'mythical' figure of 40 years, the reference to Jehu as the 'son' of Omri (in the Assyrian inscriptions), and suggesting that the mentioning of King Omri may therefore in this inscription not be solid evidence of the existence of a king of this name but simply a reference to the apical founder of the kingdom of Israel.. .the dynastic name of the state of Israel. (Lemche 1998: 44-46)
If so, his 'son' could be any king of Israel down to the fall of Samaria. Thompson is more dogmatic: Omri 'dwelling in Moab' is not a person doing anything in Transjordan. It is a character of story an eponym, a personification of the state BitHumrfs political power and the presence of its army in eastern Palestine. We have a text. Therefore we are dealing with the literary, not the historical. From the historical name ofBitffumri, the Bible's story of a King Omri as builder of Samaria and founder of its dynasty grew just as much as had the story of King David and his forty kings. These sprang from the eponymic function of a truly historical Byt dwd. (Thompson 2000: 325)
The relationship of both the biblical text and the Mesha stela to actual history is as open to debate as any other historical questioin, and I have no
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wish to stifle this debate. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that if Omri were not mentioned in the biblical text, there would not be this attempt to give a rather arcane interpretation to the Mesha stela. To my suspicious mind what lies behind the attempt to make Omri an 'eponym' is a case of 'bibliophobia'. However, even if my interpretation of the ultimate motives is correct, that does not give me the right to dismiss their interpretation. On the contrary, it is my duty to take it seriously and answer it with careful argument, which I have done (Grabbe forthcoming). Conclusions Some may feel that this article has contained some hard words. My intent has been, however, to address all of us, myself included. When Sandmel exposed the 'comfortable theory', he did not exempt himself from his own strictures, nor can I. Sandmel admitted that he was as susceptible to the seductive comfortable theory as the next person, and I have to own up to the same temptations. I have my own comfortable theories. I would like to think that I have thought them through carefully and am willing to change my mind if the facts show otherwise, but whether in practice that is true is not something I can judge alone. For example, if someone asks me where I stand in the current debate about use of the Bible in the history of ancient Syria and Palestine, I would classify myself as neither a maximalist nor a minimalist, as neither a fundamentalist nor a bibliophobe. If I had to choose a label for myself in this debate over history, I might choose the designation of 'moderate'. But of course this personal designation can be as self-seeking and self-deceptive as any other. There is no permanent state of purity nor any established chair of righteousness in scholarship. This does not mean that I take a purely academic view of the matters discussed in this article. On the contrary, in my view neo-fundamentalism should be unmasked wherever it occurs. I think it has some serious dangers not only for scholarship but for our hardwon freedoms as citizens of the Western world. I am in no way suggesting that any of the individuals mentioned in this article are 'dangerous' (if they are indeed fundamentalists in the strong sense of the word, which I cannot say for certain). But most of us are aware that biblical fundamentalism would happily call up and kit out an entire army of brawny thought police, if it had its way—and there would be no lack of good church-going, God-fearing self-righteous people to volunteer. Fundamentalism threatens our right to live as freethinking individuals who have embraced the Enlightenment heritage. One clear example of the dangers of fundamentalism (not to mention such small
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matters as the terrorism currently being practised in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and other religions) is in the constant pressure to have 'scientific creationism' taught in schools in the USA. This is a large subject which cannot be taken up here, but it is just one of the dangers to free speech and free thought, rights that fundamentalists would gladly remove from us. However, I do not suggest that we counter fundamentalism by trying to stifle it or suggesting that the arguments themselves should be dismissed as not worth considering. Granted, sometimes the differences are so great between fundamentalists and critical scholars, because of the different presuppositions, that it may seem a waste of time to deal with the fundamentalist case. But often the argument has potential validity in its own right and should be taken seriously. Indeed, if that point of view is ignored, it only serves to fuel the charge that critical scholars are not willing to consider other points of view. This is why books such as Teeple's and Bailey's on Noah's ark are needed, even though not all reviewers were enthusiastic about their taking on the task.17 The main burden of this article—which is one also championed by Robert Carroll—is the importance of maintaining an atmosphere of free discussion and debate. It is only in critical discussion that we can push past the 'comfortable theory' and all the ideological positions of many different sorts. It is in free and honest debate that we can best counter the creeping tentacles of neo-fundamentalism in whatever form it takes. The other side of the coin is to recognize how abhorrent are the put-downs, the name-calling, the dismissive reviews that categorize serious books by the sobriquet that they 'can be safely ignored'. This is why any attempt to stifle proper debate is so invidious and has no place in international scholarship. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bailey, L.R. 1978 Ban, J. 1977 Barstad, H.M. 1998
Where is Noah's Ark? (Nashville: Abingdon Press). Fundamentalism (London: SCM Press). 'The Strange Fear of the Bible: Some Reflections on the "Bibliophobia" in Recent Ancient Israelite Historiography', in Grabbe (ed.), 1998: 120-27.
17. See Teeple 1978; Bailey 1978. Cf. the review of Gigliotti (1980) for an ambivalent attitude toward the value of the two books.
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Boling, R.G., and G.E. Wright 1982 Joshua: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary (AB, 6; Garden City, NY: Doubleday). Callaway, J.A. 1993 'Ai', in E. Stern (ed.), New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (4 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society), I: 39-45. Carroll, R.P. 1979 When Prophecy Failed (London: SPCK). 1998 'Exile! What Exile? Deportation and the Discourses of Diaspora', in Grabbe (ed.), 1998: 62-79. 2001 'Jewgreek Greekjew: The Hebrew Bible is All Greek to Me, Reflections on the Problematics of Dating the Origins of the Bible in Relation to Contemporary Discussions of Biblical Historiography', in L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (JSOTSup, 317; ESHM, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 91-107. Cross, P.M., Jr 2000 'A Reconstruction of the Judaean Restoration', revised version in P.M. Cross, From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press): 151-72. Festinger, L. 1957 A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (London: Tavistock). Festinger, L., H.W. Riecken and S. Schachter 1956 When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Friedman, R.E. 2001 'The Synthesis of the Torah', unpublished paper read at the Joint Session of the Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah Section/Jerusalem in the Bible and Archaeology Consultation, Society of Biblical Literature meeting, Denver, 17-20 November 2001. Gigliotti, M.A. 1980 Review of Bailey 1978 and Teeple 1978, CBQ 42: 87-88. Grabbe, L.L. 1987a 'Fundamentalism and Scholarship: The Case of Daniel', in B.P. Thompson (ed.), Scripture: Method and Meaning: Essays Presented to Anthony Tyrrell Hanson for his Seventieth Birthday (Hull: Hull University Press): 133-52. 1987b 'Josephus and the Reconstruction of the Judaean Restoration', JBL 106: 231-46. 2000 'Adde Praeputium Praeputio Magnus Acervus Erit: If the Exodus and Conquest Had Really Happened...', in J. Cheryl Exum (ed.), Virtual History and the Bible [= Biblical Interpretation 8] (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 23-32. 2001 'The Law of Moses in the Ezra Tradition: More Virtual than Real?', in J.W. Watts (ed.), Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch (SBL Symposium Series, 17; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature): 91-113 forthcoming 'The Kingdom of Israel from Omri to the Fall of Samaria: If We Had Only the Bible...', in L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Ahab Agonistes: The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).
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Grabbe, L.L. (ed.) 1998 Leading Captivity Captive: 'The Exile' as History and Ideology (JSOTSup, 278; ESHM, 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Gropp, D.M. 2000 'Sanballat', in L.H. Schiffman and J.C. VanderKam (eds.), Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 823-25. Hackett, J.A., et al. 1997 'Defusing Pseudo-Scholarship: The Siloam Inscription Ain't Hasmonean', BARev 23.2: 41-50, 6%. Hendel, R.S. 1996 'The Date of the Siloam Inscription: A Rejoinder to Rogerson and Davies', BA 59: 233-47. Hess, R.S. 1994 'Asking Historical Questions of Joshua 13-19: Recent Discussion Concerning the Date of the Boundary Lists', in Millard, Hoffmeier and Baker (eds.), 1994:191-205. 1996 Joshua (TOTC; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press). 1999 'Early Israel in Canaan: A Survey of Recent Evidence and Interpretations', in V.P. Long (ed.), Israel's Past in Present Research: Essays on Ancient Israelite Historiography (Sources for Biblical and Theological Study, 17; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns): 492-518; originally published mPEQ 125 (1993): 125-42. Jellicoe, S. 1968 The Septuagint and Modern Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press). 1998 The Israelites in History and Tradition (LAI; Louisville, KY: Westminister/ John Knox Press). Lemche, N.P. 1998 The Israelites in History and Tradition (Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press). Millard, A.R. 1970 'Scriptio Continua in Early Hebrew: Ancient Practice or Modern Surmise', JSS 15: 2-15 1985 Treasures from Bible Times (Tring: Lion). 1994 'Story, History, and Theology', in Millard, Hoffmeier and Baker (eds.), 1994:37-64. Millard, A.R., J.K. Hoffmeier and D.W. Baker (eds.) 1994 Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in its Near Eastern Context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns). Norin, S. 1998 'The Age of the Siloam Inscription and Hezekiah's Tunnel', FT48: 37-48. Noth, M. 1953 Das Buck Josua (HAT, Erste Reihe, 7; Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck]). Rendtorff, R. 1975 'Der "Jahwist" als Theologe? Zum Dilemma der Pentateuchkritik', in J. Emerton (ed.), Edinburgh Congress Volume (VTSup 28; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 158-66; ET 'The "Yahwist" as Theologian? The Dilemma of Pentateuchal Criticism', JSOT3(1971): 2-10 (plusresponses, 11-42); 'Pentateuchal Studies on the Move': 43-45
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Die uberlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (BZAW, 147; Berlin: W. de Gruyter); ET The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch (trans. J.J. Scullion; JSOTSup, 89; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990). Rogerson, J., and P.R. Davies 1996 'Was the Siloam Tunnel Built by Hezekiah?', BA 59: 138-49. Sandmel, S. 1979 'Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity: The Question of the Comfortable Theory', HUCA 50: 137-48. Schwartz, D.R. 1990 'On Some Papyri and Josephus' Sources and Chronological for the Persian Period', JSJ 21: 175-99. Tanakh 1985 Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America). Teeple, H.M. 1978 The Noah's Ark Nonsense (Evanston, IL: Religion and Ethics Institute). Thompson, T.L. 2000 'Problems of Genre and Historicity with Palestine's Inscriptions', in A. Lemaire and M. Saeb0 (eds.), Congress Volume: Oslo 1998 (VTSup, 80; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 321-26. Whybray, R.N. 1987 The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study (JSOTSup, 53; Sheffield: JSOT Press). Williamson, H.G.M. 1992 'Sanballat', in ABD,V: 973-75. Yamauchi, E. 1994 'The Current State of Old Testament Historiography', inMillard, Hoffmeier and Baker (eds.), 1994: 1-36.
REPRESENTING MINIMALISM: THE RHETORIC AND REALITIY OF REVISIONISM*
Keith W. Whitelam
The death of minimalism has been pronounced recently in the pages of the Guardian (Irving 2001), one of Britain's leading quality newspapers, as well as in the Biblical Archaeology Review (Shanks 2001).1 In a recent review of archaeology as a discipline, Ephraim Stern pronounced that minimalism would last no more than two to three years, Larry Stager gave it five years at the most, Amnon Ben-Tor five to ten years, while Frank Cross pronounced that 'the minimalist movement will be eaten away and evaporate' (Shanks 2001: 29). It is arguably a century or more since an approach to the Bible has provoked such a strong reaction as that represented by what has come to be commonly termed 'biblical minimalism' or 'revisionism1. Given the pronouncements that it is such an ephemeral phenomenon, we might ask, why all the fuss? Yet Dever (2001:51)isso concerned by what he discerns as 'not properly speaking a coherent scholarly "school," but rather an ideological movement with revolutionary aspirations' that he has devoted considerable time and energy in trying to counter it. What is it that defines so-called biblical minimalism or revisionism as a school or movement? We might pose a series of questions after the manner of Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt (2000:1 -2) in Practicing New Historicism, who expressed themselves surprised a few years ago
* This essay is in tribute to Robert Carroll who provided tremendous help and support when I was first appointed to an academic post at the University of Stirling and throughout my academic career. I trust that the subject matter would appeal to his irreverent sense of humour and his integrity as a scholar and person. 1. Irving (2001) is discussing the minimalist movement in architecture. For the relevance of this movement in architecture, art, and music to the discussions within biblical studies, see below.
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to find an advertisement in an English Department for a specialist in New Historicism. How could something that did not exist, they ask, 'that was only a few words gesturing toward a new interpretative procedure have become a "field"?' Similarly, we might ask how could a few books and articles concerned with the study of Israelite history become perceived as a revolutionary movement so threatening that it requires senior figures in the discipline to reassure colleagues that, 'Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble' (Isa. 40.24). Although, as far as I am aware, no advert has yet appeared asking for an expert in 'biblical minimalism', we might still ask who can claim expertise in it and of what does such expertise consist? Where can we find a set of theoretical propositions or an articulated programme so that we can say, 'You are not an authentic minimalist'; or Dever and Shanks can, like the Amarna scribes before them, add one more name to the list of those banished from the mainstream of biblical studies to the land of the Apiru, the border lands of minimalism, where according to Stern, Stager, Ben-Tor, and Cross they must await their inevitable fate? An article, available on the internet, by Gary Rendsburg entitled 'Down With History, Up with Reading: The Current State of Biblical Studies'2 describes the decline from the consensus on the historicity of the biblical traditions achieved by a host of, in his words, 'luminaries' and 'giants' such as Albright, Gaster, Ginsberg, Orlinsky, G.R. Driver, de Vaux, Benjamin Mazar, Yadin, and Cyrus Gordon to the present perilous state of the discipline. 'In short', he says, 'the paradigm has shifted from a maximalist stance to a minimalist one'.3 He then asks:'.. .who are these people, these minimalists?' or '...who are these people, these revisionists, these nihilists? What drives them? To give you the names of the four best known among them', he continues helpfully:
2. The article is located on the McGill University website in a section called 'At the Cutting Edge of Jewish Studies: The Most Recent Developments in the Field: The Academy Reports to the Community'
. It is described as an expanded version of a 30-minute presentation at the McGill University Department of Jewish Studies Thirtieth Anniversary Conference. 3. Hallo (1990: 193), as far as I am aware, was the first to use these terms in relation to the study of what he terms 'biblical history'. Dever (2001: 9), however, claims that the term derives from his own writings, though he does not indicate which.
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Rendsburg does not indicate which of the character traits fits which particular scholar.4 However, such descriptions do not help us in determining what would constitute expertise in minimalism, only the kinds of characters we are likely to find applying for our hypothetical post. Rendsburg's account is typical of recent pronouncements in proclaiming that there is a clear dividing line, a bipolar opposition, that separates scholars on these matters: The maximalist holds that since so much of the biblical record has been confirmed by archaeological work and by other sources from the ancient Near East, for example, the aformentioned Mesha Stele, that even when there is no corroborating evidence, we can assume that the Bible reflects true history, unless it can be proved otherwise. The minimalist approach is exactly the opposite. Because so much of the biblical record is contradicted by archaeological work and by other sources from the ancient Near East, for
4. In response to a series of questions I emailed to Rendsburg about his article, he was unable or unwilling to inform me as to which of the character traits were meant to describe me. He claimed that he had based his information on an article by Dever (1998), as noted in his n. 15. The level of informed dialogue, on which Rendsburg seems happy to base his views, is demonstrated by Dever's (2001: 263) claim that 'those who know Davies tell me that his sometimes outrageous polemics are best understood as possibly a delayed reaction against his own conservative background. Whitelam's apparent pacifist Quaker background may help to explain his antipathy to the "militant" modem state of Israel. The fact that Thompson is a graduate of the University of Tubingen may account partly for his jaundiced view of Judaism.' Hearsay is elevated to a postion whereby it becomes the basis on which to judge scholarly arguments. I am in no position to pronounce on the backgrounds of Davies or Thompson, but Dever knows nothing of my background. I was not brought up in the Quaker tradition, but attended a Quaker meeting for a few years in the 1980s. I do not claim to be a pacifist. My opposition is to Israel's continuing treatment of the Palestinians and is not based on notions of pacifism or Quakerism. No evidence, apart from hearsay, is provided to support any of his statements about particular individuals. Similarly, Halpern (1995: 47) claims that 'the motives of the hysteria' differ in different scholars: in one it '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'. Yet, again, no evidence is brought forward to justify such serious charges against any particular scholar.
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example, the lack of any conquest at Jericho and Ai, we must assume that the Bible is literary fiction, unless it can be proved otherwise.
If we adopt the criteria set out by Rendsburg, the following statements allow us to say to their authors, 'You are authentic minimalists', or to respond to those who wish to challenge their views, 'I am sorry but you are not suitable for our post in biblical minimalism'. As late as the 1970s, the standard histories of ancient Israel were nothing more than summaries of the biblical record, occasionally sprinkled with supposed archaeological illustrations. What the Book of Kings said was history. What Exodus said was history. Sometimes, what Genesis said was history. Figures such as William F. Albright, John Bright, George E. Mendenhall and Ephraim A. Speiser were still holding the line on the existence of a 'patriarchal age.' No one with a whiff of independence from the biblical worldview accepted this as reality. The evidence for the patriarchal age was, at best, evidence of the antiquity of some social practices possibly reflected in the narratives. (Halpern 1995: 33)
Or: [And] with new models of indigenous Canaanite origins for early Israel there is neither place nor need for an Exodus from Egypt... I regard the historicity of the Exodus as a dead issue. (Dever 1997: 67, 81)5
5. Ironically, Kitchen (1998:105) in re viewing Dever's article on the Exodus says that he is 'among the finest and most able Syro-Palestinian archaeologists of our time; but here he is excrutiatingly out of his depth'. On Dever's argument relating to the absence of the Pharaoh's name in the Exodus narrative, Kitchen says, 'such a charge is what one might have expected of some long-dead, uninformed anti-biblical humanist in the 1850s, but not of a major scholar in the 1990s'. Ironically, as Dever tries to rule 'revisionists' out of the debate on Israelite history on the basis of lack of expertise, so Kitchen (1998: 112) claims that 'as a mere Syro-Palestinian archaeologist, he is in no position to speak on this issue... Neither the patriarchs nor the exodus are a "dead issue"; what does seem to be dead is the willingness or ability of some scholars to accept new factual evidence that contradicts their unverifiable personal preferences'. This is particularly ironic in light of Dever's attacks on the revisionists as being anti-Bible, being driven by ideology, and unwilling to accept the facts (as he sees them). On the question of exclusivity on the basis of expertise, see below. A further irony can be found in Shanks's (1987) attack upon Dever's claims to be championing a 'new biblical archaeology'. Shanks (56) states that the reason that Dever concludes that there was no Exodus is because he seems to find 'some special delight in knocking the Bible, in demonstrating that it is wrong'. Shanks refers to this as Dever's 'anti-Bible bias'— ironically a term that Dever is happy to use of other scholars just over a decade later.
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Or: ...take the Patriarchal narratives. After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible 'historical figures.' Virtually the last archaeological word was written by me more than 20 years ago for a basic handbook of biblical studies, Israelite andJudean History. And, as we have seen, archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus has similarly been discarded as a fruitless pursuit. Indeed, the overwhelming archaeological evidence today of largely indigenous origins for early Israel leaves no room for an exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness. (Dever 2001: 98-99)
Are these the demented ramblings of the Terrible Thompson, the Lamentable Lemche, the Diabolical Davies, or the Woeful Whitelam pursuing their revolutionary ideological agenda, corrupting younger scholars, and threatening the very foundations of Western civilization (see Dever 2001: 291)? Obviously not! The first is taken from Baruch Halpern's article 'Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel' (Halpern 1995). The others come from William Dever's essay 'Is There Any Archaeological Evidence for the Exodus' (Dever 1997) and his most recent book What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Dever 2001) Dever, perhaps the most vehement of all the critics of what he prefers to call revisionism or nihilism, denies the historicity of the patriarchal or exodus traditions, and argues that what he identifies as Israelite sites, or proto-Israelite sites, in the early Iron Age are largely the result of indigenous development. Views which he shares with those he rejects as minimalists, revisionists, or nihilists. In fact such views are expressed by so-called minimalists and maximalists alike. The remarkable consensus, achieved since the late 1980s, on the striking similarities in the material culture of settlements from the Late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age, ought to signal caution in trying to characterize the current debates as a clear cut polarization. Just as Dever has spent the last few years searching for proto-Israelites, who when fully grown a century or so later become Israelites, so on the basis of his views about the patriarchs, exodus, and conquest, we might term him a proto-minimalist who aspires to become an authentic minimalist and therefore be a suitable candidate for our hypothetical vacancy in biblical minimalism. He does, after all, claim to be 'steeped' in revisionist literature (Dever 2001: 51). When we try to define a minimalist view, in assessing the historicity of the biblical traditions, how much is too much that it becomes maximalist and how
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much is too little that it becomes minimalist? The terms are relative, of course, but size it seems does matter. What these examples illustrate is that there is not a clear dividing line between so-called minimalism and so-called maximalism within biblical studies. When we look at detailed statements and arguments, rather than indulge in generalities, we can see that the rhetoric of representation and the reality of scholarship are worlds apart. The Rhetoric of Rejection Yet how are we to construct our hypothetical advert for our specialist in minimalism? We might take the list of names who are frequently said to be members of this movement—Davies, Lemche, Thompson, and Whitelam are the most often cited—and use their work to establish a canon of minimalism or revisionism. However, Dever (2001: 40-44) includes Finkelstein as a leading figure in the movement, while Barr (2000: 62), for example, includes such scholars as Herzog, Garbini, and others. The size of the list and its constituent members varies as much as biblical genealogies formerly used to construct a hypothetical amphictyony. Invariably, the published work of the most prominent names is used to establish a canon of minimalism. Any statement by one of these scholars, it seems, can then be attributed to all of them.6 But where can we find a systematic statement of minimalism in order to apply our test of authenticity? Philip Davies' In Search of 'Ancient Israel' has been described as the beginning of a 'deliberate movement', my own The Invention of Ancient Israel is said to be a manifesto of minimalism,7 while 6. Dever (2001: 11-16,52,263) is full of such generalities, often expressed as lists of points, which are meant to represent what particular scholars have written or believe. However, all too frequently these are quotations, or very often phrases, taken from one scholar and attributed to others without any evidence. The claim at the beginning of the book that it is popular and so might seem simplistic is not sufficient defence for this tactic since he states elsewhere that it is imperative to represent views accurately (41). An injunction that he continually ignores. 7. For Kitchen (1998: 114, 116), however, it is one of a number of 'works of fantasy' or a 'work of fiction'. This article appears as part of a collection (Ahituv and Oren 1998) which contains articles by Finkelstein and Whitelam, along with a number of responses, from a symposium in London. The articles by Finkelstein and Whitelam are lightly edited versions of their public presentations. It should be noted that Kitchen's article has been significantly expanded to include a large section which includes an attack on Dever, Whitelam and others. However, none of this was said in
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Dever informs us that Finkelstein's and Silberman's The Bible Unearthed, is 'an ideological manifesto' rather than judicious, well-balanced scholarship (Dever 2001: 60). Presumably then any authentic minimalist, and prospective candidate for our hypothetical post, will be happy to affirm the various manifesto statements and pledges contained in these volumes. In addition, it is possible to compile a check list of fundamental tenets from the many representations of minimalism in scholarly publications, newspaper articles, and public lectures which warn an unsuspecting public of the dangers posed to the very fabric of western society by the practictioners of minimalism, while reassuringly issuing the divine advice 'You have only to be still' (Exod. 14.14). 'For', as the Psalmist says, 'they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb' (Ps. 37.2). Our check list of fundamental tenets to which our applicants for the post would have to subscribe would include the following: 'Ancient Israel did not exist', 'the Bible is useless for historical research', 'the Bible is a literary fiction/pious fraud written in the Persian and Hellenistic periods', 'the Tel Dan stele is a forgery', and, of course, according to the representation of minimalism, our applicants would have to be anti-Semitic.8 Yet, as with public where it could have been debated and refuted but only appeared in the final published version. 8. Dever (2001: 26) offers what he calls 'the manifesto of a movement that selfconsciously portrays itself as revolutionary'. Despite his claim that his paraphrases fairly represent 'the revisionist position' and 'is easy to document', he fails to provide any documentation to show that the scholars concerned subscribe to all or any of these statements. Later, he offers his own list (51-52), which he claims arises from the fact that he has 'steeped' himself in revisionist literature. Again, no items in the list are documented. His list claims that 'the principal revisionists' 'pose a set of convenient false issues; create an imagined dichotomy between positions; polarize the discussion'. Yet this is exactly what his book seeks to do. The current article is an attempt to show that the kind of polarization he describes is false and misleading. One does not have to read far in his book to see how he is subject to his own claim that the revisionists 'caricature the history of traditional scholarship; demonize any remaining opponents' (52). This is bolstered by such insults as 'pretend to be scientific, but discard evidence that doesn't fit; falsify the rest' (52). No evidence is cited to support any of the statements in this list, some of which, as above, are profound insults to scholarly integrity. The reader is asked to accept these claims at face value, with no documentation, on the grounds that he is a trustworthy narrator steeped in revisionist literature. An example of the contradictions which run throughout the book comes a few pages later when he claims, 'By "honesty," I mean simply citing other scholars accurately, in context, and crediting one's sources fully; not pretending to an expertise one does not possess; resisting the temptation to indulge in personal polemics that stem from a sense of
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the surprise of Gallagher and Greenblatt at the advert for an expert in New Historicism, so minimalism in the form of the set of fundamental tenets attributed to various individuals simply does not exist. Minimalism and maximalism as bipolar opposites have about as much substance as Martin Noth's amphictyony or the shade of Samuel called up by the medium of Endor to consult with Saul. What we find increasingly in many scholarly and popular presentations of minimalism is not a rhetoric of representation, a description of fundamental tenets, or a careful representation of scholarly views but a rhetoric of misrepresentation, a rhetoric of rejection which is designed to marginalize and discredit. The last item on our check list is, of course, the most serious and needs to be addressed directly. Claims that minimalism is a passing fad, a dying and irrelevant phenomenon, are part of a strategy designed to marginalize and discredit. Arguments are dismissed as 'credulous', 'facile', 'fashionable', 'apassing fad' and part of'trendy academic fashions' (Dever 1996:8; 2001:17,25). Each of these terms, along with 'politically correct' (Dever 2001: 91) or 'circle of dilletantes' (Rainey 1994: 47) are important rhetorical markers designed to discredit the ideas or scholars to whom they are attached.9 Marjorie Garber (2001: 120) notes that 'fad, fashionable, and trendy are about the most damning epithets that can be hurled at ideas these days. Each connotes breeziness, unseriousness, evanescance.' Or, as she puts it later, it is to be condemned by 'the trendiest of dismissive words, "trendy"' (Garber 2001: 97). Yet as she points out, the terms 'trend' and 'trendy', which are used so dismissively, derive ironically from 'trend analysis' in the social sciences. One of the amusing ironies is that Dever (2001: 17, inadequacy, either in oneself or in the evidence at hand; and refusing on principle to distort the evidence or another scholar's view' (91). 9. Dever (2001: 61) describes Finkelstein as 'an idiosyncratic and doctrinaire archaeologist' and Silberman as a 'popular journalist and writer' This is designed to undermine and dismiss their work, particularly when they are contrasted with 'mainstream archaeological and Biblical scholars' who, it is said, are needed to write an innovative and comprehensive history of ancient Israel. Yet, oddly, given that it is supposedly written by an idiosyncratic and doctrinaire archaeologist and a popular journalist, Dever concludes that the two main 'bold' claims of the book—the late date of the Bible's composition and its composition by a new monotheistic party with particular propagandistic aims—' are almost certainly right'. How can their work be dismissed as an ideological manifesto when he acknowledges that the central theses of the book are 'correct'? Even more puzzling, why is this view of the late composition of the Bible, which Dever shares with Finkelstein and Silberman, not characterized as the dismissal of the Bible as some pious fraud or propaganda?
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25) dismisses revisionists as 'trendy', while at the same time talking about searching for trends in archaeology (Dever 2001: 66) and praising the contribution of the social sciences in the study of Israelite history (Dever 2001: 50). Yet Garber (2001: 122) asks the pertinent question: 'How long does a "trend" (or "fad," or "fashion") have to be in place for it to transcend its suspect status?' If minimalism is set to last from two to ten years, according to the pronouncements of senior figures, when does it cease to be a fashionable trend or fad and become an accepted part of biblical studies or, more worryingly for some, the new orthodoxy? Similarly, frequent references to minimalists as 'a vocal minority', or claims that 'the minimalists dominate both in the noise that they make and in the quantity of their books. Volume after volume appears from their pens, all of it recycling the same views, all of it suspended "on nothingness," to quote Job 26.7' are part of the same rhetorical strategy.10 Yet the literary output of those scholars dismissed as a vocal minority, what Dever (2001: 28) terms 'the flood of recent revisionist publications', is minuscule when compared with the weight of material produced on the history of Israel with which they take issue.11 They are variously described as an 'increasingly modish—virulent?—strain of biblical scholarship' (Shanks 1997: 32), 'vociferous' and 'extremists' (Rodd 2001:253), or 'dangerous', 'ideologues' or 'dilletantes' (Rainey 1994: 47), a term, of course, meant to depict those who are not serious scholars but merely dabble in scholarship. Dever is fond of equating revisionists with 'deconstruction', a term which he appears to think is interchangeable with 'post-modern'.12 Both 10. The quotation is taken from Rendsburg's web article (see n. 2). 11. Elsewhere he refers to 'their voluminous output' (Dever 2001: 51). One simply has to look at the number of items cited in Dever's bibliography to see the irony of this statement. However, are scholars' views to be dismissed because they have prolific publication records? There are many fine scholars who have very prolific publication records, such as Jacob Neusner. Surely, it is not the volume or lack of volume which is critical but the quality of any individual piece of work or the corpus of a particular scholar. 12. Dever (2001: 25-26) claims that deconstruction is at the heart of the revisionist approach to texts but fails to demonstrate that Davies, Lemche, Thompson, or Whitelam ever employ deconstruction as a method of reading texts. To question the historicity of certain biblical traditions is not to employ deconstruction. After all, Dever questions the historicity of the patriarchal and exodus traditions. Such a misrepresentation is by no means unique in recent scholarship as Garber (2001: 123) notes: 'The most misused word, by far, is deconstruct, used all the time as a verb to "destroy" or "pull down" or "take to pieces," a misunderstanding that pairs it, all too recently, with the
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terms are used to conjure up frightening images of radical ideas and their proponents who threaten a Utopian world of stable boundaries and certainty.13 Furthermore, the use of the terms 'revisionist' or 'revisionism' carry an irony which seems to be lost on those who employ them as pejoratives to marginalize and discredit those with whom they disagree. To revise, after all, is to attempt to improve and correct, surely the aim of all historians and scholars. Other attempts at marginalization take a variety of forms. Halpern (1995: 47) can say that 'at the base of the extremism of contemporary "minimalism" lies a hysteria...' Recently, Michael D. Coogan in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, can say of the minimalist approach that 'such radical skepticism recalls the view, which no responsible scholar would now accept, that the absence of contemporaneous evidence for Jesus of Nazareth means that he did not exist'.14 Clearly, 'responsible' is a rhetorical marker to go alongside 'commonsense' and 'the traditional middle ground' (Provan 1995: 603; Dever 2001: 106, 108).15 It is even claimed frequent charge of nihilism (another misunderstood term). As we've seen, to deconstruct in literary and philosophical analysis is to analyze, not to destroy.' 13. Dever (2001: 291) seems to believe that the revisionists threaten western civilization, the Church, and the Synagogue. The reader is informed that these scholars are pursuing a revolutionary agenda which 'if it could be carried out, would in my opinion see not the advent of a secular Utopian "Brave New World" but rather anarchy, chaos, and ultimately those conditions of despair that have often historically led to Fascism' (291). Once again we see the rhetorical strategy which tries to link revisionism (or those associated with it) with Fascism and so, of course, anti-Semitism. What the reader is presented with is the comical picture of four biblical scholars beavering away through publications, mostly in specialist journals or with academic publishers, undermining the very foundations of Western civilization and bringing it toppling down. It can only be a short time before someone claims that they are part of Al-Qaida and and integral part of 'the axis of evil' denounced by President Bush. 14. Coogan 1998: x-xi. He adds (xi) that 'the contributors to this volume share that methodological conviction as well as commitment to the historical enterprise—the reconstruction of the past based on the critical assessment of all available evidence'. We are then told that 'each of the distinguished contributors to this book is a scholar of extraordinary breadth and depth'. The reader is left to draw the contrast with minimalists who by implication are not responsible scholars. 15. V. Philips Long (1990), in alluding to the recurrent charge that minimalists are a vocal minority, proclaims that, 'Publication rate is not always a good measure. The most vocal debaters are not necessarily the wisest' (xii). It is interesting to see how 'vocal' here has become a rhetorical marker for minimalist or revisionist. He then adds that, 'It seems to me, on the one hand, that some of the wisest perspectives on the
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that the sanity of certain individuals has to be called into question. Iain Provan (2000: 302) talks of their 'principled distrust' of the Hebrew Bible: 'We generally regard it, indeed, as a sign of emotional or mental imbalance if people ordinarily inhabit a culture of distrust in testimony at the level of principle, and most of us outside mental institutions do not in fact inhabit such a universe.' Significantly, as we have seen, there is no attempt to document or justify particular statements or beliefs attributed to so-called minimalists with a detailed analysis of the scholarly literature. The tenets of minimalist belief are repeated in scholarly and popular literature as though they are self-evident. This then provides the basis for attacks on academic competence or for personal vilification.16 Thus Rendsburg in decrying the decline from the Sinaitic heights of his luminaries can say: 'in short, the academy has created an intellectual environment which permits the untrained to operate on an equal par with the trained'.17 He goes on to inform his audience that the minimalists have no expertise in wider ancient Near Eastern studies or in archaeology and can safely be ignored. No less an authority than Jonas Greenfield encouraged him to ignore the minimalists since their rhetoric would pass away and sound scholarship, presumably of the sort represented by Rendsburg, for whom evidence and documentation are not necessary, would endure the test of time. Once again we are faced with the paradox that the revisionists or minimalists, who are not vexed question of Israel's history come from senior scholars whose net has been cast more broadly than just the area of historiography and who from this broader experience are able to provide sound counsel. On the other hand, there are a number of younger to midcareer scholars who have perhaps not gained the notoriety of their more senior (or, in some instances, more sensationalist) colleagues but whose solid contributions build a firmer foundation for future study and who deserve recognition' (xii-xiii). The latter point about the recognition and contribution of younger scholars is, of course, important. However, such contributions need to engage with the critical issues in the debate rather than try to ignore or marginalize these issues through a rhetoric of misrepresentation or rejection. 16. One of the worst statements can be found in the quotation attributed to Dever in The Chronicle of Higher Education (Shea 1997: A14). When talking of Thomas Thompson, he is reported as saying that he is 'a nasty little man who has lived a nasty little life'. As far as 1 am aware, Dever has not disowned this view or claimed that he has been misrepresented in the reporting. 17. From a personal point of view I am not sure who should feel more chastened, myself or those who taught me, including F.F. Bruce and A.A. Anderson, at the University of Manchester.
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scholars at all, are safe to ignore but dangerous enough to have to warn the unsuspecting public about.18 Similarly, Dever (2001:27,36) can claim that the revisionists make a 'pretense to authoritative credentials' while lacking 'the credentials that would entitle him to enter the debate1 on the problematic question of attaching ethnic labels to early Iron Age settlements in the highlands of Palestine. Finkelstein, who raises this question of ethnic labels and the material culture, is a particular problem because he is, of course, a professional archaelologist.19 One of the reasons that his work receives such vilification elsewhere is because he undermines the argument based on exclusive authority. Yet the claim to scholarly authority is not something which is unique to the world of biblical studies and archaeology.20 Furthermore, the charge that biblical scholars who question the historicity of some biblical traditions are left without a history is staggering in terms of its misunderstanding of the nature of historical investigation (Dever 1996: 5). The notion that biblical scholars or archaeologists inhabit discrete domains which provide them with exclusive ownership of sets of 'facts' is underpinned by a methodological imperialism to which very few would subscribe. It also confuses training in archaeology with the ability to write about history. How many sites did G.R. Elton, E.H. Carr, or Fernand Braudel excavate? Are they ruled out as being able to write history or appealing to archaeological or other forms of information in their reconstructions of the past because they were not professional archaeologists? Are biblical scholars and archaeologists debarred from discussing state formation if they do not possess a degree or doctorate in anthropology? Is it illegitimate to discuss ancient economies without having graduated from a Department of Economics? Is the question of ethnicity the exclusive domain of those who have trained in anthropology or sociology? The confusion and self-contradiction in Dever's complaint is all too evident when he later implores that 'there is no substitute for absolute competence 18. Dever is quoted by Shea (1997: A12) as saying 'they are not biblical scholars. They are certainly not archaeologists. The idea that they are theologians is laughable. They are ideological: They are social engineers manipulating the biblical text for their own goals.' 19. The question of ethnicity, the theoretical literature, or its application to the past is not, of course, an exclusively archaeological problem. This is particularly the case when biblical traditions are used to interpret the archaeological data. 20. For similar issues in the sciences, see the various essays in Galison and Stump (1996).
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in one's own discipline. Breadth of interests, open-mindedness, courage in crossing disciplinary lines, the willingness to test new models, and imagination and skill in synthesis are all necessary' (Dever 2001:90). Yet attempts to cross disciplinary boundaries, particularly in utilizing archaeological information by appealing to recognized authorities in the field who do not agree with Dever's own conclusions, are dismissed as bogus and a fraud.21 Garber (2001: 96), by contrast, claims that 'our task as scholars is to reimagine the boundaries of what we have come to believe are disciplines and to have the courage to rethink them'. It is the instability of traditional boundaries and the questioning of the 'assured results' of past scholarship which appears to be troubling to many. I feel deep sympathy for Rendsburg when he complains to his audience that '...it is a shame that serious scholars must take the time away from their own productive scholarship to respond to the baseless twaddle of the minimalist camp'. What twaddle is this? Twaddle such as claims that the line on the historicity of the patriarchal age can no longer be held (Halpern, 1995: 33) or that the historicity of the exodus is a dead issue (Dever 1997: 81; 2001:98-99)? The rhetoric of representation and the reality of scholarship, where so-called minimalist and maximalist views and approaches are often difficult to differentiate, are worlds apart. The idea that any one work represents an ideological manifesto of mimimalism simply does not stand up to examination. While there are many interconnections between the three books mentioned earlier, there are also very significant differences. Philip Davies's/« Search of Ancient Israel attempts to locate much of the biblical literature in the Persian period, while The Bible Unearthed sees the critical provenance as the reign of Josiah. In addition, The Invention of Ancient Israel provides a critique of the work of Davies, Thompson, Lemche, and Whitelam illustrating that the so-called movement is not nearly as homogenous as is often
21. Note the comment when discussing the processes which contributed to the settlement shifts in the Late Bronze—Early Iron Age transition: 'Progress in this field is now even more dependent upon the continued publication and judgements of archaeologists, so that historians can interpret the material in a comparative interdisciplinary context. Yet an important part of the investigation must include the exposure of the particularity of the data, the motives and interests which have informed the scholarly enterprise, both its design of research strategies and the subsequent presentation and interpretation of the data' (Whitelam 1996: 231). This is an entirely legitimate exercise which acknowledges the need to draw upon specialist expertise but also recognizes the need to retain critical distance.
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suggested. The common strategy of taking a sentence, idea, or argument from one work and attributing it to many other scholars without careful documentation is simply poor scholarship. What we have here is a dynamic development of tradition in the formation of a minimalist canon— at least it offers an insight into the ways in which the biblical traditions might have been formed! Ironically, some of the worst offenders—for example, Dever and Rendsburg—are the very people who attack the professional competence of so-called minimalist scholars. Equally, to take a statement by Dever, Shanks, or Kitchen and attribute it to Provan or Barr, without justification, would represent a failure to adhere to professional standards. Any close reading of the works of scholars under review illustrates that the rhetoric of representation (or misrepresentation) and the reality of scholarship diverge considerably.22 I have no desire to apply for our hypothetical post in biblical minimalism. More importantly, I would be excluded from any short-list by the appointing committee for failing to subscribe to the so-called fundamental tenets of minimalism. I cannot speak for others, but I do not believe that the post would or could attract any applications. The claim that revisionists do not believe that ancient Israel ever existed is made so frequently that it is taken as being self-evident and in no need of further documentation. Thus Dever (2001: 108) can claim that over the question of whether or not we can distinguish Israelite material culture, 'the revisionists uniformly say "no," so there is no "early Israel'".23 However, the second half 22. Thus, e.g., Ban (2000: 66-68,74-81) is in agreement with Provan on a range of views but is very dismissive of his stance on other matters. It would be wrong, therefore, to try to label either of these scholars as though they share the same views on all matters or claim that they share all the views expressed by Dever, Shanks, or Rendsburg. 23. Or later he says (Shanks 1997: 52)'... Whitelam claims that the bibilical minimalists have successfully "undermined the fundamental assumption within biblical studies that such traditions, despite a significant temporal separation from the events they describe, necessarily preserve some kind of historical kernel or historical memory which can be extracted from the narrative to provide raw data for the modern historian'". The quotation is taken from a section discussing the relationship between myth and history and begins, 'Recent approaches to the way in which tradition is invented or recycled have undermined the fundamental assumption...' It is in the context of a discussion of the work of Hobsbawm and Ranger, Raphael Samuel, and Tonkin and not so-called' biblical minimalists' as Shanks falsely represents it. Again his claim that my view is that ancient Israel has been invented for the purpose of suppressing Palestinian history is false: 'It is striking, yet understandable, that all the models have
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of this sentence is a non-sequitur. To claim that we cannot distinguish Israelite material culture from the indigenous material cultures of the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition in Palestine, a view that is widely held among archaeologists and historians, is not to claim that ancient Israel did not exist. Similarly, Shanks (1997: 52) typically employs the rhetoric of misrepresentation when he claims, again without specific page references, that Whitelam states that 'we should not be looking for ancient Israel. It never existed. Ancient Israel has only been "imagined", "invented" for the purpose of suppressing Palestinian history.' My supposed denial of the existence of ancient Israel ought to be relatively easy to check and document with specific page references, particularly for those who espouse rigourous professional standards or are steeped in the revisionist literature. Consider, for example, the following statement: This is not to deny the existence of ancient Israel in the region or that, presumably, it formed part of the transformation and realignment of Late Bronze-Early Iron Age society in ancient Palestine. Yet, it is possible to say very little more than this on the basis of current evidence. (Whitelam 2000: 390).
What I have questioned is our ability to know in any detail about the nature of Israel during the period of its emergence in Palestine as well as the the kind of picture that has been constructed and the reasons for this. It is in this sense that I use the term 'invention', in reference to a scholarly construct which has imposed the model of the nation-state on the past. This is not to deny the existence of ancient Israel in the region or that, presumably, it formed some part of the transformation and realigment of Late Bronze-Early Iron Age society in ancient Palestine. Rather, it is to acknowledge the limits of the evidence and accept that it is possible to say invented ancient Israel in terms of contemporary models. This is not to suggest that this has been self-conscious or deliberately misleading or that all the scholars mentioned explicitly support the dispossession of the Palestinians. It exposes, rather, the power of the discourse of biblical studies which has projected an aura of objective scholarship when it is quite clear that subjective and unconscious elements have played a key role in constructions of the imagined past of ancient Israel' (Whitelam 1996: 120). Kitchen (1998: 99) is also keen on claiming that the minimalists deny that ancient Israel ever existed: 'very naively, one wing of biblical studies draws the over-simplistic conclusion: "no mention of the Hebrews and their kingdoms in Palestine before c. 853 BCE— ergo, no Hebrews and their kingdoms ever existed in Palestine before c. 900 BCE'". But again there are no precise bibiographical references provided so that the reader can check if this charge is accurate.
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very little in detail on the basis of current evidence. It is for this reason that I argue for a regional history of Palestine, of which the history of Israel and Judah is a part (Whitelam 1996:235; Coote and Whitelam 1987:179) Nor do I subscribe to the view that the Bible is useless for historical research but do believe that it is an open question as to what useable information it provides for particular periods. Like many texts, it tells us more about perceptions of the past than the past itself. As Carroll (1997a: 88) notes, 'Everybody is in agreement that there are fragments and pieces of historical information (data) embedded in the Bible, but nobody seems to be able to agree on what such embeddedness signifies'. Yet this embedded historical information, even when it can be agreed upon, such as the list of Judaean and Israelite kings in chronological order, a 'touch of the real' to use Gallagher's and Greenblatt's phrase (2000: 20-48), provides little more than a skeletal framework—not to say a minimal or minimalist framework—which is inadequate for the historical task envisioned. Recent archaeological surveys have revealed aspects of demography and settlement shifts which are not at all apparent from the biblical text or contradict 'the plain sense' of the text's portrayal of a rapid outside invasion and destruction of major urban centres in the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition. The common mantra that 'we must use all the available evidence' is a truism that cannot be allowed to prejudice the critical analysis of evidence, including biblical and extra-biblical texts or archaeological data. Febvre (1973: 34) long ago argued that although history was fashioned on written evidence, it can and must be fashioned where such evidence is lacking: Then it can be made up out of anything that the historican's ingenuity may lead him to employ... Words, signs, landscapes, titles, the layout of fields... in a word, anything which belonging to man, serves him, expresses him and signifies his presence, activity, tastes and forms of existence.'24 Suitably qualified by inclusive language, Febvre's injunction is a call to 'use all the available evidence' which goes way beyond the parochial focus on the Hebrew Bible and its relationship to history which occupies the attention of many biblical specialists and archaeologists. Furthermore, to argue that a text tells us more about the perceptions of the authors than the past they purport to describe is not to claim that late texts are useless to the historian or that only eye-witness accounts, assuming we 24. Febvre's view is cited in Whitelam (1986: 55) as part of an examination of key methodological issues in the debate on Israelite history. Contra to Dever (2001: 75 n. 24) who claims that the revisionists do not consider methodological issues.
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had any, can be used to reconstruct Israel's early history. Braudel, in typically eloquent style, deals with this in the preface to his magisterial work on the Mediterranean: We must learn to distrust this history with its still burning passions, as it was felt, described, and lived by contemporaries whose lives were as short and short-sighted as ours. It has the dimensions of their anger, dreams, or illusions... The historian who takes a seat in Philip IPs chair and reads his papers finds himself transported into a strange one-dimensional world, a world of strong passions certainly, blind like any other living world, our own included, and unconscious of the deeper realities of history, of the running waters on which our frail barks are tossed like cockle-shells. (Braudel 1972: 21)
If this is a principled distrust of our sources, contemporary or late, as Provan claims, then at least when the men in white coats come to take me back to the asylum, I might be able to chat with Femand Braudel, one of my intellectual heroes and one of the giants of History. For Dever (2001: 102) to claim that revisionist datings of biblical texts to the Persian or Hellenistic periods renders the Hebrew Bible a '"pious fiction," in effect a literary hoax' or propaganda is completely disingenous given that he dates the Egyptian motifs in the Exodus traditions to the Persian period (1997: 82) or that he argues 'in short, the Deuteronomistic history as a composite literary work is largely "propoganda," designed to give theological legitimacy to a party of nationalist ultra-orthodox reformers, what has been called (along with the prophetic reform movements of the time) a "Yahweh alone" party'.25 One does not have to subscribe to a particular
25. Notice this statement in light of Dever's claim that Finkelstein and Silberman (2001: 60) is an ideological manifesto rather than judicious scholarship when their central argument is very similar to Dever's view stated here. He claims fallaciously that the revisionists declare that '"the Hebrew Bible is not about history at all," i.e., it is mere propaganda. For them, if some of the Bible's stories are unhistorical, they all are— a rather simplisitic notion' (Dever 2000: 97). The part quotation is from Thompson and Lemche. On this basis, it would be legitimate to examine their views on this matter, properly documented and represented. It is entirely illegitimate to ascribe this view to Davies or Whitelam, or anyone else, without showing that they hold such a view. It is also fallacious to argue that if someone argues that a narrative is not history, then the only possibility left open is that they believe that it is propaganda. Notice also that Thapar (1995: 81) notes how the history of India in the early first millennium BCE has slowly shifted from the centrality of the Vedic literary sources to that of greater inclusion of archaeological data. Is it suggested that historians of India must use the
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tradition or accept it as historically accurate in order to appreciate its power or importance as religious literature. It is a rhetoric of misrepresentation designed to discredit, but which bears little or no relation to what scholars actually say. The fact that I, and others, take seriously the literary character and complexity of the Hebrew Bible does not devalue its cultural or religious importance but draws attention to the Hebrew Bible as a literature of power which shapes the identity of millions in our contemporary world (see Whitelam 1991).26 The claim that revisionists reject the the Tel Dan stele as a forgery or deny the reading 'the house of David' is again repeated so frequently that it has become self-evident and in no need of documentation.27 Thus Dever (2001:166) can claim that 'the revisionists, as we have seen, deny the reading "the king of Israel," and especially the phrase "the house of David," even suggesting that the inscription is a forgery...' without providing any Mahabarata or other great religious epics as the basis for their work? Or is it being claimed that such epics, if not historical, are pious frauds? 26. See Barr (1980: 3) for an early treatment of the importance of story in understanding the Hebrew Bible. Note also his attack upon George Ernest Wright's God Who Acts which he dismisses as based on rhetorical language which is 'straight from the pulpit rhetoric' and which 'left concealed the whole strongly historicist and naturalistic attitude which a man like Wright as a historian and archaeologist looked upon actual historical events'. He then adds that the success and impact of the book depended on 'this rhetorical concealment of the logical issue'. Barr (1980: 10) also states that Albright and his followers 'seem to have had, on the whole, no feeling for a text as literature with its meaning in itself; they read it as a collection of pieces of evidence from which, on the model of archaeological study, historical stages might be reconstructed'. This is a criticism that can just as easily be applied to Dever's What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did the Know It? See Coggins (2001: 260), for a recent view that readers of the Hebrew Bible, whether religious believers or not, can benefit from recent developments in the rediscovery of the power of story. 27. Rendsburg is again guilty of this in his web article where he claims: 'Never at a loss for creative explanations, these nihilists—once their claims of forgery were shown to be totally without foundation—began to interpret the phrase in every possible way but the obvious. Suggestions included "house of the beloved," "house of the uncle," "house of the kettle," "house of a god named Dod," anything but "house of David." There could be no Judah, no reference to David, no biblical history that could be confirmed by any archaeological discovery.' The evidence he cites in n. 13 to support his claim is 'for the nihilist approach, see in particular the articles listed under the names P.R. Davies and N.P. Lemche'. Yet he has named the minimalists or nihilists as Thompson, Lemches, Davies and Whitelam, and by implication attributes these views to all of them in the statement above. So much for his claim to rigourous, responsible scholarship!
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specific references to published work. Notice that the term used, 'the revisionists', is plural and by implication includes all those named previously. The same technique is used earlier when he claims (2001: 134), 'What is one to make of such slander, similar to Thompson's implication that the Tel Dan inscription is a forgery? Is the revisionists' case so weak that they must resort to falsification of evidence and impugning the integrity of any scholars who differ with them?' The clear implication is that all those termed revisionists—Thompson, Lemche, Davies, Whitelam, and Finkelstein—ascribe to the view that the Tel Dan stele is a forgery and are guilty of falsifying evidence and impugning the integrity of other scholars. The same question might be asked of Dever who seems happy to impugn the integrity of those he labels as revisionists without producing any evidence that they hold the views he ascribes to them. Where is the evidence that I—or the other named scholars—hold the views that as a revisionist I am supposed to hold? Where is the integrity of scholarship when no specific page references are provided so that the reader can check that the claims are accurate? I have never suggested, in print or in private, that the Tel Dan stele is a forgery, a supposed tenet of minimalism. Nor have I ever impugned the integrity of the scholars involved in the discovery and its publication. What I have suggested is that the stele cannot bear the weight of interpretation placed upon it (Whitelam 2000: 395). The stele confirms the existence of a monarchy in the ninth or eighth centuries which understands its founder to be David. However, in my view, this cannot be used to confirm the historicity of the biblical David as presented in Samuel, nor the existence of a significant state in the tenth century which controlled much of the region. In this respect, it is very similar to the Merneptah stele which offers important but tantalizing information on the existence of Israel in the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age: it does not, however, confirm the biblical Israel of the books of Joshua and Judges. To argue such a case, is not to impugn the integrity of any scholars or claim that the inscription is a forgery. The most significant and serious profession of minimalist faith, according to its detractors, is however the last on our list. Rendsburg is again helpful here when he informs his audience:'.. .as you may have gathered, almost without exception, the scholars of this group are not Jewish'. He does qualify this by saying that he does not call them Christians either, since they are 'part of the general secular world'. His reason for mentioning religious affiliation, for which he professes some discomfort, is because
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their scholarship is driven by ideology and not objective scholarship. After another attack on Marxism, leftist politics, ex-evangelical Christians, and anti-authoritarianism, he says: 'Furthermore, and I do not hesitate to use the terms, these scholars are driven by anti-Zionism approaching antiSemitism'.28 The charge, or more precisely the intimation, of anti-Semitism, which amounts to the same thing, is a frequent one. Frank Cross is quoted in BARev as saying that 'something that is not talked about much: They're [the minimalists] kept alive by anti-Semitism. It bothers me' (Shanks 2001: 29). Similarly, Jerome Berman, the Executive Director of the Ancient Art Museum, is reported in the LA Times (11 May 2001) as likening them to Holocaust deniers who are discounting a century of archaeological evidence to try to erase Israel's past.29 In a letter to BARev by Frank Clancy (2001: 10) pointing out that he has read every Englishlanguage article and book by Lemche, Thompson, and Davies and has not seen any trace of anti-Semitism, the editor adds 'not all minimalists are guilty, but see, for example, Keith Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel...' No page references are given and the reader is left to infer that the whole book and its author are self-evidently anti-Semitic. Once again this is a charge that is repeated in public and private so that it becomes part of a common fund of knowledge. However, never is any attempt made to define anti-Semitism, and more importantly never is a particular quotation or page reference given to illustrate what it is that is 28. Rendsburg then offers a gross misrepresentation of a complex of views: 'By denuding Israel of any ethnic identity, and by denying the evidence of Israel in the land at an early time, and by reading the Bible as a Zionist plot by 6th century Jews in Babylonia, the picture is very clear'. The debate over ethnicity is whether or not it is possible to attach ethnic labels to archaeological remains, not that Israel has no ethnicity. No-one I know doubts the existence of an entity called 'Israel' in the Late BronzeEarly Iron Age transition. What they debate is the nature of this entity and how far it can be reconstructed on available evidence. Finally, I am not aware of any scholar who describes the Bible as a sixth-century Zionist plot. The debate is over the dating of particular traditions and what it is they reveal about the past or the authors' conception of the past. 29. A similar line is taken by Kithchen who misrepresents the arguments of The Invention of Ancient Israel by saying that I believe that there was no ancient Israel. He claims, 'it is not a crime to be interested in the Bible or early Hebrew history, or to write books on it—unless of course, reversion to the unthinkable horrors of Nazi-style fascism were in view!' The rhetorical strategy trying to equate so-called 'biblical minimalists' or 'revisionists' with anti-Semitism and Nazism is becoming increasingly frequent.
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anti-Semitic about any of the arguments. Typically, Dever (2001:37) can charge that 'finally, several of Whitelam's statements border dangeroulsly on anti-Semitism; they are certainly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel'. Yet once again, the reader is not provided with a single page reference to support any of these charges or to illustrate in what ways any of the statements in the book can be said to be anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish, or anti-Israel. He then adds that, 'In any case, other critics on the horizon will be less charitable. These critics will charge (and perhaps document) "anti-Semitism"...' (Dever 2001: 37). Why 'perhaps document'? Is it not incumbent on socalled critics to document such a defamation of character? Or is the integrity of scholarship and the demand for standards of evidence not an issue when such charges are made? It reaches the realm of the ludicrous when Shanks in a letter to Ha 'aretz includes Israel Finkelstein and Ze'ev Herzog among the biblical minimalists and then claims that most of them have 'a political agenda' and 'at the extreme, they can even be viewed as anti-Semitic'.30 This is simply the most extreme form of a rhetoric of misrepresentation which has been designed to marginalize and discredit. The juxtaposition of the terms 'anti-Zionist', 'anti-Israel', and 'antiJewish' is designed to suggest an overlap and intersection whereby the terms become interchangeable. These terms are self-explanatory and in no need, it seems, of documentation. What is also being implied by the use of these rhetorical markers is that the person so condemmed believes that Jews and the modern state of Israel have no right to exist. There are, of course, many Jews and others who are critical of Zionism and actions of the Israeli government on a variety of matters, including the treatment of the Palestinians. Neither of these positions is anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic, nor do they imply that the state of Israel has no right to exist. It is easy to find many scholars, journalists, and others who are critical of British goverment policy, domestic or foreign, but these are not labelled as 'anti-British', nor is it suggested that the right of Britain to exist is being questioned. The rhetorical strategy which is being used with increasing frequency in the debate over Israelite/Palestinian history is to link the terms 'anti-Zionist', 'anti-Israel' and 'anti-Jewish' with 'anti-Semitism' as a means of trying to silence a debate about the construction of the past and its implications for the 30. The letter by Shanks, in response to an earlier article by Herzog, in Ha 'aretz (29 October 1999) is refered to in an article at Salon.com by Laura Miller entitled 'King David was a Nebbish' .
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present. It is the ultimate ideological weapon—'the most loathsome of libels against any journalist', as Robert Fisk (2001: 5) termed it—so serious that it is designed to intimidate and silence. What it reveals, apart from the political nature of scholarship which it seeks to deny, its own worldly affiliations, is the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of those who fail to engage the arguments. The task of research, in the face of such intimidation, should not be an avoidance of difficult and principled positions, the fear of seeming too political, or of being afraid of controversy in order to preserve a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate, but to continue to address the critical questions openly concerning the reconstruction of the past and its implications for the present (see Said 1994: 74). Thus, on the basis of the evidence, I believe that an appointing committee would disqualify me from applying for the post in biblical minimalism on the grounds that I cannot demonstrate that I subscribe to the fundamental tenets of minimalism. Apart from the set of false credal statements that have become attached to it, there is a further reason why the term minimalism when applied to biblical studies is entirely inappropriate. Minimalism is a term which appeared in the mid-1960s to characterize and define a movement in postwar American art—'visual, musical, literary, or otherwise—that makes its statement with limited, if not the fewest possible, resources, an art that eschews the abundance of compositional detail...' (Strickland 1993: 7). Eric Strickland (1993:4), in his renowned Minimalism: Origins, defines this movement as 'a style distinguished by severity of means, clarity of form, and simplicity of structure and texture'. It is associated with the paintings of Frank Stella and Ad Reinhart, which reduced the medium to its components and displayed those components overtly, the stripped down sculpture of Robert Morris and Donald Judd, or the music of Young, Riley, Reich, and Glass, with its use of repetition, drones, and silence. The scholars frequently associated with biblical minimalism or revisionism do not constitute an organized, coherent movement but share a set of common sensibilities and approaches—sensibilities and approaches that are not confined to a small, vocal minority. James Barr (2000: 178) is one of the few commentators to recognize that there is not a simple bipolarity of scholarship, but, as he puts it, 'a sliding series of alignments'. Scholars frequently labelled as biblical minimalists are particularly interested in the complex textures of biblical narrative and the complex textures of history. By contrast, Dever (2001:267-74) talks about isolating a 'core
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history', or'nuggets' of historical information, while Whybray( 1996), for instance, believes that it is possible to separate out the theological bias of the narratives in Kings to reveal 'a residue of historical facts'. Such attempts to strip away layers of the text to reveal a historical core are, ironically, much more akin to the central impulse of the Minimalist movement in contemporary art, with its concern for the stripping down of art to bare technical application in the search of its essence, than so-called biblical minimalism. It is often said that the Hebrew Bible yields a lot of historical information, but it is not explained how a history, utilizing this information, would differ from the standard histories of ancient Israel which paraphrased the biblical traditions. It is interesting to note that James Barr at the end of his History and Ideology in Biblical Studies, after a sustained critique of revisionist historians, claims that his aim has been to inform readers about the state of the questions rather than to tell them the answers. It is revealing and ironic that he is unable to say anything positive in terms of a reconstruction of history: "Thus I would not like to be required to state my definite opinion about what the reigns of David and Solomon were like, historically, or about how the return of "the Jews" from "exile" was effected' (2000: 179). As White puts it, histories are never just about the events or facts of the past per se but also 'about the possible sets of relationships that those events [facts] can be demonstrated to figure' (see Jenkins 1995: 153). To move from a skeletal outline of agreed facts to historical narrative means imposing significance or meaning which is not part of the way in which they happened, 'such a narrative... is a construction, and underneath its honest and objective appearance, a whole series of implicit choices are operative' (Le Goff 1992: 117). What is at issue here is the kind of history that is possible or appropriate. The conception of history which has informed biblical studies for so long, and which is now reasserting itself forcibly in reaction to alternative proposals (Whybray 1996; Provan 1995), is one in which the particular and the general have been artificially separated. Such short-term histories tend to concentrate on small pieces of the mosaic, such as the Mannaseh or Hezekiah materials, rather than the grand movement of history. But as Braudel pointed out many years ago, such fragments of the mosaic are not understandable unless they can be related to the whole. The set of sensibilities and approaches associated with those labelled as minimalists or revisionists represents a reaction to the stranglehold that a particular form of history has held on biblical studies. It is not some passing fad which will wither away because it has no roots in the disci-
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pline, but one which continues long trends within biblical studies expressed in von Rad's (1975: 108) famous dictum that 'historical investigation searches for a critically assured minimum—the kerygmatic picture tends toward a theological maximum', or as manifested in the debate on the socalled starting point of Israelite history, which has gradually transformed into a debate on the type of history that is possible or appropriate. Consider the view of Peter Ackroyd, who can hardly be dismissed as a minimalist ideologue, writing about the Succession Narrative 20 years ago: If he [the reader] attempts to go further and suppose that he is reading history, he will find that the text does not provide this, for this is not its function. Within the passage we have been considering there are so many uncertainties—uncertainties of chronology, uncertainties about the nature of the narratives, uncertainties about their proper order—that any attempt at mere historical reconstruction is out.
What we have been witnessing in biblical studies is only one aspect of the general challenge to objectivist forms of history, which triumphed particularly in the 1940s and 50s, which were fact-based with the emphasis on establishing facts as the anchors for chronological-political histories in which the event and unique individual were dominant. It is also part of other trends within the discipline concerned with reading the Hebrew Bible, whether literary studies or more recently attempts to take seriously reading the Hebrew Bible from local non-western perspectives (Sugirtharajah 1991, 1998; Segovia 2000). Conclusion Predictions of passing fads have proven to be false prophecies as 20 years or more have elapsed since such pronouncements were first heard, while the fads continue and multiply. Pronouncements of the death of minimalism are not only premature but completely misguided. Minimalism does not exist in the form in which it is all too often represented, while the central issues which concern scholars who are dismissed by this label are part of long-term trends in the discipline. The current situation does not represent some unique episode in the history of biblical studies which according to Pro van (1997:300) has led to the loss of'a broad community of people seeking, ev$n in the midst of their matrix of commitments and 31. For an appreciation of the work of Peter Ackroyd and his relevance for contemporary discussions on a number of areas, see, fittingly, Carroll (1997b).
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beliefs, to be accountable to reason, evidence and truth, and to be in dialogue about such matters with each other'. The latter quarter of the nineteenth century is generally recognized as probably the most turbulent in the history of biblical studies; what Riesen (1985: xix; cited in Saeb0 1995: 241) called 'the period of the fiercest fighting'. It was a critical juncture in the history of biblical studies, characterized by personal attack and a form of scholarship which for many contemporaries threatened the life of the Church and Western civilization. Robertson Smith was not only ridiculed for his physical appearance and dismissed as prejudiced in matters outside his field of competence, but was charged with heresy for his article on 'Hebrew Language and Literature' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and dismissed from his Chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis at the Free Church College of Aberdeen in 1881 because it was no longer 'safe or advantageous' to employ him (Johnstone 1995: 20). Similarly, of course, Wellhausen was forced to resign from his state appointment for pursuing his scholarship.32 This hardly suggests a world of polite, detached scholarship which has been undermined in recent years by 'a vocal minority'. Furthermore, the so-called revisionist stance towards Israelite history needs to be understood in the context of the dissolution of centralized structures, particularly in the break-up of the Soviet Union with the apparent explosion of separatism, the rise of new and exclusive forms of nationalism in some parts of Europe, the debate on multiculturalism, and the reconfiguration of power structures within the EEC, the rest of Europe, and the USA. The power structures of the postwar 32. Such events and rhetoric or the correspondence and papers of Principal Rainey and those trying to convict Robertson Smith hardly suggests a Utopian world of polite, detached scholarship. Rogerson (1995) describes the personal animosity and belligerent debates which accompanied the development of biblical studies in Victorian Britain. A perspective on the history of the discipline suggests that the current situation in which boundaries are no longer stable is not a unique episode in the history of the discipline. It also sounds a warning to those who would dismiss current developments as passing fads, such as Barr (2000: 180) who claims that 'too much of the recent discussion has involved a fevered grasping at innovation and a willingness to make a quick abandonment of what earlier scholarship had achieved'. Thus, he argues, current trends should be rejected and 'tradition and continuity should be prized or preserved as far as possible' . However, it could be argued that the present trends, of which he disapproves, have their roots in the critical juncture of the late-nineteenth century and the work of Wellhausen and Robertson Smith, among others. It is the triumph of objectivism in American scholarship under the influence of Albright and his followers in the 1940s and 1950s that is out of step with the traditions and threads of biblical scholarship.
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era have fragmented and been reconfigured leading to radically altered perspectives on the Israelite past, including changed perspectives on notions of ethnicity and identity. What is now being advocated by some is an inclusivist and integrated history of Palestine, of which the Iron Age is one part of the rhythms and patterns of Palestinian history, in contrast to an exclusivist reading of history that hides behind the unsubstantiated slur of anti-Semitism. Biblical minimalism will not die because it does not exist as a coherent, self-conscious, closely articulated movement. It is absurd to suggest that it represents a revolutionary movement threatening Western civilization. It certainly does not exist in the form in which it is often represented by those who wish to marginalize and discredit particular scholars or their ideas.33 However, the set of sensibilities and approaches represented by those labelled biblical minimalists or revisionists are likely to continue and to evolve since they are connected to interests and approaches throughout the discipline as well as to wider intellectual movements in the contemporary world.34 Although the term 'biblical minimalism' is entirely inappropriate and ought to be abandoned, along with 'biblical maximalism', we might heed the opening words of Eric Strickland's outstanding study Minimalism: Origins on the Minimalist movement in the art, sculpture, architecture, film, literature, and popular culture. There he warns that 'the death of Minimalism is announced periodically, which may be the surest testimonial of its staying power' (Strickland 1993: 1).
33. Ronald Hendel (2001), although disagreeing with conclusions of the minimalists' says that they are 'absolutely correct to use doubt as a tool against entrenched positions in biblical studies'. He adds that '...the minimalists are not destructive, nihilistic or even postmodern, as their critics sometime allege'. 34. Greenblatt's view (1990: 183 n. 7) offers an instructive comment on current debates within biblical studies on the nature of subjectivity, objectivity, and the presence or absence of ideology in scholarly views: 'An older historicism that proclaimed self-consciously that it had avoided all value judgements in its accounts of the past—that it had given historical reality wie es eigentlich gewesen—did not thereby avoid all value judgements; it simply provided a misleading account of what it had actually done, hi this sense the new historicism, for all its acknowledgement of engagement and partiality, may be slightly less likely than the older historicism to impose its values belligerently on the past, for those values seem historically contingent.'
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackroyd, P. 1981 'The Succession Narrative (so-called)', Inl 35: 383-96. Ahituv, S., and E.D. Oren 1998 The Origin of Early Israel: Current Debate; Biblical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion/University of the Negev Press). Barr, J. 1980 'Story and History in Biblical Theology', in Explorations in Theology 1 (London: SCM): 1-17. 2000 History and Ideology in the Old Testament: Biblical Studies at the End of a Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Braudel, F. 1972 The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (2 vols.; London: Collins). Carroll, R.P. 1997a 'Madonna of Silences: Clio and the Bible', in L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Can a 'History of Israel' Be Written ? (JSOTSup, 245; ESHM, 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 84-103. 1997b 'Razed Temple and Shattered Vessels: Continuities and Discontinuities in the Discourses of Exile in the Hebrew Bible. An Appreciation of the Work of Peter Ackroyd on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday', JSOT 75: 93-106. Clancy, F. 2001 'Minimalists were smeared', BARev 21 A: 10. Coggins, R.J. 2001 'Disputed Questions in Biblical Studies 1. History and Story in the Old Testament', ExpTim 112: 257-60. Coogan, M.D. (ed.) 1998 The Oxford History of the Biblical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Coote, R.B. and K.W. Whitelam 1987 The Emergence of Early Israel in Historical Perspective (Social World of Biblical Antiquity, 5; Sheffield: Almond Press). Davies, P.R. 1992 In Search of 'Ancient Israel' (JSOTSup, 174; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Dever, W.G. 1996 'The Identity of Early Israel: A Rejoinder to Keith W. Whitelam', JSOT12: 3-24. 1997 'Is there any Archaeological Evidence for the Exodus?', in E.S. Frerichs and L.H. Lesko (eds.), Exodus, the Egyptian Evidence (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns): 67-86. 1998 'Archaeology, Ideology, and the Quest for an "Ancient" or "Biblical" Israel', Near Eastern Archaeology 61: 39-52.
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What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).
Febvre, L. 1973 A New Kind of History and Other Essays (New York: Harper Torch Books). Finkelstein, L, and N. Silberman 2001 The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press). Fisk, R. 2001 ' When Journalists Refuse to Tell the Truth about Israel', Independent Tuesday Review 17: 5. Galison, P., and DJ. Stump 1996 The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Gallagher, C., and S. Greenblatt 2000 Practicing New Historicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Garber, M. 2001 Academic Instincts (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Greenblatt, S. 1990 Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (London: Routledge). Hallo, W.W. 1990 'The Limits of Skepticism', JAOS 110: 187-99. Halpern, B. 1995 'Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel', BR (December): 27-47. Hendel, R. 2001 'Of Doubt, Gadflies and Minimalists', BR (June): 8. Irving, M. 2001 'Nothing to It', The Guardian Weekend (16 June): 77-79. Jenkins, K. 1995 On 'What is History?': From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London: Routledge). Johnstone, W. 1995 'Introduction', in Johnstone (ed.), 1995: 15-22. Johnstone, W. (ed.) 1995 William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment (JSOTSup, 201; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Kitchen, K. 1998 'Egyptians and Hebrews, from Ra'amses to Jericho', in S. Ahituv and E.D. Oren (eds.), The Origin of Early Israel: Current Debate; Biblical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press): 65-131. Le Goff, J. 1992 History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press). Long, V.P. (ed.) 1999 Israel's Past in Present Research: Essays on A ncient Israelite Historiography (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns). Provan, I. 1995 'Ideologies, Literary and Critical: Reflections on Recent Writing on the
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Rainey, A. 1994 Rendsburg, G. nd
Riesen, R.A. 1985 Rodd, C. 2001 Saeb0, M. 1995
Said, E.W. 1994 Segovia, F.F. 2000 Shanks, H. 1987 1996 1997 2001 Shea, C. 1997
History of Israel', JBL 114: 585-606. 'The End of Israel's History? K.W. Whitelam's The Invention of Ancient Israel. A Review Article', JSS 42: 283-300. 'In the Stable of the Dwarves: Testimony, Interpretation, Faith, and the History of Israel', in A. Lemaire and M. Saeb0 (eds.), IOSOT Congress Volume Oslo 1998 (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 281-319. 'The "House of David" and the House of the Deconstructionists', BARev 20: 47. 'Down With History, Up with Reading: The Current State of Biblical Studies ', . Criticism and Faith in Late Victorian Scotland (Lanham, MD: University Press of America). 'Talking Points from Books', ExpTim 112: 253-56. 'Some Problems of Writing a Research History of Old Testament Studies in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century—with Special Regard to the Life and Wirk of William Robertson Smith', in Johnstone (ed.), 1995: 242-51. Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (London: Vintage Books). Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books). 'Dever's "Sermon on the Mound"', BARev (March/April): 54-57. 'Postscript: Keith Whitelam Claims Bible Scholars Suppress Palestinian History in Favor of Israelites', BARev (March/April): 54-56, 69. 'The Biblical Minimalists: Expunging Ancient Israel's Past', BR (June): 32-39, 50-52 'The Age of BAR', BARev (March/April): 21-31, 35. 'Debunking Ancient Israel: Erasing History or Facing the Truth?', The Chronicle of Higher Education (21 November): A12-A14.
Strickland, E. 1993 Minimalism: Origins (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Sugirtharajah, R.S. (ed.) 1991 Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (London: SPCK). 1998 The Postcolonial Bible (The Bible and Postcolonialism, 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Thapar, R. (ed.) 1995 Recent Perspectives of Early Indian History (Bombay: Popular Prakashan).
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von Rad, G. 1975 Old Testament Theology, I (London: SCM Press, 2 vols.). Whitelam, K.W. 1986 'Recreating the History of Israel', JSOT35: 45-70. 1991 'Between History and Literature: The Social Production of Israel's Traditions of Origin', SJOT2: 60-74. 1996 The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge). 2000 'The History of Israel: Foundations of Israel', in A.D.H. Mayes (ed.), Text in Context: Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 376-402. Whybray, R.N. 1996 'What Do We Know about Ancient Israel', ExpTim 101: 71-74.
JEWS, HEBRAISTS AND 'OLD TESTAMENT' STUDIES Stefan C. Reif
Introduction Robert Carroll and I first became friends when we were teaching in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at the University of Glasgow over 30 years ago. It was no accident that our lectureships were held there and not in the Department of Old Testament since neither of us could by any stretch of the imagination be seen as scholars standing within the tradition of nineteenth-century biblical criticism and under the spell of its theological agendum. Indeed, the distinction still at that time drawn between the respective functions of such departments in the Scottish universities made due allowance for the difference between a linguistic and historical approach and one that was more closely linked with the study and practice of religion. We had both, in different ways, enjoyed the benefit of Jewish teachers and a Celtic educational environment and were consequently never in any danger of belonging to the academic establishment in the area of biblical studies. Over the years we enjoyed meeting and chatting about what we regarded as the misguided nature of some current scholarship, and took the opportunity of exchanging complaints about some of the more egregious errors of which we considered it guilty. It therefore gave me great pleasure when he invited me to lecture at the winter conference of the Society for Old Testament Study in January 1999 during the year of his presidency and came as no surprise when he suggested that I opt for a topic that stressed the kind of Jewish approach that was not commonly characteristic of that Society's deliberations. In view of what he wrote to me afterwards, he was evidently pleased with the paper I gave and the discussion that it engendered.11 am greatly saddened 1. I lectured in that department from 1968 until 1972, while Robert remained at the University of Glasgow for the remainder of his career, witnessing the incorporation of his subject into a newly created Department of Theology and Religious Studies. He
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that so soon after its delivery, and his presidency, we should have been invited to contribute to a volume in his memory but at the same time consoled by the fact that he would have been pleased to see the publication of that paper, in slightly modified form, in the context of a tribute to him and his work. Three questions appear to me to be worthy of particular attention in my treatment of the topic that appears in the title of this essay: 1. Is there a background in Jewish literary culture that matches part of the modern study of the Hebrew Bible at least in some interesting and valuable, if critically limited, ways? To answer this question, I shall have to draw attention to some lesser known or inadequately stressed developments in the history of Jewish biblical exegesis. 2. What are the underlying attitudes to Jews, Judaism and Jewish literature on the part of Christian hebraists over the last few centuries? To answer this question, I shall have to cite both primary sources and secondary treatments, particularly relating to the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. 3. Can it be justifiably argued that within current Old Testament studies there still exist approaches to the subject that leave Jews feeling uneasy about participation? To answer this question, I shall refer to recent developments in the USA and Israel and compare these with the British situation. Jewish Biblical Exegesis What I propose to offer here, given the limited context, is not of course intended to be anything like a historical survey but amounts to no more than a simple attempt to draw attention to some elements and characteristics of Jewish biblical exegesis, beginning with that of the early rabbis, that may not be widely familiar in the world of Old Testament scholarship. As far as early rabbinic midrash is concerned, the first point to be made is that the description that is often proposed for this type of Jewish literature is nothing less than a crass distortion of the facts that chooses to regretted that those who studied there did not have the linguistic competence once required for students of the Bible. In his letter of thanks to me for my lecture (11 January 1999), he expressed the view that my paper had fully met his expectations, not only with regard to its academic content but also by engaging critically with 'our discipline as experienced by Jewish scholars'.
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ignore at least half the reality by concentrating on the fanciful and farfetched. The fact is that Wilhelm Bacher, in a classic study written 100 years ago, and many literary historians since then, including Rimon Kasher in a particularly helpful article published in 1988, have demonstrated clearly and convincingly that a central element of midrash undoubtedly constitutes what would today be regarded as solid, down-to-earth exegesis.2 Such an element concerns itself with literary context, linguistic sense, and historical background. The technical terms used to refer to literal exegesis are UTlDEn/irDtDDa, D3fDD D'-QT, '«T1 and BDQ and the variations of method may be illustrated by reference to the following examples: 1. The comments of the Sifre on Deut. 22.17 include a literal interpretation by R. Eliezer b. Jacob of the phrase 'spreading out the cloth' that presupposes just such a physical act rather than the use here of a judicial metaphor.3 2. The comments of the Sifre on Deut. 11.14 include the rejection by R. Ishmael of a purist literalism that would interpret the phrase 'depart out of your mouth' in Josh. 1.8 as a physical act (§42, p. 90). 3. The comments of the Mekhilta on Exod. 15.25 include a variety of alternative meanings and etymologies for the Hebrew word
ino].4
4.
The comments of the Sifre on Num. 6.3 demonstrate an awareness of synonyms and other linguistic devices in the interpretation of the phrase "Q271 ]", meaning 'wine and strong drink'.5
2. W. Bacher, Die exegetische Terminologie derjudischen Traditionsliteratur (2 vols., Leipzig: n.p., 1899-1905; reprinted Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965); R. Kasher, 'The Interpretation of Scripture in Rabbinic Literature', in Martin Jan Mulder (ed.), Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 553-60. 3. L. Finkelstein (ed.), Siphre adDeuteronomium (Berlin, 1939; reprinted New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1969), §238,270. Subsequent references to Sifre are from this edition. 4. J.Z. Lauterbach (ed.), Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933; reprinted 1961,1976), II, 94. Subsequent references to Mekhilta are from this edition. 5. H.S. Horowitz (ed.), Siphre d'Be Rab (Leipzig, 1917; reprinted Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1966), §23, 27.
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The comments of the Sifre on Num. 5.29, 6.13,29.39-30.1 and 31.17 include a recognition by R. Jonathan of the existence of stylistic devices such as concluding formulae, expressed by such Hebrew phrases as min PKT, and an awareness on the part of R. Ishmael that certain sections form a natural break in a narrative (§20 and §38, Horovitz, 24,41; §152 and §157, Horovitz, 197, 212). The talmudic comments of the third-century rabbis, Rav and Samuel, on 2 Kgs 4.10 testify to a deep awareness of the variety of interpretations that might be offered for the phrase ~Pp rP^I? (b. Ber. lOb). The talmudic comments of an unnamed rabbi, in discussion with the Palestinian teacher Samuel ben Nahman between the third and fourth century, question the historical authenticity of the biblical character Job, claiming that he was, like the characters in the story told by Nathan to David in 2 Sam. 12.1-6, no more than an allegorical figure (b. B. Bat. 15a). Some toseftan comments demonstrate a sensitivity to instances where statements, though they appear together, are actually being made by different speakers, as in Jer. 26.18-23, Nah. 1.1-4 and Ps. 58.1-4, stating'mTU IT HEHS ^D PIT TQ« $b HT "lORO HO D"~Q1 (t. Sot. 9.5-1). The comments in Mekhilta on Exod. 16.20 attempt to solve the chronological problems that arise from the order in which the events appear in the text by the use of a talmudic idea that stresses that each piece of the Torah relates to a different time and was originally transmitted independently (Lauterbach, II, 2, 116). The Mekhilta on Exod. 15.9 and Qohelet Rabbah cite long lists of verses that raise chronological difficulties and include Exod. 15.1, Lev. 9.1, Isa. 6.1, Ezek. 2.1 and 17.2, Jer. 2.2, Hos.10.1, Eccl. 1.12, as noted in the former, and Deut. 29.9, Josh. 3.7, Ps. 73.22 and Judg. 5.3, as noted in the latter.6
The relationship between such comments and their equivalents in modern critical studies was neatly summarized by Israel Frankel some 55 years ago: .. .the agreement of certain modern scholars with some of the Rabbinic observations may be due to their dependence on the Rabbinic material, 6.
Lauterbach (ed.), Mekilta, II, 54; Qoh. tf. 1.12 (ed. Vilna [Rom, 1878], 9).
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In the matter of the Jewish exegesis of the early medieval period (that is to say, the geonic period, in Jewish terms), one should not be surprised by the range of what might justifiably be called a kind of critical approach. The precise provenance of the ninth-century Bible critic, Hiwi al-Balkhi, is yet to be established but his scepticism about the Hebrew Bible's authenticity and reliability is unquestionably clear. God's characteristics seem totally unimpressive, the Bible's religious ideas are irrational and not truly monotheistic, and there is much inconsistency in the commandments and the narratives.8 This was evidently part of a wider tendency in the Islamic, Christian and Jewish world of that period (perhaps representing the views of the biblical nihilists of the day!) to call into question the religious ideas and literature of the three major religions, one that is remarkably 'liberal' and 'modern' and that clearly disturbed the spiritual mentors of the various faiths. Theodore Pulcini has recently demonstrated how Ibn Hazm, a Muslim thinker of eleventh-century Spain, adduced biblical texts to argue that the Torah was deficient in morality, theology, logic and science, that the Christian Gospels were also guilty of polytheism and blasphemy, and, incidentally, that the Jews and Christians were inferior in intellect and religion.9 On the basis of manuscript fragments from the Cairo Genizah, the rabbinic response to these attacks, as composed by Sa'adya Gaon (882-942) in Babylon, and by others, has been reconstructed and demonstrates just how seriously the challenge was taken. In this connectvion, Robert Brody's recent translation of Sa'adya's introduction to the Torah gives the flavour of the response in the tenth century:
7. I. Frankel, Peshat (Plain Exegesis) in Talmudic and Midrashic Literature (Toronto: La Salle Press, 1956), Appendix, 169. 8. Judah Rosenthal, Hiwi al-Balkhi (Philadelphia: Dropsie College, 1949). 9. T. Pulcini, Exegesis as Polemical Discourse: Ibn Hazm on Jewish and Christian Scriptures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); C. Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Biblefrom Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996); H. Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
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The exegete must consider all words which are in accordance with the prior dictates of reason and the later dictates of tradition as unambiguous words, and all those words which are in conflict with one of these two as ambiguous words. To explain further: A reasonable person must always understand the Torah according to the outward meaning of its words, i.e. that which is well known and widespread among the speakers of the language—since the purpose of composing any book is to convey its meaning perfectly to the reader's heart—except for those places in which sense perception or intellectual perception contradicts the well-known understanding of an expression, or where the well-known understanding of an expression contradicts another, unequivocal verse or a tradition...
Brody goes on to cite one of Sa'adya's illustrations in favour of this view. The description of Eve in Gen. 3.20 as 'the mother of all living things' cannot be interpreted literally, for to do so would be to contradict the evidence of ours senses, which informs us that lions, oxen, and other animals are not born of human mothers. The phrase in therefore to be understood as 'speaking living things'.10 The Karaite Jews, who rejected the talmudic traditions in favour of a faith and practice more directly based on the Hebrew Bible, made a major contribution to the development of textual, philological and exegetical studies of Scripture, especially between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Compared to the rabbinic views of such figures as Sa'adya, their response was even more concerned with rational, literary and linguistic acceptability and went to the extent of stressing as central the freedom of the individual to interpret the Hebrew Bible on the basis of his own scholarship and intellectual judgment. It is remarkable just how similar their outlook was in this respect to that of the later Protestants. For the Karaites, as Meira Polliack has recently made clear, no one translation was preferred over any other, various options were presented, and biblical scholarship was thus encouraged. She, indeed, raises the possibility that such an approach may already have been pioneered in Byzantine Palestine.11
10. R. Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 305. 11. M. Polliack, The Karaite Tradition of Arabic Bible Translation: A Linguistic and Exegetical Study of Karaite Translations of the Pentateuch from thg Tenth and Eleventh Centuries C.E. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997), xiv, xvii and 289; idem, 'Medieval Karaite Methods of Translating Biblical Narrative into Arabic', PT48 (1998), 375-98.
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In the case of the classical Jewish Bible commentators of the later Middle Ages, there is perhaps less need to stress their potential contribution to current scholarship since this has in recent years been better recognized than previously, especially in such major centres of Jewish studies as the USA and Israel. As far as the medieval period is in general concerned, more enlightened scholars are coming to the realization that certainly for the Jews and Muslims, and maybe also for many Christians, those centuries did not constitute a dark age of narrow learning and limited culture but an impressive period of broad scholarship and multi-faceted civilization. Although much of the philosophy and methodology underlying the works of the Middle Ages does not tally with current academic approaches, linguistic and literary analysis has now broadened to such a degree that it can happily incorporate major aspects of the medieval heritage.12 The acceptance of multiple interpretations is giving midrashic views a new relevance; the search for fresh information and insights is leading to a re-evaluation of the literary and aesthetic sensitivities of pre-modern commentators; and the recognition that early Hebrew language traditions were preserved in the Middle Ages is inspiring a healthier respect for the earliest Hebrew grammarians. Chaim Cohen has expressed it well when describing the meanings of expressions in Gen. 4.10 (Tip, 'hark', according to Ibn Ezra), 4.13 (flU, 'punishment', according to Ibn Ezra), 11.28 033 7JJ,'during the lifetime of, according to Rashi), 18.10,14(rrn H£O, '[at this time] next year', according to many exegetes): .. .the internal biblical evidence relied on by the medievals is substantially the same as that which is cited by modern biblical scholars; while in other cases, where the medieval interpretation is in need of further evidence, modern biblical philology itself may be used to provide the missing evidence (especially from ancient Near Eastern sources which were of course unavailable to the medievals).13
Numerous examples may be cited from these commentators but space limitations here permit only five brief examples:
12 . For further discussion and the relevant documentation, see S.C. Reif, Why Medieval Hebrew Studies? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); idem, 'Aspects of the Jewish Contribution to Biblical Interpretation', in J. Barton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 143-59. 13. C. Cohen, 'Jewish Medieval Commentary on the Book of Genesis and Modern Biblical Philology. Part I: Gen. 1-18', JQR 81 (1990), 1-11.
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In Yadin's study of the Temple Scroll, he notes that this work prescribes, contrary to rabbinic interpretation, that the celebration of the days of ordination is to begin on the first day of the month equivalent to the rabbinic Nissan, so that the ritual of the eighth day can take place on the eighth of that month, as it did in the wilderness of Sinai according to the plain meaning of the pentateuchal text in Lev. 9.1.14 He adds that in the second century the celebrated Rabbi Akiva also held that the eighth day of the ordination fell on the eighth and not the first day of Nissan, as did Abraham Ibn Ezra, in the twelfth century.15 Apart from his famous comments about the authorship of the final verses of the Pentateuch and of chs. 40-66 of the book of Isaiah, Ibn Ezra also critically compares the two accounts of the Ten Commandments in Exodus and Deuteronomy. He argues that only one can be authentic and the other must therefore be a later paraphrase.16 On Gen. 1.5, Rashbam (Rashi's grandson, Samuel ben Meir) argues that since the return of the light signals the beginning of a day, the literal definition of a day is from morning to evening and not, as rabbinic religious law has it, from evening one day until night the next.17 According to a contemporary of Rashbam, Joseph b. Isaac of Orleans (known as 'Bekhor Shor', after Deut. 33.17), who was another follower of thepeshat or literal method in France, Gen. 19.26 does not mean that Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt
14. Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll: The Hidden Law of the Dead Sea Sect (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1985), 80. 15. Sifra on Lev. 9.1 (ed. J.H. Weiss [Vienna, 1862], 43b); y. Yoma 1.1 (38a); b. Sukkah 25b; Ibn Ezra on Lev. 9.1 (ed. A. Weiser [Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Quq, 1977], III, 25). See also B. Epstein, Torah Temimah (Vilna, 1904 [reprinted Tel Aviv: Mosad ha-Rav Quq, 1967], III, 76), and M. Kasher, Torah Shelemah (Biblical Encyclopedia Society) on Lev. 9.1 (Jerusalem, 1975), 145-46. 16. Ibn Ezra on Deut. 34.1 (Weiser, III, 228); on Isa. 40.1 (ed. M. Friedlander [N. Triibner for the Society of Hebrew Literature]), The Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah (London, 1877), in, 64, and (London, 1873), 1,169-71; and on Exod. 20.1 (ed. Weiser), II, 125-30. 17. D. Rosin (ed.), Commentarium quern in Pentateuchum composuit R. Samuel ben Meir (Breslau: S. Schottlaender, 1881 [reprinted New York, 1949]), 5; see E.L. Greenstein, 'Medieval Bible Commentaries', in B.W. Holtz (ed.), Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 244.
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but that, in Ed Greenstein's translation, 'she was simply coated with lime and sulphur and appeared to have turned into a pillar of salt'.18 Concerning the hoary problem of the insertion of Genesis 38 into the Joseph narrative, Shalom Goldman has noted that the fifteenth-century Jewish savant, Don Isaac Abrabanel, anticipated modern criticism. He recognized that competing claims to kingship were at issue in the latter part of Genesis and explained the 'intrusion' of the Judah story into the Joseph narrative as a reminder that the 'house of Joseph', because of its descent from 'Asenath the Egyptian', did not remain the tribe of royalty. The kings of the tribe of Judah, descended from Tamar (whom the rabbis described as a 'daughter of Shem') and Judah, were the rulers destined to be 'God's holy kings for all time'.19 Christian Hebraists
The two great periods of Christian Hebraism in Europe and North America are undoubtedly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the one hand and the nineteenth on the other. Although the underlying religious and intellectual philosophies of the two eras have much in common as far as the Hebrew Bible and Judaism are concerned, they require to be examined independently since there are some important differences of emphasis. First, then, some remarks will be in order about the years following the Reformation. As is well known, it was the Protestant Reformation that placed the Bible, divorced from ecclesiastical traditions, at the centre of its theology and challenged the individual believers to strengthen their understanding of the faith and their commitment to it by creating a personal as well as an institutional relationship with the words of God.20 The only way to be sure of developing a sound understanding of the 18. Joseph ben Isaac Bekhor Shor (ed. Yehoshafat Nevo; Jerusalem, 1994), 34, and see Greenstein, 'Medieval Bible Commentaries', 247. 19. S. Goldman, The Wiles of Women: The Wiles of Men: Joseph and Potiphar's Wife in Ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic Folklore (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 98-99. 20. For general background, see S.D. Greenslade (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).
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Bible's religious message and to strengthen one's ability to meet challenges from within and outside Christianity was to study the two scriptural testaments at first hand (sola scripturd). With those aims underlying the religio-educational approaches, a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek became widely regarded as a prerequisite, and every encouragement was given to the development of related theological studies at the universities. As a result, the study of Scripture came to be championed in the Protestant tradition more than in any other contemporary Christian or Jewish denomination.21 Jewish exegetical traditions and linguistic prowess could be employed in the interpretation of the Old Testament but the overall approach had to remain a predominantly Pauline-Lutheran one. Those parts of the Old Testament that stressed faith, morals, spirituality and universal values (at least in Christian eyes) were of continuous significance, while details of laws, rituals and particularly Israelite concerns could be subsumed under 'works' rather than 'faith'. They therefore had a limited importance, overtaken as they had been, by greater theological events and ideas centred on the figure of the messianic Jesus. The early leaders of the Reformation gave expression to their theological ideas very much by way of biblical exegesis and when converted Jews with hebraic insights could be joined to the cause, so much the better.22 If Jews remained loyal to their own rabbinic traditions, they might still be permitted to function as 'language teachers' in limited contexts but their understanding of the Old Testament was severely flawed, particularly since they rejected an essential tool for its valid interpretation, namely, the New Testament. As far as the nineteenth century is concerned, the leading figures in Old Testament scholarship adopted approaches that permitted them to retain all the Protestant principles of exegesis, while claiming to have absorbed
21. S.J. Burnett, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564-1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1996), esp. 54, 78,93, 104,132 and 169. See also Gareth Lloyd Jones, The Discovery of Hebrew in Tudor England: A Third Language (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983). 22. For an authoritative list and close study of Christian Hebraists, see the entry 'Christian Hebraists' by R. Loewe in EncJud, VIII, cols. 9-71. For Cambridge as an example of such developments, see S.C. Reif, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1-12. See also W. McKane, Selected Christian Hebraists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
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the best of modern literary and historical analysis. The historical-critical method was regarded not only as academically superior but also as theologically more sound. The ideal hebraic religion was that of the prophets which was seen as theologically pristine, spiritual and inspiring, universal and ethical. It became corrupted in later Judaism where the emphasis moved towards the carnal and the ritualistic, the land, the temple and the letter of the law, all of them religiously inferior notions. Wilhelm Gesenius, for example, referred to the books of Daniel, Esther and Jonah as containing legends that reflected 'a low Jewish taste'. Only the New Testament remains true to the original idea.23 Having chosen those parts of the Hebrew Bible that could be dejudaized and given a purely Christian flavour, American and European Protestants were then even able to identify personally with the people, the land, the language and the message of biblical Palestine.24 Jon D. Levenson at Harvard has provided a powerful summary of the Wellhausenian view: The Torah in its entirety is no longer the norm. // has been replaced by the historical process that produced it. Scrutiny of that historical process discloses what is essential to the Torah and what is dispensable. What is dispensable is law, 'Judaism'. In short, Wellhausen decomposed the Torah into its constituent documents, reconstructed history from those components, and then endowed history with the normativity and canonicity that more traditional Protestants reserved for scripture. Biblical history replaces the Bible, but biblical history still demonstrates the validity of the biblical (i.e. Pauline) economy of salvation and thus serves to preserve the literary context of the Hebrew Bible. Its conjunction to the New Testament as volume 1 of the Christian Bible is logical after all. The historical context replaces the literary context, but without casting into doubt the anti-Judaic and antitoraitic thrust of Pauline-Lutheran theology. The Hebrew Bible remains only an 'Old Testament'.25
23. J.W. Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany (London: SPCK; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), esp. 46-48,53, 55 and 65. 24. S. Goldman (ed.), Hebrew and the Bible in America: The first Two Centuries (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993), esp. xii, xx-xxii, 25 and 157. See also S. Goldman, 'Christians, Jews, and the Hebrew Language in Rhode Island History', Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 11.3 (November 1993), 344-53. 25. J.D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Study (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press 1993), 15. See also Y. Sherwood, '"Colonizing the Old Testament" or "Representing
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As far as text-critical theories are concerned, Frank Manuel has described them as jumping 'from the strained scribal hypothesis of Pere Richard Simon's Critical History of the Old Testament to feats of textual dismemberment so daring that one could never be sure of counting accurately the numerous Isaiahs buried in the chapters traditionally bearing the name of the prophet in the King James Version'.26 The rabbis and rabbinic literature were regarded as the epitome of such religious deterioration. The tradition that they represented was best ignored or, if necessary, could be debunked. Its notions were stupid and its leaders miserable.27 Rabbinic accretions had to be stripped away in order to reach the purer Hebrew that lay beneath. If a Jew wished to be a serious scholar, as Edward Robinson put it, in a phrase cited by Shalom Goldman, he had 'to break away from the trammels and fetters of rabbinic education, from that nightmare of talmudic absurdity'.28 As far as teaching was concerned, the formal and senior posts were by definition and by ideology restricted to Christians. Anything that could be seen to relate to Christian education, including of course Hebrew, was, even outside the seminaries, the exclusive prerogative of Christian clerics.29 It is true that Jews, who had only recently been admitted to most universities, were gradually permitted to do some of the teaching in the fields of rabbinics on the assumption that they knew more about such studies. In most instances, however, there was controversy about the degree of permanence and seniority that they could enjoy and about other conditions of their appointments. What is more, rabbinic topics were more often taught for their value in providing background to the New Testament than for any intrinsic worth the Jews might claim for them. In sum,
Christian Interests Abroad": Jewish-Christian Relations across Old Testament Territory', in S.E. Porter and B.W.R. Pearson (eds.), Christian-Jewish Relations Through the Centuries (JSNTSup, 192; Roehampton Institute London Papers, 6; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 255-83. 26. F.E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 302. 27. S.C. Reif, 'William Robertson Smith in Relation to Hebraists and Jews at Christ's College Cambridge', in W. Johnstone (ed.), William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment (JSOTSup, 201; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 210-23. 28. S. Goldman, 'Isaac Nordheimer (1809-1842): An Israelite Truly in Whom There Was No Guile', American Jewish History 80 (1990-91), 1. 29. S. Goldman, 'Joshua/James Seixas (1802-1874): Jewish Apostasy and Christian Hebraism in Early Nineteenth-Century America', Jewish History 1 (1993), 65-88.
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as political and social disabilities were removed, expressions of antiJewish bias nevertheless continued to find refuge in theological and academic spheres.30 Current Situation Numerous Jewish scholars of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, among them such distinguished figures as Moritz Steinschneider, Ignaz Goldziher, Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy, Adolf Neubauer and Solomon Schechter, had to make do with a second-class status of one sort or another if they wished to take any part in the academic world. There is indeed a history of such and similar personalities waiting to be written and much still to be revealed in this connection and, I might add, not all of it relates only to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.31 It has, however, to be acknowledged that the situation of the Jew has changed drastically in more recent decades. There is undoubtedly less organized and institutional anti-Semitism per se and one of the results of the Holocaust has been the creation of guilt feelings on the part of those who might still wish to indulge themselves in some form of that bigotry. There is a political Jewish state to boost Jewish feelings of independence, confidence and a related unwillingness to make do with any reduced level of recognition. Such improvements in the social and political spheres have brought with them, on the part of at least some (more intellectual?) sections of Jewry, a greater degree of cultural and educational open-mindedness, as well as an awareness of the need to develop interests in areas that were previously either closed to them or rejected by them.32 Hence, there has been a return by the Jews to the kind of study of the Hebrew Bible that was left primarily to the Christians for so many generations. Particularly in North America and in Israel, Jews have made 30. A good example is the appointment of Schiller-Szinessy at Cambridge; see S.C. Reif, 'A Jewish Usurper among Christian Hebraists', in W. Horbury (ed.), Jewish Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999), 277-90. 31. For some of the intellectual background, see D.N. Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); D.N. Myers and D.B. Ruderman (eds.), The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 32. Manuel, Broken Staff, esp. 298,300-301,308 and 318; B. Levine, 'Context and Community: The Two Foci of Jewish Biblical Interpretation', Spotlight on Teaching 6.2 (November 1998), 2-4.
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a major impact at the highest level on research into Semitics, the ancient Near East, Palestinian archaeology, ancient inscriptions, Biblical Hebrew language, literature and exegesis, the Second Temple period, and Qumran. At the same time, there is undoubtedly a continuing Jewish reticence about speculative literary and source criticism, and about the conscious development of systematic religious thought, but this may have more to do with the theological biases to which allusion is being made in this article than with academic or educational inadequacies. Where there is a genuine failure to deal satisfactorily with current scholarship is in the Orthodox world, or to put it more precisely, in the modern Orthodox world, that it is to say, not among the ultra-Orthodox where no validity whatsoever is accorded to such scientific approaches. A number of challenges have recently been issued in this connection and it remains to be seen whether they will be soundly met.33 No serious historical researchers in any branch of learning would today claim that they are uncovering history wie es eigentlich gewesen ist.34 There is obviously a subjective element in all scholarship and one can only use one's best efforts to try to ensure that such an element remains of minor significance and never dictates the nature of the whole theory or analysis. Is then Jewish biblical interpretation open to the accusation of theological tendenzl35 It arises out of the talmudic and midrashic traditions, takes for granted the existence of an integral link between the written and oral versions of the Torah, and makes central use of the Hebrew Bible, particularly of the Pentateuch, for the validation of halakhic, or Jewish religious norms. Jewish exegesis also emphasizes the people, the land and the language more than it does any systematic theology and sees the continuity of the covenant between God and Israel in terms of the history of the Jews from ancient to contemporary times. It has repeatedly returned to the Torah, not only as the foundation for its development of, respectively, the legal and more generally religious ideologies ofhalakhah 33. S. David Sperling (ed.), Students of the Covenant: A History of Jewish Biblical Scholarship in North America (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992). 34. E.H. Carr, What is History? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, January-March 1961 (London: Macmillan, 1961 [2nd edn = ed. R.W. Davies; Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986; 3rd edn = ed. R.J. Evans; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001]). 35. For a summary, see S.C. Reif, 'Aspects of the Jewish Contribution to Biblical Interpretation', in J. Barton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 143-59.
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and aggadah, but also as a source for the novel ideas of each generation. The Hebrew Bible has also been extensively used in the liturgical and educational activities of both synagogue36 and academy and the distinction between religious practice and scholarly analysis may consequently be said to have become blurred to such a degree that the Jewish interpretation is not capable of being sufficiently disinterested to be characterized as scholarly and scientific. I do not myself believe that such accusations are justified. There is barely any Jewish need for a systematic theology of the Bible, the history of interpretation generally shows it to be undogmatic and multifarious, and the halakhic use has often been distinguished, internally among the Jews, from the literal sense. The status of other faiths plays no central role in establishing the nature of Jewish exegesis, there is an ongoing conviction that 'there are seventy different ways of interpreting the Torah' (Num. R. 13.15) and there is certainly no confident assertion (except perhaps in the narrowest of circles where Bible study is only an adjunct to Talmud) that one's own form of exegesis is either the only truly scientific one or a theologically essential one. As and where the holistic approach gains ground in the subject as a whole, Jewish biblical scholarship may perhaps feel a little more relaxed about its own contribution. I find it difficult to believe that a Christian scholar would find it a theologically uncomfortable experience to participate in contemporary Jewish Bible study at a serious academic level. Is the same true for a committed, loyal or observant Jew in the contexts of what are known as biblical criticism and Old Testament study? Generally on the North American scene, and in some European contexts too, the situation has undoubtedly changed in recent decades. Jewish scholars have been welcomed as colleagues and have even been accepted in traditional faculties, not always as valid interpreters of the Old Testament, which activity sometimes still remains a Christian prerogative and commitment, but at least as teachers of Hebrew grammar, post-biblical texts, medieval and modern Hebrew language and literature, Jewish history, and similar topics. Departments of religious studies have emerged where there is no prior commitment to a particular theology and an explosion in Jewish studies has balanced the overall university situation in many cases. It has become common for the emphasis to move from the theological and
36. This topic has been treated in S.C. Reif, 'The Bible in the Liturgy', in A. Berlin and M. Brettler (eds.), The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
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the literary-critical to the historical, archeological and linguistic.37 Primarily in North America, but also to an extent in Israel, the new generation of Jewish Bible scholars have not only moved more centrally into the field but have issued serious challenges to their Christian counterparts about the continuation of the Reformation ideology and the nineteenth-century approach in the guise of detached and critical scholarship. What they are objecting to is not, of course, the active inclusion of Christian theological content in some of the dominant scholarship but—and this is the nub of the matter—the passive presupposition that such content is an integral part of sound critical study. Nahum Sarna, Moshe Greenberg, Baruch Levine, Ed Greenstein, James Kugel, Fred Greenspahn, Jon Levenson, David Sperling and Barry Levy38 are among scholars who have pointed to problematic aspects in the 'Old Testament' approach of the past and looked for a rethink in the current new century. The importance of the challenge has been stressed by Rolf Rendtorff in his comments on Levenson's The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Study which constitutes a powerful attack on attitudes to be found in the work of such scholars as Wellhausen, Eichrodt, von Rad, Alt and Mendenhall. 37. E. Vernon and C. Berlin (eds.), Jewish Studies Courses at American and Canadian Universities: A Catalogue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992; expanding on an earlier edition of the same title published in 1979); 'Jewish Studies around the World: Research and Teaching', Jewish Studies 32 (1992), 5-64. Further details may be found in other issues of Jewish Studies. 38. N.M. Sarna, 'The Modern Study of the Bible in the Framework of Jewish Studies', Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies (1983), 19-27; J.D. Sarna and N.M. Sarna, 'Jewish Bible Scholarship and Translations', in E.S. Frerichs (ed.), The Bible and Bibles in America (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 83-116; M. Greenberg, 'Exegesis', in A.A. Cohen and P. Mendes-Fiohr (eds.), Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987), 211-18; andM. Greenberg, 'To Whom and For What Should a Bible Commentator be Responsible', Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Division A (1990), 29-38; Levine, 'Context and Community'; E.L. Greenstein, Essays on Biblical Method and Translation (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), esp. 17, 21, 24-26, 61-62 and 68; J.D. Levenson, M. Fishbane and J. Kugel, 'Biblical Studies and Jewish Studies in the University', Newsletter of the Association for Jewish Studies 36 (1986), 16-24; F.E. Greenspahn, 'Biblical Scholars, Medieval and Modern', in J. Neusner et al. (eds), Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 245-58; Levenson, Hebrew Bible; Sperling (ed.), Students, particularly, B. Levy, 'On the Periphery: North American Orthodox Judaism and Contemporary Biblical Scholarship', 159-204.
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Rendtorff s comments may be applied not only to that volume but to the whole approach of the scholars just listed: This is an important book that opens a new era of mutual interreligious study of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. Jon D. Levenson challenges the traditional Christian and in particular the Protestant way of studying the Old Testament.. .he asks questions that urgently need to be asked and whose answers can only be given with the cooperation of Jewish and Christian scholars who are willing to face the problems of interpreting the common Jewish and Christian Bible in the religious and intellectual context of our world today.
Another quote from Rendtorff explains the situation as it was for over a century: the documentary hypothesis was a dogma and every scholar who wanted to be accepted by the establishment of Old Testament scholarship had to submit to this theory in order to demonstrate that he was able to handle the established method.39
At this juncture it may be useful for our discussion to list the kind of comments that have disturbed not only Jewish scholars, such as those just listed, but also their less devotionally oriented Christian counterparts: Walther Eichrodt: It was not until in later Judaism a religion of harsh observances had replaced the religion of the Old Testament that the Sabbath changed from a blessing to a burdensome duty.. .real worship of God [was] stified under the heaping up of detailed commands from which the spirit has fied.. .the living fellowship between God and man... shrivelled up into a mere correct observance of the legal regulations.. .the affirmation of the law as the revelation of God's personal will was lost.40
Gerhard von Rad: The end was reached at the point where the law became an absolute quantity, that is, when it ceased to be understood as the saving ordinance of 39. R. Rendtorff, 'The Future of Pentateuchal Criticism', Henoch 6 (1984), 1-14 (2), and his comments on the back-cover of the paperback edition of Levenson's volume; see also his essay 'The Jewish Bible and its Anti-Jewish Interpretation', Christian Jewish Relations 16 (1983), 3-20. 40. W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament (ET, 2 vols., London: SCM Press, 1961-67), I, 133.
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a special racial group (the cultic community of Israel) linked to it by the facts of history, and when it stepped out of this function of service and became a dictate which imperiously called into being its own community.41
Martin Noth (with reference to Jewish history almost 2000 years ago): Thus ended the ghastly epilogue of Israel's history.42 Otto Eissfeldt (on Esther): The fact that in spite of all the objections which would militate against its acceptance, it was nevertheless taken into the canon, is in the last resort to be explained from the close connection between Jewish religion and the Jewish national spirit. A book which was so closely bound up with the national spirit, and which indeed the people itself regarded as a source of its power, could not be excluded by the religion which was bound up with it. This we can understand, but Christianity, extending as it does over all peoples and races, has neither occasion nor justification for holding on to it. For Christianity Luther's remark should be determinative, a remark made with reference to II Maccabees and Esther in his table talk: 'I am so hostile to this book and to Esther that I could wish that they did not exist at all, for they judaize too greatly and have much pagan impropriety'.43
Matthew Black: Pharisaism is the immediate ancestor of rabbinical (or normative) Judaism, the arid and sterile religion of the Jews after the fall of Jerusalem... It is a sterile religion of codified tradition, regulating every part of life by a 44 halachah, observing strict apartheid...
L.H. Brockington: One might think that such an attitude would have lifted Ben Sira above the level of nationalism and led him to think in terms of universalism as did some of the prophets before him. That was evidently far more than the ordinary Jew could reach.45
Hannes Odil Steck (discussing a chapter that)
41. G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology (ET, 2 vols., Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962-65), I, 201. 42. M. Noth, The History of Israel (ET, London: A. & C. Black, 1958), 452. 43. O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction (ET, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), 511-12. 44. M. Black, 'Pharisees', in IDE, K-Q, 774-81 (781). 45. L.H. Brockington, A Critical Introduction to the Apocrypha (London: Gerald Duckworth 1961), 83.
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Sense and Sensitivity would teach the Christian to understand Christ as the holy place.. .to understand Christ as a person...to understand Christ as the release of meaning. . .to understand Christ as the guide.. ,46
It may of course be argued that the battle against such approaches has already been won and that current thinking among Old Testament scholars is more liberal at its core as well as at its more iconoclastic edges and demonstrates an awarensss of past bias. Rudolf Smend, for instance, is content to acknowledge that 'what has been called the "utilitarianism" of wisdom has evoked much criticism from the theologians—naturally more from Protestants than from Catholics and from Germans more than from Anglo-Saxons'.47 Have the Jews, then, nothing more to fear and may they take their place in the discipline knowing it to be based on scholarly and not theological considerations? I am sure that John Barton, who is certainly at the centre of the subject as the holder of the Oriel and Laing chair in the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford, would assure us that they might and yet he himself apparently still hankers after aspects of the old-fashioned approach. He has recently argued categorically, and I quote, 'for Old Testament study to be reunited with theology proper, reorientated towards religious faith and theological truth', has stated that 'its closeness to the Protestant spirit is obvious', and has called on scholars to 'recapture something of the attitude of the great nineteenthcentury German critics'. To be fair, he also argues that 'the study of the Old Testament belongs to no special interest group' but certainly leaves Jewish scholarly readers wondering how the two types of commitment actually tally for them.48 46. H.O. Steck, Old Testament Exegesis: A Guide to the Methodology (ET, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 207. 47. R. Smend, 'The interpretation of Wisdom in Nineteenth-Century Scholarship', in J. Day, R.P. Gordon and H.G.M. Williamson (eds.), Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour ofJ.A. Emerton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 267. 48. J. Barton, 'The Future of Old Testament Study: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 12 November 1992' (Oxford, 1993), 6, 11, 15 and 17-18. In a recent issue of The Times Literary Supplement (21 December 2001), 5-6, Graham Davies comes in for some interesting criticism at the hands of Gabriel Josipovici for giving 'traditional historical scholarship' a more central place than modern approaches that place greater emphasis on the canonical texts and on the biblical traditions as they stand. The erudite essay by G. Davies, 'Introduction to the Pentateuch', is included in J. Barton and J. Muddiman (eds.), The Oxford Bible Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 12-38, with the passage cited by Josipovici appearing on 32.
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Such a conservative Anglican approach finds little support among what has been referred to as the 'nihilist school' or the 'minimalist school' in which scholars are anxious to promote their own kinds of interpretation as free of the Christian bias that has become endemic to some types of Old Testament study.49 Alas, most Jews will find little evidence of disinterest in their writings, especially with regard to the State of Israel and the nature of Israeli scholarship. For such 'nihilists', a whole history of ancient Israel has apparently been invented to justify modern Christian and Zionist thinking. Inscriptional evidence has been misinterpreted, Palestinian history (whatever that means) has been silenced, and imperialist considerations have dictated the nature of research. Authors such as Philip Davies and Keith Whitelam criticize those who allow religious and political bias to colour their scholarship but permit themselves the following statements that we are apparently expected to accept as scientific and unbiased: Davies: There are also political issues at stake. Biblical archaeology is a large industry, with many interests vested in it. Relatively disinterested pursuit of data about the past there certainly is; but even more evident are the financial, political and social stakes. For the state of Israel, archaeology has often gone, and goes increasingly, hand in hand with tourism. Unearthing the past has also played a dominant role in strengthening links between the modern state of Israel and the land it occupies; every Jewish artifact, inscription and ruin buttresses a claim to Jewish possession.50 As a consequence, 'ancient Israel', which is one of the fundamental projects of this pseudo-scholarship, will live on, imaginary as it ever was, but now enshrined in the hearts of biblical theologians.. .there will be no search for the history that no one thinks is missing; instead, the great reluctance will persist to look hard for 'ancient Israel' in the life of Iron Age Palestine, for
49. For summaries and criticisms, see, for instance, T.L. Thompson, 'A NeoAlbrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship', and P.R. Davies, 'Method and Madness: Some Remarks on Doing History with the Bible', JBL 114 (1995), 683-705 (683-98 and 699-705, respectively); I. Provan, 'Ideologies, Literary and Critical: Reflections of Recent Writing on the History of Israel', JBL 114 (1995), 585-606; B. Halpern, 'Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel', BRev 116 (1995), 26-35 and 47. 50. P.R. Davies, 'Introduction', in V. Fritz and P.R. Davies (eds.), The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States (JSOTSup, 228; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 11-21(13).
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Whitelam: Biblical studies is, thereby, implicated in an act of dispossession which has its modern political counterpart in the Zionist possession of the land and dispossession of its Palestinian inhabitants.52 Here [in Gottwald] is an invention of the Israelite past which mirrors the ideological projection of the present of the modern state of Israel, which contrasts its democratic (egalitarian) ideal with the undemocratic (centralized and stratified) Arab states which surround it.53 It is necessary to trace the discourse of biblical studies in relation to the invention of an Israelite state or 'empire' in the context of the Zionist agitation for and eventual realization of a modern state of Israel.54
What the Jewish reader of such views understands from them is that the old Christian anti-theological bias has been replaced in some circles by the new political anti-Zionist bias and that opportunities are still being sought, under the guise of pure scholarship, for points that have little to do with research to be made and to be won. In her review of Davies, Sara Japhet summarizes his volume as follows: Davies describes his own critique of biblical scholarship as 'savage' and 'over general'.. .while Halpern describes it as 'venom'. Indeed, the book's consistent tone is that of fervent rhetoric and an all-embracing iconoclastic crusade; it is actually spitting fire in every direction and on every issue. All these indicate that deeper issues are at stake than scholarly methodologies. What the book presents in fact is another theology. We may call it, following the author's own remark, 'a theology of disbelief.. .or even better, 'a theology of condemnation'. But this urgent request for the 'truth', the undertaking to 'unmask' the biblical 'falsification', to reveal the 'scheme', and to bring light into a world cast in darkness, is in fact theology, and nothing else.55
51. P.R. Davies, In Search of 'Ancient Israel' (JSOTSup, 174; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 47. 52. K.W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge, 1996), 46. 53. Whitelam, Invention, 117. 54. Whitelam, Invention, 128; see also 95, 120, 128, 137, 147-48 and 174. 55. S. Japhet, 'In Search of Ancient Israel: Revisionism at All Costs', in Myers and Ruderman (eds.), The Jewish Past Revisited, 212-33 (230). For an important critique of the 'nihilist' viewpoint on the basis of linguistic history, see A. Hurvitz, 'The Historical
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There will be Jewish scholars who can live with such studies in the expectation that the general picture is changing and that neither of such biases, the anti-Judaism or the anti-Zionism, is any longer central, and in the hope that they can themselves contribute to the process of evolution. There will be others who will continue to be reticent about making a contribution to the field. They will see it as still a part of the dispossession philosophy of anti-Judaism. Aspects of such a philosophy include the desire to replace the Holocaust with broader tragedies and persecutions; to retain for nonJews the scientific study of the Hebrew language; to replace the land of Israel with the land of Canaan, Palestine or Syria; to convert the Hebrew Bible or Torah or Tanakh into the Old Testament; and to apply the name of Israel (new Israel) to groups other than Jews. It remains to be seen which of these philosophies, the truly liberal or the tendentious, will ultimately triumph in the context of Old Testament studies in the United Kingdom in the new millennium.
Quest for "Ancient Israel" and the Linguistic Evidence of the Hebrew Bible: Some Methodological Observations', VT47 (1997), 305-15; idem, 'The Relevance of Biblical Hebrew Linguistics for the Historical Study of Ancient Israel', Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies (1999), 21 *-23 *. For a variety of views on the subject, see L.I. Levine and A. Mazar (eds.), The Controversy Over the Historicity of the Hebrew Bible (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi/Dinur Centre, 2001 [Hebrew]).
ISAIAH AND ZIONISM
John F.A. Sawyer
This is a study in Wirkungsgeschichte, the history of the impact of the Bible on those who read it and use it down the centuries. When my book The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity came out in 1996, several people, including Robert, suggested I write a companion volume on Isaiah in the History of Judaism. There have been some studies of the Jewish reception history of parts of the book, for example, A. Neubauer and S.R. Driver's famous study The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters (1969 [repr.] with Raphael Loewe's wonderful introduction); Craig Evans' meticulous analysis of early Jewish and Christian interpretations of Isa. 6.9-10, To See and Not Perceive (1989); and a fascinating article 'A Prophecy for the Jews: Isaiah in Yiddish and German' by the linguist Albert Waldinger (1998). But there has not been a comprehensive study like my book on Christian uses of Isaiah and I am not sure if I am the right person to do it. So this is a rather hesitant first step on what would inevitably be a very long journey, focusing mainly on Isaiah's role in the origins and history modern Zionism. I gratefully dedicate it to a colleague and friend who taught me much about what texts can mean and do. Isaiah and Judaism Isaiah has always been a favourite text for Jews as well as Christians. But it must be remembered that the Jewish book of Isaiah is a very different text from the 'Fifth Gospel'. In the first place, it is not 'Gospel', in the sense that it is not part of the Torah, and therefore less authoritative, less well known, less central to the liturgy. Second, for Jews it is a Hebrew text as opposed to the Greek or Latin or German or English versions that have played such a formative role in Christian tradition. The almah in 7.14 remains an "alma ('young woman') and never becomes siparthenos
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or a virgo ('virgin'). A third difference is that texts traditionally interpreted by Christians as metaphors are often taken at face value (Jeffrey 1992: 746-47). For example, the prophecy that one day there will be universal peace and justice, and swords will be beaten into ploughshares, means what it says. Finally, texts from Isaiah that have spoken volumes to Christian writers and preachers and artists about the Virgin Mary, Christ's Passion, the Trinity and the Eucharist (Sawyer 1996) are often texts of only marginal interest to Jews, while some of the language and imagery of Isaiah, quite unfamiliar to Christians, has played an important role in Jewish culture and history. The popular association of the word oneg ('delight') with shabbat comes from Isaiah as does the custom of wearing one's best clothes on the sabbath 'to honour it, not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure' (Isa. 58.13; 61.10). The legend of the 'Thirty-Six Just Men' (the ' lamed-vav-niks'1) finds its scriptural authority in 30.18: 'blessed are all those who wait on him' (Heb. lo, that is, the numeral lamed waw; Scholem 1971:251-56). TheAvele Tziyon ('mourners of Zion'), mediaeval ascetics mentioned by, among others, the traveller Benjamin of Tudela, got their name from 61.3 (JewEnc, 1:51). Haredim, a name given to ultra-orthodox Jews, comes from 66.5: 'Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble (haredim) at his word. Your brethren who hate you and cast you out for my name's sake, have said, "Let the Lord be glorified that we may see you joy", but it is they who shall be put to shame' (Harris 1992: 164-65). Post-holocaust Judaism has found inspiration in Isaiah too. The best biblical formulation of the doctrine ofhesterpanim, cited by a number of theologians, is to be found in Isaiah 45: 'Truly you are a god that hides yourself, O God of Israel the Saviour'. The orthodox Jewish writer Eliezer Berkovits, for example, sees in it a credal statement to the effect that God's absence from human history is necessary so that man may be, while his presence is necessary so that evil will not ultimately triumph. Some find him in his 'absence', some miss him in his presence. Either way the God who hides himself from time to time is, in Isaiah's words, the saviour of Israel (Berkovits 1973:63-65). The holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, gets its name from Isaiah (56.5), as does the inscription on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington which reads (in Hebrew) 'You are my witnesses' (43.10). Already in the narratives of Kings and Chronicles, Isaiah is far more prominent than any of the other Writing Prophets. Only Jeremiah and Jonah are mentioned and they only briefly. Ben Sira singles Isaiah out for
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special mention, comparable to Elijah, one who was 'great and faithful in his vision', one who worked miracles and comforted those who mourned in Zion and revealed what was to occur at the end of time (48.23-25). Isaiah was a favourite of the Qumran sect too and it is probably no coincidence that the oldest complete biblical manuscript in existence, familiar to visitors to the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, is the beautiful 7.5 m-long Isaiah Scroll A. The exceptional prominence of Isaiah in the New Testament is further evidence of his special role in first-century Judaism: not only is he far more often quoted in the New Testament than any other part of scripture (with the possible exception of Psalms), but New Testament writers often (20 times) give his name when they quote him: Paul, for example, introduces quotations with phrases like 'Isaiah cried out...' (Rom. 9.27) or 'Isaiah is so bold as to say...' (10.20), a further indication that Isaiah held a special position in his heart as he did in the hearts of other first-century Jews. Such references put Isaiah in the company of Moses, David and Elijah, rather than that of Jeremiah, Ezekiel or any of the other writing prophets (Sawyer 1996: 20-25). In the rabbinic literature Isaiah is frequently compared to Moses not only because he communicated directly with God (Lev. R. 10), but also because of his contribution to Jewish law: according to one tradition he reduced the ten commandments to six, according to another to two: justice and righteousness (= charity, mishpat and tsedaqa, b. Mak. 24a). His notoriously hard line on the shortcomings of his people gave rise to a rabbinic interpretation of Isaiah's vision in ch. 6 according to which the reason why he had his mouth burned was that he had been foul-mouthing his people: 'it was all right for him to call himself a man of unclean lips, said the Holy One Blessed Be He, but he had no right to say he was in the midst of a people of unclean lips' (Cant. R. 1.6; cf. b. Yeb. 49b). He is also unique among the prophets in being the subject of a rich series of legends about his martyrdom, at the hands of King Manasseh, some of which have a fascinating history in Christian and Islamic tradition as well as Jewish (b. Yeb. 49b;.y. Sanh.lQ; Knibb 1985). Isaiah's role in the Jewish liturgy is fascinating and very significant. Best known is the Qedushah, from Isaiah's vision in ch. 6, which is as important in Judaism as the Trisagion and the Sanctus are in the Christian liturgy, Eastern and Western. Accompanied by various blessings and responses, it was one of the Eighteen Benedictions, the shmoneh esreh or the Amidah, since ancient times. It is mentioned already in the Talmud where it is said: 'Since the Temple was destroyed, the whole world is sustained
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by it' (b. Sot. 46a). The special power and effectiveness of the Qedushah is a function of its divine origin: when you recite it, you are reciting the words of the angels. The history of the impact of the Sanctus not only on Western liturgical tradition, but through the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Britten and a host of others, on Western secular culture as well, is well known and has been the subject of a number of scholarly studies (Spinks 1991). Its role in Jewish tradition is less well known but almost as interesting. Carmi's beautiful anthology of poetical works ancient mediaeval and modern, collected for the Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, contains two anonymous mediaevalpiyyutim based on the Qedushah. One of the 'Four who saw visions of God' (Carmi 1981:243-44) is Isaiah; and apiyyut celebrating the sanctification of God beginning 'he wraps himself in a cloak' (Carmi 1991: 251) has eight stanzas, each a variation on a phrase from ch. 6. The qedushah gains added poignancy from its association with the concept ofqiddush ha-shem, 'the sanctification of the Holy Name', which down the ages in many contexts came to be synonymous with martyrdom (Berkovits 1973: 80-85). In Jewish literature, from Ben Sira onwards, Isaiah is the 'Prophet of Consolation'. Ezekiel's consolation is said to have been like the speech of a villager, Isaiah's like that of a courtier (b. Hag. 14a). According to the Talmud, if you see Isaiah in a dream, you can expect consolation (b. Ber. 57b). A liturgy of consolation at the end of the Daily Prayer Book, prescribed to be recited in a house of mourning, concludes with three beautiful passages from Isaiah: ' As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you (66.13).. .your sun shall no more go down nor your moon withdraw itself, for the Lord will be your everlasting light and your days of mourning will be at an end (60.19)... He will destroy death for ever. The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth: for the Lord has spoken (25.8). (Singer 1892: 324)
This brings us to Isaiah's role in the Jewish lectionary. Fifteen of the weekly readings from the Prophets (haftarot), are from Isaiah, to which must be added five for special sabbaths and holy days: this is a far larger proportion than from any other book of the Prophets. All except four are from Isaiah 40-66 (readings from 1, 6, 11-12 and 27 are the four exceptions), and of particular significance are those associated with Tesha be'Av, the fast commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem. Chapter 1, one of Isaiah's most ferocious attacks on the stupidity, hypocrisy and blindness of his people, is read on the sabbath before Tesha be 'Av, to give
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some kind of reason for the disaster, and the seven from ch. 40-66 known as the haftarot ha-neh amah ('consolation readings'), are read on the sabbaths following it, beginning with ch. 40: 'Comfort, comfort my people, says your God' (Elbogen 1993: 145,425-26). As far as I can see, that proportion of 7 to 1, seven parts Consolation to one part Judgment, is about right for Isaiah's role in Judaism. The need for consolation down the ages has been at least seven times greater than the need for judgment, if not 70 times seven. The origins and history of the Jewish lectionary, down the centuries are obscure and I have no intention of tackling that topic here (Elbogen 1913: 143-49; Mann 1940,1960). But the standard lectionary as printed in most modern editions of the Humash can be important for our topic in several ways. In the first place, passages included in the lectionary, that is to say, passages read aloud and often preached-on every year at public worship, are likely to have had a more significant role to play in Jewish culture than passages not in the lectionary. This is going to be particularly true of passages read on special holidays when above-average congregations attend. 'The wolf shall lie down with the lamb' (11.6), for example, appears in a Passover haftorah.' Yad vashem' (56.5) is in one of the haftarot nehama ('consolation readings') and the late Prime Minister Rabin's famous words on shaking hands with Yasser Arafat is in a passage read on Yom Kippur, the year's busiest days in most synagogues worldwide: 'Peace, peace to the near and the far' (57.19). Other examples from the haftarot are she 'aryashub ('a remnant will return', 7.3), 'surely the people is grass' (40.7), Rishon le-tziyon ('first to Zion', 41.27) and 'as one whom his mother comforts' (66.13). Another observation about the lectionary often made is that a number of passages of central significance to Christians are conspicuous by their absence. Chapter 53 is the best known and it may be that it was deliberately omitted from the Jewish lectionary because of its Christian associations (Montefiore and Loewe 1963: 544). The same may apply to the Immanuel references in chs. 7-8 and to the messianic passage beginning 'the people that walked in darkness...' in ch. 9. The haftorah for Exodus 18-20 stops at 7.6, just before 7.14, while the 'christianization' of ch. 9 can be illustrated by the problems translators have had in translating sar shalom. Modern translators felt they had to avoid the phrase 'Prince of Peace' because it 'exudes christology': thus the 1917 JPS translation has 'Ruler of Peace', while the 1978 version has the brilliant 'peaceable ruler', to go along with the 'peaceable kingdom' in ch. 11 (Sawyer 1996:
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106). Christianization has clearly been a significant factor in Jewish uses of the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah and Zionism I hope I have shown that Isaiah has been as fertile and productive a text in the history of Judaism as it has been in Christianity. We come now to his role in modern Zionism. I wrote something on this already in my book (Sawyer 1996), but a bit more now needs to be said on the subject, particularly in the light of some recent publications on the Bible and Zionism. A fairly cursory search shows that the language and images of Isaiah crop up everywhere in journals, novels, musical compositions, place names, mottoes, monumental inscriptions and other contexts associated with the origins and history of Zionism and the State of Israel. At least half a dozen journals published towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth got their titles from Isaiah: the influential Ha-Shiloah (Isa. 8.5), a literaryjournal published in Berlin, is one. Others include Ariel from ch. 29, Havatzelet from 35.1, Mevasseret Tzion and its English counterpart The Zion Messenger from 40.9, Torah Mitziyon from 2.3 and Yagdil Torah from 42.21. Ha-yo'etz as a title probably comes from 9.5. In 1868Rabbi Nathan Friedland, one of the Hoveve Tzion ('lovers of Zion'), an early Russian Zionist organization, published a piece in Hebrew under the title qol tzofayik (' the voice of your [Zion's] watchmen'), a phrase from 52.8, and two generations later Rabbi Yeshayahu Margolis chose another phrase from Isaiah as the title of a tract, Qumi Ori ('Arise, shine') from 60.1. The phrase 'from the wells of salvation' (Isa. 12.3) is the title of a tract published in 1963 by Jacov Moshe Harlap, a follower of Rav Kook's son Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook, to whom we shall return later. Incidentally this passage is part of the haftorah for Yom Ha 'atzma 'ut ('Independence Day'), as well as for Passover (Isa. 10.32-12.6), since this annual post-194 8 commemoration occurs near the time of Passover. Abraham Mapu's novel, Ahavat Tziyon, first published in 1853 and translated into many languages in several editions, is about Isaiah, a prophet characterized throughout the 66 chapters attributed to him in the Bible, more than any other, by his 'love for Zion'. The controversial Yiddish novelist Scholem Asch also wrote a book about Isaiah called Der Novi (1951), published in English in a paperback edition (1955). A significant number of musical compositions on Isaianic themes by Jewish
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composers appeared in the years following the establishment of the state of Israel, including an oratorio by Jacob Weinberg for solo voices and chorus with organ accompaniment and trumpet obbligato, first performed in 1947. This was followed by Alexandre Tansman's Isaie le Prophete first performed in 1949, the Israeli Ben Tzion Orgad's Isaiah's Vision in 1953, and the American composer Robert Stater's Ariel: Visions of Isaiah ten years later. A disproportionate number of place-names in the modern State of Israel are also derived from Isaiah. Here is a selection: Shear Jashub ('a remnant will return', 7.3), Nes Harim ('a banner on the mountains', 18.3), Ariel (29.1), Mevasseret Tzion ('O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion', 40.9), Mevasseret Yerushalayim ('O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem', 40.9), Mesillat Zion ('highway to Zion', cf. 11.16; 40.3; 49.11; 62.10), Hephtzibah (62.4) and Or Tal ('the light of dew', cf. 26.19). Chapter 35, which begins with the image of the desert blossoming 'like the rose' and ends with the return of the ransomed to Zion, provided the settlers in the Negev with another six: Havatzelet ('rose', AV; 'lily', LXX, Vg; 'crocus', RSV; 'jonquil', JB), Tiphrah ('blossom'), Gilat ('joy') and Rannen ('singing') from v. 2, Maslul (another word for 'highway') from v. 8 and Peduyim ('ransomed') from v. 10 (cf. 51.11). To these maybe added another group of three settlements in the same area, Berosh, Tidhar and Te'ashur, which were named after some of the trees in 41.19—'I will set in the desert berosh, tidhar and te 'ashur—berosh ('cypress') is used in modern Hebrew, but the other two cannot be identified for certain and, as in the case of havatzelet, this gives them an ancient romantic flavour. Another well-known example is Bilu in the place-names Kfar Bilu and the Bilu crossroads near Gedera, a settlement founded by ten Biluim, nine men and one woman, in 1884. The Biluim were a group of secular pioneers who took their name from Isaiah, an acronym derived from four words in 2.4: bet Ya'akov leku venelkd ('house of Jacob, come on let's go'). It is taken out of context in that it stops short before be-'or Yhwh ('in the light of the Lord'), but firmly associated with the preceding prophecy of all the nations going up to Zion. Their motto comes from Isaiah 60: The little one shall become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation'; and their constitution uses other Isaianic language in its vision of the future restoration of Israel. Incidentally Hebrew Union College took as its motto the second part of the Bilu verse: 'let us walk in the light of the Lord'. Isaiah also provided the motto of the Tel Aviv harbour authority: 'When you pass through the
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waters I will be with you; and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you' (43.2). Military colleges in Haifa and Tel Aviv have as their motto 'in quietness and in trust shall be your strength' (30.15), and a 'Monument of Peace' set up outside Jerusalem after the Six Day War in June 1967 bears the inscription 'they shall beat their swords into ploughshares' (Isa. 2.4; Mic. 4.3). Uses and Abuses of Isaiah These examples raise many questions about how Isaiah is used in this highly charged context. I offer a few comments on what is by any standard a remarkable phenomenon. I think it can be proved that the language and imagery of Isaiah, not only inspired the Christian Church, but actually helped to shape its early history (Sawyer 1996:242-43). I wonder whether the same is true of the Zionist movement. There is first the way in which Isaianic images were applied to contemporary signs of hope and optimism in nineteenth-century Europe. One of the very earliest Zionist writers, Moses Hess, in his classic Rome and Jerusalem (1862) quoted Isa. 40.1-5 to express his hope that Jewish restoration was at hand and much more. As the Suez canal is the road of civilization being built through the desert, so the Jewish people will be the means whereby civilization will be spread out beyond Europe into the Middle East: 'the rugged shall be made level and the rough places smooth' (Hertzberg 1997: 132-34). The same optimism and confidence can be seen in the writings of another early Zionist, Rabbi Judah Alkalay, who applies a phrase from Isa. 49.9 to the spirit of the times, in particular to the emancipation of the Jews: 'saying to the prisoners, "Go free!'" (Ravitzky 1996: 27). The vision of universal peace and justice at the beginning of Isaiah 2 is another passage often quoted in this context. Solomon Schechter, one of the early leaders of Conservative Judaism, based his universalist understanding of Zionism on v. 3: 'out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem' (Hertzberg 1997: 512); and Ben Gurion used it to prove that the Jews were the 'first to see the vision of a new human society' (Hertzberg 1997:607). In contrast Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a science professor at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, argued that that this is completely wrong. The Jews have no mission: that is God's task. Jews have one task and that is to be 'a kingdom of priests and a holy nation', not missionaries. Isaiah's 'light to the nations' is God's light not missionary preaching. Heretics from the apostle Paul to Ben Gurion have
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got it wrong: they want to cast off the yoke of the Torah and substitute for it some abstract sense of missionary vocation to the world (Dorff and Newman 1999: 454). Rav Kook (1865-1935), first Chief Rabbi in Palestine, cited 41.4 to urge his followers to take their time—not to rush, not to 'force the hour': '(I am the Lord) who called the generations from the beginning' (Ravitzky 1996: 105). Isaiah 11.9 is another verse given prominence by many. The philosopher David Hartmann, for example, interprets it as a call to spread the Jewish ethic throughout the world: 'for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea'. By contrast Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, Dean of the Kiryat Arba Yeshivah (1983), cited it as scriptural authority for his view that it is the mission of Jews to impose order on the land. For him ha 'aretz is not 'the earth' but Eretz Israel, 'the land of Israel', including South Lebanon; and de'ah 'et-yhwh, 'the knowledge of the Lord', he translates as 'devotion to the Lord', that is to say, devotion to the law. Combining it with 56.7, he reads it as a claim that everyone must accept the authority of God's Temple: 'my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples' (Ravitzky 1996: 84). For Rabbi Tzevi Yehudah Kook (1891-1981), son of Rav Kook and leader of messianic religious Zionists in Israel, the service of the Temple ('avodah) is extended to the work ('avodah) of the State as a whole—'the armies of Israel are the armies of God'. It was actually his father who said that first, but that was long before there was actually a State of Israel in existence, with its own defence forces. Since Maimonides, a verse from the first chapter of Isaiah has often been cited to authorize messianic activism, the restoration of a theocracy and the reconstitution of the Sanhedrin as part of national revival: 'And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, the city of righteousness, the faithful city' (1.26; Ravitzky 1996: 91-92). Isaiah gives authority to those who believe that the State of Israel is part of a divine messianic process leading towards Israel's eventual repentance and final redemption. As Aviezer Ravitzky shows in his Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (1996), such a belief draws its inspiration and its authority from the Bible, and can lead to a form of messianic determinism that leaves little room for moral responsibility. So it comes about that texts of a very different kind are applied—fierce, defiant, bitter texts—to the current situation, by people still holding out in new settlements on the West Bank, swearing never to give up control of Jerusalem, and believing what they are doing is God's work. I cited Rabbi
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Eliezer Waldmann as one example. Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook and his followers provide another. In one text a bitter verse from Isaiah is applied to the situation in post-1967 Israel: 'Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for the uncircumcized and the unclean shall enter you no more' (52.1; cited in Prior 1999: 93). In this view Christians, Muslims and 'the uncircumcized and the unclean' in general have no place in Israel, the holy land, 'the pedestal of God's throne in this world' as his father called it. But unlike his father (Dorff and Newman 1999:66-71), he believed, on the basis of another verse from Isaiah (43.21), that there was no need for repentance, teshuvah: it was by divine decree that historical redemption was coming to pass and the ingathering of the exiles was a reality (Ravitzky 1996: 142). It took many centuries for scholars to recognize the extent to which the Bible had been used by Christians—and by no means only Christian extremists—to authorize social injustice, hatred, oppression and even violence. The Jews, alongside heretics, blacks, women and the poor, have been the victims of Christian biblical interpretation. I have collected hundreds of examples of anti-Jewish uses of Isaiah (Sawyer 1996: 10625). From New Testament times Isaiah, more than any other biblical text, provided the Church with scriptural authority to hurl at the Jews every kind of insult. If their own prophet criticized them for their blindness (Isa. 6.9-10), their incredulity (65.2) and their deicide ('your hands are filled with blood', 1.15; cf. Mt. 27.25), then the Church had a right to do that too. When Justin Martyr (c. 100-165), John Chrysostom (c. 347-407), Augustine (354-430), Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) and many others called the Jews 'rulers of Sodom' (1.9), 'dogs' (56.10) and 'drunkards' (29.9), and accused them of'blindness' (6.9-10), 'obstinacy' (65.2) and 'treachery' (3.9-11), they quoted Isaiah. When they wanted to say that it was their own fault that they had been rejected (29.13-14), their cities destroyed (3.11), their lives ruined (57.1-4), they cited Isaiah. In no way can the history of Jewish uses of scripture be compared to such a catalogue of Christian anti-Jewish polemic, but I have to admit that my earlier observations on Isaiah's role in the history of modern Zionism were restricted to what I believe were wholly innocent uses of scripture to inspire and enrich the lives of those fleeing from persecution in Europe and struggling to start a new life in Palestine. I was in that respect overlooking the implications of such uses of the Bible for the indigenous population of Palestine. I had not come across, or indeed looked for, examples of morally offensive uses of Isaiah like Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook's one
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cited above. The specific question raised for me by recent critiques of Zionist uses of the Bible, in particular, Michael Prior's two recent books The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique (1997) and Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry (1999), is: how can we distinguish between innocent uses of Isaiah and morally offensive ones? Sometimes it may be clear enough, but not always. Let me look at two examples. The first is Rishon LeTzion, 'first to Zion' (Isa. 41.27), the name of an early Jewish settlement in Palestine, established by Russians in 1882 (41.27). Are we to see this as a claim by those settlers to the right to take over Palestinian land? 'We were here first—we were here before you...' Or was it a reference to the fact that those Russian settlers were among the first of the European Jews to arrive in Palestine? No doubt a political, colonial gloss could be put on the name, but unless there is good evidence for such an interpretation, we should recognize that Rishon LeTzion is far more often associated with Baron Rothschild and the wine-trade than with anything political, and it would be unfair to read anything else into the name without first carefully investigating its origin and usage. Another example comes from post-1967 Gaza where there is a Jewish settlement called Morag which means 'a threshing sledge' (41.15). Does this name suggest power, defiance, even vengeance as it does in its original context ('new sharp, having teeth.. .you shall thresh the mountains and crush them...')? Or is it God's answer to Israel's fear ('fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel, I will help you, says the Lord')? Or is it a reference to the settlers' determination to tackle agricultural work, to exchange their pens or type-writers or scalpels for agricultural implements? Whether or not we could discover what the original planners believed when they chose the name, religious fanatics like Rabbi Zvi YehudahKook (1891-1981) and the GushEmunim could certainly have used it in a violent, aggressive sense to bolster up their messianic plans for the expansion of the 'holy and exalted state of Israel'. As we have seen, Isaiah can certainly be used to fuel violent and aggressive aims and objectives: there is plenty of violence and vengefulness in Isaiah. But whether and to what extent it has been used in that way, and precisely by whom, is not so easy to establish. It is unscholarly and dangerous to generalize. In any case there are plenty of Jewish religious writers, following in the footsteps of Rav Kook, whose call for repentance we have already mentioned, who condemn nationalist triumphalism. The mainstream philosopher David Hartman is one who calls for a new agenda characterized by pluralism, self-judgment and love. In his appeal to 'covenantal Jews',
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as he calls them in his best known book The Living Covenant (1997), he quotes a remarkable verse from Isaiah, already given profound significance by Maimonides: 'You are my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified' (49.3). We shall build our Judaic society, he says, not by dogmatism and religious coercion, but like the Hasidby means of the compelling example of the way we lead our daily lives (Hartman 1997: 292-93). Similarly the radical Marc Ellis, like Solomon Schechter and Ben Gurion, puts Isa. 2.4, the 'swords into ploughshares' passage, at the centre of his vision for the future, rather than triumphalism (Ellis 1999: 47-51). Conclusion Finally we must remember that there are millions of Jews worldwide as well as in Israel for whom the biblical sentiments and attitudes we have been considering mean virtually nothing. They certainly do not provide scriptural authority for anything. Most Jews, outside the academic world, probably know next to nothing about the Isaianic origin of Israeli placenames, and have never heard of the oratorios mentioned above and have never read Avraham Mapu or Scholem Asch. My work on the Wirkungsgeschichte of Isaiah is first and foremost about Isaiah, and only secondarily on the effect he has had on history and culture, ancient and modern. The interaction between text and culture, however, seems to me to be an absulutely crucial part of our work, and one that we neglect at our peril. So I conclude with a few comments on the place of this kind of material in teaching and research programmes. Should it be left to church historians, linguists, theologians and sociologists or should it be for us biblical experts to tackle? My own view is that it is extremely important for students of the Hebrew Bible to be made aware that what they are studying, especially in a predominantly Christian context, is not only an important part of the history of ancient Israel, but also a vital part of the history of Judaism and Christianity, and especially in relation to Christian attitudes to Judaism and the Jews. This is already admitted in commentaries on Isa. 7.14 and ch. 53 where much space is often devoted to the Jewish interpretations. But for the past three centuries of modern scholarship, how texts have been interpreted down the ages has been almost totally neglected. Now at last, in a postmodern age, the situation is changing. The study of the reception history or Wirkungsgeschichte of biblical texts down the centuries is becoming more and more popular at all levels and in many institutions.
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In fact there is now as much interest among scholars in reader-response as in authorial intention, and in later contextualization(s) of the biblical texts they study, as in what they originally meant. I have said enough about all this elsewhere, especially in connection with the Blackwell Bible Commentaries project in which I am involved (Sawyer, Kovacs and Rowland 2002-). So let me restrict myself to two final points about this new interest, within the world of biblical studies, in reception history. The first concerns the plurality of meaning: a recognition of the fact that texts have more than one meaning. Not that this is a new idea: both the rabbis and the early Church Fathers knew this well enough. But among modern scientific scholars it is a relatively new idea that biblical interpretation is not a search for the one and only correct meaning of a text, but rather a critical examination of different readings, each in its own context, each with its own nuances and associations, each worthy of careful consideration in its own right. My experience of examining the various meanings a text has had, in its various contexts, Jewish or Christian, Hebrew or Greek or Latin or English, ancient, mediaeval or modern, scientific or prescientific, literal or allegorical, is that it greatly heightens one's awareness of all kinds of nuances and subtleties in the text, most of which I was totally unaware of before. Whether one is trying to get back to an original Hebrew meaning or to ipsissima verba or to how things actually were in eighth-century BCE Jerusalem, or whether one is interested in the meaning of the canonical text in the form it had reached let us say in the early Second Temple Period or in New Testament times—whatever one's interest, the possibilities opened up when one examines the Wirkungsgeschichte of a text are a constant source of interest and inspiration. The other result of more reception history is a greater awareness of the ethical, political and ideological implications of biblical exegesis. With the appearance of ideological criticism, ethical criticism, feminist criticism, post-colonial criticism and the like, alongside form-criticism, source criticism, textual criticism and the other tools of traditional biblical scholarship, abuses such as those I touched upon are exposed and condemned as unethical. Books like The Women's Bible Commentary (Newsom and Ringgren 1992), The Postmodern Bible (Aichele 1995), Sugirtharajah's Postcolonial Bible (1997) and a host of others, are heightening our awareness of what we are doing when we read and interpret the Bible. I have tried to show how some of Isaiah's prophecies of peace, security and a return to Zion were understood, by people who had lived for centuries under persecution and in exile, to be on the point of fulfilment, and that
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the political implications of some Jewish religious radical interpretations (e.g. 41.15,27; 52.1) need careful analysis, not only by historians and sociologists, but also by biblical scholars aware of the Wirkungsgeschichte of the texts they handle.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Aichele, G., et al. (eds.) 1995 The Postmodern Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press). Berkovits, E. 1973 Faith after the Holocaust (New York: Ktav). Carmi, T. (ed.) 1991 The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (London: Allen Lane). Dorff, E.N., and L.E. Newman (eds.) 1999 Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Elbogen, I. 1913 Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History (ET, New York: Jewish Publication Society of America) [= Derjudische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Frankfurt, 1913)]. Ellis, M. O Jerusalem! The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant (Minneapolis: 1999 Fortress Press). Evans, C.A. 1989 To See and Not Perceive: Isaiah 6.9-10 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation (JSOTSup, 64; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Harris, I., S. Mews, P. Morris and J. Shepherd (eds.) 1992 Contemporary Religions: A World Guide (London: Longmans). Hartman, D. A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (Wood1997 stock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing). Hertzberg, A. (ed.) 1997 The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America). Jeffrey, D.L. (ed.) 1992 A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Knibb, M.A. 1985 'The Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah', in OTP, II: 143-76. Mann, J., and I. Sonne, 1940/1960 The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue (2 vols.; Cincinnati: privately published; reprinted: New York: Ktav, 1971) Montefiore, C., and H. Loewe (eds.) 1963 A Rabbinic Anthology (New York: Meridian Books). Neubauer, A., and S.R. Driver 1969 The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters (repr., New York: Ktav).
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Prior, M. 1997 1999 Ravitzky, A. 1996
Sawyer, J.F.A. 1996 Scholem, G. 1971 Singer, I. (ed.) 1892 1901 Spinks, B.D. 1991
The Women's Bible Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press; London: SPCK). The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique (The Biblical Seminar, 48; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry (London: Routledge). Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (ET: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 [Hebrew original: Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1973]). The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The Messianic Idea in Judaism and other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books). Authorised Daily Prayer Book (London: Wertheimer, Lea & Co.). Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk & Wagnall).
The Sanctus in the Eucharistic Prayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sugirtharajah, R. (ed.) 1998 The Postcolonial Bible (The Bible and Colonialism, 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Waldinger, A. 1998 'A Prophecy for the Jews: Isaiahin Yiddishand German', Babel 44.4:316-35.
PROPHETIC INTERCOURSE Francis Landy
This is part of a larger project on the discourse of sexuality in Isaiah 1-12. My thesis is that language and sexuality are metaphors for each other in the book, and that problems of sexuality are also problems of language. I focus here on two episodes. One is the sole narrative representation of intercourse in the whole of the Latter Prophets, the encounter between Isaiah and a prophetess in Isa. 8.1-4. This is an intimate moment in his socalled Memoir, which corresponds to his initiation in ch. 6. Sex, here, is paralleled by an inscription, which is both an epitome of the book and perpetuated in Isaiah's disciples. The second passage is the hymn of praise at the conclusion of the section. The song is projected to or beyond the end of time and predicts an ultimate consummation. But this consummation, which apparently resolves the poetic problems of the book, culminates in a figure of sexual union, in a female voice. Between the female voice and the solitary paternal deity at the beginning of the book, grieving over his waste seed, there is both an incommensurable distance and a dissimulated, ambiguous dialogue, in which misogyny and repudiation is transformed always into nostalgic identification. Robert Carroll knew more about Isaiah, I think, than anyone else, except perhaps Willem Beuken, at least on a poetic level. He knew that the imagery of the book could only be read using what he called 'blindsight', by recognizing that the words always had meanings other than those one expected, and that they could trip one up. For him, they were instruments of opacity and incomprehension, as in Isaiah's commissioning scene. But this process, whereby insight is achieved through a progressive unknowing, defamiliarizing, is only possible, at least for the critic, through the most attentive exegesis. At this, too, Robert was very skilled; he was extraordinarily interested in postmodernism, had a fabulous love of language, and a real pleasure in people. He had paid his debt, he said, to historical criticism, and knew there was something beyond it. But he never
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had time to write what he wanted. For him, too, Isaiah was Blakean, and hence one of the most revolutionary of poets. Robert spent a couple of weeks in Edmonton in the autumn before he died, working very hard, but also, I hope, enjoying himself, though we lost him once in a snowstorm. Many places, especially bibulous ones, are marked by the secret sign of his presence. He found the Irish pub with uncanny instinct. But best of all, at least for me, was a trip through the Rockies in perfect weather. I hope he remembers that too.
I And Yhwh said to me: Take for yourself a large placard, and inscribe on it with a human stylus, For Maher-Shallal-Hash-Baz. And I summoned faithful witnesses, Uriah the priest and Zechariah ben Berechyahu. And I approached the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. And Yhwh said to me, 'Call his name Maher-Shallal-Hash-Baz. For before the child can say 'Father' and 'Mother', one will carry off the wealth/rampart of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of Assyria'. (Isa. 8.1-4)
In 8.1-4 there are two parallel scenes: the writing of a tablet, placard or scroll, and the conception of a son. They are linked by the key phrase and prediction: Maher-Shallal-Hash-Baz ('Hastens-plunder-speeds-spoil'). The question is: what is the relation between sex and writing? 'And Yhwh said to me.' Scholars have long regarded this passage as part of Isaiah's Denkschrift, an autobiographical account composed some time in the prophet's career, comprising 6.1-8.18.1 Some extend it to 9.6, and some see ch. 7 as secondary, because of its third-person narration.2 At any rate, ch. 8 matches ch. 6, by focusing on the experience of the prophet. We expect some kind of continuation of the vision and communication of ch. 6. God speaks to Isaiah, with whom the reader is invited to identify; God impresses and instils his words in him. Isaiah and reader are perhaps tabulae rasae, like the tablet on which Isaiah is instructed to write.3 The intimacy of divine language in humans is linked with that of prophet and prophetess, or any human coupling. The words on the page and the tablet 1. See Barthel 1997: 37-43, for a convenient summary of the development of the Denkschrift hypothesis, and the variety of views as to its extent. See also Laato 1988: 100-102. 2. Barthel 1997: 151-53, who argues that ch. 7 was modelled after ch. 8. For a powerful critique of this supposition, see Blum 1996: 553 n. 22. 3. This is Barthel's interpretation (1997: 185).
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are those that are encoded in the genetic structure and name of the child, whose entrance into language will succeed the fulfilment of the prophecy. There is a transfer from prophet to prophetess; the prophetess is the one in whom the divine word is nurtured. If, in general, the prophet is the matrix for the divine word, that function is now literalized in the woman. The prophet mirrors the divine insemination with which the book of Isaiah opens. Sexuality in the prophetic books is usually fraught with misogyny; it becomes a symbol for the perversion of all human relations, and in particular that of God and humanity. Here, uniquely in the prophetic literature, we have an untroubled sexual encounter. Many identify the prophetess as Isaiah's wife, the mother of ShearYashub4 in 7.3, and correlate her with the HO^U, the 'girl' who is impregnated with the child portent, Immanuel, in 7.14.5 There is a clear parallel with Hosea 1, in which Hosea's three children bear names that signify the destiny of Israel. Here, however, there is no narrative; we know nothing about the relationship. We cannot know if the prophetess is identical to the nnbu, whether Immanuel is Isaiah's child, whether Shear-Yashub has the same mother. Unlike Hosea, there is no sign of denigration, unless the prophetess is assumed to be a cult-prophetess, and this is regarded negatively. Of this we have no evidence.6 If the prophetess is not the prophet's wife, this maybe an extra-marital relationship. If so, no stigma seems to be attached to it. Or is this a single liaison? Is it witnessed by Uriah and Zechariah, and thus granted social legitimation?7 Most commentators link the evidence of Uriah and Zechariah to the first sign and not the second, but there is no justification for this. If the prophetess is the prophet's wife, why is she called the prophetess and not 'my wife '?8 Does intercourse proceed at God's behest or not? 4. Blenkinsopp (2000:238) is an exception. The identification with the prophet's wife is in general unargued. 5. See, e.g., Clements (1980: 88, 95). Gray (1912: 144) thinks that 'prophetess' simply means wife of a prophet, but this is rejected by most recent commentators. 6. See the discussion in Laato 1998:145-46. Wildberger( 1991:337) thinks it possible that she held the position of cult-prophetess in Jerusalem, like Huldah, and dismisses the supposition that her title is simply borrowed from her husband ('Mrs Prophet', as it were). See also Gottwald (1958:44), Jepsen (1960) and Reynolds (1935). 7. Wolf suggests that 8.1-2 is the first part of a marriage ceremony, to which Uriah and Zechariah are witnesses (1972:451-54), and that Isaiah's first wife may have died in childbirth. 8. Werner (1985: 15) postulates that it may have replaced an earlier TO* ('my wife'), as part of a prophetic redaction, but admits that there is little to support this view.
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What is important is self-evidently that she is a prophetess, indeed the prophetess. The union is then between male and female prophet, representatives, it would seem, of male and female prophecy. What the prophetess prophesied is unknown, and excluded by the prescriptions of a male canon. She is a site of sacred power outside the normative male hierarchy. What her relationship is to that authority, whether she is accommodated within it, we do not know. If she is Isaiah's wife, her vocation may imply a complementarity of interest, a spiritual equality. It may be that this is a strange prophetic act, especially if she is a cultic figure, though it is not specifically mandated by God. At any rate, that the one who conceives is a prophetess, and that it is in the text, grants it a symbolic resonance. The child who is born is a child of prophecy. The crossing of gender boundaries maybe correlated with one between different types of prophecy; male and female prophets may have different messages or styles, conforming to gender stereotypes, or different relationships with God. Does a female prophet, for instance, speak for God in a female voice? If God crosses gender boundaries, inhabiting the body of a woman, and in particular the woman Israel, what does the prophet do? Is the prophet in female guise? The intimacy between the prophet and prophetess, silenced by the text, approached only through the euphemism, 'and I approached', an approximation that leaves the conjunction entirely in abeyance, unspoken, so that we never know how close they really get, whether the two languages and experiences meld, recalls Isaiah and God's initiatory encounter in 6.1, 'And I saw my Lord...' Between the transgressive gaze, which leaves that which is seen entirely undisclosed, and sexual privacy, there is perhaps opposition, especially if sex exemplifies the impurity which the prophet laments in 6.5 (especially if it is transgressive sexuality, outside the bounds of a chaste society). Perhaps, however, it communicates God's desire, or the two may be correlated: seeing that which should be concealed is a euphemism for incest. Does the prophetess represent God, or a female aspect of God? The silence of the woman may represent a discourse repressed by the text or subsumed by it. Her relationship to the other women in the text (the daughters of Zion, the seven women of ch. 4, the subject or object of the love song in ch. 5) remains to be determined. She may or may not be all women. But Isaiah's entracte with her, his desire for her, is potentially an opening to the voice of the other. Prophets are ambivalent in gender, marked by sexual anomaly and transference. As poets, they have negative
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capability, the ability to identify with those they describe and evoke. We know nothing, of course, of Isaiah's desire. Perhaps he is motivated by a sexual urge, or a wish to subordinate his to the desire of God, in which case he retains the passive, submissive position that characterizes ch. 6. Perhaps, however, there is a genuine desire for her as another, loved person. What is her desire? The text occludes this question. The prophetess, here, is pure object, someone to be approached, fertilized, and to carry the sign which she does not even name. To grant her a voice, a point of view, a desiring body, would be to permit her subjectivity, and to recognize the fragility of human boundaries. But prophecy is also separation from normal human life and relations. Sex, with his wife or another woman, means participating in the human amorous economy. After his call vision, in which every word is rendered duplicitous, sex, like everything else, is double-edged. Is the word implanted in the womb that of the new age, in which everything turns into its opposite? So that communication between two people, and the erotic drive that sustains it, is miscommunication, and morbid? So the name of the child may suggest. Except that the prophetess is a mirror image of the prophet, and shares his strange language. So theirs is intercourse between two strangenesses. Parallel to the conception of the child is the writing of the tablet: 'Take for yourself a large placard and inscribe on it with a human stylus'. This is a rather enigmatic phrase. The word ]V73 ('placard'), only occurs elsewhere in Isa. 3.23, as part of a list of women's ornaments, and we have no way of knowing if they are related. It looks similar to H72D ('scroll'), but most scholars assume that the inscription was for public display—why else should it be large?—and derive it from the root lib] ('uncover'), referring to its smooth writing surface (Barthel 1997: 184). It may be a synonym for m^ ('tablet'), or differentiated from it materially or formally. It is inscribed with a human stylus or perhaps a chisel; the word Bin is only used elsewhere of Aaron's engraving the Golden Calf (Exod. 32.4). Especially if the placard were to be of wood or stone, the letters would be impressed into the surface; the skill, resistance of the material, and pressure of carving are among the sensory correlates of the action. Carving or chiseling is work in a way that writing on a plain surface is not. The impress of the prophet on the stone or wood corresponds to that of the prophecy in time. Work, as Heidegger argued, requires patience, and
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an evocation of that which is worked.9 The material surface is fractured, acquires depth and human meaning. The prophet himself is evoked as, over and above the message, we see him acting in response to the divine command. The stylus is described as 2713$ ('human'), puzzling commentators; many revocalize it as 271]$ ('irremediable'), which is hardly less perplexing.10 One's reading will accordingly emphasize the human instrumentality of the stylus, or the fixity of the letters. The difficulty of the phrase, our inability to decipher it, contrasts with the etched message and draws attention to the connotations, to its sounds and impressions. It has a surplus meaning, which is carried over to the rest of the passage. For example, the cruelty and inexorability associated with the stylus, if one adopts the reading 271]$ ('irremediable'), will be transferred to the message it writes. Similarly, the reading 271]$ ('human'), may, as Barthel (1997: 185) says, suggest that Isaiah is God's amanuensis, but it also conveys powerfully a sense of human presence.11 271]$ is a poetic word for humanity, that takes us back to our first origins. Writing marks the landscape or time as human; it gives it a name and a destiny. Isaiah's imprint on the blank space preserves an instant, but it also repeats the mark of every human being and it is also repeated, in subsequent readings, becoming figural, typical, and intertextual, that is, part of a text, which it modifies in various ways.12 Isaiah's inscription is not isolated, just as it is not Isaiah's but God's; it has a human pertinence, 9. Heidegger's thoughts on work, the work, and technology, pervade his oeuvre. Essentially, work, and the work of art, calls things into being, so that they are no longer 'things' but presences, evoking human presence (cf., e.g., Heidegger 1975: 15-87). 10. The main lines of interpretation are that: (1) 'human' means 'common', that is, demotic as opposed to hieratic script. However, there is no evidence that there were esoteric sacred scripts in Ancient Israel, and, besides, the stylus is characterized as 'human'; (2) that, if revocalized as E713K, it means 'indelible'. This does not, however, accord well with the usual meaning ofBflJS, which is 'incurable'; (3) that it means 'disaster' (Kaiser 1983: 178; Wildberger 1991: 331-32); (4) that 27138 be derived from an Akkadian root 'enesu ('to be weak'), and refer to a flexible pen; it is difficult to reconcile this with meaning of Din as 'stylus' or 'chisel' (Talmage 1967); and (5) that it have metaphorical sense, referring to the prophetic transmission of the divine command (Barthel 1997: 185). This, however, cannot be the literal meaning of the phrase in the narrative context. 11. See also Werner 1985: 15 and Kaiser 1983: 178. 12. 'Recurrent and iterable, (the graphic mark) carries literal singularity into figurality' (Derrida 1995: 20).
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as, Enosh-like, it bears witness to human instability and anxiety.13 Moreover, it encodes the future into the present; the future, when it happens, will be the fulfilment of its anticipation in the text. The text is repeated, changing its signification, and pre-empts repetition, since the future is inherent in the past. Its theme is the foreshortening of time. But time will not be hurried. Parallel to the writing of the text is the impregnation of the woman. The prophet does his work (how?), entering or at least approaching the strange nexus of male-female relations, but the seed takes its time, expressed by the formulaic 'and she conceived and bore a son'. The analogy between pen and penis is both explicit and ironic. The human or male stylus is a premonitory displacement of the silenced and discreet penis, embedded tactfully in a textual elision. Pleasure, male or female, is out of the question. But perhaps the whole text is a transcription or sublimation of this pleasure. The child is born, bearing its traces, the entire interaction indeed of father and mother, into an erotic as well as cultural matrix. But Eros, as we have seen, is ambiguous, as is the child; that which is born into the culture signifies its destruction, even if it is deferred or displaced. The penis writes in the womb, which is equivalent to the blank slate of v. 1. The phallocentric hegemony of writing would seem to be confirmed; the text, and its reflex in the sexual act, is invested with an impersonal, transcendent authority. It becomes part of the symbolic and material structure of the world, which is overtly patriarchal. The correlation between stylus and penis would make the latter incisive, and, if one adopts the reading of 2713 N for 27138, cruel. Sex is violation or, at the least, associated with violence. The identification is not so simple. I have already noted the transfer between prophet and prophetess, and that the prophet, obedient to God's command, is in a passive, stereotypically feminine, position. All messages and communications are double-edged, especially between two prophets and two species of prophecy. The prophetess is at least equivalent to the prophet, subverting, appropriating and changing his language. Writing too is duplicitous; it sustains but also questions the established order, including the patriarchal one. This is particularly true of prophetic and poetic texts. The |V^ ('placard') is the site of revelation, punning on the word rhl ('reveal'). It opens up a space for revelation, as much to the prophet as to his audience. The blank surface, the pure presence/absence
13. The poetic associations of the word 2J1DN (enosh) overwhelmingly stress human frailty (e.g. Ps. 8.5). Enosh, as Adam's grandson, is a figure for human mortality.
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which is revealed, is covered over, fractured and disrupted by writing whose meaning is never altogether clear. The message is Maher-Shallal-Hash-Baz ('Hastens-plunder-speedsspoil'). We do not know whether it was meant to be displayed publically, or what it was meant to communicate or miscommunicate, in line with Isaiah's paradoxical commission in 6.10. The placard is clear, announcing the imminence of the disaster. The compression of the message, contracting from the disyllabic T72) TID ('hastens plunder') to the monosyllabic O 2)n ('speeds spoil'), corresponds to the foreshortening of time and the exigency of the pronouncement. A text on a placard, like a slogan, is Isaiah's discourse at one remove; in it, people can see, reduced to six syllables, the essence of his prophecy. It is another kind of strange speech and symbolic gesture. The words are both indices of their source, and disseminate in the world and the book. In particular, TD DPI ('speeds spoil'), is synonymously parallel with bbc "lilD ('hastens plunder'); if, in biblical poetry, the B line often intensifies and goes beyond the A one,14 here the effect is one of concentration. H &1 is one of the shortest possible lines in Hebrew biblical poetry, packed with the whole weight of impending violence.15 Poetic order is inversely proportional to the destructive energy it transmits; it is the agent of, contains and shapes, Thanatos. The words T2 2J1, with their accumulation of fricatives and continuants, mimic cacophany. Each is isolated yet bound together through half-rhyme across a space, which mirrors the world that is to be destroyed. The caesura between the words may represent a point of rupture, that which is beyond the letters and articulates them, or fragments them. Letters open gaps, discontinuities, in the surface of the placard, which is the repository of all possible meanings. If the word ]V72 puns with that for revelation, that which is revealed is a divine absence, or a God who opens up absence in the world. The slogan is repeated, or fulfilled, in the naming of the child in v. 3; the prefix b ('to/for/concerning'), which introduces it in v. 1, may be a performative—the prophet writes the message in order to hasten the devastation it predicts—or it may indicate a destination. The placard would then be a sign of the sign, whose meaning, for the moment, can only be enigmatic. 14. See Kugel 1981: 8-11 and Alter 1985: 3-26. 15. For terseness as a feature of biblical poetry, inducing a gnomic quality, see Kugel 1981: 87-94. There is considerable debate about the formal constraints on biblical poetry, and in particular whether it allows for single-unit cola (cf. Korpel and de Moor 1988: 7, as against van Grol 1992: 89).
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The connection between the child and the script suggests that he is already written, that the fate he embodies precedes its advent, no matter how quickly it comes, that the conception of the child anticipates the act that consummates it. God is a third party, a transcendent and universal authority, from which the child and its contextual significance proceed. Through the cracks and fissures of the placard, God inserts himself into the womb. Except that, as we have seen, God is ambivalent, identified with the prophet and prophetess as well as conditioning them; the prophetess may speak for a female aspect of God. Further, the language is an anti-language, which unmakes as well as implants meaning, so that God's creation of the child is also its antithesis. If God, as the guarantor of social and symbolic order, is the author of its destruction, his language, as in the prophet's commission in 6.9-10, bears with it the possibility of asymbolia, the erasure of language. The name of the child is a mirror, which undoes that of the father. The two witnesses, Uriah and Zechariah, may represent sacred and political order respectively, as many commentators have said.16 Their designation as 'faithful' witnesses grants them a stability which contrasts with the 'unfaithfulness' of Ahaz in the previous chapter. They perhaps comprise a potential, elements in the body politic, which could stave off catastrophe, and thus have an ironic function. They recall the heavens and the earth in 1.2, which witness to Israel's filial rebellion. Like the heavens and the earth, they preside over complementary aspects of Israel's social and therefore sacred world. But if they are faithful, it means that Israel is not so faithless after all. They witness, however, to the seed of dissolution of the world they faithfully preserve. Witnesses, especially faithful ones, disinterestedly attest to the truth. The fact that they witness represents a hope that there will be survivors to give evidence; it projects the world of Isaiah beyond catastrophe. A child's name has a cultural value, expressing hope or faith. Isaiah ('Yhwh saves') and Immanuel ('God is with us') are good examples. A child with an ill-omened name, like Maher-Shallal-Hash-Baz, is the opposite of a child's usual associations with joy and social continuance. Only a
16. Uriah the priest appears in 2 Kgs 16.10, while Ahaz's father-in-law is named as Zechariah in 2 Kgs 18.2. (Barthel 1997: 196-97; Blenkinsopp 2000:238). Van Wieringen (1998: 96 n. 159) attributes the entire speech to God, on the grounds of the jussive construction (jHKrTD), , but this is unnecessary (cf., e.g., Blenkinsopp 2000: 138, who translates 'notarized'), as well as difficult to conceive.
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churlish parent could give such a name, quite apart from its being a mouthful. What did his friends call him? What did other people think? The prophetess gives birth to plunder and spoil, metonyms for the devastation of city and country. Given the feminine persona of political entities, plunder and spoil are figures of rape. That which is bom in the womb is that which eviscerates the womb. It is a horrible fantasy, in which the woman is textually framed by two exemplars of male violence: Yhwh in v. 1 and the king of Assyria in v. 4. But it also counters the violence in two ways. The first is that it deflects it onto Damascus and Samaria, as in 7.15. The womb that represents the country is spared, at least for the time being. This is not of great comfort, and certainly not for the inhabitants of Damascus and Samaria. The second way is that the child is a real child, who says 'Daddy, Mummy', presumably with affection, and who is nurtured by its parents. Its growth coincides with and outlasts the fulfilment of the symbolic significance of its name. Alongside the child as the incarnation of the divine script that violates its mother, we have mother and father cooperating in the entrance of the child into language. The script is rewritten, and the child writes it. Finally, both phalli are susceptible of inversion and subversion. Assyria is the object of polemic and satire, for instance in ch. 10, while Yhwh envisages and is ultimately responsible for the child's future as well as for the destructive message he brings. Yhwh's speech, as we have seen, is enigmatic and duplicitous, identified with the systematic negation and ambiguity of prophetic language. The prophetess enacts God as matrix as well as that which is violated by God. The child as sign embodies an antilanguage, but one that is embedded in a continuing and open communication.
II And you shall say in that day, I will thank you, Yhwh, for you were angry with me; you retract your anger17 and you comfort me. Behold the God of my salvation I will trust and I will not fear, for my strength and song/help is Yah Yhwh, and he was for me as a salvation. And you shall draw water in joy from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day, 'Give praise to Yhwh, call upon his name, let his deeds be known among the nations;
17. 'Anger' may also be the subject of this phrase ('your anger has turned back'); there is little to choose between the two possibilities.
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recount, for his name is exalted. Sing to Yhwh, he has acted gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout and exult, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. (Isa. 12)
The climax of chs. 1-12 is a song, a response to the transformation of reality in ch. 11. The song is both very traditional and represents the language of the new age, presumably characterized by clarity as well as communication. It is a song of the future, framed by the repeated 'And you shall say in that day', and hence projected beyond the boundaries of the present, with its deceptive language. The speech closes with the anticipation of another speech, that will supersede it. As song, moreover, it is a special use of language, for individual or collective celebration. It is, in particular, liturgical language, reminiscent of many Psalms, virtually a patchwork of quotations.18 In response to his feats described at the end of ch. 11, the worshippers praise God in his Temple. The psalm presupposes a liturgical setting, an enclosure in sacred time and space. It is also a reversion to the past, as evidenced by the citation of the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15: 'My strength and my song/help is Yah, and he was for me a salvation' (v. 2). The future will recapitulate the past, just as the language of Psalms suggests an ever-repeated consummation in the present. The language of the new age is poetically conservative, identical to the timeless language of the Temple. This suggests a link with the call-vision of ch. 6.19 The chapter takes place in the Temple, and is characterized by the isolation of God and the prophet in their respective communities, the impurity of human speech compared to that of the divine beings, and the transmission of the paradoxical commission not to communicate. Chapter 12 is set beyond the threshold, marked by the formulaic 'on that day' and Isaiah's question 'Until when?' (6.11), when the obfuscatory commission will cease to operate. The prophet is part of a community, at whose centre is God. Their speech is holy, and corresponds to that of the seraphim in 6.3; like them, they perceive God's renown encompassing the entire earth. The psalm urges that the withheld knowledge become universal. At the centre and periphery of the section, then, are two scenes located in the Temple, the 18. In addition to the citation of Exod. 15.2, v. 4 is identical to Ps. 105.1. For a particularly insightful discussion of the relationship of quotation to the message of the book in Isa. 12,seeMathys 1994:181-200. Mathys regards Isa. 12 as a condensation of the entire book of Isaiah. 19. The connnection with ch. 6 is made by van Wieringen (1997: 167, 171; 1998: 235,240-41), who also connects it to Isa. 40.1-11 (1997:171 n. 64; 1998: 240 n. 359).
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sacred nucleus of Israel. In one, the initiatory encounter, the Temple is the site of God's despair, discontinuity between heaven and earth, and the source of disinformation. In the other, the Temple is the scene of fulfilment, of the prophet's career as well as Israel's history. The song promotes unanimity; the voices of the entire community, as well as all the messages of the book, converge on this summation. The words of the song, too, are subsumed in praise. Poetic unity is accompanied by, is the effect of, the union of the protagonists in a sexual embrace. This is suggested by the switch of gender from the male addressees of w. 1-5 to the female ]VU raftr ('inhabitant of Zion') in v. 6: 'Shout and exult, O inhabitant of Zion, because great in your midst is the holy one of Israel' .20 This is the culmination of the sexual motif in the book so far, beginning with the daughter of Zion in 1.8. The holinesss of God, which signifies his transcendence in 6.3, is now immanent in the midst of the ]VH mErr ('the inhabitant of Zion'). biTlS? 'CTlp ('the holy one of Israel'), is both grammatically masculine and associated with God's paternity in 1.4, his exaltation in 5.16, and his dependability in 10.20. The closest correlate of our verse is, however, 6.13, in which embedded in the female stump (TirmD) is the 2hp ITIT ('the holy seed'). There the holy seed is the returned remnant, which incorporates the holiness celebrated in the seraphim's song; here it is God himself. The link between chs. 6 and 12 is thus confirmed. But the holy seed has now grown: 'for great in your midst is the holy one of Israel'. In response, the 'inhabitant of Zion' shouts and exults (^"Tl ""biTJJ), both verbs connotating jouissance, sexual and/or mystical, induced by the presence of God in their midst.21 In Song 8.13, the one 'who sits/dwells in gardens' (D^D fQCTrn) is the woman, whose voice is equivalent to the voice of the poem, of which the garden is one metaphor.22 The dweller among gardens inhabits poetic and erotic space from which the lover of the Song is excluded. Here the dweller/one who sits in Zion represents the settled or resettled city, and
20. McEvenue (1997: 216) notes that the address supposes a female audience, which he considers anticipates the female herald of Zion in 40.6-9, in support of his thesis that the author of Second Isaiah was a woman. 21. 12.6 is paralleled by Zeph. 3.14-15, in which a female persona of Zion ('the daughter of Zion') rejoices because Yhwh is in her midst. For the comparison, see Mathys 1994: 195-96. 22. For the garden as the garden of poetry, see Landy 1983: 206.
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the woman waiting for her husband or lover.23 God, and the poem, have come home. It contrasts with the figure of the city as widow, sitting on the earth, in 3.26. The space is sacred, as is evident from the evocation of the sacred mountain, Zion; it is the Temple filled with Psalms, and especially this Psalm (or double Psalm) of rejoicing.24 The Temple nurtures and incorporates God; God may be the woman's son as well as lover. The passivity of the sitting woman, conventional as it is, is dynamic, since from there the knowledge of God spreads through the whole earth (v. 5). It is a metaphor for gestation or sexual climax (or even position). The woman's space becomes divine space. The poem's problems seem to be resolved. Except, who is this woman? Who says, 'Shout and exult'? Is it the prophet, and whatever voices he transmits? Is it the anonymous group he addresses in vv. 1 and 4? In that case, the 'inhabitant of Zion' is the equally anonymous addressee of their exhortation. Or else they are the woman herself. In any case, the voice shifts, from the prophet to the singular addressee of v. 1, to the plural one of v. 4, and then to the woman in v. 6. There are further difficulties. Is the second person plural of v. 3 ('And you shall draw water in gladness') identical to that in v. 4? Is v. 3 part of the first-person discourse in vv. 1 -2, or is it an independent interjection by the prophet?25 If the former, then the speech in v. 4 is an inset quotation: the prophet quotes the speaker in v. 1 quoting the speakers in v. 4, who in turn call on others to sing to God. Even odder, all these speeches are invented by the prophet; he imagines or anticipates the first speaker imagining or anticipating the second speaker, and so on. Of course, all these voices can be conflated: the first speaker is a member of the wider
23. Schmitt(1997:102), drawing on Gottwald's claim (1979: 515-30) that in various contexts yosheb is a metonym for a ruler ('one who sits on a throne'), argues that yoshebet here means 'queen'. The evidence, however, both here and in Gottwald's extended survey, is slight. More accurately, Frymer-Kensky (1992:173) holds that the expression refers to 'the essence of the city seen as a female, the immanent presence that lives within its walls'. 24. Prinsloo (1992) argues that ch. 12 is a single poem, in contrast to those who see it as consisting of two Psalms (cf. e.g. Blenkinsopp 2000: 269-70, who describes it first as containing two 'mini-Psalms' and subsequently as a 'two part composition'). 25. Van Wieringen (1997:154; 1998: 219) excludes this possibility, because of the double grammatical shift, from singular to plural, and {mmyiqtol to qatal tense. This does not seem to me to be a compelling argument. Why should a speaker not change number and tense within the same discourse?
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community in v. 4, and they concomitantly are the objects as well as the subjects of the imperatives in vv. 4-5. The voice, however, even if selfreflexive, still passes from one performer to the other, from the soloist to the chorus, which subdivides, perhaps antiphonally, and thence to the female lead. Their chain of voices in unison recalls the song of the seraphim in 6.3, in which one called to the other. The human community matches the heavenly one. The consummation, however, betrays through its insistence a certain anxiety. We do not hear the woman's voice; we only hear the male voices, which may or may not be identified with it, urging it to 'shout and exult'. The wish that the woman experience or at least act out jouissance corresponds to the equally importunate demand that they themselves, or their counterpart, should give thanks to God, call upon his name, and so on. They exercise all their vocal resources in trying to spread his fame, and equally, voyeuristically, in egging on the woman. Whether they succeed, and whether the woman does comply, is unknown. The prophet is identified with, and supplanted by, the community; the estrangement of ch. 6 is over. His displacement, however, makes of this passage something of a supplement. Are the songs part of his prophecy or appended to them? Is the female voice in v. 6 his voice, or does it represent some prophetic alterity, as in 5.1? Its relationship to the silenced voice of the prophetess in 8.3 is both one of reversal and confirmation, since the inhabitant of Zion only responds through male impersonators. As we have seen, however, the woman in ch. 8 is not a pure instrument of God's will, and does not simply foster the script implanted in her, both because she is a prophetess and represents an independent source of prophetic authority, and because the child, and she herself as mother, do not conform to script. The joy of the inhabitant of Zion, no matter how stereotyped her persona and how distanced temporally and through verbal displacement, may similarly evade prophetic control, or at the least correspond to a prophetic fantasy of female autonomy and spontaneity. In 7.14, it is the woman who calls the child's name Immanuel, and thereby affirms God's continued commitment to Judah. In 1.8, correspondingly, the daughter of Zion encapsulates the community of survivors in 1.9. Verse 6 corresponds to v. 3, at the end of the first subsection of the poem: 'And you shall draw water in joy from the wells of salvation'. The joy of the inhabitant of Zion encompasses that of the future celebrants,
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perhaps in the water festival of Tabernacles.26 At the centre of the community there are the wells of salvation, a metonymy for God in v. 2, and clearly equivalent to the 'holy one of Israel' in v. 6. In them the holy one of Israel is transmuted into the water that gives life to the community.27 But they are also generative symbols; the female orgasm elicited in v. 6 is elaborated by the collective effort of drawing the water and its effusion in song to the ends of the earth. A well, like the vineyard in 5.1, has feminine connotations, as a source of life embedded in the earth.28 Hence it may represent a feminine aspect of God, especially as the source of salvation. There is, however, something unconvincing about the poem. It tries too hard, with its duple structure and its string of imperatives. The quotation from the Song of the Sea, from the repertoire of ancient triumphs, makes the poet an epigone, just as the eschatological feats of 11.11-16 repeat those of Exodus. Endzeit ist Urzeit, but with the difference that it is secondary, that repetition can only recollect the original experience. It can only be pastiche, as if the poet had no resources to express salvation except the words of another poet. The belatedness of the poem is evident from the constant changes of rhythm and theme. From the recall of the divine wrath against the poet we turn to his declaration of faith, the future water drawing, and thence to the proclamation of his deeds among the nations. The very insistence on the necessity of making his deeds known, however, suggests that they are not, that, for instance, his name is not exalted. The Song of the Sea is an affirmation of God's virility; his masculinity is hardly ever more explicit or uninflected. Chapter 12 of Isaiah is a poem of desire, for the incorporation of the masculine in the feminine or vice versa, and for feminine fulfilment. The desire of Isaiah 12 for the Song of the Sea, for the confidence expressed, for instance, by 'Behold, the God of my salvation I will trust and will not fear' (v. 2a), is thus analogous to that represented by the poem. Between the two there is incommensurability; one cannot actually cross the gap and the fraught history that constitutes it. The alternation of divine anger and comfort to which the poet is subject
26. Blenkinsopp (2000: 260) makes the connection with Tabernacles, as does Wildberger (1991: 505). Sawyer (1984: 128), however, associates it with Passover, because of the references to the Exodus in the immediately preceding context. Werner (1982: 166) suggests a connection with the rejected waters of Shiloah in 8.6. 27. Mathys (1994:188-89) sees the 'wells of salvation' as a metaphor for the book of Isaiah, reinforced by the pun between 'salvation' (jHKr) and Isaiah (jHKrT0. 28. See, e.g., Song 4.12 and Prov. 5.5.
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is a microcosm of the experience of the book as a whole,29 but also abstracted from it, in the timeless, and stereotypical, posture of the psalmist for whom personal suffering is transformed into joy. The individual is a collective representation, or, more precisely, a rhetorical stance and jumping-off point for the poem which is utterly ahistorical. Whether or not the poet is a persona or projection of the prophet,30 there is still distantiation and fragmentation. Similarly, the poet only experiences the consummation of the dweller of Zion and of the holy one of Israel at one remove, even if he participates in it, drawing up poetic waters, for instance, from the wells of salvation. The ending cannot but be ambiguous and unresolved. It is not, however, an ending. The book continues, and the song is recollected and reworked in various forms, for instance by the prostitute's song at the end of the Oracles against the Nations in ch. 23. Moreover, the song, with its desire for the phallus, also celebrates its presence in Zion. Like the psalms it adduces, it is a realized eschatology. The future is inserted into the present, into the voices imagining, rehearsing their future song, just as we readers join in the performance and defer it ever further. But it is also beyond the threshold, the intimation of a song which can only be alluded to in the book, just as it begins with a vision which precedes it. The vision is of the end, of the song which is beyond the end, and in which vision dissolves.
29. See Mathys 1994: 185-88, 197. 30. Beuken (1989:414) argues that the addressee of 12.1 is the prophet; the prophet, however, is representative of the community, and a metonymy for the book named after him. Van Wieringen (1997: 163-67) suggests two reading options. One is that the speaker is God, addressing the prophet; the other that it is the prophet, whose audience is the ideal king of 11.1. Ackroyd (1987: 96) also identifies the speaker of 12.1 b-2 as the king, whose restoration is predicted in the previous chapter. This seems to me to be over-specific; there is no indication otherwise that the king is being addressed here, and the identification detracts from the anonymity of the addressee, who merges with the figure of the reader.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackroyd, P.R. 1987
Alter, R. 1985 Barthel, J. 1997
'Isaiah 1-12: Presentation of a Prophet', in idem, Studies in the Religious Tradition of the Old Testament (London: SCM Press): 79-104. (First published in Congress Volume, Gottingen, 1977 [VTSup, 29; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978]: 16-48.) The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books). Prophetenwort und Geschichte: Die Jesajauberlieferung in Jes 6-8 und 28-31 (FAT, 19; Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck]).
Beuken, W.A.M. 1989 'Servant and Herald of Good Tidings: Isaiah 61 as an Interpretation of Isaiah 40-55', in J. Vermeylen (ed.), The Book of Isaiah/Le Livre d'isaie: Les Oracles et Leurs Relectures: Unite et Complexite de L 'Ouvrage (Leuven: Peeters):411-42. Blenkinsopp, J. 2000 Isaiah 139 (AB, 19; New York: Doubleday) Blum, E. 1996-97 'Jesajas Prophetisches Testament: Beobachtungen zu Jes 1-11', ZAW108: 547-68 (Part 1) and ZAW 109: 12-29 (Part 2). Broyles, C., and C.A. Evans (eds.) 1997 Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Carroll, R.P. 1995 'Revisionings: Echoes and Traces of Isaiah in the Poetry of William Blake' in J. Davies, G. Harvey and W.G.E. Watson (eds.), Words Remembered, Texts Renewed: Essays in Honour of John F.A. Sawyer (JSOTSup, 195; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 226-41. 1997 'Blindness and the Vision Thing: Blindness and Insight in the Book of Isaiah', in Broyles and Evans (eds.), 1997: 79-93. Clements, R.E. 1980 Isaiah 1-39 (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Derrida, J. 1995 Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (trans. Eric Lenowitz; Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Frymer-Kensky, T. 1992 In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press). Gottwald, N.K. 1958 'Immanuel as the Prophet's Son', VT 8: 36-47. 1979 The Tribes ofYahweh (Maryknoll: Orbis Books). Gray, G.B. 1912 Isaiah 1-XXVII (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark).
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Grol, H.W.M. van 1992 'Clause, Sentence, and Versification: A Theoretical and Practical Exploration of the Role of Syntax in Versification, with Isaiah 5,1-7 as Example', in E. Talstra and A.L.H.M. van Wieringen (eds.), A Prophet on the Screen: Computerized Description and Literary Interpretation of Isaianic Texts (Amsterdam: VU University Press): 70-117. Heidegger, M. 1975 Poetry, Language, Thought (trans. Albert Hofstadter; New York: Harper & Row). Kugel, J. 1981 The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven: Yale University Press). Jepsen,A. 1960 'Die Nebiah in Jes 8.2', ZAW12: 267-68. Kaiser, O. 1983 Isaiah 1-12 (trans. John Bowden; OTL; London: SCM Press). Korpel, M., and J.C. de Moor 1988 'Fundamentals of Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetry', in M. Korpel and J.C. de Moor (eds.), The Structural Analysis of Biblical and Canaanite Poetry (JSOTSup, 74; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 1-61. Laato, A. 1988 Who is Immanuel? The Rise and the Foundering of Isaiah's Messianic Expectations (Abo: Abo Akademis Forlag). 1998 'About Zion I will not Be Silent': The Book of Isaiah as an Ideological Unity (CB, 44; Stockholm: Gleerup). Landy, F. 1983 Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs (Bible and Literature Series, 7; Sheffield: Almond Press). 2000 'Ghostwriting Isaiah', in idem, Beauty and the Enigma and Other Essays on the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 312; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 392-413. (Repr. in P.R. Davies [ed.], First Person: Essays in Biblical Autobiography [The Biblical Seminar, 81; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002]: 93-114). Mathys, H.-P. 1994 Dichter and Beler: Theologen aus spatalttestmantlicher Zeit (OBO, 132; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Freiburg: Universitatsverlag). McEvenue, S. 1997 'Who was Second Isaiah?', in van Ruiten and Vervenne (eds.), 1997:213-22. Prinsloo, W.S. 1992 'Isaiah 12: One, Two, or Three Songs?', in K.D. Schunk and M. Augustin (eds.), GoldeneApfel in silberne Schalen (Xlllth IOSOT Congress Volume; Frankfurt: Peter Lang): 25-33. Reynolds, C.B. 1935 'Isaiah's Wife', JTS 36: 182-85. Ruiten, J., van, and M. Vervenne (eds.) 1997 Studies in the Book of Isaiah: Festschrift Willem A.M. Beuken (Leuven: Peelers).
LANDY Prophetic Intercourse Sawyer J.F.A. 1984 Schmitt, JJ. 1997 Talmage, F. 1 9 6 Werner, W. 1982
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Isaiah, I (Philadelphia: Westminster Press). 'The City as Woman in Isaiah 1-39', in Broyles and Evans (eds.), 1997: 95-120. jHKrTDU7in Isaiah 8.\\HTR 60: 465-68.
Eschatologische Texte in Jesaja 1-39: Messias, Heiliger Rest, Volker (FzB, 46; Wiirzburg: Echter Verlag). 1985 ' Vom Prophetenwort zur Prophetentheologie: ein redaktionskritischer VersuchzuJes 6,1-8,18', 5ZNS 29: 1-30. Wieringen, A.L.H.M., van 1997 'Isaiah 12.1-6: A Domain and Communication Analysis', in van Ruiten and Vervenne (eds.), 1997:149-72. 1998 The Implied Reader in Isaiah 6-12 (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Wildberger, H. 1991 Isaiah 1-12 (trans. Thomas H. Trapp; Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Wolf, H.M. 1972 'A Solution to the Immanuel Prophecy in Isaiah 7.14-8.22', JBL 91:449-56.
THE LAW OF MOSES AS A FENCE AND A FOUNTAIN Johann Cook
Introduction The role and function of the law of Moses in the inter-testamental/early Judaic period has not been researched extensively. This applies especially to two prominent textual corpora, the LXX and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both collections are nevertheless ready for such analyses. The publication programme of the former is speeding up, whereas many of the Qumran wisdom texts, that contain reflection on the law, have been published of lately. This contribution aims at analyzing aspects of the role and function of the Tor at Moshe in the LXX (Proverbs and the Letter of Aristeas), on the one hand and the Dead Sea Scrolls, noteably the Damascus Document, on the other hand. As will soon become clear these passages contain ideological traditions concerning the law. I commence with the LXX. The Law of Moses in the LXX The Book of Proverbs The person(s) responsible for this translated unit had a rather systematic approach towards specific religious matters (Cook 1997:316). One example is the question of contrasts/dualisms. The Greek version contains more dualisms than is found in the Hebrew. Chapter 2, for instance, is neatly divided into two realms, that of the good (vv. 1-12) and that of the evil (w. 13-22). I have also demonstrated that the strange women in chs. 1-9 are systematically interpreted symbolically as a metaphor for foreign wisdom, namely the Hellenism of the day (Cook 1999:459). However, in this contribution I want to concentrate on the law of Moses. I detected the same systematical approach toward it in LXX Proverbs (Cook 1994:459). First, various lexemes are used to describe the law of Moses. The Hebrew lexeme i~mn occurs in 12 passages and is rendered differently: 1.8
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(6Eauous); 3.1 (VOMIUCOV); 4.2 (vouos); 6.20 (0so|jous) and v. 23 (vopos); 7.2 (AoyousO; 13.14 (vojjos); 28.4 (voiaos), v. 7 (v6ijo$-) and v. 9 (VOMO?); 29.18 (VOMOS) and 31.25 (EVVOHCOS). The translator distinguishes between parental instructions and the law of Moses. The latter is referred to in practically all the passages where vopos' acts as equivalent. Second, in addition to these lexemes the Greek noun vouos appears as pluses in comparison to the Hebrew in two passages; Prov. 9.10 and 13.15 which are highly significant. The MT and and LXX versions of 9.10 read:
nra D'Ehp n:m rnrr PKT HCDH rfenn The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy one is insight. apxn aortas 4>6(3os Kupiou KCU (3ouXr) ayicov auv£ai$ TO yap yvcovcu UOMOV Siavoias EOTIV cxya0fjsThe beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord And the counsels of saints is understanding, For to know the law is the sign of a sound mind,
And again in Prov. 13.15:
•rpN Q'-m -p-n irrjir iiB^atB Good sense wins favour, but the way of the faithless is their ruin. ovjvsais aya6ri SiScoaiv x^P'v TO 6s yvcovai v6|jov Siauoia? SOTIU ayaSfjs bSo'i SE KaTa<J>povouvTcov ev aircoXsia Sound discretion gives favour, And to know the law is the sign of a sound mind, But the ways of scorners end in destruction.
Thus these passages have an identical addition (to know the law is the sign of a sound mind) which is part of the systematic application of exegetical perspectives by the translator. I have argued that it became necessary in the wake of a specific historical situation to stress the importance of the law of Moses. The translator namely warns the readers of the inherent 'dangers' of foreign wisdom (the Hellenism of the day). One of these prominent dangers was the devaluation of the law of Moses (Cook 1999). Of special significance is the way the law of Moses is depicted in ch. 28. It can be observed in the following translation of LXX Prov. 28.4:
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nn TUT mm *~\w\ stir, ibbrr mm ^TJJ Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law struggle against them. OUTCOS 01 EyxaTaAEiTTovTEs TOV v6|jov EyKco|Jic<£ouaiv aos(3eiav 01 5e ayaircovTEs TOV vopou TT£pt|3a}iAouaiv EOUTOIS TsTxo? Likewise those who forsake the law and praise impious deeds; However, those who love the law build a wall around themselves.
Here the law has a protective function towards the righteous. A similar tradition occurs in the Letter ofAristeas 139: rrEpi4>pa£sv ripas cxSiaKorrois x a ptt£i Kai oiSnpots TEIXEOIV When therefore our lawgiver, equipped by God for insight into all things, has surveyed each particular, hefenced us about -with impregnable palisades and with walls of iron, to the end that we should mingle in no way with any other nations...
This is markedly different from the view found in some later rabbinical writings, for example the Mishna and in even later rabbinical writings such as Ab. 1.1, according to which the torah must be protected ('the latter used to say three things: Be patient in justice, rear many disciples and make a fence around the torah''). The biblical textual background to this interpretation is not that easy to determine. The noun TEIXOS appears in various passages, as follows: '.. .and the water of it was a wall on the right hand and a wall on the left'. (Exod. 14.22,29) '.. .and when we were in the field, they were (soldiers of David) as a wall round us both by night and by day'. (1 Kgdms 25.16) '...the people on the wall'. (2 Chron. 32.18) '...a city whose walls are broken down, and which is unfortified, so is a man who does anything without counsel'. (Prov. 25.28) 'The watchmen that go their rounds in the city found me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me'. (Cant. 5.7) ' If she is a wall, let us build upon her silver bulwarks... I am a wall, and my breasts are as towers'. (Cant. 8.9-10) 'And among the elect was Nehemiah, whose renown is great, who raised up for us the walls that were fallen, and set up the gates and the bars, and raised up our ruins again'. (Sir. 49.13)
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'...and they shall hasten to her walls, and shall prepare their defences'. (Nah. 2.5) '... and I will give in my house and within my walls an honourable place...' (Isa. 56.11) '...and thy walls will be called Salvation'. (Isa. 60.10) '...a brazen wall'. (Jer. 15.20) 'He went about to make a bridge to a certain strong city, which was fenced about with walls'. (2 Mace. 12.13)
The verb TEixiC E | V is also used in this regard: 'an inhabited house in a walled city' (Lev. 5.29); 'walled cities' (Num. 32.17); fortified cities (Hos. 8.14; Ezek. 17.4; 33.27; 1 Chron. 21.3). The Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls At Qumran there are also pertinent interpretations of the law. I have detected two significant traditions in the Damascus Document (CD). In CD 4.12 the following phrases could be an allusion to the torah: 'each man must stand upon his watchtower. The wall is built, the boundary is extended'. This quote is part of a larger context where the 'faithful' Zadok is mentioned as well as the 'sons of Zadok' who are the chosen ones of Israel who are 'called by name' and who arise at the end of days. According to 4.8 there are, moreover, those who entered (the covenant) after them and who 'behave according to the details of the law (minn 27113)'. At 4.12 it is stated that 'there will be no (further) joining the House of Judah, but rather 'each man must stand upon his watchtower: "The wall is built, the boundary is extended"'. Unfortunately this text seems to have been redactionally reworked. There is also a reference to the 'builders of the wall (pHil ^"D)' in 4.19. In 8.12 this image is developed further: 'but all these things they do not understand, (these) builders of the wall and daubers of plaster, because a raiser of wind and spouter of lies spouted to them, against all of whose congregation the anger of God is aroused'. The biblical context of the term "pn H3D in Ezek. 13.10 can provide some understanding of this phrase. The passage deals with a wall, which the people have built, and which false prophets daub with plaster. The prophet predicts that God will bring down the wall. From this passage it is clear that the builders of the wall are seen as a negative grouping. This is also clear from the statement in CD 4.19: 'the builders of the wall who
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have followed after Zaw (Hos. 5.11); the Zaw is a spouter'. According to Davies (1982: 112) the 'builders of the wall' are the whole of Israel outside the Qumran community. Nevertheless, one has to distinguish between the phrases that I have discussed this far. The phrase 'builders of the wall' is taken as a negative group, as can be deduced from the whole context, whereas in Davies' words 'the motif of the wall.. .where the image of each man standing upon his own flimsy structure is succeeded by that of the extended wall round the community' (112). Even though this specific text in CD 4.12 is fragmentary, the context (Zadok vs. Zaw) in my opinion refers to the law of Moses. This tradition thus corresponds to some extent to the phrase in LXX Prov. 28.4: '...they who love the law build a wall around themselves'. Schiffman (1994: 249) has an interesting interpretation of the tradition concerning the builders of walls. According to him we can understand the legal theology of the Qumran sect from the Scrolls and gather information about the legal views of the Pharisees and Sadducees, supplementing what we already know from other sources. Moreover, according to him, what we learn about the Pharisees can be deduced indirectly from the sectarian polemics against their views. He thinks that one prominent example is the Admonition, the first section of CD, which includes a list of transgressions attributed to 'the builders of the wall who followed the commander. The commander being the preacher about whom it is said (Mic. 2.6) "They shall surely preach'" (CD 4.19-20). Schiffman argues that the builders of the wall, as well as the commander or preacher are the villains. He uses two biblical passages as arguments. The one is Hos. 5.10-11: 'The commanders of Judah have acted like shifters of field boundaries. On them I will pour out my wrath like water. Ephraim is defrauded, robbed of redress.' Another passage states, 'That is no way to preach' (Mic. 2.6). According to Schiffman 'the commanders of Judah' are equated here with Ephraim, a sectarian term for the Pharisees. They are the builders of the wall who follow the teachings of the commander. This same commander is the one who preaches improperly, hence defrauding his listeners. The sect regarded the Pharisees as preaching falsely and misleading their followers. Of significance is Schiffman's interpretation of the appellation 'builders of the wall'. He thinks it should be derived from the concept 'Build a fence around the Torah' (m. Ab. 1.1) to which I have referred to above. In his opinion, to build a fence refers to the Pharisaic-rabbinic concept of
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creating more stringent laws than those found in the Bible in order to safeguard biblical laws from violation. According to him the authors of CD were, moreover, in disagreement with this approach, even though Talmudic sources consider this 'fence' concept a positive feature of rabbinic halakhah. They were not comfortable with this free adaptation of the biblical law. Schiffman also argues that the differences of opinion between the sect and the Pharisees are clear from the consistant criticism of the Pharisees: 'They even rendered impure their holy spirit and in blasphemous terms opened their mouth against the laws of the covenant of God, saying, "They are not correct" And they spoke abomination about them' (CD 5.11-13). Accordingly, says Schiffman, to the sectarians the Pharisaic polemic was not only fierce, but worse, an abomination. Schiffman moreover finds evidence that repeatedly in the Scrolls, the sect characterizes Pharisaic halakhah by its tendency to derive laws not directly from scriptural sources but through their own interpretations. This is why the Pharisees are called Hp^PI "'KTn, sometimes rendered as 'seekers after smooth things', but more correctly translated 'interpreters of false laws'. This phrase, he argues, is based upon the biblical expression 'smooth things', referring to lies or falsehood (e.g. Isa. 30.10). According to Schiffman, then, the phrase npbn
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According to Baumgarten, Qumran law in effect thus carried out one of the principles attributed to the Men of the Great Assembly to which I refered to already: 'build a fence (TD) around the Torah' (m. Ab 1.1). However, he significantly differs from Schiffman (1994: 250) that the references in CD 4.19 and 8.12 were particularly directed at the protorabbinic 'fences' which served to protect the law. Thus there existed a tradition about the 'law as a wall surrounding the righteous' in the LXX as well as in Qumran. However, the Damascus Document is not exclusively found at Qumran, for a copy of it was also discovered in Egypt, in the Cairo Genizah at the end of the nineteenth century. This tradition must therefore have been known in both Egypt (CD, Aristeas and LXX Proverbs) as well as in Palestine (CD, Qumran and LXX Proverbs). It is uncertain where LXX Proverbs should be located, to me it seems possible that it could have been written in either Palestine or Egypt (Cook 1999: 461). There are, however, also other traditions concerning the law of Moses in the Dead Sea Scrolls. CD 6.9 talks about the people (the nobles) who keep the law as being 'well-diggers'! Again the immediate context is important: after referring to the detrimental influence of Belial, Jannes and his brother and those who prophesied falsely to turn Israel from God the following is said: But God remembered the covenant of the fathers and he raised from Aaron men of understanding and from Israel men of wisdom, and he let them hear (his voice), and they dug the well, 'a well which princes dug, which nobles of the people dug with a staff. The well is the law, and those who dug it are the 'captivity of Israel' who went out from the land of Judah and settled in the land of Damascus, all of whom God called 'princes' because they sought him and because their renown was not denied by anyone. And the staff is the interpreter of the law of whom Isaiah spoke (when he said): 'He produces a tool for his work'. And the nobles of the people are those who have entered (the covenant) in order to dig the well with the staves (rules) which the staff (legislator) fashioned (legislated) to walk during all the period of wickedness until there shall arise one who will 'teach righteousness' at the end of the days. (Translation by Davies 1982: 247)
The biblical background to this tradition seemingly is the 'Song of the Well'in Num. 21.17-18:
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Then Israel sang this song; Spring up, O well!—sing to it— The well which the chieftains dug, Which the nobles of the people started With mace, with their staves. (Translation by Fishbane 1992: 6)
It is clear that the authors transformed the biblical passage from Numbers into a religious history of the Qumranic sect (Fishbane 1992: 7). Significant is also the interpretation that the well is the law (miD) in CD 6.4. Here we find the word pplTO; the verb ppH ('inscribe') is used extensively in the Pentateuch in connection with the Torah (D^pFI). What we have here is clearly an identification of the torah and the desert well in which the impact of the natural surroundings in which the sect existed can be observed. Conclusion In conclusion it is clear that there is some relationship between the law of Moses and wisdom in the writings, which I discussed above. In CD 6.2 it is said: 'God raised men of understanding and men of wisdom in order to dig the well'. This seems to be in line with LXX Prov. 31.5 where the Hebrew word pplHQ is brought into connection with wisdom (cf. my discussion in Cook 2001). There are also many other connections between the LXX and the Dead Sea Scrolls. What Schiffman calls 'the Pharisees' lack of understanding', referring to them as 'builders of walls', and more specifically the statements in CD 8.12-13 and 9.24-26, 'For one who raises wind and preaches falsehood...', reminds us very much of the pluses found in LXX Prov. 9.12 in comparison with MT: He that sets himself upon falsehood, he attempts to rule the wind, and it is he that pursues birds in their flight. For he has forsaken the ways of his own vineyard, and has caused the axles of his own farm to go astray. Yes, he travels through an arid desert and a land destined to drought, indeed he gathers barrenness with the hand. (Cook 1997: 271-72)
I have interpreted this passage as well as other additions in LXX Proverbs as evidence of a conservative translator warning the readers of dangerous and foreign (Hellenistic) wisdom (Cook 1997: 273). I need to extend this investigation into the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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There are also the correspondences in the tradition of the law as a protective wall which I discussed above. In this regard I did not deal exhaustively with later traditions found in the Mishnah and other Jewish exegetical writings such as Ab. 1.1. However, as I indicated, there are also significant differences. The law as a well does not appear in the literature other than CD that I have up to now studied. As I suggested, these different exegetical traditions are the result of contextual differences. Exactly where these contexts are to be located, Alexandria and/or Palestine, needs to be investigated further.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baumgarten, J.M., E. Chazon and A. Pinnick (eds.) 2000 The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery; Proceedings of the Third International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 4-8 February 1998 (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Broshi, M. (ed.) 1992 The Damascus Document Reconsidered (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/The Shrine of the Book/Israel Museum). Cook, J. 1994 jHKrTDU(Proverbs 19 Septuagint): A Metaphor for Foreign Wisdom?', ZA W\06 (1994): 469-74. 1997 The Septuagint of Proverbs: Jewish and/or Hellenistic Proverbs ? Concerning the Hellenistic Colouring of LXX Proverbs (VTSup, 69; Leiden: E.J. Brill). 1999 'The Law of Moses in Septuagint Proverbs', VT 49: 448-61. 2001 'Intertextual Relations between the Septuagint Versions of the Psalms and Proverbs', in R.J.V. Hiebert, C.E. Cox and P.J. Gentry (eds.), The Old Greek Psalter: Studies in Honour of Albert Pietersma (JSOTSup, 332; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press: 218-28. Davies, P.R. 1982 The Damascus Document: An Interpretation of the 'Damascus Document' (JSOTSup, 25; Sheffield: JSOT Press). Fishbane, M. 1992 'The Well of Living Water: A Biblical Motif and its Ancient Transformations', in M. Fishbane and E. Tov (eds.), Sha'arei Talmon: Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East presented to Shemaryahu Talmon (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns): 3-16. Schiffman, L.H. 1994 Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America).
THE TEXT OF WAR IN THE CONTEXT OF WAR: A FUNCTIONAL READING*
Robert Setio
But to manipulate men, to propel them towards goals which you—the social reformers—see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them. —Sir Isaiah Berlin
It has been said by many that reading the biblical text in Asia is different from the usual reading produced and learned in the West, in that it is more rooted in the daily life of Asian peoples. When suffering is pervasive in the life of a people, biblical stories that portray a dignified life for those who suffer can be taken as a reference. Though religious pluralism has since a long time become a part of a people's life, reading the Bible cannot be an isolated activity. The Bible should be read in dialogue with other sacred texts so that in a post-colonial context Asia can strive to find its own way of reading the Bible. This search for an Asian way of reading is necessary not only because most Western styles of reading the Bible do not flourish in Asia, but also because of the demand that it should respond to Asian dynamic problems. Recent developments in hermeneutics which offer more freedom for readers seem to converge with the Asian struggle. What has broadly been mentioned as a reader-response reading—or even a postmodern reading— has provided a philosophical basis for Asian readers to develop their own way of reading based on their real experience. The meaning of the biblical text for, broadly speaking, 'the people of the Bible' is important, but it is undeniably more important for contemporary Asians. This understanding * I write this article in response to the critical judgment of my guru, the late Professor Robert Carroll. Much of what he said about the newly emerging reading is true but I still want to argue that with regard to the Asian, and particularly the Indonesian context, the reader should be given a greater opportunity in the process of interpretation.
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has yielded many ethical readings of the Bible, by which I mean readings that have a strong ethical dimension, or are intended to highlight an ethical decision. This result is closely related to concerns typical of Asia, as indicated by Kwok Pui-Lan (1995: 11) in comparing Chinese philosophical tradition and Western thought: Chinese philosophical tradition is very different from western thought in that it is not interested primarily in metaphysical and epistemological questions. On the contrary, it is more concerned with moral and ethical visions of a good society.
This Chinese tradition could be applied to other peoples in Asia too. In relation to biblical interpretation, the concern of Asian peoples would be more on its effect on real problems. In other words, Asian interpretation is rather functional. Although it may include a rigid technical consideration, as shown by the work of many Asian biblical scholars, this nevertheless does not free us from a deeper discussion of how interpretation can function to answer contextual problems. One may even say that there is no biblical study in Asia that is not at the same time a contextualization study.ï Nevertheless, the stress on the function of reading may not always bring a responsible outcome. What I am referring to here is a reading that one way or another supports a destructive action. In the country where I live, the Bible has been often used to legitimate a hatred towards the followers of another religion (Islam).2 Though it is not the only motive of biblical reading here, one cannot let this kind of reading go without criticism. In this article, by focusing on the reading of a text about war against a neighbouring people, I argue that the most recent use of the Bible to justify the war against Muslims in some areas of Indonesia proved, on the one hand, the failure of the academic lesson of biblical exegesis. On the other hand, it also showed the danger of the kind of simplistic reading 1. My colleague in Duta Wacana, Gerrit Singgih, known among Asian theologians both as a biblical and a contextualization scholar, has written both biblical commentaries and studies on contextualization theology. But when we read his commentaries we can easily recognize his expertise in cultural and social analyses. On the other hand, his works on contextualization theology always contain the careful reading of biblical text characteristic of a biblical scholar. His style is that of many Asian scholars. 2. In Indonesia, the Bible is understood by society as a sacred book of Christians. This differs from its acceptance in the West, where the Bible is also known as a classical and academic document. Only recently has there been an attempt to read the Bible from the point of view of non-Christian people. This is done within the frame of religious dialogue, but it is too early to see the impact of such a kind of reading.
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usually taught by fundamentalists. Rather than producing an atmosphere conducive of peace, it only fueled the Christians' anger. In the end, the life of people in the areas of conflict has been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands have died since the religious conflict began in 1998. The survivors have now to live in temporary settlements, waiting anxiously for a secure peace. The trauma of the war (in fact it was a war rather than a mere conflict) cannot easily be wiped out from the mind of those people. In the aftermath of war they prefer to live with people of the same faith, separated from those of the other religion. No doubt they will not be able to live in such abnormal conditions forever; but to restore life after such a war takes a long time. We see that to destroy life is much easier than to rebuild it. One should reflect on how this appalling tragedy could happen in a previously peaceful land. Readings of the Bible that have somehow contributed to the cause of the war should be declared as anti-life and, therefore, should also be countered. If academic forms of interpretation cannot work for the people, and the simplistic interpretations of fundamentalism are unacceptable, then I would propose as an alternative a functional reading. This functional reading will be directed to achieving a better life for all, which is both religiously and socially inclusive. By using such reading, we can prevent biblical interpretation from going back to the ivory tower of the old biblical scholarship, but also from being used for destructive motives. Reading Deuteronomy 20 in the Context of War It still amazes many that Indonesia, a country known for its richness in culture and religion, could suddenly turn into a hell through religious confrontation. For decades people lived in harmony in the midst of religious and cultural pluralism. Migration between islands and provinces took place almost without any major problem. But during the transition of the New Order government led by Soeharto, a series of riots, starting in East Java, spreading to West Java and then Ambon, were soon followed by other outbreaks in the Maluccan islands, and, most recently, in Poso. All had a religious motive. Churches were attacked and burned in Java. More than just properties: people were also targeted, and some from Christian families were beaten and killed. In this island Christians were often placed in a hopeless position since they were outnumbered by the Muslims who harassed them. But the situation in the eastern part of Indonesia, including Ambon and Poso, was different. In these cities, the numbers of
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Christians and Muslims are almost equal. The balanced composition made retaliation seem logical. What we have seen in those areas is a continuous war between Muslims and Christians. The city of Poso in central Sulawesi is to this day still in great tension. Many of its people are forced to stay on the high ground outside the city, leaving their houses unguarded, even separated from their families. By contrast, Ambon is now in a better condition, even though the city is divided into Muslim and Christian areas. A normal meeting between the followers of the two religions is yet to occur. Just this week (11 and 12 February, 2002), leaders of the two religions entered into negotiations in a neutral place in south Sulawesi, to seek an agreement to end the war. A government minister who chaired the negotiations insisted that it is not yet a peace talk, just a negotiation to end the war. Peace talks are to take place a year later, provided each faction stays loyal to the present agreement. There have been many analyses of how the religious war in Ambon (a central city in the Maluccan islands) and Poso could have happened. Most of the analysts agreed that the actual problem had nothing to do with religion. Religion was just used to incite people to make war against the other religion. Some analysts believe that there is strong evidence that the war was deliberately fomented by some elite authority. Suspicion is strongly aimed at Soeharto or his devoted followers, primarily those who are in the military, since there is evidence that in both Muslim and Christian factions there was a military officer inciting the people. Besides the significant presence of military power in those areas, particularly Ambon, there was also no will to curb the militias. Stories from those areas revealed the use of automatic machine guns by one of the militia groups. Since the tragedy of 11 September, the US Government has indicated the possibility of what they call a network of global terrorism in the eastern part of Indonesia,in particular central Sulawesi. This claim has opened another possibility—of an external influence in the Indonesian Muslim-Christian war. But the presence of US military personnel in the south of the Philippines, close to the island of Sulawesi, makes the matter far from final. Apart from such causes of religious war, it is important to remember that the way people understand their religion also makes a decisive contribution. To deny this, and attribute the war to political motives alone, will never make us wiser in the practice of religion. As the focus of this essay is on biblical readings, let me now make some comments on how people read a biblical warfare passage such as Deut. 20.1 -20.1 quote the passage according to NRSV:
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1
When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots, an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. 2Before you engage in battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the troops, 3 and shall say to them: 'Hear, O Israel! Today you are drawing near to do battle against your enemies. Do not lose heart, or be afraid, or panic, or be in dread of them; 4for it is the LORD your God who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you victory'. 5Then the officials shall address the troops, saying, 'Has anyone built a new house but not dedicated it? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another dedicate it. 6Has anyone planted a vineyard but not yet enjoyed its fruit? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another be first to enjoy its fruit. 7Has anyone become engaged to a woman but not yet married her? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another marry her.' 8The officials shall continue to address the troops, saying, 'Is anyone afraid or disheartened? He should go back to his house, or he might cause the heart of his comrades to melt like his own.' 9When the officials have finished addressing the troops, then the commanders shall take charge of them. 10When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace. nlf it accepts your terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you in forced labor. 12If it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; 13and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword. I4You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. 15Thus you shall treat all the towns that are very far from you, which are not towns of the nations here. 16But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. 17You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the LORD your God has commanded, 18so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the LORD your God. 19 If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you? 20 You may destroy only the trees that you know do not produce food; you may cut them down for use in building siege-works against the town that makes war with you, until it falls.
An immediate reading of this passage in the context of religious war such as happened in Ambon would easily lead people to the conclusion that it endorses their war. In this case, the Christians in Ambon took the passage
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as a call for a war against the Muslims. For the Christians, the Bible not only justified their war against the Muslims but also authenticated it as a holy war. It was not the people who initiated the war, but, just as the passage says, it was God who wanted the war. God even led the people in the battle and promised a victory for his people (v. 4). Muslims are like the Amorites and others mentioned in v. 17—they are enemies that have to be annihilated. But there is clearly a problem in this understanding: the verse, even read as it is, never says that the enemy is the follower of another religion. It is nations rather than religious followers that are mentioned as the enemy of God's people. However, this misreading has a certain background. The Christian Ambonese have a strong belief that religion and people are inseparable. To be born as an Ambonese is automatically to adhere to Christianity. This conception is neither new nor unique. In world history there are many examples in which nations or peoples take a religion to be part of their ascribed status. In the Ambonese context, however, it is strongly related to social conditions during the Dutch period. The Ambonese at that time were treated very specially by the Dutch, with the result that many of them gained a better position than other Indonesian tribes. They were given good positions in governmental departments, and for this reason were also well educated. Many reached the highest levels of education possible at that time, so that in the decades immediately after national independence in 1945, many Ambonese worked as professors, medical doctors and government officials. These are prestigious positions for which advanced qualifications beyond the reach of many Indonesians are needed. The prominent status of the Ambonese shaped the lifestyle of the people. They often spoke Dutch, dressed like Europeans, and preferred whitecollar jobs. When migrants came from other islands, the Ambonese let them take lower class jobs such as paddy-cab drivers and daily labourers. After some time the migrants benefited from their hard work. Not a few of them became bosses, and this in turn created jealousy among the local Ambonese. The success of the migrants has challenged the old convention that only Ambonese can have a high status in the society—a convention that was often related to religion as well, since Christianity was understood as a religion only for people of high status. Confronted by the fact that being a Christian no longer guaranteed an honored position, they were disappointed. But rather than questioning the myth, they blamed the migrants, who were mostly Muslim, for their failure. So. when religious conflict arose—sparked off by some petty reason like a quarrel between
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young men in the street—it provided an opportunity to settle old scores. Many Ambonese thought that the war offered them a chance to remove all Muslims from the area, either by killing or excluding them from the city. The desire to make Ambon a solely Christian city was further strengthened by the conviction that Christians are God's chosen people. The ideal of the chosen people is of a kind of exclusive life. No other religious follower is allowed to live together with them—something which can find ready justification in the passage. Verses 17 and 18 of Deuteronomy 20 clearly state that it is God's will that his people should live alone in their land. Not only was there an internal justification from the reading of the biblical passage, but Ambonese Christians found an external cause in the belief that the life of the chosen people was somehow threatened by aggressive Muslim proselytization. They observed that Muslim proselytization had increased after Soeharto tried to win over the Muslims in order to bolster his weakening position. From the second half of the 1980s Soeharto changed his policy towards the Muslims. In the period before the 80s he was suspicious of them, and several times accused Muslim groups of constituting subversive movements. But this changed in the early 90s, when he granted control of several eastern areas, known to be Christian, to Muslims. The most obvious proof of the change was the formation of a Muslim organization for scholars (/CM/) that worked aggressively to boost the intellectual ability of young Muslim students by sending them mainly to Western countries to acquire a higher education. This organization also firmly established its influence in government institutions by placing its men in strategic positions. This political situation was regarded by non-Muslims as a threat. As a matter of fact, there was also a Muslim organization that felt uneasy about Soeharto's policy. This organization (NU) was led by Abdurrahman Wahid, the next President of the Republic after Soeharto, and B.J. Habibie, who was and is known for his pluralistic views of religion. Wahid criticized the Muslim scholars organization particularly on the issue of an Islamic constitution. He saw that the long-term goal of the organization was to replace the secular constitution of the Republic with an Islamic one. Basically, Wahid was opposed to any movement that mixed religion with politics—what he referred to as 'political Islam'. Though Wahid won presidential office after Soeharto stepped down, he was far from being favoured in Soeharto's time. He was considered to be Soeharto's fierce critic and was disliked by the authoritarian president. On the other hand, the scholars' organization held a powerful position. It was in this context
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that the Christians in the eastern part of Indonesia felt under pressure. If only they had learned that not all Muslims agreed with the political movement that aimed to introduce an Islamic constitution, they might have had a more balanced view of Islam. But the knowledge that, apart from Soeharto's policy of encouraging the supporters of political Islam, those who disagreed with him still dominated the political and the social spheres of the country, was not considered to be important. The fear of being forced to submit to Islamic law was so pervasive that they reacted strongly to the pressure they felt from the Muslims. That there was a nostalgic hope for the return of the condition when Ambon was still a Christian city was undeniable. At the same time, it is not surprising that the people regretted that Ambon had become open to Muslims. So, rather like the deuteronomistic view of the religious reformation, which basically meant a return to the golden age of the past, the Ambonese longed for a return to their 'golden age'. Of course there was much myth in the ideas of the Christians in Ambon. But the myth seems to find its justification in the biblical text. Modern biblical scholars would readily have helped the people to see that what is in the biblical text is none other than a myth—and making a myth out of a myth is not wise! Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that mythical thinking such as the Ambonese practised has had an important role in the survival of the people. Being under pressure from an external power, the myth functioned to keep their spirit alive. The biblical passage has also given them an opportunity to see a correlation between their own experience and that of Israel. When they read in the text a demand from God to his people not to fear the power of the enemy, they interpret it as a demand for themselves. Whereas the biblical reading has had a positive side in keeping their spirits up, it also had a negative side in encouraging the Ambonese to choose a violent response to the initial attack. The result of the reading was not only a spirit of defence but also a zeal to go on the offence. It is hard to justify such aggression even though it is also hard to deny what the biblical text says about it. So while the text can be made alive by taking account of the readers' context, it is still difficult to accept the consequences of reading ethically. Readers who exercise a critical judgment on the text would not approve of the Ambonese reading. For them, the issue is not about a command to make war as such. Rather it is how the concept of war was apprehended from time to time. Modern commentaries on Deut. 20.1-20 are in general dominated by discussions on the strata of the traditions that lay behind the
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text. These show how each tradition or redaction has used the message for its own interest. Specific attention is primarily given to the latest tradition, usually understood as Deuteronomic. The importance of the text should be found in our understanding of the Deuteronomic message. As Patrick Miller says (1990: 157): Israel's life and death were totally held within the divine provision: whether it was a matter of surviving in battle or surviving daily in the land, everything was provided by the Lord and accomplished by the Lord's power.
And again (1990: 158): The biblical insistence that life under God is impossible apart from the conviction and faith that God is controlling and shaping events, and that human responsibility is to live faithful to God and trusting in the Lord's power and providence, is sounded once more in all these rules of war.
Miller's emphasis on the meaning of the text with regard to Deuteronomic concerns can represent the interpretation of modern readers. It is not the war in itself that should be noted but, as it were, the theology of the latest redactor (the Deuteronomist). The quotations are even taken from a section entitled 'The Holy War'. The title seems to encourage the expectation that the following explanation will be about the war itself. But it turns out to be an explanation of the theology of the latest redactor. Therefore the text for those modern readers is no more than a reflection of Deuteronomic thought. And a reader should explore the thought rather than speculate about the execution of war. Other points are revealed by modern readings; but the focus of the reading is generally not so much on the text itself as on the history of the text. Layers, redactors and the structure of the text dominate the work of modern scholars. The question of how we should articulate the command to annihilate other nations seems out of context. There is also a tendency to portray such problems as relevant to an ancient and more barbaric time. In other words, it should not be the main concern of modern people. This attitude seems closely related to the context of readers who are mostly academics by profession. They live in peaceful countries, or at least are not directly involved in war. They tend to see war as an object to be discussed rather than a reality to live in. In short, they are very different from the Ambonese who face a difficult condition that makes war a reasonable option. However, before the pressure on the Christians began during the closing part of Soeharto's era, the war option was entirely absent from the
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mind of the Ambonese. Their life clearly had no place or reason for religious hatred. If we looked at the teaching of the church, we would clearly see that it was based on a critical mode of thought common to the mainstream Protestant churches. The dominant church in the Maluccan islands, the Maluccan Protestant Church (GPM) is one of the mainstream Protestant churches in Indonesia. It is in fact one of the oldest churches in the country. Most of its ministers have been educated in theological colleges with a strong Western critical tradition. In the field of biblical study, for example, it is normal to pursue historical criticism of the Bible. The Bible is studied using the familiar methods of the guild of critical scholars. It is also interesting that before the religious conflict started the text of the Old Testament was, as in many other churches in Indonesia, not popular in the Ambonese church. Sunday sermons would use more New Testament passages than Old. One may say that Old Testament was discussed more in theological colleges than in the church. For theological students, the Old Testament contains many interesting—even provocative—matters that could hardly be discussed in church, whereas the church would feel the New Testament to be more important, since it witnesses to the life of the first church, talks much about love, and has a clearer, more relevant message for the present church. This view, which is very common in the churches, turned upside down when the religious conflict started, but also in the period just before. How could the Old Testament in just a short time become so interesting for the Christians in Ambon? There may be different answers to this question; but I propose the following. In peaceful times—that is, in times when no element of conflict occurs—the Old Testament has often been read as a book that reminds the Indonesian Christian of Islam. The principle of 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' is seen as common to the Old Testament and Islam alike. The image of a religion of law is recognized in both the Old Testament and Islam. So with the many rites involving an animal sacrifice. For many Indonesian Christians, therefore, the Old Testament is closer to Islam than to Christianity. Christianity most of the time uses the Old Testament as an exemplary text. Old Testament stories are full of examples of how the people of God live or should live. Israel is often taken as an example of a sinful but stubborn people. Apart from this, the Old Testament could subconsciously be thought of as an alien book. More than just an alien book—it may also describe the old way of worshipping God; that is, by observing many rules and laws. This is clearly a prejudice against the Old Testament, and specifically Israel or Judaism.
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But we may sense a more dangerous situation, in that the prejudice is actually directed against Islam. What the Christians mean by Israel is actually Islam. The indirect repudiation of the Old Testament is none other than a repudiation of Islam. If this is true, then there is no change at all between the past and the present reading of the text of the Old Testament. The reading of the text of war, certainly the part that should most obviously have been rejected in peaceful times because of its opposition to the principle of love, is still carried out within the same anti-Islamic frame of mind. The difference between past and present readings is that what was done subtly in the past is now done transparently. When the Ambonese use the Old Testament text to legitimate their war against the Muslims, it does not mean that their image of the Testament has changed. We could not expect that, by reading seriously the Old Testament text, the Ambonese would have increased their appreciation of it, and of Israel. What they actually do is just to appropriate the violence from the text. They take heed of the content not as a matter of appreciation but because they need an endorsement for their violent act. This impulsive reading of the Old Testament is hardly going to last long. When conditions improve and war disappears, Christians will go back to their earlier position. Thus what is actually needed is a change of view of Israel/Islam on the part of Christians, not only in Ambon and Poso but everywhere else in Indonesia and perhaps, in the world. Christians may improve their relations with Muslims via an improvement in their reading of the Old Testament. But to do this, it seems we cannot fully trust the critical readings of modern biblical interpreters, particularly those with a historical-critical inclination. As in the case of the Ambonese, historical criticism taught in the theological colleges did little to improve the image of the Old Testament. Rather than bringing an appreciation of the texts and the people of the texts, criticism has used the texts as proof of some historical facts. It, of course, has produced many important discoveries (or inventions)—but not appreciation. Thus, it is not surprising that prejudice against the Old Testament/Israel has not been erased, and that, on the contrary—perhaps accidentally—it has been confirmed. If we want to appeal for the Old Testament to be esteemed in an Indonesian context, we should always try to relate the book to the life of the people, aware that there is a hidden misconception of the Old Testament and of Islam. Consequently we should always include in our reading a re-examination of the way we think of the Old Testament and Islam.
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My suggestion for a reading that is sensitive to the actual (religious bigotry) problem of the reader may fit the description of a post-structuralist approach given by Robert Carroll. In his brief but clear explanation of the post-structuralist approach he wrote (1999: 50): this approach to reading texts meant that.. .texts tended to become mirror images of the readers who assumed into their textual readings their own values as explicit modes and strategies for their reading processes.
While in Carroll's judgment the approach is more like an impulsive attack on the Enlightenment's commitment to historical criticism, in the Indonesian case it has opened up the possibility of a more creative and valuable reading. Historical-critical approaches have not been able to respond properly to the problem of Christian prejudice towards Islam because of their primary attention to the historicity of the texts. In this way of reading we are given many historical data that increase our knowledge and understanding of the past. But at the same time we are, as it were, asked to forget about our present condition. We fail to address our own problem, resulting in a prolonged misconception of Islam. If we choose to correct the misconception we should also choose to adjust our reading so that it may help us in finding the path to a better future. But the kind of post-structuralist reading that only stresses the playfulness of a text may not be helpful for Indonesian readers either. This kind of reading would only succeed in producing new images not related to the life of the readers. I would rather choose the pragmatic approach that pays more attention to the function of text for the readers. Here. I would like to quote Richard Rorty: I distrust both the structuralist idea that knowing more about 'textual mechanism' is essential for literary criticism and the post-structuralist idea that detecting the presence, or the subversion, of metaphysical hierarchies is essential... Each of these supplementary readings simply gives you one more context in which you can place the text—one more grid you can place on top of it or one more paradigm to which to juxtapose it. Neither piece of knowledge tells you anything about the nature of texts or the nature of reading. For neither has a nature... Reading texts is a matter of reading them in the light of other texts, people, obsessions, bits of information, or what have you, and then seeing what happens. What happens may be something too weird and idiosyncratic to bother with—as is probably the case with my reading ofFoucault 's Pendulum. Or it may be exciting and convincing, as when Derrida juxtaposes Freud and Heidegger, or when Kermode juxta-
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poses Empson and Heidegger. It may be so exciting and convincing that one has the illusion that one sees what a certain text is really about. But what excites and convinces is a function of the needs and purposes of those who are being excited and convinced. (Rorty 1999: 143-44 [my emphasis])
Rorty's pragmatic reading emphasizes the need for, and the purpose of, reading with regard to the reader. One probable reaction to this approach is to strengthen irrational reading, such as a fundamentalist one. But if we understand the need and purpose as that of a wider part of society, say Christians and Muslims in Indonesian society, then there is no need to worry that this approach will promote only fundamentalism. On the contrary, fundamentalism will not be a reasonable option for the people if it is to destroy their common life. The need and purpose of the readers should be that which simply cares for a better future in communal life. What I imagine here is that Christians and Muslims can sit together to discuss what kind of better life they need—and no biblical reading should contradict such agreement. Suppose that the better life includes an inter-religious cooperation in any sector of life, then the text of war should be changed into a text of peace. In this case what Robert Carroll says almost at the end of his writing on post-structuralist approaches (1999: 62) may come true: 'while postmodernism may fail to (re)build the "original" Tower of Babel, take the erased erased Babel, itit may maywell wellproduce producethe theerased erasedbible— bible BIBLE'.'. II take bible to be the Bible without any trace of religious bigotry, for which Indonesian readers are still waiting, as are peace lovers throughout world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Carroll, R.P. 1999
Miller, P.D. 1990 Patte, D. 1995 Pui-lan, Kwok 1995 Rorty, R. 1999
'Poststructuralist Approaches, New Historicism and Postmodernism', in J. Barton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 50-66. Deuteronomy (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching; Louisville, KY: John Knox Press). Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: A Re-Evaluation (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press). Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World (New York: Orbis Books). Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin Books).
AGE AND AGEISM IN THE HEBREW BIBLE, IN AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE*
Athalya Brenner
Let me begin by admitting that my interest in questions of age and ageism in the Hebrew Bible stems, at this time, from my own situation. I'm 58, sometimes going on 18 and at others on 118. Although I often try to talk myself out of the chrono-biological trap ('You are as old as you feel'; 'So what? Who's counting?'; 'Most wines need to age'; etc.), I feel uncomfortable in the western culture that extols all things young, where young has acquired a fetishized cult status. Young is beautiful. So I turn to the Hebrew Bible to check the situation there, following my habit of, whenever possible, combining scholarly activity with materials taken from my personal and inner life. And, because of my personal interest, I shall focus on the aspect of advanced age rather than childhood, or puberty, or any other aspect one could discuss. It is accepted wisdom in Bible interpretation that, in the Bible, old/older is beautiful and young/younger may be beautiful but is also foolish and in need of education by and obedience to aged authority. The Jerusalem/Tel Aviv school of ancient Jewish history (see Malamat and others) have gone as far as to state that the tribal institution of 'elders' (jHKrTDU) indeed originated in the veneration of aged persons' wisdom, and then the term became indicative of a social institution although the age signification emptied into irrelevance. To substantiate their findings, such scholars cite cognate cultures (such as Egyptian cultures). Now, I remember well how I used to rebel against the almost automatic and proverbial equation of 'age = * A first version of this article was delivered as a paper in the SBL Annual Meeting in Nashville, TN, November 2000, in the Semiotics and Exegesis session on Autobiographical Criticism. Other versions were delivered as papers at Witwaterstrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa, September 2001 and to the Dutch Old Testament Society in Utrecht, January 2002. My thanks to patient listeners and their feedback, criticisms and responses.
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brains', as put forward in such work and, allegedly, in the Hebrew Bible itself. Perhaps some consolation can be found in it now?, I ask myself. With the advancement of age, I return to the most obvious and oft-cited examples. Here are some of them. In Genesis 22, Abraham cedes to god's authority and seems ready to sacrifice Isaac to him. Isaac seems willing to accept Abraham's authority and goes along, although he can't be a child any more. In some post-biblical Jewish lore, Isaac becomes older and even more prepared to perform his task of willing victim. In Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy and most of the Deuteronomic history so-called, as well as in Ruth, the 'elders' (D^pT) seem to be of the highest authority in the social group: they hold the judiciary as well as executive powers. Leaders, from Abraham to Moses to others, come into their own as socially influential persons mostly when they have attained older or mythical/legendary age. In 1 Kings 12 = 2 Chronicles 10, Rehoboam is advised by his counsellors, the 'children' (D'HT1) he grew up with, to give his subjects a certain answer when they ask him to lighten the load his father Solomon had leveled on them. By rejecting the contrary advice of the D^pT, Rehoboam contributes to the splitting off of the unified monarchy. Proverbs warns again and again, in the voice of the elder, against stupidity and cupidity. The wise 'teacher' is styled as an older person; the words of wisdom are addressed to a typically younger person or persons (mostly male). In Daniel 7 the god 'seen' is imaged as 'the ancient of days'. His image is that of an old patriarch/king, with white hair. Western and also Eastern art, in depictions of biblical figures, almost invariably manage to present biblical males as old or at least older, with stereotypic external markers (gray hair, beard, wrinkles, posture). At least, this happens whenever there are no indications to the contrary; that is, when young age is actually mentioned in the biblical text. It seems that older age and authority go together in art depictions too. Now, let me reread these examples, taking my cue from a semantic examination of Y[pT derived terms and usage. The root ]pT and its derivatives occur almost 200 times in the Hebrew Bible. V]pT can appear as a verb (in the qal and hiphil formations), adjective (zaqeri) and nouns (zequnim, ziqnd, zaqari). A cursory glance at the word contexts of its occurrences shows that its basic meanings are as follows. Please bear with
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me, I'm talking usage here: that is quantity, rather than etymology, at least to begin with. 1. 'Grow older' or 'age' rather than 'be old' is decidedly the most regular designation of V|pT. In other words, V]pT designates a process rather than a state, and is a relativevariable term rather than a rigid, fixed term. When 'old' per se is intended, an additional qualifier is necessary, such as D'O'D K3 ('advanced of days') orO'D11 m& ('sated with days'). In such cases a number of years might also be added, as in the formula ']D ofx years'. I'm almost tempted to infer that V]pT means 'not young', but not necessarily what we shall call 'old'. In other words, V]pT denotes relativization of time rather than an agreed-upon, fixed time/age designation. 2. Tfqenim, mostly as a m. pi. noun, is habitually translated as 'elders', 'social seniors' (unless old or older age is definitively suggested by the word and circumstantial context). But, quite clearly, the zeqenim in positions of authority are always males, never females. Whether the zeqemm represent a long-surviving institution or institutions per se or hark to other patterns of social organization (to which we shall return below), they are male. In other words, in Lacanian terminology, the zeqemm are the owners of the phallus, as epitomized by their actual or metaphorical zaqan, 'beard' (see also Egyptian iconicity of kingship and authority), and the cane (Judah [Gen. 38], Moses, Aaron, etc.), the other symbol of ripe male authority. Not to have a beard is shameful—note how David's emissaries are shamed by cutting off half their beards and the ensuing war with the Ammonites (2 Sam. 10.1-5). 3. Indeed V]pT is, largely and according to the biblical texts we have—might be accidental, of course—a gendered term. Sarah and Naomi are certainly described or describe themselves as 'older', too old to have children (Gen. 18.11,13; Ruth 1.12); 'old/older' women lean on their cane in Zech. 8.5 together with their male counterparts; and an ageing mother is to be obeyed still (Prov. 23.22). But, otherwise, VjpT is applied to males almost exclusively. V)pT derived
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m/M terms far outweigh, in number and denotation, the f/F terms.1 These findings can be correlated with the designated and denoted meanings of antonyms such as yeled, na 'ar, ben (m/M and f/F) and similar terms. The age designation is relative, not specific. For instance, Rehoboam is 41 when he ascends to the throne (l Kgs 14.21//2 Chron. 12.13); and yet his contemporaries are designated yeladim ('children') by comparison to his father's advisers, the zeqenim, whose actual age is not divulged. Here too a social marker of inferiority is denoted in relation to 'older' persons. Moreover, in most of the examples cited the dialogic relationship obtaining in the oppositional pairs jHKr on the one hand and yeled, na 'ar, ben and the like on the other hand, this dialogic relationship is joined to another dialogic relationship, that of the oppositional pair parent—mostly 'father'—as against son, and sometimes daughter. It would therefore seem that the typical zdqën/zeqënim are not necessarily terribly aged. Nevertheless, they have to be parents or parental figures, more specifically fathers, in order to be social zeqenïm, that is, persons of authority. On the other side of the equation, yeladïm, ne 'drim, banïm (not to mention their f/F equivalents) are socially and intellectually inferior as a group by virtue of their relation to the male phallus (read: beard) bearer, be he old/older or otherwise, notwithstanding his age. It would seem that real or imaginary gender/parenthood are factors overriding age, even relative age, as determinants of social seniority; and that 'age' conceptualizes less 'time' than seniority, power, 'wisdom' and authority, as symbolized by the 'beard'. This should be taken into account. Otherwise we would tend, for instance, to image Boaz as a senior citizen relative to Ruth. And what is our 'evidence'? That he is wealthy, has authority, is legally knowledgeable, and addresses Ruth by the ultimate putdown as 'my daughter', immediately setting her up in her socially subordinate place? Are these our clues? Pace a long tradition of interpretation, Boaz may be a young and strapping adult, as in the unforgettable Hollywood Ruth movie. Or consider
1. The sigla F/f (Feminine/female) and its counterpart M/m (Masculine/male) 'voice' stand for the attempt to abstract gendered voices from/in the biblical texts, where appropriate. Since textual 'voices' are deeply socially ingrained and hence problematical, they are difficult to define as female/male (that is, motivated by biological sex) or feminine/masculine (that is, motivated by social gender). See further Brenner and van Dijk-Hemmes 1993, esp. 1-11.
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Potiphar's wife. Rembrandt visualized her twice—once as older and revolting (in an etching), once as young and serene (in a painting). How do you visualize her, as against Joseph's 17 years of age or thereabout? In truth, both possibilities are warranted by Genesis 38; nevertheless, readers use the 'age' hypothesis as a marker of social standing In short, the zaqën [sic] is mostly and at the very least symbolically the person with the zaqan ('beard'), the visible corporeal signifier of the right gender to have in patriarchy, possessing paternal authority. Not necessarily the old/older person, certainly not regardless of gender/sex. This reading is something of a turnaround of accepted wisdom, I'm aware of that. I'm even tempted to extend my observations to etymology, that is, to derive all jHKoccurrences from a nominal zaqan ('beard'), as is almost done in the new (in book and in electronic form) KB (HAL) edition (Richardson [ed.] 2000). A digression seems in order here. As is well known, circumcision is the physical signifier, or referent, marking the in-position of an Israelite male with regard to his god and the community, at least ideally, as partner in the divine covenant; or, in other words, as participant in the ownership of the religio-cultural phallus. This physical mark is branded, or assumed for Israelite males. Nevertheless, the mark of circumcision is literally clothed, that is, hidden from public view. On the other hand the beard, as an external marker of the same identity principle, is easily noticeable. I would like to emphasize that the 'beard' does carry not only the signification of belonging to the divine community but also of the authority derived thereof, in Northwest Semitic and other cultures as well as in others, in addition to or as motivation for what is usually unproblematized as beard-growing, a religious custom at least in Judaism and Islam even in contemporary settings. That a 'beard' is indexical of a circumcized state is perhaps hinted by the post-biblical (Mishnaic and more) usage of referring to male pubic hair specifically as 'lower beard', whereas the face beard is referred to as 'upper beard' (for instance m. Sank. 8.1, 4); the 'lower beard', acknowledged as a euphemism, is a mark of adult responsibility for commitments such as obedience to parents. For girls (as, admittedly, sometimes for boys as well when sexual as against social seniority is discussed) no mention of a 'lower beard' obtains: for them, simply, [pubic] hairs are cited as a sign of'sexual maturity (for instance m. Nid. 6.11). The association of a 'beard', of any anatomical sort, with social responsibility and maleness in Mish-
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naic Hebrew (MH) perhaps points to the direction followed here and noticed in other ancient Near Eastern praxis as well.2 Another line of inquiry that one can take is a semiotic rather than a semantic line, to be bolstered further by archaeology and medical anthropology. Was old age, whatever the terms designating or signifying it, admired in the 'biblical' worlds and around them, as reflected in the Hebrew Bible? A long life span was certainly coveted, together with eternal life. Archaeological evidence shows that life expectancy in the ancient Near Eastern was extremely short by our western standards, notwithstanding the wonderful golden lifespan numbers given in the Hebrew Bible (from the ante-diluvian 10 generations onwards, especially for preferred individuals, see Gen. 5). In fact, two-thirds of children born did not survive to puberty. Life expectancy for males was at least 10-20 per cent higher than for females, unlike the present situation in contemporary western society. This is understandable given the depletion of female skeletons with the many pregnancies dictated by the social group, any group's, need to survive. Incidentally, according to archaeological findings well into the Greco-Roman period and beyond, an average Mediterranean male could expect to become less than 40 years old (Brenner 1997 and further literature cited there). The statistics vary by period, location and conditions. Moreover, class and central-urban as against remote-rural position play their part in determining availability of food and care, hence longevity. At any rate, and clearly, women got older faster and died younger. In passing, let us ask: Was this reduced lifespan a reason for women not to be numbered among the socially superior 'elders'? This seems to be doubtful. But, after all, women didn't possess the beard marker! So getting on in years was valued. But admired per sel There is some Egyptian evidence that it was not. And elsewhere the loss of male sexual potency—as in the KRT epic from Ugarit (first tablet) or in King David's case (1 Kgs 1), to name just two examples—seems to have been understood as indicative of loss of authority. No sense of 'wisdom' is mentioned here in connection with old age: on the contrary. In passing, let us not confuse this state of male potency loss with the alleged barrenness of aging (relatively speaking) matriarchs, since it is Yhwh who 'closed' and later 'opened' their wombs, so that the 'age' factor is subordinate to the sequence of events rather than the cause of barenness. The physical deterioration and fragility associated with old age is acknowledged, feared and 2.
I am indebted to Philip Davies to pointing me in the direction of this MH usage.
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mourned (cf. Barzillai's words to David, 2 Sam. 19.32-39; or Qoh. 12.1-7 and elsewhere). Certainly, the achievement of long life—although probably seen as a divine reward for better behaviour, at least in some biblical theodicies—by itself could not have justified the equation 'old is wise' and, by contiguity, 'old should have authority, therefore old is powerful'. Incidentally, admiring the wisdom of past generations does not, not automatically, entail admiration for old people's wisdom—as I've been told as a student and by my parents of course. Certain voices, in the so-called wisdom books, blurt as much. A wise young child (m/M) is better than a foolish old king (Qoh. 4.13). The younger Elihu gets to say his stuff in the book of Job at length, partly repeating his older predecessors' arguments; his speeches, in the present structure, lack responses—but they are there, as the product of a younger voice taking up quite a lot of space and—at least to begin with—ridiculing the older persons' speeches (Job 32-37). And this leads us back to the claim made here earlier. Relative age notions in the Hebrew Bible are mostly male-gendered, intimately and ultimately tied up with the male competition between fathers and sons that is focused on acquiring the Phallus. One has to admit that here—distressingly—the older generation is more successful, many times, than the younger one. Abraham gets to sacrifice Isaac, or does he? David survives Amnon and Absalom. Job survives his first set of children. And so on. In this sense, the Hebrew Bible is both similar to and different from other mythologies—such as the Greek and Sumerian myths. My point, once again, is that not age per se is the decisive factor, but the authority of the bearded (metaphorically or otherwise) father. Another point in this direction is the fact that the Hebrew Bible does not object to younger brothers acquiring the father's Phallus, in the form of the inverted bekora, the skipping of the father's blessing and/or inheritance, over the older brother; this again shows that age, even relative age, is in the social construct less important than other factors—certainly less important than the divine or human father's power to exercise his own choice. To return to the beginning of this paper, then, and to the issue of the value of critical autobiographical criticism. This reader is motivated, at this time and for the purpose of this reading, by her age and gender. Age, yes, not being young any more may liberate one of the disgust felt earlier about the father's control over his children. So does it, for this mother (decidedly not a father, privileged by definition?). It is almost shameful, in our culture, to be a woman in her late fifties. It is easy for such a woman to be considered past her prime. On the other
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hand, males of this certain age are considered in their prime. In our society, the law of diminishing importance with age applies more to females than to males. Older males—as a group—seem to fare better in the social arena. This gender differential is very pronounced. As such, it supplies the impetus for a re-examination of what has become in biblical scholarship the biblical cliche of 'age' as a time signifier only, the lens for looking afresh at old—please excuse me—problems. The sensitivity I feel about my age is put to use here. So is the sensitivity about gender roles and social constructs, in the Hebrew Bible as well as outside it. I started by wishing to find consolation in the seemingly older-generation focused cultures of the Hebrew Bible. I found that I could reach new philological insights, born out of the necessity to re-view the available texts. Namely, that the verbal V|pT in the Hebrew Bible is perhaps derived from the nominal zaqan ('beard'); that V]pT has therefore two parallel meanings, perhaps even synchronous—'to be a person [male] of authority, owner of the beard = Phallus' as well as 'not young'; that V|pT denotes a process rather than state; that the 'elders' of the community, therefore, are persons of authority not because they are 'old' or 'older', not necessarily because veneration of old age and aged wisdom lies at the root of the institution of'elders', as has been stated so often in biblical scholarship, but because they are males of parental authority and symbolically bearded. Therefore, my gender awareness helped me re-examine the semantic, semiotic and social phenomena linked to V[pT occurrences3 but prevented me from finding such consolation. Through the dual lenses of age and gender, things seemed to acquire other foci. Not age per se but relative age is at play here; and even more than that, the cliched age gap became a mostly male parent/male child competition for the bearded phallus competition in which the male parent is more often than not the victorious party. And yet, and still, I find that my sympathies lie—even at this time of my life—with the sons (and daughters, of course) rather than with the fathers. 3. In this paper I have not touched upon biblical occurrences of PD'to, 'grey' or 'white' hair (19 times; Gen. 15.15; 25.8; 42.38; 44.29, 31; Lev. 19.32; Deut. 32.25; Judg. 8.32; 1 Kgs 2.6,9; Isa. 46.4; Hos. 7.9; Pss. 71.18; 92.15; Job 41.24; Prov. 16.31; 20.29; Ruth 4.15; 1 Chron. 29.28. Here too, an adjectival complement may be necessary to indicate unambiguous 'old age': the expression rmo rtTO appears four times (Gen. 15.15; 25.8; Judg. 8.32; 1 Chron. 29.28), and there are other solutions to indicate not simply 'advanced' but actually 'old' age. Moreover, while a cognate operates in Akkadian for this word in the sense of 'elders', here too a distinction is made between 'age' and 'social function of responsibility' (institutionalized?).
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As a parent, I say to myself, it is not right for parents to overshadow their children or to outlive them. It is not right for older persons to sacrifice their children in the name of any ideology. It is not right to ask offspring for total obedience. It is not enough to declare that contemporary, Dr Spock-influenced parental attitudes are very dissimilar to ancient paternal attitudes. Indecencies and crimes in the name of the fathers and the Father continue to be made, and I'll refrain from contemporary examples. Finally, this is the value of autobiographical criticism for me: it makes you reconsider, as you get on; it makes you incorporate your life into your work, and vice versa. Other people have and will do the same.4 Done properly— it is another question altogether what 'properly' will mean here—this will contribute to an ongoing chain of learning, then be assigned to the recycle bin, and so on. This is in honour of Robert, with humility; it's pathetic, but I keep hoping that he would have approved. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, J.C., J.L. Staley and R.A. Culpepper (eds.) 1995 Taking it Personally (Semeia, 72; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press). Brenner, A. 1997 The Intercourse of Knowledge (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Brenner, A., and F. van Dijk-Hemmes 1993 On Gendering Texts (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Kitzberger, I.R. 1998 The Personal Voice in Biblical Interpretation (London: Routledge). Richardson, M.E J. (ed.) 2000 Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: The New KohlerBaumgartner in English (5 vols.; Leiden: E.J. Brill).
4. Cf. Semeia 72 (= Anderson, Staley and Culpepper [eds.] 1995) and Kitzberger 1998.
HE-PROPHETS: MASCULINITY AS A PROBLEM FOR THE HEBREW PROPHETS AND THEIR INTERPRETERS
David J.A. Clines Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible is essentially a masculine project.1 There were female prophets in ancient Israel (five in the Hebrew Bible), but with the exception of Huldah, who gets six verses, and Miriam, who gets one, they hardly contribute to the profile of prophecy as a literary product.2 My purpose in this paper is to isolate in the prophets elements that are characteristic of masculinity, asking withal, metacommentatingly, after strains of co-option by prophetic masculinities in texts of our own time. 1. The Messenger Prophets are messengers; that is the most commonplace of commonplaces about the prophets.3 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said, 'Here am I! Send me'. (Isa. 6.8) You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the Lord persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets. (Jer. 25.4)
1. And not just because, as Robert Coote put it in an unforgettable phrase, it' came in spurts' (1981:1). Masculinity can be defined in psychological terms (as corresponding to the different parental responses to the child's drives towards pleasure), in terms of role theory (as playing out a set of scripted behaviours), as a set of distinctive practices (which develop from men's position in specific social structures), or as a variety of discourses of masculinity present in and offered by the culture to men (who have a certain freedom to adopt one type of masculinity or another). See the helpful analysis by Edley and Wetherell 1996. 2. The female prophets are Miriam (Exod. 15.20-21), Deborah (Judg. 4.4), Huldah (2 Kgs 22.14-20; 2 Chron. 34.22-28), Noadiah (Neh. 6.14), and the unnamed jHKrT, presumably the wife of Isaiah, in Isa. 8.3. 3. See, e.g., the classic article of Ross 1962; and Glazier-MacDonald 1987.
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It is the implication of the prophetic formula 'Thus saith the Lord', as all the form critics point out. What they do not point out, however, is that messengers in the world of the Bible are males. Women do not travel; their place is in the home.4 I draw two conclusions already: (1) this central metaphor for the prophetic role is inescapably gendered, and (2) no one notices. 2. Strength Strength is not in itself a marker of masculine discourse; women too want strong bones, strong glass in their car windows, strong friendships, and, at the end of a hard day at the office, a good strong drink. But when you find an intense concentration of the language of strength in a text, you may properly form the suspicion that you are in the realm of the masculine,5 since strength is the primary quality for men and boys of whatever culture,6 and they talk about strength in the Old Testament all the time. Here is a prophetic text that revolves about the language of strength: Behold, the Lord C3~fK) Yhwh comes as a mighty man (pTl"l), and his arm (i?ni, i.e. power) rules for him... When he brings out the army OOiJ) of heaven by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness p~l) of his might (D^IN), and because he is strong (}"QN) in power (TQ) not one is missing... He gives,power (113) to the faint, and to those who have no might (D^IK) he increases strength (TOUU)... Those who wait for Yhwh shall renew their strength (PD). (Isa. 40.10,26, 29, 31)
This is a prophetic encouragement to its hearers, that is how it sets itself forward; it assumes that you will agree that weakness is bad and that strength is a most desirable quality, in humans as well as in God, that if you do not have enough strength, you can acquire it from God's surplus strength. The power of this God of Israel is worshipped by the prophets; here are some examples: 4. While women may journey with their menfolk from Egypt to Canaan, or be carried into exile, or accompany their husband on a trip to Jerusalem, it is hard to find a single case of a lone travelling woman in the Bible. 5. This fact is not recognized even by the most up-to-date and Foucauldian studies of power in biblical literature; cf. Polaski 1999, which does not seem to invoke the concept of the masculine at all. See further, Brittan 1989. 6. Cf. Edley and Wetherell 1996:117: '[A]ny adequate theory of men and masculinity has to have the concept of power at its centre'.
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There is none like thee, O Yhwh; thou art great, and thy name is great in might. (Jer. 10.6) I am a great King, says Yhwh, Lord of Fighting Men, and my name is feared among the nations. (Mai. 1.14)
The accoutrements of power surround this divine figure: he is kitted out with a hard and great and strong sword (Isa. 27.1), his arm is strong (Isa. 51.9; Jer. 21.5) and so is his hand (Isa. 8.11; Jer. 32.21; Ezek. 3.14), arm and hand both outstretched in power (Jer. 21.5; 32.21; Ezek. 20.33, 34). Naturally, the prophets of such a male God of power inevitably view their office as an exercise of power: But as for me, I am filled with power (rn), with the spirit of the LORD, with authority (C3S1EQ) and with might (mi33); To declare to Jacob his crimes and to Israel his sins. (Mic. 3.8 NAB)
Or if the prophets imagine an ideal human figure, one upon whom the Spirit of Yhwh may rest, for example, strength cannot be missing from the picture. So upon the ideal ruler in Isaiah there rests the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might (TITO}), the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yhwh (Isa. 11.2). It is a ruler who is humane and religious, with intellectual virtues—but, oh yes, strong. That was not forgotten. Or if it is the Manservant of Yhwh in Isaiah 53 (as we should no doubt always translate HllT 1113, since "OI7 is gendered), he cannot be a success if he is not at the end found dividing spoil with the strong, himself one of them (Isa. 53.12). Are there for the prophets no values in what might be perceived as 'weakness'? Are there any alternatives to the traditional or hegemonic masculinity? What of patience and calm, of quietness and trust? They are indeed virtues, but they are not ends in themselves. If the prophet says, 'in quietness and in trust shall be your strength' (Isa. 30.15), he means that strength is his ideal, and that quietness and trust are ways of achieving the ideal. It esteems quietness but it honours strength more.7
7. I made a similar point about Paul's phrase, 'when I am weak, then am I strong' (2 Cor. 12.10) in my paper 'Paul, the Invisible Man' (Clines: forthcoming). I am delighted to discover that Isa. 30.15 is the motto of the Israeli Military College in Haifa and Tel Aviv (my thanks to John F. A. Sawyer for the information); we may be sure that such an institution is not harbouring any namby-pamby construction of masculinity.
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Masculine strength can be used for pacific and salvific purposes, but it is no secret that male strength is typically on display when it is being used aggressively, for fighting with other males and for killing them. Prophets, no doubt, are on the whole pretty harmless individuals, physically speaking (I mean the 'writing' prophets, not the Elijahs). Their aggression is expressed verbally, and they do not mince words. In the prophets, there are more occurrences of words for destroy and break (318) than there are of Jerusalem (248), more for die and death (158) than for spirit (155), more for fire (154) than for holy and holiness and sanctify (146), more for anger, angry and wrath (193) than for voice (174) or soul (158) or prophet (156), 50 per cent more for evil (66) than for good (40). There are 50 woes (mn) ) in the prophets, morecursing (31) than blessing (29). The speaking, 'writing', prophets themselves will not harm a fly, as far as we can tell, but open a prophetic book at random and you will find such sentences as these: Woe to my worthless shepherd ... May the sword smite his arm and his right eye! Let his arm be wholly withered, his right eye utterly blinded! (Zech. 11.17) Behold, I am against you, says Yhwh, Lord of Fighting Men, and I will bum your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. (Nah. 2.13) You are my hammer and weapon of war; with you I break nations in pieces; with you I destroy kingdoms, with you I break in pieces the horse and his rider; with you I break in pieces the chariot and the charioteer; with you I break in pieces man and woman; with you I break in pieces the old man and the youth; with you I break in pieces the young man and the maiden; with you I break in pieces the shepherd and his flock; with you I break in pieces the fanner and his team; with you I break in pieces governors and commanders. (Jer. 51.20-23)
Then there is the pornography of the prophets, sex without eros, the pornography of perverse pleasure, the sadism of verbal violence against women.8 8. On the subject, see, among others, Bauer 1998; Brenner 1993, 1996, 1997; Carroll 1995; Exum 1995,1996: 101-28; Selvidge, 1996; Setel 1993; Törnkvist 1998.
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And there is, supremely, the divine violence, for the divine male is above all the fighter and the killer. ' Yhwh God of Fighting Men' is his favourite title, according to the prophets: 2117 occurrences of Yhwh, 236 of Yhwh Sebaoth (only 23 occurrences outside the prophetic books). Fascinating how the 'divine warrior' has become so frequented a topos in (male) scholarly literature,9 how severely objective is the scholarly language of the history of traditions, and how rarely the ethical problem of a killer God comes to the surface (that is of course the province of pacifists). Here is a typical notation of the theme: The understanding of God as a warrior is grounded in the origins of biblical religion. The image of the divine warrior dominates the oldest Israelite poetry, remains a frequent characterization of God throughout the biblical period, and gains a new prominence in the apocalyptic literature of both Jewish and Christian communities. (Hiebert 1992: 876) Israel's prophets shared the tribal and royal conception of God as a warrior whose involvement in military engagements determined their outcome and preserved or destroyed nations... The fervent concern for justice among Israel's prophets, however, gave a unique emphasis to their apprehension of the kinds of warfare in which the divine warrior was engaged. For the prophets, the divine warrior entered military conflicts against any nation characterized by injustice and political hubris. Thus prophetic circles associated the warfare of God with the divine maintenance of justice in the world, a justice which would eventuate ultimately in the abolition of war and the reign of peace. (Hiebert 1992: 878)
Please note that (1) if the conception of God as warrior is 'grounded in the origins of biblical religion', biblical religion itself might be undermined if it were to be surgically extracted from it, (2) that if it 'dominates' the oldest Israelite poetry (and remember, in biblical scholarship, old = authentic), remains frequent throughout the Bible, and even so manages to gain a 'new prominence' in the (presumptively climactic and supersessive) religion of Christianity, it is to be applauded, (3) once the warfare of God can be connected with the maintenance of justice and the Great Lie of the 'war to end war' can be invoked, only an enemy of peace could find an unkind word to say against it, and (4) caught up into a Utopian vision of
9. Cf., e.g., Miller 1973; Yoder Neufeld 1997; Brettler 1993; Klingbeil 1999; Longman and Reid 1995; Wright 1992.
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the 'abolition of war and the reign of peace' the quintessential masculinity of the idealization of violence can be totally ignored.10 4. Honour A fourth area where I would look for male assumptions in the prophets is the matter of honour. It is a key concept in Mediterranean culture, as many recent writers have been pointing out;11 some would go as far as to call ancient Israel essentially an 'honour-shame' culture. But it is more correctly defined as a patriarchal culture, the concern with honour being an instanciation of male values. The cultural anthropologists concur: '[H]onor is a value embodied by adult males'; 'Honour is bound up with male ideology' (Wikan 1984). What is honour? It is a recognition by the group of the status of a male. It is a competitive matter, for a man's honour ranking is relative to those of all the other males in his group. It is constantly open to challenge, and a man with honour always has to be prepared to defend it.12 Honour is essential for male identity. There is hardly a place in the Hebrew Bible where a woman has honour (though a woman, who normally has zero honour in the male world, can be shamed or dishonoured, that is, can have negative honour, honour less than zero, for example by being widowed, losing her sons, or not bei"" married).13 It is males who 10. Thomas Romer speaks of the 'disarmament' or 'demilitarization' of the warrior god by Deuteronomistic editing that 'counterbalances' the tradition of Yhwh as a God of conquest (Romer 1996: 87) but, as the quotation above from Hiebert shows, a picture of a pacific future need not in the least countervail against the image of the warrior God, but may in fact be its ultimate justification. 11. See Peristiany 1965; Finley 1962; Adkins 1960; Cairns 1993. 12. Cf. Moxnes 1993: 168. 13. For widowhood as a shame, cf. Isa. 54.4 (the woman is of course Jerusalem, and not a real woman, but the language would presumably not be possible if a real widow did not suffer shame just for being a widow). A mother of seven sons is shamed (2TI3) and disgraced ("ISI"!) when all her sons are killed in battle (Jer. 15.9). The only texts about women's honour are these: (1) Exod. 20.12 and Deut. 5.16 call upon sons to honour their father and mother. But it must be a different kind of honour for the mother than for the father; for the father's honour is a public one, attributed and assigned in a sphere in which mothers do not move. Or it may be that text means that one should honour one's father and not dishonour one's mother. (2) Isaiah 66.11, where Jerusalem as a mother is said to have glory. Those who mourn for her will suck and be satisfied with her breasts of consolation; they should drain them out and delight themselves 'in the fullness of her glory' (HTI33 T'TD). If it turns out that women can
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need and seek honour, the social esteem awarded to males both human and divine.14 Without honour, a male is 'shamed'. Defeat in battle is automatically shame for a land's soldiers (Zech. 10.5), its inhabitants (Jer. 9.19) and its deities (Jer. 50.2); not being able to produce what is expected of one (crops from a farmer [Jer. 14.4], prophecies from a seer [Mic. 3.7]) is a shame. A thief is shamed when he is caught (Jer. 2.26): not that he is subjectively 'ashamed' (he maybe), but he is defeated, he has failed, and that is the shame. jHKr, which is 'honour', is sometimes translated 'glory', especially when it is Yhwh's honour, but I will always translate it 'honour', as it must be in Mai. 1.6: A son honours his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honour? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says Yhwh, Lord of Fighting Men, to you, O priests, who despise my name.
Among humans, a king has maximum honour, of course: Yhwh is bringing against them the king of Assyria and all his honour. (Isa. 8.7)
But such honour is outranked by that of the divine king, who says: For my own sake, for my own sake, I act. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my honour to another. (Isa. 48.11)
Just to look at Isaiah alone, Yhwh's honour is foregrounded in these places among others: Yhwh, sitting on his throne, is surrounded by courtiers who cry out, 'The whole earth is full of his honour'. (Isa. 6.3) The honour of Yhwh will be revealed when he brings the exiles back. (Isa. 40.5) He gives his honour to no one else. (Isa. 42.8; 48.11) He created humans for his own honour. (Isa. 43.7)
have honour or glory, namely full breasts, this is nothing like the honour that men possess. Cf. also the idea that a woman's long hair is her honour (1 Cor. 11.15). 14. Certain objects also can be honoured or have honour, e.g., a forest and orchards (Isa. 10.18), Kedar (Isa. 21.16), Lebanon (Isa. 35.2), chariots (Isa. 22.18), the temple (Hag. 2.3,7,9), Ephraim (Hos. 9.11). Are they all within the male realm?, one wonders.
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Wherever it appears, the honour of Yhwh is the honour of a male, for that is the only kind of honour there is. Every time we encounter his honour, we must remind ourselves that we are moving in a male sphere, and that the prophet must stress Yhwh's honour because, as one male to another, that is the only way he knows of expressing his own esteem for the deity. 5. Holiness It is a strange but symbolically meaningful fact that 2JHp never occurs in the feminine in the Hebrew Bible. Women cannot be holy, sanctified or consecrated. Not only are there no 'holy women', the adjective is not even used with any feminine noun.15 The sphere of holiness is exclusively male, which is what we should have expected anyway, since it is the essence of the male deity. So we should always translate, for example, the Isaianic term^N"!!^ 27np, 'holy one of Israel', as 'holy male of Israel', or perhaps 'the Holy Israelite Male' (25 of its 31 occurrences in Isaiah). What is holy in the prophets? God himself (Isa. 1.4, and about 40 other occurrences), his name (Amos 2.1 and seven other occurrences), his Spirit (Isa. 63.10 and one other occurrence), his words (Jer. 23.9), his arm (Isa. 52.10), his angels (Zech. 14.5), his temple and its objects (Jer. 51.51 and 37 other occurrences), his people and their seed (Isa. 62.12 and three other occurrences), his city (Isa. 52.1 and two other occurrences), his mountain (Isa. 11.9 and 15 other occurrences), his land (Zech. 2.12), his feasts (Isa. 30.29), his Sabbaths (Isa. 58.13), his highway (Isa. 35.8), his remnant in Jerusalem (Isa. 4.3). In short, nothing female, nothing domestic, nothing from the realm of the moral, nothing outside the sphere of the male God himself and the objects and practices of his cult is holy here. 6. Women Yet another indication of a male text is the attitude taken toward women. If in any text women are despised, or feared, or threatened, or blamed, or abused, or trivialized, or stereotyped, or marginalized, or humiliated, or ignored, it is prima facie evidence that it is a male text.
15. If you want to say 'holy city' in Hebrew, you must say 'city of holiness' (Ehp Ti:), asinNeh. 11.1, 18; Isa. 48.2; Dan. 9.24 (the only occurrences).
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Women are despised in: And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, 'We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach'. (Isa. 4.1)
Not to have a husband is automatically a reproach; here women are represented as making pathetic and ludicrous attempts to avoid shame. Women are threatened in: The Lord said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet; the Lord will smite with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts. (Isa. 3.16-17)
Usually in the prophets threats against women are threats of punishment against their men, as for example in the famous case of Amaziah's wife who is to become a harlot in Bethel because her husband has tangled with Amos (Amos 7.17),16 but here, though it hardly an advance, the women are wholly responsible for their own punishment. Women are blamed in: In that day the Lord will take away the fmery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarfs; the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; the signet rings and nose rings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils. Instead of perfume there will be rottenness; and instead of a girdle, a rope; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth; instead of beauty, shame. (Isa. 3.18-24)
Women's clothing is clearly very wicked (probably because men are uncontrollably attracted by nose rings and handbags),17 and Yhwh will need 16. Cf. Job's wife whom he curses to suffer a similar fate should he allow himself to be seduced by another woman (Job 31.10). 17. Not so, says Wildberger (1991: 147), quoting Budde: 'It is definitely not correct to say that Isaiah is indignant about clothing customs as such.. .since one presumes that Isaiah would certainly have been able to find all these effects in his wife's wardrobe' (and we must presume that the prophet could hardly have waxed indignant about his own wife's trinkets, even though the image of the prophet poking about in his wife's wardrobe might raise an eyebrow). No, this is not an authentic Isaian passage, since 'it is.. .most unlikely that he would have put in the time and effort to assemble such a list' (for why would a real man, a prophet with high affairs of state on his mind [cf. 148], waste his time with trivia like women's clothing?). 'In and of itself, of course,
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to personally remove it, item by item, since shaming a woman by stripping her naked is a recognized divine method of punishing her for overdressing (cf. Hos.2.5,11-12). The perversity of the prophet is embarrassingly transparent. Women are feared in: And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, every one who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning. (Isa. 4.3-4)
If male holiness is only possible when female 'filth' has been washed away (no mention of male 'filth'),18 female filth is plainly dangerous and fearful. Women are stereotyped in the standardized depictions of them as mothers, for example: Pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in travail. (Isa. 13.8) Therefore my loins are filled with anguish; pangs have seized me, like the pangs of a woman in travail; 1 am bowed down so that I cannot hear, I am dismayed so that I cannot see. (Isa. 21.3; cf. also 7.14; 26.17; 42.14; 45.10; 66.12-13)
Women are abusedin: I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity... Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. (Isa. 13.11, 16-17) 'beautiful clothes, with the accompanying decorative touches, could give expression to the naive, natural joy of an Oriental wife who wanted to adorn herself (such adornment being, any man will tell you, childlike and naive). But that is not the issue here; what is under judgment is not the clothing but the lifestyle of the Jerusalem women which is 'a symptom of the drive to be important'—and readers will know how unbecoming such a drive is in a woman. That lifestyle 'reveals a haughtiness in which one is so wrapped up in human affairs that there is no time left to bow down before God' (156)—for obviously these women who are 'jingling with their foot bracelets' are not on their way to a prayer-meeting. The prophet and his commentator are of a common mind that women cannot be both pious and glamorous; they really disapprove of female adornment—which is to say, they fear it. 18. ~HU is sometimes 'excrement', but the fact that it is specifically the nNU of the women suggests strongly that it is female impurity. 19. There is also abuse of the woman who personifies Babylon in 47.1-15, but I am not dealing with metaphorical women here.
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That is, while the punishment for a wicked man is to be killed with a sword, the punishment for a wicked woman is to be raped. If, on the other hand, the wicked women were to be slaughtered and the wicked men were to be raped one would suspect that it was not a male text. Women are trivialized in: Like fluttering birds, like scattered nestlings, so are the daughters of Moab at the fords of the Arnon. (Isa. 16.2) hi that day the Egyptians will be like women, and tremble with fear before the hand which the Lord of hosts shakes over them. (Isa. 19.16) Rise up, you women who are at ease, hear my voice; you complacent daughters, give ear to my speech. In little more than a year you will shudder, you complacent women; for the vintage will fail, the fruit harvest will not come. Tremble, you women who are at ease, shudder, you complacent ones; strip, and make yourselves bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins. (Isa. 32.9-11)
They are slight things, easily alarmed, not like Egyptians, who are of course all male. They have no conception of affairs of state, of how serious the political situation is: they are 'at ease' QK2)) and they are 'trusting' (mnHD), just the sort of thing we should imagine Isaiah is deeply opposed to (if we overlooked 12.2; 14.30; 26.3; 32.17). This must be something that is good if men do it but bad if women do it.20 Women are marginalized in: My people—children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. (Isa. 3.12)21
That is to say, women are regarded as so incompetent and defective that to have women ruling a society is a sure sign of social disorder and anarchy. Women are humiliated in: Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (Isa. 49.15)
Since women have little purpose in existing except to have children, it is rather humiliating to women to suggest that even in their primary function of childcare they have to take second place to the Almighty.
20. Babylon, pictured as a woman, is also in trouble for 'trust' in 47.8. 21. BUS and some commentators read D'typi 'oppressors' (so too NJB) instead of D"1^: 'women'.
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Oh, women are ignored everywhere else. Above I have listed all the references to women in Isaiah (real women, not cities or countries personified as women, or ballast variants22 to men),23 constituting much less than one per cent of the book of Isaiah. It is not much of a recognition of women, but taken together the meaning of these references is clear enough: women, though fundamentally unclean, are a source of dangerous temptation for men; they are weak, and scream a lot in childbirth. If they are wicked, they will be raped. 7. Standard-Bearing Ian Harris has drawn attention to an important social role men play, which he calls 'standard bearing': Men produce the world by promoting certain social standards that reflect the way they want the world to be... Male standard bearers strive to realize ethical standards, produce lasting creations, improve the world, and devote themselves to excellence. Standard bearers reflect concern for higher order needs, not just survival. They derive a sense of worth by fulfilling meaningful social roles and have an unselfish concern for others' well-being. Standard bearers take pride in living up to their moral precepts, so that when they finish their lives they can feel they have been of use. (Harris 1995: 55-56)
Reading these lines, I imagine I am reading about the prophets. I draw attention to these elements: (a) The oracles against theforeign nations. The prophets see themselves as global standard-bearers, responsible for assessing the moral standing of nations generally and for denouncing those that do not meet acceptable standards. They are applying the standards of 'international customary law' (Barton 1980), norms that would have 'embodied conventions hammered out in response to the pragmatics of routine life' (Hayes 1988: 58). In more poetic vein, the prophets see their people, in Isaiah's words, as a 'light of the nations' (Isa. 42.6; 49.6), perhaps as setting an ethical standard for other nations.
22. See Watson 1984: 344. I have commented on the phenomenon in my 'The Parallelism of Greater Precision: Notes from Isaiah 40 for a Theory of Hebrew Poetry' (Clines 1987). 23. I have omitted Isa. 24.2, perhaps the only text where women are mentioned by Isaiah without pejorative overtones.
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(b) Prophecy and satire. Like satire, prophecy's objective may be said to be to praise and to blame (more of the latter than the former, I should guess). Thomas Jemielity has drawn attention in this regard to the 'heavily censorious content of the canonical Hebrew prophets' (Jemielity 1992:15). (c) Prophecy and tradition. The prophets do not regard themselves as lone individuals who have just received a startlingly new word from Yhwh which they must pass on willy-nilly. If that is what Amos alleges (3.8), it certainly is not representative of the Hebrew prophets. As Clements puts it, even though the prophets were 'undoubtedly testifying to a particularly immediate consciousness of God', they 'appear to have been well aware that they stood in a prophetic tradition and fulfilled a particular role in the divine ministry to Israel' (Clements 1975:39). They have a vision of themselves as standard-bearers, passing down an ethical and religious tradition from a former generation, one that they trust will survive their own lifetime. (d) The ethicization of politics. It is of the essence of prophecy that it insists on reading the history of the prophets' own time, of their past and future as well, as a story of right and wrong. They have no space for historical causation, for everything is a moral matter, every historical event is a divine disclosure. A classic case is Amos's: I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places ... And I also withheld the rain from you when there were still three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city... I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword; I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a brand snatched from the fire; yet you did not return to me, says the Lord. (Amos 4.6-7, 10-11)
Famine, plague, defeat—all are acts of God, and all are summonses to moral behaviour. This single-minded concentration on the ethical, on ethical excellence to boot, is the mark of the standard-bearer, and proof again of the masculine formation of the prophets. It is not only the prophets themselves who are standard-bearers; those who study and research, teach and preach the prophets often see themselves as carrying on the standard-bearing role of the prophets. Just one citation, from James Crenshaw, will make the point:
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Sense and Sensitivity Careful study of the Book of Jeremiah helps us to remain faithful to the prophet's legacy by learning from him to weigh the traditions of the past and to use them in the struggle to forge a better world.24
Remaining faithful to the prophet is clearly an important ideal for this man, since the modern scholar sees himself as a legatee of the prophet, who will find his own fulfilment in recapitulating the ideals and experiences of the prophet.25 8. Masculinity as a Problem How is the masculinity of the prophetic texts a problem, and for whom is it a problem?26 It is a problem for the prophets themselves, for they do not know they speak only in Gavrit, as I term the language of masculinity (translated as Masclish). Like M. Jourdain, who had been speaking prose for 40 years without knowing it,27 the prophets use Gavrit pervasively and exclusively, 24. Crenshaw 1987:100 (cf. 112). Of course, from a male point of view we cannot remain faithful to the prophet unless we know exactly which are and which are not authentic words of his, i.e., where legitimacy lies. Thus it is not surprising (though it is deeply saddening) that Crenshaw identifies the 'fundamental issue' in current Jeremiah research as the question, 'How can we recognize authentic materials of Jeremiah when the book contains distinctive literary styles?' (100-101). 25. As a second example I offer the closing words from the preface to Hans Wildberger' s Isaiah commentary (Wildberger 1991: viii):' [H] ope remains that the message of the prophet and the words of the many interpreters and interpolators within the book itself will begin to speak once again in a new way to our own age. The central theme of Isaiah's proclamation is as timely today as it was in the time of the prophet: .. .If you do not believe, then you will not remain.' The idea that the commentator is transmitting the words of the prophet to another age casts him as a standard-bearer. Interesting also, incidentally, is Wildberger's choice of this text (Isa. 7.9) as the 'timely' message of Isaiah when 'faith' or 'belief is so scarce in Isaiah (28.16 seems to be the only other use of"|QN in such a sense). It couldn't be anything to do with Lutheran theology, could it? 26. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz is also worried about masculinity (Eilberg-Schwartz 1994), but his concern is different from mine. He finds 'the sexual body of a father God...troubling for the conception of masculinity', 'rendering] the meaning of masculinity unstable' (1-2). I am more concerned with the effect of the masculinity of the prophets upon their writings and their readers. 27. M. Jourdain appears in Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. He is astonished to find that he has been speaking prose for 40 years without realizing it (ily a plus de quarante cms queje dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rieri).
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but know nothing of it. Unlike women, who can only ever define themselves over against males, men have long been accustomed to equating maleness with humanity. A woman prophet, a 11^33, can only ever know herself as a female counterpart of a JV3] but a male &V3] will never think of himself as a masculine rW3D. As the linguists say, &VD3 is an unmarked form, and in the real world it is the unmarked who call the shots. Whether the masculinity of the prophets is a problem for interpreters of the Bible depends on how they value the Bible. If they regard the Bible as an ancient text like the Gilgamesh epic or the Iliad or the Epistles of Seneca, they will not find the masculinity of the prophets a problem, assuming they even notice it. But if they think of the Bible as the Word of God, or as a theological resource, or even merely as a cultural classic, they are bound to have a problem translating Masclish into Human. How can a 'message' that comes in male attire, standing tall and girded with a sword, lifting high its standard yet fearful for its precarious honour, hope to speak to a world that is 53 per cent female (to say nothing of the men in the other 47 per cent who are troubled about traditional masculinity)? Interpreters of the Bible (until now) have, of course chosen the best way of handling any problem: ignore it.28 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adkins, A.W. 1960 Barton, J. 1980 Bauer, A. 1998
Brenner, A. 1993
1996
Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Amos's Oracles against the Nations: A Study of Amos ;.3-ZJ(SOTSMS,6; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 'Das Buch Jeremia: Wenn kluge Klagefrauen und prophetische Pornographie den Weg ins Exil weisen', in L. Schottroff (ed.), Kompendium feministische Bibelauslegung (Gutersloh: Christian Kaiser, Gutersloher Verlagshaus): 258-69. ' 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 Hebrew Bible (BIS, 1; Leiden: EJ. Brill): 178-93. 'Pornoprophetics Revisited: Some Additional Reflections', JSOT1Q (1996): 63-86.
28. There are, for example, no references to 'male' or 'masc*' in 700 references to books and articles on prophecy in the Aktinos database .
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326 1997 Brettler, M. 1993 Brittan, A. 1989 Cairns, D.L. 1993 Carroll, R.P. 1995
Clines, D.J.A. 1987
forthcoming
The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and 'Sexuality ' in the Hebrew Bible (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 153-74. 'Images of YHWH the Warrior in Psalms', Semeia 61: 135-65. Masculinity and Power (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press). 'Desire under the Terebinths: On Pornographic Representation in the Prophets—A Response', in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to The Latter Prophets (Feminist Companion to the Bible, 8; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 275-307. 'The Parallelism of Greater Precision: Notes from Isaiah 40 for a Theory of Hebrew Poetry', in E.R. Follis (ed.), New Directions in Hebrew Poetry (JSOTSup, 40; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 77-100. (Reprinted in On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays, 1967-1998, I [JSOTSup, 292; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998]: 314-36.) 'Paul, the Invisible Man', in J.C. Anderson and S.D. Moore (eds.), Masculinity in the New Testament (Semeia).
Clements, R.E, 1975 Prophecy and Tradition (Growing Points in Theology; Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Coote, R. 1981 Amos among the Prophets: Composition and Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press). Crenshaw, J.L. 'A Living Tradition: The Book of Jeremiah in Current Research', in J.L. 1987 Mays and P. Achtemeier (eds.), Interpreting the Prophets (Philadelphia: Fortress Press): 100-12. Edley, N., and M. Wetherell 1996 'Masculinity, Power and Identity', in M. Mac an Ghaill (ed.), Understanding Masculinities (Buckingham: Open University Press): 97-1 13. Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 1994 God's Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (Boston: Beacon Press). Exum, J.C. 1995 'The Ethics of Biblical Violence against Women', in J.W. Rogerson, M. Davies and D.M. Carroll R. (eds.), The Bible in Ethics (JSOTSup, 207; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 248-71. 1996 Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women (JSOTSup, 215; GCT, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Finley, M. The World of Odysseus (London: Penguin Books). 1962 Glazier-MacDonald, B. 1987 Malachi: The Divine Messenger (SBLDS, 98; Atlanta: Scholars Press).
CLIMES He-Prophets Harris, I.M. 1995 Hayes, J.H. 1988 Hiebert, T. 1992 Jemielity, T. 1992 Klingbeil, M. 1999
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Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities (London: Taylor & Francis). Amos, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and his Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press). 'Warrior, Divine', mABD, VI, 876-80. Satire and the Hebrew Prophets (Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press).
Yahweh Fighting from Heaven: God as Warrior and as God of Heaven in the Hebrew Psalter and Ancient Near Eastern Iconography (OBO, 169; Freiburg: Universitatsverlag). Longman, T., Ill, and D.G. Reid 1 995 God is a Warrior (Studies in Old Testament Biblical Theology; Grand Rapids: Zondervan). Miller, P.D., Jr 1973 The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (HSM, 5; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Moxnes, H. 1993 'Honor and Shame', BTB 23: 167-76. Peristiany, J.D. (ed.) 1965 Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Polaski, S.H. 1999 Paul and the Discourse of Power (GCT, 8; The Biblical Seminar, 62; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Romer, T. 1996 Dieu obscur: Le sexe, la cruauté et la violence dans 1 'Ancien Testament (Essais bibliques, 27; Geneva: Labor et Fides): 77-96. Ross, J.F. 1962 'The Prophet as Yahweh's Messenger', in B.W. Anderson and W. Harrelson (eds.), Israel's Prophetic Heritage: Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg (London: SCM Press): 98-107. (Reprinted in D.L. Petersen [ed.], Prophecy in Israel: Search for an Identity [Philadelphia: Fortress Press]: 111-21.) Selvidge, MJ. 1996 'Reflections on Violence and Pornography: Misogyny in the Apocalypse and Ancient Hebrew Prophecy', in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament (Feminist Companion to the Bible, 10; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 274-85. Setel, T.D. 1993 'Prophets and Pornography: Female Sexual Imagery in Hosea', in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs (Feminist Companion to the Bible, 1; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 143-55. (First published in L.M. Russell [ed.], Feminist Interpretation of the Bible [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985]: 86-95.)
328 Törnkvist, R. 1998
Sense and Sensitivity The Use and Abuse of Female Sexual Imagery in the Book of Hosea: A Feminist Critical Approach to Hos 1-3 (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala Women's Studies. A. Women in Religion, 7; Uppsala: University of Uppsala).
Watson, W.G.E. Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to its Techniques (JSOTSup, 26; Shef1984 field: JSOT Press). Wikan, U. 'Shame and Honour: A Contestable Pair', Man 19: 635-52. 1984 Wildberger, H. Isaiah 1-12: A Commentary (trans, T.H. Trapp; Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1991 [German original, 1980]). Wright, G.E. 'God the Warrior', in B.C. uilenburger (ed.), The Flowering of Old Testa1992 ment Theology: A Reader in Twentieth-Century Old Testament Theology, 1930-1990 (Sources for Biblical and Theological Study, 1; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns): 100-19. YoderNeufeld,T.R. 1997 'Put on the armour of God': The Divine Warrior from Isaiah to Ephesians (JSNTSup, 140; Sheffield: JSOT Press).
Part IV READING THE SIGNS: THE BIBLE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
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LITERATURE AND THE POSSIBILITY OF THEOLOGY
David Jasper
I
I begin with a simple, contentious statement: theology, at least as generally understood within the Western tradition, is no longer a possibility within the context of our contemporary postmodern condition. My reason for making this audacious claim takes its origin from the suggestion, contra major critics like Charles Taylor, that the idea of definition of selfhood and the subject have collapsed in upon themselves and invalidated the structures upon which Christian theology, at least since St Augustine, has been constructed. This collapse was the subject of a major enquiry undertaken in the late 1980s by Jean-Luc Nancy which culminated in the publication of a volume of essays entitled Who Comes After the Subject? (Cadava, Connor and Nancy 1991). The enquiry explains the question as follows: ...one of the major characteristics of contemporary thought is the putting into question of the instance of the 'subject', according to the structure, the meaning, and the value subsumed under this term in modern thought, from Descartes to Hegel, if not to Husserl. The inaugurating decisions of contemporary thought—whether they took place under the sign of a break with metaphysics and its poorly pitched questions, under the sign of 'deconstruction' of this metaphysics, under that of a transference of the thinking of Being to the thinking of life, or of the Other, or of language, etc.—have all involved putting subjectivity on trial. (Cadava, Connor and Nancy 1991: 5)
This analysis, I suggest, has profound implications for the possibility of theology. To the question of metaphysics we will return. For now, let us expand a little on this trial of the subject via a brief excursion into the thought of the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard. In his Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993), Baudrillard defines what he terms 'three orders of simulacra' responding to mutations of the law of
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value since the Renaissance. The first, of least relevance to us here, operates up to the Industrial Revolution, on the natural law of value, its dominant scheme being that of'counterfeit'. The copy 'counterfeits' the original, which remains primary and unique. The second order, which is the true child of the Enlightenment, operates on the market law of value in terms of products and production. The third order, into which the age of production inevitably falls, functions according to the structural law of value, and this is our current code-governed phase in the nightmarish celebration of simulation. The nineteenth century in Europe was the great age of production, the flower of the Enlightenment, and the exposure of its agonizing placing of the subject on trial. Unlike the counterfeits of the Renaissance, the results of mass production no longer encourage and pose the problems of specificity and origin. The aim now is the production of identical objects in celebration of equivalence and indifference. 'Quality control' claims to guarantee infinite and indefinite reproducibility without origin from the mechanical production line. In human, or inhuman, terms the realization of the industrial simulacrum is found in Aldous Huxley's 1932 dystopia Brave New World, with its World State Motto set over the 'Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre', the words COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. Its irony recognizes, of course, that the achievement of the human production chain both realizes and negates precisely those three things. As Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and the rest of the nineteenth century after Kant knew full well, in the age of mechanical reproduction (or production), there can be no community, no identity and finally no stability. Thus Walter Benjamin in his great essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'—to which Baudrillard (1993) makes reference—shows how reproduction absorbs the process of production, changes its goals and alters the status of both product and producer—in short, redefines entirely the notions of meaning and selfhood. For Benjamin (like Marshall McLuhan) recognized that production itself has no meaning, so that we find ourselves teetering on the very brink of history and slipping into the postmodern abyss of simulation. Baudrillard plays a game with Ferdinand de Saussure and his system of linguistics: take Saussure's structural laws of language to their extreme and what remains? The loss of determination, the loss of meaning—and above all the loss of reference. In much the same way, Jacques Derrida
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picks up in Heidegger what would have horrified Nietzsche. Take everything to its logical end—and make no mistake, both Baudrillard and Derrida are faithful, if grimly ironic, children of the Enlightenment—and we are left at the implosion of the age of production—with the end of labour, of political economy, of the signifier/signified dialectic, of the dialectics of value. Oh, brave new world—from the hell of industrialization we collapse into what Baudrillard terms 'the cool universe of digitality [which] absorbs the universe of metaphor and metonymy' (Baudrillard 1993: 76). In his Foreword to the 1946 edition of Brave New World, Huxley admitted that the world he had projected 14 years earlier was coming much faster than he had expected. What, then, of the year 2002? We have passed into a universe of structures and binary oppositions. There is, indeed, nothing outside the text, but merely systems of inter-relationship without grounding—the metaphysics of indeterminacy and the code. Values now are merely strategic and tactical, and the subject is identified only by DNA coding. And finality, if it can be spoken of at all, is already inscribed in the code. All around us there is only cyberspace, since this cannot now be distinguished from 'real' space—or rather, as Nietzsche said, 'Down with all hypotheses that have allowed belief in a real world'. Are ethics, like any vestigial claims of the subject, merely systems of defence to preserve the vicious circle of hyper-reality, simulacra and cyberspace? Are we now living in the nightmare of Baudrillard from which there can be no way out? The displacements and distortions of metaphor and metonymy which allowed reflection, the sense of the other, the aesthetic have now been absorbed. There are no metaphors or metaphysics in cyberspace. That being the case, what is the possibility of theology within the postmodern condition? Graham Ward has suggested that surfing the Net is the ultimate postmodern experience, for thereby we experience life within cyberspace (Ward 1997: xv). In cyberspace we encounter absolutely the implications of the crisis of humanist subjectivity, while time and space collapse into omnipresence and multilocality. Postmodernism is the ultimate achievement of eclecticism, the avoidance of responsibility and definition. In Ward's words: You act anonymously, simply as the unnamed, unidentifiable viewpoint of so many interactive network games and where identity is needed, you can contstruct one. (Ward 1997: xv)
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God, too, is absolutely deconstructed, constructed, reconstructed at will in irresponsible games which lack governing metaphors or the claims which they make upon us. The theological project must now be pursued in what Philippa Berry has called 'a shadowy inbetween realm—a no-man's-land of thought' (Berry and Wernick 1992: 1) which is characterized by the ever-present image in the twentieth century of the waste-land, experienced in the desolations of war and famine, in the minds of poets and musicians like Eliot, Pound and Schoenberg, and in the installations of artists like Bill Viola. To Edgar Varèse this wasteland 'means not only deserts of sand, sea, mountains, and snow, of outer space, of deserted city streets, not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest bareness and aloofness but also the remote inner space of the mind no telescope can reach' (Viola 1995:263). This is no desert from which springs of living water will flow, but a wasted land in which the mind and spirit wanders nomadically and without direction. It is a landscape familiar to a very few within the history of Christianity, and invariably they have been rejected, for, as Altizer said long ago, having proclaimed anew the Death of God, it lies beyond 'the established categories of Western thought and theology' and 'the theologian has not been able to understand the radical vision, or even perhaps to identify its presence' (Altizer 1966: 182). To this we will return later. In cyberspace, beyond metaphor and metaphysics, can we even think! Or, at least, can we think within any categories of philosophy and theology hitherto know to us?
II Let us now turn to the work of Maurice Blanchot, and in particular his series of meditations entitled The Space of Literature (1982): another kind of space. Blanchot begins with what he calls 'the solitude of the work', to be clearly distinguished from the solitude of the artist. For, he affirms: In the solitude of the work—the work of art, the literary work—we discover a more essential solitude. It excludes the complacent isolation of individualism: it has nothing to do with the quest for singularity... The writer never knows whether the work is done. What he has finished in one book, he starts over or destroys in another. He whose life depends upon the work, either because he is a writer or because he is a reader, belongs to the solitude of that which expresses nothing except the word being: the word which language shelters by hiding it, or causes to appear when language itself disappears into the silent void of the work. (Blanchot 1982: 21-22)
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And so we have moved from a wasteland void of theology to the space or void of the work of literature. In another essay in the collection entitled 'Kafka and the Work's Demand', Blanchot suggests that writing can only originate in 'true' despair—that is writing's sole determination, powerfully present in Kafka, who is a most deeply religious writer and who is preoccupied with the question of salvation and its impossibility. And yet writing and despair have nothing in common—one can only write 'by faith'—except their own indeterminacy. Kafka, then, writes determined by despair, and as his character 'K' he hopelessly and endlessly pursues the possibility of salvation. Yet even the language, the grammar of the text is against him: 'Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning'. So runs the opening sentence of The Trial. Joseph K, who only exists in the text of the novel, combats the text itself (was 'someone telling lies'?), and yet in its space only is salvation. But literature is never merely a means to an end, as Kafka is well aware, and so K's case remains hopeless, despairing, for as the priest in the cathedral says to him: 'it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary'. 'A melancholy conclusion', K replies, 'It turns lying into a universal principle'. And someone must have been telling lies. And yet the words of the text remain, defiantly: someone must have been telling lies. Is it the case that somewhere in the maze of textuality there is truth? K never finds it, if that is so, for in Kafka it is never that simple. Blanchot suggests that Kafka has a tendency to mix religious experience and literary experience: at first to relieve religion with the demand of literature, and then, later, to move from literature to religion. In Kafka, says Blanchot, the demands are mixed in a rather confusing way by passing from the desert of faith to faith in a world which is no longer the desert but another world, where liberty will be returned to him. (Blanchot 1982: 83)
But ultimately, the poet—the artist whom Kafka aspires to be—exists in neither world. In Blanchot's wonderful sentence, 'for there exists for him only the outside, the glistening flow of the eternal outside'. There can hardly be a better description of Kafka's texts. Their crushing honesty— or the truth, in spite of itself—is that there is only outside, only the words themselves, and yet that outside is the only content, the impossible space of the text determined by despair yet prompted by faith. That is all there is, and it is what Blanchot calls 'the work's space and its demand'.
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This desert space is indeterminate, and it cannot be concluded, yet it always longs for closure. That, indeed is its genius, so that Roland Barthes can write in Writing Degree Zero (1953), 'Literature is like phospherous: it shines with its maximum brilliance at the moment when it attempts to die'. Literature is thus already a posthumous affair: as we read the writer is already, in effect, dead, for the indeterminate space opened up by the text is lived entirely in the present, without either past or future. At its maximum brilliance, the work's space and its demands recreates the moment of death which is at the same time the only true moment of life fully lived, undisplaced by past or future, and yet utterly real on the edge between literature and religion. Here are some examples of what is meant by this. The first is from the work of the American poet Emily Dickinson in a poem written about 1862. I heard a Fly buzz —when I died— The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air— Between the Heaves of Storm— The Eyes around—had wrung them dry— And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset—when the King Be witnessed—in the Room— I willed my keepsakes—Signed away What portion of me be Assignable—and then it was There interposed a Fly— With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz — Between the light—and me— And then the windows failed—and then I could not see to see— (Dickinson 1970: 223-24)
Dickinson catches beautifully what Iris Murdoch would have called the moment of contingency. The poem recreates the formality of a death bed in its light touches of religious language and the shedding of the self, both individual and in community. Then, across the loss of the subject in the non-being of the moment of death there interposes the stumbling, accidental fly, the last thing heard and seen. Dickinson, the poet, has gone and only the poem remains, and it is in this tiny space, opened up, that the subject is allowed to speak as 'I', an interpolation which makes it possible to be in that moment of maximum brilliance.
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Emily Dickinson is a poet of immense delicacy, a recluse who finds spaces in tiny incidents which we can easily miss in the clumsiness of religious assertion or despair. And yet they are very real and they make it possible for her to be a deeply religious poet, perhaps the only truly Christian poet in the American literary tradition. For her the moment of the poem is freighted with energy which penetrates Kafka's 'eternal outside'. Against this is weighted the library of the literature of despair with its eternal waiting, the 'Waiting for Godot', a waiting which has no ending and has nowhere to go for it is nowhere. Vladimir: Well? Shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let's go. They do not move. (Beckett 1956: 94)
Reading texts is a hugely time-consuming activity, and yet the true reader is, by nature, impatient, for to read is to lose oneself (Samuel Taylor Coleridge called this letting go the 'willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith'), and to embark on a voyage of recovery and rediscovery. Wolfgang Iser, in 'The Reading Process', describes the bringing to light of the subject matter of the work as an action of Konkretisation (Iser 1974: 274-75). In this action, which takes place in the space of reading, is realized also the subject of the reader, for the work is only ever virtual and absolutely demands completion by the creative participation of the reader. As Virginia Woolf once said of Jane Austen, she is 'a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there' (Woolf 1925). It is in the unwritten part of the text, which we so easily can miss and which is present only to the eye alert to the concrete, the contingent, the accidental, the unimportant, that the possibility of theology may again be presented to us. And this is a moment of death and unbearable brilliance. Here is another example, quite different from Emily Dickinson, but chosen to indicate the universality of this moment. In the fourth-century CE Lausiac History there is the description of a virgin in a monastery who pretended to be mad. The very least in the company of her religious sisters, she spends her time in the scullery, forgotten and an object of disgust and derision. Dressed in rags, she performs the most menial of tasks, eats only the left-overs from others' meals and drinks only the dishwater. She is, as it were, a sponge who absorbs all the waste of the community. The narrative continues:
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And so, travelling to the community of sisters, he meets all the women, except one. But it is the poor idiot in the kitchens who had hidden herself away for fear of discovery and therefore had become as nothing, and had been hidden by the others out of a sense of disgust or perhaps just sheer neglect who is the one of whom the angel had spoken". She is the 'abject nothing', the unwritten part of the text, what Michel de Certeau calls 'the unsymbolizable thing that resists meaning'. The narrative concludes: A few days later, unable to bear her sisters, esteem and admiration, overwhelmed by the demands for pardon, she left the convent. Where she went, where she hid herself, how she ended her days, no-one has found out.
Ill
This woman, it may be suggested, is the space of literature. It is her nonspace which makes being and theology possible, but once it is found it is already gone, already dead. By now it should be clear that the argument is not particularly radical, and is actually quite familiar within the biblical tradition, but rarely acknowledged in our many ways of reading the Bible, for the signs and reminders of this deep kenosis are so easily missed. This is especially so if we neglect the reminder of Douglas Templeton to read the New Testament as 'true fiction', and therefore take with the utmost seriousness the space of all fiction and literature. For as Iris Murdoch reminds us at the end of her most slippery novel, The Black Prince (1973)— a nice take on Hamlet: Art is not cosy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended. And after art there is, let me assure you, nothing. (Murdoch 1975: 416)
We are not here concerned with Iris Murdoch's own religious position, but rather with what her fiction (and indeed, her philosophical writings, which often read more like fictional narratives than careful argumentation) can allow and enable. From her earliest novel Under the Net (1954) to her late work Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992), Murdoch consistently reflects upon, (1) the abandonment of metaphysics as a feature of
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contemporary philosophy generally, and (2) the intrusions of the contingent upon all human experience and constructions. Life is, as she puts it, 'chancy and incomplete'. For her this has immediate bearing upon moral philosophy and the self; for us, perhaps, on the even greater, though related, venture of theology. In the words of one of Murdoch's most recent critics: In spite of its need for systematic elaboration, moral philosophy must not fail to remember the contingent, and to preserve the particular and the individual from absorption into any kind of totalizing theoretical framework. (Antonaccio 1996: 111)
The artist, in creating a work, faces the same question as the metaphysician seeking a theoretical or systematic framework, yet at the same time must affirm the individual, the subject, precisely within the framework, yet free and unrestricted by the pattern of the work. We are back to the space which has been the subject of this whole essay. It may perhaps be the case that the balance and interplay between system and the irreducibility of the individual was on the principle of dialogics, after Mikhail Bakhtin's work on fiction, and especially the novels of Dostoevsky. But on the other hand, it may be the case that at the heart of what we are struggling to articulate here is another source. And so, byway of conclusion, let us refer briefly to the work of one further poet, one philosopher, and finally, one theologian. They may, perhaps, lead us back more or less to where we began, but with a little more illumination. IV
The key lies, perhaps, not in the dialogical principle, but rather in the dialectical. For we do seek resolution, though not yet, and not, perhaps, in the work of literature. Behind a reading of the poet William Blake, and following the lead of the American theologian Thomas Altizer, there lies a dialectical method to be found comprehensively only in Hegel as a guide to a dialectical understanding of theology. Deep within Hegel lies a profound love of the mystical writings of the medieval Meister Eckhart, and Hegel's understanding of negation owes much to Jakob Boehme and Spinoza. In the Logic (1812-16), but above all in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel's thought is grounded in a deep kenotic movement of negation: in the Preface to the Phenomenology, Hegel describes Spirit in wholly kenotic terms, succintly described by Altizer:
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From such dialectical thinking, the move to Blake's poetics is but a short step. For William Blake has never been recognized as the central figure within Christian theology that he is, since his prophetic poetry both transcends and negates its roots in the Christian tradition. In the space of his text, theology suffers an absolute negation and kenosis via a particularity which is located neither in history nor in an understanding of the universal, but which makes its demands in the profane reality of all experience: the challenge of Blake is both sacred and profane, both mystical and contemporary. Blake, like all true poets, is a visionary whose violent attack on the Christian God makes possible a totally Christocentric vision of faith. By the visionary is revealed the world as an abyss—a space of absolute negation which alone makes possible a wholly new creation in a genuine coincidentia oppositorum. Only in such an apocalyptic vision can Christ be truly present, and only in such vision can the subject be recovered via an absolute kenosis. Theology, I began by saying, is no longer possible within the context of our contemporary postmodern condition. Since the beginning of this brief essay we have crossed many strange seas and deserts. Theology is no longer possible in its traditional forms because it lacks both courage and vision. The form of this paper has been an attempt to embody its message (if that is even the correct word). It claims coherence, but it is a coherence which continually deconstructs itself from within, and so if there are moments of insight, that may be enough. For the vision is only ever in fragments, but it resides, ultimately, in a space which is 'no-space', a place which we cannot actually inhabit, for to do so would be to deny it and to lose it, and yet it is at the same time the most familiar of all spaces. Kafka knew it well, though all his fictions are 'outside'—K in The Trial never finds the space, for he is looking in the wrong place, and perishes 'like a dog', lamenting the universal principle of lying. Yet nothing is necessary, and therefore things may be true, reflected in the accidents of metaphor. The crucifixion and Passion were not necessary, and may therefore be true, in a moment outside time and a space outside place, yet a negation, an absolute negation, which alone makes affirmation possible. And, within the Christian tradition, the Passion is the only pure moment ofpoiesis—both sacred and profane.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Altizer, T.JJ. 1966
2000 Antonaccio, M 1996
Barthes, R. 1953 1972 Baudrillard, J. 1993 Beckett, S. 1956 Benjamin, W. 1973
'William Blake and the Role of Myth in the Radical Christian Vision', in T.JJ. Altizer and W. Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill [reprinted London: Penguin Books, 1968]). The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (Aurora, Colorado: The Davies Group Publishers). 'Form and Contingency in Iris Murdoch's Ethics', in M. Antonaccio and W. Schweiker (eds.), Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Writing Degree Zero (trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith; London: Cape). New Critical Essays (trans. S. Heath; Evanston, EL: Northwestern University Press [reprinted New York: Farrar, Straus & Gioux, 1980]). Symbolic Exchange and Death (trans. I.H. Grant; London: Sage). Waiting for Godot (London: Faber & Faber).
'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', in idem, Illuminations (ed. with Introduction by H. Arendt; trans. H. Zohn; London: Fontana). Berry, P., and A. Wernick (eds.) 1992 Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion (London: Routledge). Blanchot, M. 1982 The Space of Literature (trans A. Smock; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Cadava, E., P. iConnor and J.-L. Nancy (eds.) Who Comes After the Subject? (New York: Routledge). 1991 Certeau, M., de 1992 The Mystic Fable. I. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (trans. M.B. Smith; Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Dickinson, E. 1970 The Complete Poems (London: Faber & Faber). Huxley, A. 1932 Brave New World (London: Chatto & Windus). Iser, W. 1974 The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press). Kafka, F. 1974 The Trial (trans. W. and E. Muir; London: Penguin Books). Murdoch, I. 1973 The Black Prince (London: Chatto & Windus [reprinted London: Penguin Books, 1975]).
342 Templeton, D. 1999 Viola, B. 1995 Ward, G. (ed.) 1997 Woolf, V. 1925
Sense and Sensitivity The New Testament as True Fiction: Literature, Literary Criticism, Aesthetics (Playing the Texts, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973-1994 (London: Thames & Hudson, Anthony d'Offray Gallery). The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). The Common Reader (London: Hogarth Press).
POLYPHONIC CARROLLING: HETEROGLOSSIA, PLURALISM, AND EDITING THE BIBLE
Stephen Prickett Working with Bob Carroll on the World's Classics edition of the Bible was one of the most unnerving and educative experiences of my life. Our brief from Oxford University Press was to produce an edition that would assist students who were aware of the Bible's historical and cultural significance, but who had little or no knowledge of the text itself, and no idea where to find the most influential and often cited passages—or of their relation to the whole. In our initial brain-storming sessions no possibilities, however bizarre, were ruled out. Schemes of radical abridgement were considered. Different modern translations were inspected. Plans for printing the 'significant' or 'well-known' passages in bolder face or even different coloured inks were tossed about. Finally, common sense prevailed, and we accepted that, though it was not, of course, the Bible of Shakespeare, Spenser, or Sydney, the version that most nearly met our cultural and historical needs was the obvious one: the King James Bible of 1611. Our function as editors was to be confined to introduction and notes. It was only once we had fallen back on this format that I began to realize both how traditional and how creative was the role we had so lightly assumed. Behind us, I was dimly aware of nearly 3000 years of Midrash, textual gloss, and learned footnotes. That, however, was Bob's task. Mine, by common consent, was to write the introduction, somehow compressing into a few thousand words the endlessly complex interaction of the muchtranslated, yet sacred, words of the Bible, with the evolution of English literature. Deadlines nevertheless drove, and in due course a version of the introduction was completed. Bob showed no sign of having started. His room, as ever, contained hundreds of open books, some on subjects that I assumed must have some bearing on his professional skills, but an alarming number of which seemed to relate to my own literary interests—and many of which I had not read. I would go and see him. We would talk. To illustrate his point he would open a few more books—on top of those
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already open from whatever tutorials or supervisions had taken place in the days, weeks, or months before. I would leave: usually with a further reading-list. Still no sign of the promised notes. Then, some 18 months after the final deadline, Bob entered my room with an armful of loose sheets. 'Genesis to Psalms', he announced. 'The rest next week...' Soon I had over 400 (unnumbered) A4 sheets on my desk. The editor at Oxford had emerged from despair into steely indifference. 'No way', she said firmly. 'No more than 200 pages of notes. Period.' I picked up the phone again to speak to Bob. I put it down again. It would be quicker to make the cuts myself—besides, the exercise would make me look more attentively at parts of my own introduction that I knew were shaky. The one thing to be said for ignorance is that it makes a good startingpoint. If Bob's notes were loose, rambling, and often repetitive, they contained more hard information, more probing scepticism, and a wider, more comprehensive overview of the biblical material than I had ever come across in any other commentary. Just how culturally conditioned and jejune had been my assumptions about 'significance' of certain biblical passages, or of their presumed relationship to the larger whole, slowly became clear to me. It did not, perhaps, radically alter what I knew about the reception and influence of the Bible in English as much as make me increasingly aware of how much that reception itself had become a part of the way in which the Bible has been read and understood—the degree to which the English Bible was itself an elaborate and on-going cultural construct. What came across, in short, was something very close to Jorge Luis Borges' vision of what constitutes both literary criticism and, indeed, literature itself. The process of endless revisions, of re-reading people, events, texts, in the light of later generations, other happenings, more writings, that is so central to the Bible mirrors and even re-illustrates Borges's own example of Shakespeare: Shakespeare's work has been progressively enriched by the generations of its readers. Undoubtedly Coleridge, Hazlitt, Goethe, Heine, Bradley, and Hugo have all enriched Shakespeare's work, and it will undoubtedly be read in another way by readers to come. Perhaps this is one possible definition of the work of genius: a book of genius is a book that can be read in a slightly or very different way by each generation. This is what happened with Bible.' 1. From 'Lecture on Shakespeare', reprinted in J.L. Borges, Selected Non-Fictions (ed. Eliot Weinberger, trans. E. Allen, SJ. Levine and E. Weinberger; London: Allen Lane, 2000), p. 473.
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This is at once an obvious and a deeply subtle point. It is not (as some Romantics held) that Shakespeare must be freed from the grime of centuries of commentary and exegesis for the original qualities of the text to shine forth. Rather what we now know as 'Shakespeare' is the amalgam of the texts of the plays, the life of the man, and the centuries of commentary and criticism that followed. 'Shakespeare' (like any major writer) is thus not a fixed object, but a still-flowing conduit of ideas and emotions, a moving, inexhaustible source. I f this is true of Shakespeare, a writer whose texts, though often problematic, can at least be traced to a single person and period, how much more true is it of a book like the Bible, whose texts have never been stable, and which come from a multiplicity of sources and languages, through layers of translation and redaction? There are two interesting corollaries from this argument. The first is that despite repeated claims by some religious sects to have an exclusive understanding of the Bible, its real historic significance has always been polyphonic. It has traditionally been heard as speaking with many voices— usually in harmony, but occasionally in powerful dissonance. Nor is this simply a feature of the Borgesian feature of 'accumulation' described above. The Bible is, in itself, a palimpsest of different kinds of writings: narrative, history, poetry, wisdom literature, prophecy, and so on. It was always what Bakhtin would have called a 'heteroglossic' compilation. But that is a quality that has been vastly enhanced within the culture of the English-speaking world by the presence and popularity of two related artforms: drama, and, subsequently, the novel—both of which have always been essentially polyphonic. As a result, we have always tended to discover in it drama and debate even when others have been more attuned to hearing a single authoritative voice. It is significant that Bakhtin himself, who coined the word 'heteroglossia' for the novel, was a Russian Orthodox believer who seems to have thought of the Bible as essentially monologic rather than dialogic. This dialogic or polyphonic nature of our culture is so basic as often to be nearly invisible for those inside it. It takes cross-cultural comparison to highlight it. A recent book by the British scholar Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton, is provocatively entitled What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response?' In one chapter, 'Time, Space and Modernity', Lewis points out that, in contrast
2. Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
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with the assumed unity of Islam society, one of the central elements of Western societies—and a fundamental engine of its development—has been the prevalence of polyphony, not only in its musical form of many voices singing different parts within a single harmony, but also, analogously, a capacity for complex interaction in literature, science, team sports, and finally even politics. A distinguishing characteristic of Western music is polyphony, by harmony or counterpoint. This begins in its simplest form with the choir, in which matched voices sing different notes in a planned sequence to produce a combined effect; then comes the keyboard instrument, matching the ten fingers of the two hands, following different routes in a common purpose; and finally, the musical ensemble, from duets and trios to the full orchestra. Different performers play together, from different scores, producing a result that is greater than the sum of its parts. With a little imagination one may discern the same feature in other aspects of Western culture—in democratic politics and in team games, both of which require the cooperation, in harmony if not in unison, of different performers playing different parts in a common purpose, hi parliamentary politics and team games, there is further cooperation in conflict—rival parties or teams, striving to defeat their opponents, but nevertheless acting under an agreed set of rules, and in an agreed interval of time. One may also detect the same feature in two distinctively Western literary creations—the novel, and still more, the theatre. Both of these involve the combined activities of a number of different individuals.. .whose characters and interrelationships are seen to develop and change in the course of time. Such are the differences between the tale and the novel, the recitation and the theatre, and—one might perhaps add—the autocrat and the assembly. The same qualities may be seen, in a more obvious form, in the work of the historian, and indeed distinguishes [sic] his writing from that of the chronicler or annalist.3
Again, Borges provides an example. In his short story, 'Averroës' Search', he describes the efforts of the great twelfth-century Moorish scholar to understand the terms tragedy and comedy from Aristotle's Poetics. In the course of a long evening's discussion with friends, one of them, Abulcasim, tells the following adecdote about his travels in China: One afternoon, the Moslem merchants in Sin Kalan led me to a painted wood house inhabited by a large number of people. It is impossible to describe that house, which was more like a single room, with rows of chambers or of balconies, one on top of the other. People were eating and
3.
Lewis, What Went Wrong?, 128-29.
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drinking in these cavities; the same activity was taking place on the floor and on a terrace. The people on the terrace played on drums and lutes, except for some score or so (who wore crimson masks) who were praying, singing, and conversing. They suffered imprisonment, but no one could see the prison; they rode on horseback, but no one saw the horse; they fought in combat, but their swords were reeds; they died and then stood up again. 'The activity of madmen', said Farach, 'goes beyond the previsions of the sane'. 'They were not mad', Abulcasim was forced to explain. 'They were representing a story, a merchant told me'. No one understood, no one wanted to understand. In confusion, Abulcasim turned from the narrative which they had heard to cumbersome explanations. With the help of his hands, he said: 'Let us imagine that someone shows a story instead of telling it. Suppose this story is the one about the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. We see them retire to the cave, we see them pray and sleep, sleep with their eyes open, we see them growing while they sleep, we see them awake at the end of three hundred and nine, we see them awake in Paradise, we see them awake with the dog. Something of the sort was shown us that afternoon by the persons on the terrace'. 'Did these people speak ?', asked Farach. 'Of course they spoke', said Abulcasim, now become the apologist for a performance he scarcely remembered and which had only vexed him at the time. 'They spoke and sang and perorated'. 'In that case', said Farach, 'there was no need for twenty people. A single speaker can relate anything, however complex it may be'.4
Even Averroës, exceptional scholar though he was, cannot conceive that this half-remembered description of what we in the West call 'Chinese Opera' might have any bearing on his attempt to understand Aristotle, and those mysterious terms, tragedy and comedy. The sheer improbability that at the height of Muslim culture and influence, there might have been a classical Greek art-form, still popular in societies as different as contemporary twelfth-century Europe and China, that had no counterpart whatsoever in the Muslim world, blinded him to the significance of what his friend was describing. It is only we, the readers, who can recognize a theatre from Abulcasim's halting account. Yet, as Lewis makes clear, that inability to understand the theatre had important historical consequences. Theatre was in fact re-introduced into
4. 'Averoes' Search', in Jorge Luis Barges: A Personal Anthology (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 106-107.
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the Islamic world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Spanish Jews, and this tradition was continued by other foreign troupes—Greeks and later Armenians—but not until the end of the eighteenth century, with the emergence of the Shi'ite passion plays, do we find any kind of native Islamic drama.5 Imported films from Hollywood (not to mention Bollywood) mean that the Muslim world is now certainly very familiar with the idea of drama, but it is arguable whether the full extent of polyphony in those other areas has been absorbed either by traditional Muslim culture or, indeed, by authoritarian regimes elsewhere. Certainly, in its postEnlightenment form of capitalism, and its counterparts in intellectual or political pluralism, it has made little headway. But it is not the place here to discuss Lewis's thesis about the Middle East, but rather to explore the surprising ramifications of the polyphony so basic to our own society and education that we scarcely recognize its presence. What was the historical sequence that created in the Christian West what one might call the polyphony of modernity? Drama was clearly central. Right from its inception European literature was shaped both by its vernacular theatre and by the very Greek tragedies and comedies that had baffled Averroës. Chaucer and Rabelais are in their own ways as polyvalent as the Mediaeval Miracle Plays, Marlowe or Shakespeare. What brings their worlds alive is the multitude of conflicting, even dissenting, voices. Even writers like Dante or Milton, who at first sight seem ideologically bound to a single viewpoint, a monologic voice, are, if we stop to look, in fact no less dramatic and polyphonic. One has only to think of Beatrice's stinging rebuke to Dante at their first meeting (Purgatorio XXX), or Satan's parliamentary grandiloquence in Paradise Lost, to see how irretrievably and unconsciously both poets were part of an essentially dramatic culture. Similarly, critics who complain that we see politics and sports in terms of 'drama', as if this were alien to their proper nature and function, might reflect that this could reveal something intrinsic, even necessary to those activities as we have come to practise them. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that attempts to present the Bible, that other foundational work of modern European culture, as a single authoritative monologic text first by the Catholic Church, and later (for different reasons) by Protestant reformers were equally doomed to failure once the scriptures were available to all through the mass-production of printing.
5.
Lewis, What Went Wrong?, 141-42.
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As Peter Harrison has convincingly argued, after the Civil War and the Restoration of Charles II in the second half of the seventeenth century, England had become, for better or worse, the world's first pluralistic society.6 Others, such as the USA and France were shortly to follow. But any expectation that the Bible was to play no part in the creation of a new, pluralistic, modernity in the wake of the Enlightenment is not born out by the subsequent history of the nineteenth century. It is easy, moreover, to miss the degree to which even the most militantly atheistic elements of Enlightenment thought were themselves the products of a Christian and biblically-based society. As Chateaubriand memorably pointed out, Voltaire was unmistakably the voice of a Christian culture.7 He could never have emerged from a Chinese or Islamic one. If the polyphony of our drama helped to shape our literature, and thus also our interpretation of the Bible, that, in turn, was no less effectively to shape the whole fabric of our social awareness in ways that even drama had failed to do. The second corollary follows from this. If Borges' argument is true—as I believe it is—then despite every hermeneutical problem that may hamper our interpretation of particular biblical texts, the document we now know as 'the Bible' (one of many such) is actually a fuller, deeper, richer text than that possessed by any period in the past. 'Our' twenty-first century Bible is the product not merely of the Gospel writers' reflections on the life of Jesus and their interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. It has been enriched by Augustine, by Anselm, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Lowth, Coleridge, Kierkegaard, Browning, Maurice, Hopkins, Arnold, Eliot, Barth, Lewis, Auerbach, Auden, and a host of other critics, theologians, philosophers, novelists, and poets—a few of whom we have read and can identify, but also a multitude of others whose contributions have been invisibly filtered down to us. It is not so much a case of, 'if we can see further, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants'. We do stand on the shoulders of giants: we should be able to see further—the direction in which we look is, however, up to us. This perspective should also enable us to understand more clearly our own hermeneutic practices. In what we have been calling our polyphonic
6. P. Harrison, Religion and Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 7. Rene Francois Auguste Viscount de Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity; or the Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion (trans. Charles White; Baltimore: n.p., 1856 [1802]), 11,228.
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relation to the Bible I have tried to avoid two opposite and, I think, equally misleading conclusions. The first is that this is a quality that we have imposed upon the heterogeneous collection of Hebrew and Greek texts from which our current Bibles are selected. For various contingent literary reasons to do with the prestige of the classics, and, later, the prestige of Shakespeare in the English-speaking world (so this argument might run) we have unconsciously chosen to read our Bible as a complex polyphonic text, when in fact it is really a much more authoritative book, laying down divinely-sanctioned codes of moral and social behaviour that brook no argument. Mediaeval Catholicism and Russian Orthodox practices, not to mention those of Calvin's Geneva, and even today's conservative evangelical movements, ranging from Southern Baptist Churches of the USA to the 'closed' Plymouth Brethren, show how provincial and modern is our assumption of any inherent biblical polyphony. Despite the impressive numbers chalked up by such bodies, this is not a difficult argument to refute. The authority of both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches before the invention of printing was based on widespread illiteracy, and even an organized and concerted attempt to prevent individual or local biblical interpretation As David Lawton has argued, there is substantial evidence to show that biblical translation (especially for some reason into English) was regarded with a peculiar horror—with an almost irrational frisson—by the Catholic authorities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.8 But the fact that radically different interpretations were possible at all, not to mention the problems encountered by both Catholic and Calvinistic churches in enforcing their particular authoritative interpretations of the Bible, graphically illustrates the inherent difficulty of the enterprise. Moreover, modern attempts to insist on obedience to 'biblical teaching' are invariably highly selective: the Mosaic Law of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth', death by stoning, or the wholesale slaughter of non-believers, down to their slaves and cattle, is generally frowned upon in even the most conservative contemporary Christian circles. Whatever the exact selection favoured, and whatever the rhetoric used to justify it, almost all contemporary Christian groups follow some version of the argument for progressive theological development so cogently put forward by Newman in 1845 in The Development of Christian Doctrine.
8. David A. Lawton, Blasphemy (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press), 1993.
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The second, and opposite argument, is however, more difficult to deal with. This is that we are free, in effect, to interpret the scriptures in absolutely any way we choose because there is really nothing to interpret. Interpretation is all there is. This is not, of course, a new argument, and it comes packaged in several different forms. The weak version is that there is no resolving debates about biblical meaning because the biblical texts are themselves so diffuse, incoherent and ambiguous that nothing at all of certainty can be deduced from them. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century a Dutch commentator had observed that 'The scripture is like a nose of wax that easily suffereth itself to be drawn backward and forward, and to be moulded and fashioned this way and that, and howsoever ye list'.9 What had begun as a polemical insult (the Papists 'make the scriptures a nose of wax, and a tennis ball'10) had been turned into a cynical comment on the nature of the medium itself. As Dryden put it in his poem on the Catholic/Protestant debates, the Hind and the Panther, After long labour lost, and time's expense, Both grant the words, and quarrel for the sense. Thus all disputes for ever must depend; For no dumb rule can controversies end. (200-204)
What one might call the strong version of this argument, however, sees in the Bible only the most prominent example of something that is true of all written texts. In the twentieth century, philosophers like Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty have extended this argument to all language11—and it has been happily embraced by such postmodernist theologians as Don Cupitt in defence of what he calls a 'poetical theology', which would recognize that 'the supernatural world of religion turns out all along to have been in various ways a mythical representation of the truly magical world of linguistic meaning'.12
9. Albertus Pighuis, Hierarchiae Ecclesiasticae Asserti (Cologne 1538), fol. Ixxxx, sect. B., in Works (trans. Jewel; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1841-53), IV, 759 (cited by H.C. Porter, 'The Nose of Wax: Scripture and the Spirit from Earsmus to Milton', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th. Series, 14 [1964], 155). 10. The image goes back at least to Alain of Lille (1120-1202); see Porter, 'Nose of Wax', 155. 11. See, for instance, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 12. Don Cupitt, After God: The Future of Religion (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), 47.
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Such easy postmodern relativism receives covert support from what Jurgen Habermas has aptly called a kind of nostalgie de la vérité13—a kind of respect for an idea of truth no longer admissible that lingers in the air like the scent of flowers that have just been removed. Nevertheless, the argument that there is nothing behind language is nonetheless refutable both on logical and historical grounds—though admittedly only for those who accept the possibility of logic and history.14 Between these two extreme possibilities, that we have imposed polyphony on what is really an essentially authoritative and monologic book, and the alternative, that we can find in the Bible more or less anything we want to find, lies a middle position that I think has still not yet been given the attention that it deserves. This is that centuries of debate, commentary, and what one might call 'Borgesian' accretion by theologians, polemical atheists, humanists, critics, writers, musicians and artists of all kinds, have created in the Bible an inherently polyphonic work, the implications of which we are only now becoming able to explore. To grasp what this might involve we need to return to Lewis's notion of 'polyphony' discussed earlier. This was, we recall, primarily an aesthetic metaphor, based on music—initially voice parts, but later extended to include instrumental and orchestral harmony. As Lewis uses the image, it is primarily one of cooperation rather than conflict, but, as he is careful to show, 'cooperation' is a broad term: With a little imagination one may discern the same feature in other aspects of Western culture—in democratic politics and in team games, both of which require the cooperation, in harmony if not in unison, of different performers playing different parts in a common purpose. In parliamentary politics and team games, there is further cooperation in conflict—rival parties or teams, striving to defeat their opponents, but nevertheless acting under an agreed set of rules, and in an agreed interval of time.15
One might add that many post eighteenth-century musical forms show a similar capacity to contain discord and harmony: one thinks, for instance, of the development of opera from Mozart onwards, where sometimes unresolved narrative conflict is mirrored not merely in the words, but in the 13. Jurgen Habermas, 'Richard Rorty's Pragmatic Turn', in Robert B. Brandom (ed.), Rorty and his Critics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000), 33. 14. See my discussion of Rorty and Cupitt in Narrative, Science and Religion: Fundamentalism Versus Irony, 1700—1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), Chapter 6. 15. Lewis, What Went Wrong?, 128.
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structure of the music itself. Nor, I think, is it accidental that this was an age increasingly seeking to frame its ideas of truth in dialectic rather than dogma. Here I am thinking less of Hegel (whose dialectic was suspiciously monotonie in implication) than of that disillusioned Hegelian, Kierkegaard, who went further, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries in seeing polyphony and irony not merely as present within our narratives of the world, but as characteristic, and, indeed, essential to them. In Fear and Trembling, which was published together with Repetition in 1843, we recall that there were three levels, or stages, in the development of Abraham as what he called the 'knight of faith'. These he called the aesthetic, the ethical, and, finally, the religious. Each, though good in itself, is fatally undermined by the next. Thus what he calls 'the beautiful story' of Abraham and his son Isaac on Mount Moriah must stand criticism from the ethical standpoint (is it ever right to practise human sacrifice?—even more of the firstborn child, after he has reached an age to understand what is happening?) But, in turn, the ethical is undermined by the religious, in which God's will (however mysterious) is seen to prevail. Each level is wholly incommensurable with the others, yet as each higher stage is reached, the earlier stages, which originally looked like ultimate values in themselves, are reinterpreted and re-valued. But, for Kierkegaard, the aesthetic cannot ever be subsumed into the ethical, nor the ethical into the religious. Their values are not overturned or denied; they are, in Harold Bloom's word, incommensurable. Plurality and irony are not so much the result of imperfect understanding, or incomplete knowledge, they are part of the very fabric of existence. If this is a difficult doctrine, Kierkegaard was well aware of its difficulties. The whole point of his telling and re-telling the story of Abraham and Isaac is to highlight its insolubly problematic status, and if the reader is not troubled by the feeling that this story is neither beautiful, nor ethical, nor religious, then he or she has not yet begun to struggle with the its meaning. 'Though Abraham arouses my admiration', writes Kierkegaard, 'he at the same time appals me'. Any easy account of the story, that sidesteps the impossibility of grasping his actions, would 'leave out the distress, the dread, the paradox'.16 But for us, there are further problems with this schema. Words slip, 16. S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Tremblin, and The Sickness unto Death (trans, with Introduction W. Lowire; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), problem 1: 71,75.
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slide, and change their meanings. What Rorty has called the 'aesthetic turn' of twentieth-century thought means that the appeal and meaning of the aesthetic is likely to be greater for us than for Kierkegaard's bourgeois Danish contemporaries, for whom 'art' was less likely to have been experienced as a form of inner expression than as an externally prescribed, circumscribed, and even commodified form of decoration—and the 'aesthetic' an abstract quality likely to be enmeshed in the less-than-elegant prose of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. At the same time, the word 'religious' has declined in relative status. Movements like 'the religious right' in the USA have given the English word at least associations of narrowness and rigidity that are clearly foreign to Kierkegaard's idea of openness and absolute submission in an act of faith. The idea of a higher obedience than that of the ethical—especially one that incites to murder—has, for the twentieth century, echoes of Himmler's exhortations to his SS brigades. At one level this may simply enhance Kierkegaard's sense of the paradox of the Abraham story, but at another, it may also illustrate how context can destabilize meaning. Since this is not a commentary on Kierkegaard, but a re-reading of his ideas of polyphony for a later age and context, we may perhaps offer here a creative ra'sreading, by reversing his triad of faith, to give us, in ascending order, the religious, the ethical, and the aesthetic. We thus start with (what is now) the externally controlled and bounded, and move through the inner-directed limitations of the ethical, before arriving (like Dante in the Earthly Paradise17) at the terrifying non-choice of the truly free. If we find this better expressed in our time by the arts than in what is now popularly meant by 'religion', we would not be alone. Hans Urs von Balthasar's attempt to approach God by way of Kant's third Critique, on beauty, was startlingly at odds with the conventional Thomism of Catholic thought when it first appeared in mid-twentieth century, but it was to prove prophetic.18 'Great works of art', he wrote, 'appear like inexplicable eruptions on the stage of history. Sociologists are as unable to calculate the precise day of their origin as they are to explain in retrospect why they appeared when they did... [Art's] unique utterance becomes a universal
17. See my Words and the Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 149-73. 18. See in particular his massive, seven-volume, theological aesthetics, The Glory of'the Lord(ed. John Riches; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1982-89).
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language; and the greater a work of art, the more extensive the cultural sphere it dominates will be'.19 We recall also George Steiner's claim that 'the experience of aesthetic meaning in particular, that of literature, of the arts, of musical form, infers the necessary possibility of this "real presence'".20 Such a meaning of'aesthetic' as replacing the 'religious' is, of course, only possible if we take it in the modern sense of permitting (if only theoretically) full presence—in other words, giving it much the same force as Kierkegaard wants to give to the 'religious'. Or, better still, in reading Kierkegaard, we have to understand the 'religious' as subsuming the 'aesthetic' in our sense. Our understanding of the aesthetics of narrative changes the way in which we understand religion just as much as it changes the way in which we read science, or history—or any other discipline. As with Dante's own movement from Hell through Purgatory to Paradise, Kierkegaard's original triad is not a staircase, still less an escalator. Indeed, it may only be those who have traversed all three who have the right to speak of it as an 'ascent' at all. The final stage may even be better spoken of as a matter of 'assent'. Each stage is separate, and seemingly complete in itself. As with sight for someone who is blind, or sound for the totally deaf, there is no understanding of the next stage(s) until reached. Only then is a revaluation possible of what has gone before. Only looking backwards is the polyphony of incommensurables apparent— composing a harmony that, by definition, can never be fully articulated. What is valuable about Kierkegaard's trinity (whether or not read in his order) is that it makes pluralism and polyphony not an accidental or contingent phenomenon of modernity, but a normal and indeed essential ingredient of it. If the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious can be described as occupying the same inner space, they tell utterly different narratives. Other narratives, other metaphors, intervene—interrupt. 'The shortest definition of religion: interruption', writes Metz.21 In reply to the objection of Jürgen Moltmann that this definition is inadequate, because a single interruption can always be deflected or absorbed, thereby allowing things to continue as usual, Kevin Hart proposes 'the second shortest
19. Two Say Why (trans. John Griffiths; London: Search Press, 1973), 20-21. 20. Real Presences (London: Faber, 1989), 3. 21. Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Towards a Practical Fundamental Theology (trans. David Smith; London: Burns & Gates, 1980), 171.
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definition of religion': 'absolute interruption'.22 The phrase, as Hart points out, comes originally from Maurice Blanchot, though a similar idea is to be found in Emmanuel Levinas.23 Whatever its modern sources, however, narratives of absolute interruption abound in the Old Testament—as in the New—from Moses and the burning bush to Elijah's encounter with the 'still small voice' on Horeb.24 But, as both Blanchot and Levinas make clear, there is nothing exclusively, or, indeed, intrinsically religious about such interruptions. The full title of Blanchot's meditation is 'Interruption (as on a Reimann Surface)'.25 Theoretical physics, too, has its interruptions. But that metaphor of 'interruption' has further connotations in the light of the title of the book where Blanchot expands this ideas: The Infinite Conversation:16 What, for instance, is the difference between 'narrative' and 'conversation'? What is the difference between interrupting a narrative and interrupting a conversation? Is the 'aesthetic' conversation, narration, or polyphony? 'In the beginning', Erasmus translated the opening of John's Gospel, 'was the conversation'. Whether the Greek logos or 'word' originally included the idea of conversation is immaterial. Like many Greek words used in the koine of the New Testament, that word logos was already in the process of being given a new connotation and meaning. In yet another example of Borgesian accretion, Erasmus was re-reading, re-interrogating his source. He was, as it were, entering into a conversation with the biblical text, as traditional Christianity had always 'conversed' with the many voices of the New Testament and the Hebrew scriptures. Though hardly a representative of traditional Christianity himself, the piles of open volumes in Bob Carroll's room attested to the fact that he 22. Moltmann writes: 'Interruption is not an eschatological category. The eschatological category is conversion' (The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology [trans. Margaret Kohl; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996], 22). 23. Kevin Hart, 'Absolute Interruption'; Maurice Blanchot, 'L'Interruption',Nouvelle Revue Francaise 142 (1964), 674-85; Emmanual Levinas, 'Enigme et phénornene', Esprit 33 (1965), 1128-42. 24. See Prickett, Words and the Word, Chapter 1. 25. Although it is not entirely clear whether he understood all the implications of his choice of the mathematical curvature of space as a metaphor of communication, his main point concerns 'a change in the form or structure of language (when speaking is first of all writing)—a change metaphorically comparable to that which made Euclid's geometry into that of Reimann'. 26. M. Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (trans. S. Hanson; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
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too was conversing in his own way with the many voices of the Bible. Those of us privileged to eavesdrop on that conversation through 400 (unnumbered) pages of notes will appreciate just how rare was that ongoing dialogue—though no such conversation would have been complete without its own interruptions.
VIBRANT SPACES Gabriel Josipovici
I
In his great essay on reading, 'Journées de lecture', which he wrote as an introduction to his translation of Ruskin's own meditation on reading, Sesame and Lilies, Proust makes a number of absolutely fundamental points which have, alas, not been taken on board by subsequent professional readers, that is, by critics and scholars. Every page of the essay, even the asides and subsequent insertions, bristles with observations which, when we fully grasp them, seem both obvious and revolutionary. Early on, for example, he remarks: I have to admit that certain uses of the indicative imperfect—of that cruel tense which presents life to us as something both ephemeral and passive which, at the very moment when it retraces our actions, brands them as illusions, annihilates them in the past, without leaving us, as the present tense does, with the consolation of activity—these uses of the imperfect have remained for me an inexhaustible source of mysterious sorrows. Even today I may have thought for hours about death in perfect calmness; but it suffices for me to open a volume of the Lundis of Sainte-Beuve and to fall for example upon that phrase of Lamartine's (it concerns Mme d'Albany): 'Nothing recalled for her at that time... She was a little woman.. .etc.' to feel myself seized at once by a profound melancholy.
As with so many passages of A la Recherche, this strikes the reader as both slightly comic and, when we think about it, absolutely true. Long before Sartre and Barthes, Proust grasped that all narrative has a hold on us, and that the nature of that hold depends on how something is narrated much more than on what is narrated. Late in his life he would begin his essay in defence of Flaubert, an author he admits he does not much care for, but whom he feels called on to defend against his academic detractors, by making a similar claim:
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I was astounded, I have to admit, to see treated as one who has few literary gifts a man who, by the entirely original and personal use he has made of the passé défini, of the passé indéfini, of the present participle, of certain pronouns and prepositions, has renewed our vision of things almost as much as Kant, with his categories and his theories of knowledge and the reality of the external world.
Why is Flaubert's work on syntax and grammar the equivalent of Kant's philosophical revolution? In what sense can we say that it has 'renewed our vision of things'? Why does thinking about death leave us completely unaffected, while the reading of a narrative which is couched in the imperfect causes us the most profound melancholy? A la Recherche explores these questions within the context of life as a whole, not just syntax and grammar. Its central theme is the way external events can shock us into a recognition of how things are, which even the most concentrated thinking will fail to do. Marcel has grown tired of life with Albertine and decides to end their relationship. He comes home determined to tell her that their affair has come to an end and that she should leave his house for ever, only to find that she has already left. The shock turns his life and feelings upside down. Now he recognizes that he cannot let her go, that she means more to him than anything else in his life, and that his earlier thoughts were completely beside the point, predicated as they were on the fact that he knew Albertine was safely his. But once that fact has been blown away by her departure it is as though his very body had at last understood something which had been hidden from it before, or as though his body had been given voice when before only his mind had been at work. Or, again, Marcel's grandmother dies. He grieves for her, mourns her, and slowly recovers. Then one day, years later, he bends down to tie his shoelace and it is as if his grandmother, who used to perform the task for him when he was a child, had been buried in the folds of his body, and was now suddenly resurrected. The violent sense of her presence, of her livingness, shakes him to the core, and it brings with it the equally powerful sensation of her death, of the fact that she is no more. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he is racked by an agony greater than any he had ever imagined. In precisely this way the use of a tense in a book we are reading, or of a preposition or conjunction, seems to force upon us truths we had hitherto protected ourselves from, or which we could never have experienced if left to our own thoughts. That is why, Proust goes on in his wonderful
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essay on reading, great writers prefer ancient books, 'the classics', to those of their contemporaries. For ancient books open up for us vanished worlds; they not only posses the beauty which their creator endowed them with, 'they possess another beauty, still more moving, in that their very materiality, I mean the language in which they were written, is like a mirror of a vanished life. Like a city such as Beaune, whose fifteenth-century hospital is still intact in the midst of the busy modern town, a fragment of a past that has disappeared but is here, miraculously, still present, ancient works of literature contain 'all the lovely forms of vanished tongues and of ways of feeling that no longer exist, persistent traces of a past to which nothing in the present resembles, and which time, passing over them, has alone been able to embellish'. That is why no good writer is satisfied with anthologies, with morceaux choisis, as the French say, implying both 'choice' and chosen pieces culled from ancient authors. For anthologies give us what we know and expect, they are like Marcel thinking that he would feel happier without Albertine, thinking that he has come to terms with his grandmother's death. But reading the entire works of ancient authors, attuning our ears to their way of thinking and speaking, we are given entry into worlds which, but for these writers and their works, would have been lost forever; we are made to leave the prison-house of ourselves and are touched by the world. But, Proust goes on, 'it is not only the phrases which conjure up before us the forms of an ancient spirit'. Between the phrases—and I am thinking here, he says, of those very ancient books that were probably first recited orally—in the intervals that separate the phrases, we can still hear today, if we are prepared to listen, the silence of centuries long gone: 'Often in the Gospel of Saint Luke, coming upon the two dots which make us pause before each of those sections almost in the form-of canticles with which it is littered, I have heard the silence of the worshipper who would have paused in his reading out loud to murmur the following verses like a psalm which recalled the most ancient psalms of the Bible'. In those pauses two thousand years are, as it were, made palpable to us, just as in the Piazzetta in Venice the two ancient columns, brought from far away so long ago, alert the modern visitor to the way Time erupts into the present. Many years later, at the very end of his great novel, Proust is clearly still thinking of those colons which have, by an easy imagistic transition, given way to those two columns, when he writes of the way human beings exist in time, like a man who walks on stilts and whose two long legs
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reach down into the depths of the past. Indeed, the entire essay on reading can be seen, formally and thematically, as a model and blueprint for the novel to come. But also, though he does not pursue it, Proust's intuition here about the Bible is, as so often with this wonderful reader, absolutely right. More than any other ancient book, the Bible depends on pauses, on the space and silence between phrases, a space and a silence which are alive, as Proust grasped, and which I want to call 'vibrant'. That is not all. Though the way the Bible proceeds, its use of tenses and conjunctions, is quite as original as Flaubert's, what is really extraordinary about the Bible is that one of its central themes, if not the central theme, concerns the nature of pauses, of 'in between'. In what follows I want to try and tease out some of the implications of this and, by so doing, to sketch in some of the key elements of what is a unique attitude to and conception of space. II
Though Proust, in a way typical of assimilated Jews at the end of the nineteenth century, talks only about the New Testament, what he has to say is particularly illuminating about the Hebrew Bible. For one of the most striking things about biblical Hebrew is its use of parataxis. Though Hebrew has a number of conjunctions, the biblical authors nearly always opt for the simple 'and', wa. 'AndBoaz took Ruth and she was his wife and he went in unto her and the Lord gave her conception and she bore a son' (Ruth 4.13). The English Authorized Version1 is on the whole faithful to such constructions, and refuses to subordinate. That is in large part why it is such a great and distinctive translation. But the desire to subordinate in our Western culture, profoundly influenced as it is by Latin, is so powerful, that in passages like the above even the AV translators succumb: 'So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife; and when he went in unto her, the Lord gave her conception, and she bare a son'. It is the same with Luther: 'Also nahm Boas die Ruth, dass Sie sein Weib ward. Undda er bei ihr lag, gab ihr der Herr, dass Sie Schwanger ward, undgobar einen Sohn.' Modern translations are even more prone to this, under the mistaken impression that modem readers want something that runs smoothly and in the manner to which they are accustomed. Thus the Jerusalem
1.
Unless otherwise stated all biblical quotations are from the AV.
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Bible has: 'So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. And when they came together, Yahweh made her conceive and she bore a son.' Simple and is used five times in the Hebrew, twice only in the three translations. But it is not just a question of numbers. In the Hebrew each phrase is separate and of equal weight: Boaz took Ruth; Boaz went in unto her; the Lord gave her conception; she bore a son. As Proust would say, the space between the phrases is an important part of the meaning; to introduce temporal markers such as 'when' or 'da' is to compress time, when what the Bible does is to keep it flowing evenly and smoothly; and to stress causality where the Bible does not. The effect of course is cumulative, and an isolated verse cannot give an adequate sense of what the consistent use of wa does for the Hebrew. But in some cases meaning is directly involved. In my book on the Bible21 looked at another passage where translation away from wa has rather important implications for interpretation. This is the passage which concludes the episode of David dancing before the ark and being rebuked by his wife Michal. The final sentence reads, literally: 'And to Michal, daughter of Saul, there was not to her a child till the day of her death'. The AV, however, reads: 'Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death' (2 Sam. 6.23). (Luther, for some reason, has 'Aber Michal...') The AV translators naturally knew that Hebrew has a term for 'therefore' ('al ken), but they instinctively chose that term as a translation of wa since to them it was obvious that Michal's childlessness was the result of her criticism of David. But the Hebrew does not say that. It says that Michal rebuked David, an d that she was barren till the day of her death. Whether that is the Lord's doing or not, whether there is a connection between the two or not, is left to us to decide. I do not say that the Hebrew is deliberately ambiguous. I say that the greater precision of modern languages, especially Latin derived languages, may come at a cost; the wise haziness is replaced by a false precision. That 'wise haziness' is, as this example has suggested, bound up with the effect of the insistent parataxis: elements are laid side by side, and a whole is built up which is more than the sum of its parts, but which does not rush towards conclusion or fit all the parts into one large box on which the lid may eventually be placed. Christians, who see the Old Testament as constantly prefiguring the New, as leading up to the Gospels and
2. The Book of God: A Response to the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 22-23.
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Revelation, are more prone than others to ignore the spaces between; but if we would understand the Hebrew Scriptures we must be more respectful. And of course this is not just a matter of being alert to syntax. For in the Hebrew Scriptures, as in Flaubert, syntax reflects thematics. This is most obvious at the very beginning: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said: 'Let there be light': and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said... (Gen. 1.1-6)
The verses roll on, as day is added to day, and element of creation to element of creation, each separated from the other by wa; and it is right that they should be so separated, since the act of creation is an act both of addition and of separation: 'And God divided the light from the darkness'; 'And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters'"; 'And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night"' (1.4, 6, 14). At first the earth was töhü waböhü ('without form and void'), a chaos lacking boundaries. Chapter 1 of Genesis shows how this is transformed into the orderly cosmos we know today.3 For Christians the creation ends on the sixth day: 'And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day'. That is where, in the Middle Ages, the Christian scholars placed the end of the first chapter. But in the Jewish tradition the section does not end till 2.3. Why? What is it that follows? First of all, a recapitulation: 'Thus [actually, another wa, 'and'] the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God had created and made'. On the seventh day God ended his work, and he rested. But that is not all. On the fifth day God had
3. Mary Douglas long ago pointed out that the key to Leviticus is the act of separation, the making of distinctions. See her Purity and Danger (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966).
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created the creatures of the sea and air and blessed them; on the sixth day he had created man and woman, and blessed them; on the seventh he creates the Sabbath and not only blesses it but sanctifies it (yebarek... wayekade§). The Sabbath, the day of rest, the day of pause in the onward rush of life, is that which divides week from week, but it is also, in a sense, the embodiment of the ubiquitous wa. It is as though that which underlay the rhythm of the preceding six days of creation had been brought out into the open, given a place and a name, and blessed; the day of rest, of pause, we are made to understand, is not simply a gap, a hiatus; it is a holy thing, the holiest of all creation. The Hebrew God is a God who makes it a sacred injunction to pause, to rest. This has profound ethical implications. This is a God who wants to stop man thoughtlessly or selfishly marching across space as though it were not there. As the remainder of the Hebrew Bible will make clear, when you stop, as much as how you go on, shows what you are and where you belong. This of course is a very different attitude to life from that which prevails in the West today, and one it is rather difficult for us to come to terms with. Nevertheless, the Bible will help us do so. God reserves his most severe punishments for those who try to breach boundaries, to annihilate space. We see this happening in the very next chapters, Genesis 2-3. Adam, told that he must keep his distance from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil breaches that injunction. It is as though he tries to attain the godhead mechanically—rather as Proust said the bad reader is the one who imagines the books in the library are jars of honey from which he can feed at will and in passivity, instead of recognizing that books can only lead us to a threshold, after which it is up to us— and is punished for it by being expelled from the sacred space of the Garden of Eden. A short while later, in the episode of the Tower of Babel, the whole of humankind is in similar breach of sacred space, again trying mechanically to reach up to God instead of talking to him, and as a result being scattered over the face of the earth. Later, Aaron, under pressure from the people as Moses remains at the top of the mountain talking to God, creates a Golden Calf for the people to worship. And, just as Adam tried to placate God by passing the blame on to Eve, so Aaron tries to excuse himself by saying that he was forced to bow to the pressure of the people.
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The breaching of established boundaries or, on the contrary, the acceptance of them, is in fact the key to distinguishing acts which are pleasing to God or otherwise. Saul, for example, is someone who has no sense of where the boundaries are, and in the end he too is driven to calling up a mere image to seek its help, a final proof of his refusal to walk in God's way; while David, for all his faults, seems to have an instinctive sense of where boundaries lie. And we could go on multiplying examples. Fundamentally, 'walking in God's way', which means keeping the commandments, but also being mindful of space and its vibrancy, is seen to be the only true path, and those who do not do so lay themselves open to chaos and destruction. Ultimately, the entire people will succumb to this. A number of important consequences for interpretation and reading flow from this. First of all there is the issue of mysticism and the Bible. Various mystical texts, Gnostic or otherwise, have grown up round the text of both the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles. Commentators, both ancient and modern, have argued that these texts give us the hidden truth of the Bible, which those who read only superficially will miss. But if I am right and the central injunction of the Bible is to respect boundaries, then it is perfectly easy to understand why the central tradition of commentary, in both the Hebrew and the Christian traditions, is wary of such texts, for what they do is to deny boundaries, to claim to lead us to a hidden truth which we can, if we are initiated, possess. This runs counter, I would suggest, to the central thrust of the Bible as we have it, and Gnostics and cabbalists, as well as their modern champions, from crazed interpreters of Genesis and Revelation to sober scholars such as Elaine Pagels and Margaret Barker4 are not so much revealing the hidden truth of the Bible as branding themselves the descendants of the men of Babel and the wretched Saul. Second, there is the question of the sacred geography of the Bible. Of course the geography of the region resonates symbolically throughout this book: Egypt, the place of bondage vs. the mountain of Sinai, the place of freedom in willing servitude; Sinai and the desert vs. Zion and the city; Red Sea and Jordan; Babel and Babylon; and so on. Structural anthropologists like Mary Douglas5 have shown how the sacred mountain of Sinai is mirrored not just in the sacred space of the tabernacle, but also in the sacred space of the body of the sacrificial animal and, finally, even in 4. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979); Margaret Barker, The Revelation of Jesus Chri.it (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000). 5. Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
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the structure of the book of Leviticus itself. She has also shown,6 convincingly in my view, how the disposition of the 12 tribes round the mountain, as described in the book of Numbers, is itself profoundly symbolic. But my criticism of this kind of work when applied to the Bible, rests on the fact that it ignores the temporal dimension, that it presents us with static and, as it were, timeless oppositions. But the Bible is a narrative, it moves forward in time from creation to slavery in Egypt to the wandering in the desert to the establishment and disintegration of the state. At each stage memory of the past is a crucial factor. Memory as nostalgia, whether for a lost paradise or the pleasures of Egypt, is to be condemned. But memory as the recalling of God's saving acts is central to the survival of the people. To recall is to recognize that we are creatures who exist in time, but that we are not simply driven by time; recalling is in fact an instance of the sabbath motif, the motif of pause and the acceptance of distance, except that in this case it is the distance of time, not space. Recalling in the Hebrew Bible is never a personal matter, it is always public. Recalling is a question of speaking out loud and listening to what is spoken. In that sense the person who listens is like the reader, who also moves forward in time, but pauses, recalls, repeats. In fact the rhythm of the creation of the world and the rhythm of the wandering of the Israelites and their eventual arrival in a (temporary) homeland, is mirrored in the very rhythm of reading—if we would obey Proust's injunction and listen as we read, allow an alien and distant world to penetrate our senses. Ill
So far I have drawn attention to the pausal or paratactic element in biblical syntax; to the moral dimension of the institution of the sabbath; and to how an awareness of this can keep us from some frequent errors of reading. I want now to look a little more closely at the way space is made vibrant in the course of biblical narratives. I will look at three examples, but before I do so I want to pause myself and ask you to listen to a seaman's description of the element in which he lives and works: Seen from the cliffs, the sea might have looked as evenly arranged as the strings on a harp—the lines of white-caps running parallel at intervals of sixty feet or so. Seen from the wheel of a small boat, it presented quite a different aspect. Each wave in the train carried a multitude of smaller 6. Mary Douglas, In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (JSOTSup, 158; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993).
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deformities—nascent waves bulging, heaping, trying to break as they rode the back of the senior waves in the system. Many-angled, climbing every which way, they turned each square yard of water into an unruly brew of shifting planes and collapsing hillocks. Wherever the wind found an exposed surface, it raised tiny wrinkles of waves awaiting birth.
This, from Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau: The Sea and Its Meanings, provides the best description I know of one aspect of the Hebrew Scriptures: the broad expanse of Scripture we look down on from above, when we are merely thinking about it or remembering it, turns, on closer inspection, into myriads of waves, each slightly different from the others. Let us look closely at three such 'waves'. The first is in stark contrast to the stately march of Gen. 1.1-2.3. This is 2 Samuel 18-19, the narrative of David's discovery of the death in battle of his beloved son Absalom. We learn first of David's injunction to the commander of his forces, Joab, not to harm 'the lad'—an ironic description of Absalom, given that he is the leader and instigator of a rebellion against David—but of course, in spite of everything, that is still David's view of him. Then we learn of the battle in the wood and of how Absalom is caught by his long hair—another irony, given his pride in his hair—in the branches of a tree and how Joab 'took three darts in his hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom, while he was yet alive and in the midst of the oak' (2 Sam. 18.14). We then move to David, waiting for news of the outcome of the battle: 'And David sat between the two gates: and the watchman went up to the roof over the gate unto the wall, and lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man running alone' (v. 24). The watchman tells the king: 'And the king said: "If he be alone there is tidings in his mouth, And he came apace and drew near"' (2 Sam. 18.25). Now the watchman sees another man running, and he tells the porter, who tells the king. 'And the king said, he also bringeth tidings' (v. 26). The watchman now is able to make out the first man, and he tells the king it seems to be Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok. 'And the king said, "He is a good man, and cometh with good tidings"' (v. 27). Note that we are not told how David felt, only what he said, yet we have no difficulty in realizing that what for David as father is 'good tidings' may not be that for David the commander of the army which is fighting a civil war, or of course for the army itself. Conversely, what is 'good tidings' for the commander may not be that for the father. The next verses has Ahimaaz coming up to within shouting distance of the waiting king:
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The difference between the two points of view, the public and the personal, is now out in the open. The king only wants to know if his son is safe, the messenger, perhaps knowing that he has been killed out of political and military necessity, but also knowing how the king feels, does not directly answer the question. The knowledge, which we and Ahimaaz have, of how things have turned out for Absalom, has not yet become David's knowledge: the space between the two is vibrant with tension, both for the reader, who waits to see how David will react to the news and what effect this will have on the army, and for David, whose question has not yet been answered. The narrative will maintain this for a short while longer: 'And Ahimaaz answered, "When Joab sent the king's servant, I saw a great tumult, but [wa again] I knew not what it was". And the king said unto him, "Turn aside, and stand there". And he turned aside and he stood still' (vv. 29-30). Now the second messenger comes running up: And Cushi said, 'Tidings, my lord the king: for the Lord hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up against thee'. And the king said unto Cushi, 'Is the young man Absalom safe?' And Cushi answered, 'The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is'. And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, 'O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom! Would god I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son my son!' (2 Sam. 18.31-33)
David is the great lamenter of the Bible, more so even than Jeremiah. The first part of his life ends with the defeat of Saul and Jonathan, leaving him in sole possession of the kingdom, and he greets their death with a formal lament of great beauty, but one which makes it impossible to decide if he is really moved or not. He had loved Jonathan, and he had had a love-hate relationship with Saul, his father-in-law, but their death is also to his advantage. Now too the death of the leader of the revolt leaves him once again in complete control, but this time there is no doubt that he is sincere in his articulation of sorrow. For the reader, the time it takes for the news to arrive, and to enter David's consciousness, as it were, is made palpable: we are both inside
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David's consciousness and outside it, and the time and space traversed is brought fully alive by the narrative: the distance between Joab and David, between the war zone and the king's residence, between ignorance and knowledge, is made vibrant by the constant deferral of meaning. In the end Absalom's death is made all the more unbearable by never being explicitly mentioned. We only get the messenger's circumlocution, which is partly perhaps common practice on the part of a courtier and partly his way of protecting himself from the news he brings; and David's final recognition that what he had feared all along has come to pass. His outburst is both release and acknowledgement, and all the more moving for being so brief. The second 'wave' I want to examine is one which encompasses one of the best-known episodes in the Bible, Moses' first encounter with God, in Exodus 3. At the end of ch. 2 the Israelites, oppressed in Egypt by a new and cruel Pharaoh, set up a groan, 'and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of their bondage' (Exod. 2.23). 'And God heard their groaning', we are told, 'and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob' (v. 24). The Israelites may be the chosen people, but it is they who have to initiate events. It is because they cry unto God that he responds. He remembers his covenant with their fathers, 'And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them' (v. 24). At this point we switch from Egypt and from God to Moses, in a specific space: 'Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the backside of the desert [ 'ahar hamidbar}, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb' (3.1). Why did Moses lead the flock to just this place? Did God have a hand in it? Was it just chance? We are not told. Only that now the angel of the Lord appears to Moses 'in a flame of fire, out of the midst of the bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed' (v. 2). That phrase, 'and behold', which we have met before, is the Bible's way of placing us at the point of view of the beholder—but again, note the effect of'this ancient way of putting it': the simple phrase puts us in a particular position and establishes the act of looking, the act of bridging a gap through sight, as the key fact. Moses looks, Moses sees, and now Moses speaks—to himself, but nevertheless, it is an act of speech, it is an act: 'And Moses said, "I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned"' (v. 3). So once again the encounter requires two partners: God
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and man. God makes the bush burn, but the man is roused to try and understand what is being shown him: 'And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, "Moses, Moses". And he said, "Here am I"' (v. 4). Encounter, the making vibrant of the space between two beings, is never silent. It depends upon acknowledgement. God acknowledges Moses, 'calls' him, utters his name, twice, and Moses in turn acknowledges the presence of Another by saying: hinnëni, 'here, present before you in all my openness, am I'. At this point God establishes the need for a more formal space between them: 'And he said, "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground"' (v. 5). God then reveals himself as the God of the fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. On hearing this Moses covers his face, 'for he was afraid to look upon God' (v. 6). The conversation that follows, in which God promises that he 'will be with' Moses and gives his name as 'I will be that I will be', is an encounter that makes space even more vibrant, for it is no longer crossed by Moses' sight, which is a passive thing,7 but by words. And since that encounter is relayed to us by words, the words of this book we are reading, we too experience it in its fullness. The Bible is not unique in its way of making space sacred. Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus is also about an encounter of man and God in a sacred space, and the space is created for us all the more powerfully in that the man we see on stage is blind.8 But it is worth pointing out that in Sophocles the space was sacred before Oedipus arrived, and will go on being so after he has gone. His death, so beautiful and mysterious, merely reinforces its sacred status. In the Bible, on the other hand, though the encounter takes place somewhere at the foot of Mount Horeb, the place is only made sacred temporarily, for the duration of the encounter, by the encounter. That is why the later Christian sacralization of the space, the erection of 'the burning bush' as an object of pilgrimage and worship (it is now in the confines of the monastery of Saint Catherine at the foot of Gebel Musa, the mountain of Moses) is completely misguided (and, one might add, why Jewish fundamentalist claims to portions of the ancient land of Israel is equally, and much more tragically, misguided).
7. Actually sight is both more passive and more a matter of the will than hearing; the eyes have lids, which we can close at will, but the ears do not. 8. See my discussion of this in Touch (New Haven: Yale Univesity Press, 1996), 52-57.
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My last example is, if anything, even better known than this. But there is much that is frequently overlooked even in discussion of the best-known biblical episodes, and it may be worthwhile to examine this from the point of view adopted here. I am talking about the episode of Jacob wrestling with the angel (Gen. 32). The scene is quickly set: hearing of the approach of Esau, the brother he had tricked all those years before, and who is advancing with a great force to meet him, Jacob sends his camels, sheep and cattle, along with the rest of his family over the brook Jabbok to meet Esau, while he himself stays behind.9 As always, the action moves swiftly: 'And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day' (vv. 23-24). The next eight verses recount what happened. But it is never explained why 'the man' wrestled with him, or whether Jacob was prepared for this or not. Unlike the encounter of Moses and God in Exodus 3, here distance appears to be immediately abolished; instead of talking, the two wrestle. Yet out of the wrestling, which seems to result in stalemate, a dialogue does ensue: 'And when he [the angel or man, that is] saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him'. At the end of this sentence the pronouns are indeed interchangeable: wrestling in the dark, the two become indistinguishable: behë'abqö 'imö, says the Hebrew, 'in his show of strength against him'. 'And he [the "man" again] said, "Let me go, for the day breaketh". And he said, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me'" (v. 26). The 'man' who has come upon Jacob so suddenly in the dark has enough power to inflict damage on Jacob's body, but Jie cannot overpower him. Indeed, it is Jacob who has him in his grip and will not let go. But dawn approaches and the 'man' has to beg Jacob to let him go, for it seems that he cannot remain there in daylight. Jacob now appears to have the upper hand, and extracts a promise from the man: I will only let you go if you bless me. 'And he [the man] said unto him, "What is thy name?" And he said, "Jacob". And he said, "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed'". Jacob, Ya 'akob, was the name given him at his birth, a name related both to the word 'ëkeb 9. Barthes has pointed out the ambiguity of the narrative at this point: on which side of the ford is Jacob when the wrestling takes place? See Roland Barthes, 'La lutte avec 1'ange: Analyse textuelle de Genese 32,22-32', in idem (ed.), Analyse structurale et exegese biblique (Neuchatel: Delachaux etNiestlé, 1971).
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('heel'), for Jacob came forth from the womb holding his brother's heel, and 'akab ('crooked'), a word probably related to the other. Jacob, in other words, is what the Americans call 'a heel'. Now, says the man, you will no longer be called a heel, but the one who stood up to God. Jacob proceeds to ask the man his own name, just as Moses had asked, and, as with Moses, the answer is a kind of riddle: 'And Jacob asked him, and said, "Tell me, I pray thee, thy name". And he said, "Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?" And he blessed him' (v. 29). The man does not answer, but blesses Jacob, and that blessing is the answer: the one who fought with him is the one with the power to bless: that is his name: the power to bless. Man need know no more. To ask for more is to ask to cross boundaries which may not be crossed, to imagine that one can take away an essence, a 'name' instead of an epithet, a phrase which is verbal: I will be that 1 will be, I am the one who blesses, and so on. 'And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved' (v. 30). He has not actually seen God, nor has he really talked to him, as Moses will; rather, they have wrestled together and each has acquired a sense of the other which is deeper than words. The story ends: 'and as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh' (v. 31). He has a new name, Israel, and a new mark on his flesh—he limps. And the narrator, having pulled the camera back, so to speak, and given us a long shot of the lonely limping figure, now moves even further away, in both time and space, speaking to the reader directly and telling him about a current practice among the Hebrews: 'therefore [ 'al ken here, for causality needs to be stressed] the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day; because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank' (v. 32). His body has been altered, the God has touched him. That is not something he has learned from the encounter, it is the mark of the encounter, a mark which signifies both proximity and distance from the God. To this day, the text says, we commemorate the event, without needing to understand it—-just as to this day we read the episode, without needing to go behind it and extract its meaning. Space extends into time and commemoration returns us to the initial encounter, mysterious, vibrant: the narrative of something happening. These are some of the waves which make up the ocean of the text, when we get down to eye-level. In each case the reader is forced to participate by the form of the syntax, the rhythms and pauses. It is important to
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understand the sacred geography of the Bible, but even more important to grasp that we can only understand the space of the Bible by walking through it, in other words, by the act of reading. History and theology abound in the Bible, but why we go on reading it, as Proust understood, is because only the act of reading can lead us into its world and make us experience that world not just in our minds, but with our bodies.
BROWNING ON FEUERBACH AND RENAN John Ashton
A Death in the Desert Robert Carroll was interested throughout his career in what he called 'the long history of the effects of the reception of the Bible in Western culture'. In the nineteenth century that other Robert, the poet Browning, played a significant part in this history; and I hope therefore that this study of the one poem of Browning in which his response to the biblical criticism of his day is expressed most strongly will be thought an appropriate tribute to the work of a great twentieth-century scholar who would certainly have sympathized with Browning's attempts to come to grips with the new challenges offered by Strauss, Feuerbach and Renan. In the essay that follows, rather than setting out in detail the challenges of Feuerbach and Renan to which Browning was replying in A Death in the Desert,] I simply want to consider his own response and to reflect on his arguments. After a few remarks concerning the structure of the poem certain key passages will be selected for further comment. In a concluding section I will briefly consider the last poem of the volume (Dramatis Personae) in which A Death in the Desert first appeared. A Death in the Desert is dominated by two central motifs: (1) love (40 occurrences as verb or noun in this 687-line poem); (2) truth (25 occurrences). In his reflections on love Browning is presumably thinking of Feuerbach; whereas the truth motif is readily related to his concerns for the work of Strauss and Renan, especially the latter, whose Vie de Jesus appeared in 1863, the year before the publication of Dramatis Personae.
1. For Feuerbach see Drew (1970:200-27); for Renan see Shaffer (1975:191 -224) and Culpepper (1993). Browning's A Death in the Desert may be found online at: .
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The bulk of the poem consists of replies by the dying apostle to objections put in the mouths of imaginary interlocutors. Browning's St John had evidently read Feuerbach in George Eliot's translation (1854) as well as Renan's Vie de Jesus in the original French; so it is not surprising that he appears to be preoccupied with the nineteenth-century debate. Like many of Browning's works A Death in the Desert is a masterpiece of indirection, starting hesitatingly, almost fumblingly, so that the reader has covered nearly a tenth of this long poem before the identity of the protagonist is made plain. This is disclosed in a quotation from the gospel read off from an engraved tablet fetched 'out of the secret chamber' by one of the dying man's attendants: 'I am the Resurrection and the Life'. It is another 50 lines before the speaker identifies himself without equivocation, declaring himself to be Trying to taste again the truth of things— (He smiled)—their very superficial truth; As that ye are my sons, that it is long Since James and Peter had release by death, And I am only he, your brother John, Who saw and heard, and could remember all. (112-17)
With typical economy, then, Browning closes his introductory section by announcing one of his most important themes: the message of the dying John, the last surviving eyewitness of what he calls 'that Life and Death', is addressed to a generation that will no longer be able to appeal directly to the witness of the apostles: once his ashes are scattered there will be ...left on earth No one alive who knew (consider this!) —Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands That which was from the first, the Word of Life. How will it be when none more saith 'I saw'? (129-33)
Browning proceeds partly by the use of inclusions, partly by the use of the leap-frogging or snail-shell technique familiar to students of St Paul. The whole poem is one vast inclusion, with an introductory section explaining the discovery of the manuscript and a concluding section commenting on the argument from the outside. Inside these there is another preface (to the manuscript itself) and another conclusion, explaining the circumstances of the apostle's last discourse and telling of his death and burial. This is a Chinese doll of a poem. One of its minor inclusions comes early on, where the apostle's first uncertain words of explanation are balanced by a more definite assertion some 40 lines later. Between these lies a curious 23-line
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parenthesis, containing a little essay in rational psychology that sketches a doctrine of three souls after the manner of Plotinus. This concludes: 'What Does, what Knows, what Is, three souls, one man' (103). Towards the beginning of the poem the speaker betrays some confusion regarding his own identity, thus heralding the leading motif, namely, the tension between fact and faith and the movement from 'a very superficial truth' to a more profound one. Even the physical description of the cave in which the dying man is lying touches on this motif: The midmost grotto; since noon's light Reached there a little, and we would not lose The last of what might happen on his face. (26-28)
Characteristically, Browning's noon, which introduces the important motif of the sun, only 'reaches there a little' and the 'noon and burning blue' are outside the cave, not inside. The setting, which is repeated half-way through the poem in a passage reminiscent of the cave in Plato's Republic, contributes to its argument. Browning's winding style makes it hard to lay out the poem's structure precisely. Yet he succeeds in marking off certain sections quite clearly. In line 133 the question 'How will it be when none more saith "I saw"?' anticipates the conclusion of the section that follows: Was John at all, and did he say he saw? Assure us, ere we ask what he might see! (196-97)
This particular section (134-97) brilliantly summarizes all the works ascribed to the apostle John commencing with his oral teaching: Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bidden teach, I went, for many years, about the world, Saying 'it was so; so I heard and saw', Speaking as the case asked: and men believed. (134-38)
But this seemingly clear, matter-of-fact statement is a starting-point, not a conclusion. It suits Browning's purpose to treat the book of Revelation, which records an open disclosure of heavenly truth, as the first of John's written works; then come the letters, and finally, most important of all, the Gospel: Since much that at the first, in deed and word, Lay simply and sufficiently exposed, Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match, Fed through such years, familiar with such light, Guarded and guided still to see and speak)
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Of new significance and fresh result; What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars And named them in the Gospel I have writ. (168-75)
'What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars.' This one verse concisely sums up Browning's central paradox: the points, hard little nuggets of historical fact, are just guessed at: the stars, enlargements or expansions of the points, and consequently less clearly defined, are known, but the knowledge is not that of the historian but of the believer. In the following section this little metaphor is taken up again (another example of Browning's leap-frogging technique), and expanded into the remarkable simile of the optic glass that reverses the movement, creating a distancing effect through being Turned on objects brought too close, Lying confusedly insubordinate For the unassisted eye to master once. Look through his tube, at distance now they lay, Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear! Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth I see, reduced to plain historic fact, Diminished into clearness, proved a point And far away: ye would withdraw your sense From out eternity, strain it upon time... (230-39)
But having performed this operation, John's imaginary audience is immediately told to .. .stand before that fact, that Life and Death, Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread, As though a star should open out, all sides, Grow the world on you, as it is my world. (240-43)
John had already declared that That Life and Death Of which I wrote 'it was'—to me it is; —Is, here and now: I apprehend nought else. (208-10)
The journey he traveled between the 'was' and the 'is' is one he expects other people to make too: Browning, like Kierkegaard in The Philosophical Fragments, comes very close here to the perspective of the evangelist himself, whose concern is for what Kierkegaard calls 'the contemporary Christian'; though both of these writers of course are attempting to answer questions that belong to their own century. These questions demand just as big a leap from one time to another, from sight to inference, from
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superficial knowledge to profound faith as was required by the evangelist: 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe'. The following section is the clearest inclusio in the whole poem, for the question that concluded the preceding section is repeated verbatim at the end of this one: What do I hear say, or conceive men say, 'Was John at all, and did he say he saw? Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!' (334-36)
In the meantime the poet has treated us to a meditation on truth: the word itself occurs eight times within 100 lines. It is compared to Prometheus's fire, so much more precious than material goods of gold or purple. But then the speaker asks whether, if the worth of Christ were as plain as that of fire, it would be possible to give him up: Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift; Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact, And straightway in his life acknowledge it, As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire. (295-98)
To make this point Browning adopts a curious stratagem. In the Fourth Gospel's version of the Passion, John himself, alone among the disciples, remains present right up to the crucifixion. But now the poet turns instead to the synoptic account, according to which John, along with all the others, forsook Jesus at the moment of his arrest—an account that turns him into a liar. Shaffer (1975: 196) thinks that Browning borrowed this suggestion from Renan. However that may be, Browning's John finds a value in his act of cowardice: if, having witnessed the life, he was, despite what he says in his Gospel, absent from the death, then he could claim precisely that lack of sight which is given the character of a beatitude at the end of the Gospel. Accordingly,'.. .my soul had gained its truth, could grow' (312). This is his answer to the objection of those who sigh, 'It had been easier once than now' (299). Next Browning introduces his second important motif, which has received only a brief mention up till now but is anticipated in an earlier remark about the First Epistle, in which John, 'reasoning from his knowledge', had taught that 'men should, for love's sake in love's strength believe' (148). 'Was truth safe for ever, then?', he asks. 'Not so', he replies, sustaining the comparison with fire: Already had begun the silent work Whereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze, Might need's love's eye to pierce the o'erstretched doubt. (319-21)
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How love can pierce the integument of doubt the poet nowhere makes clear. Here, perhaps, is the clearest example of the fideism he shares with Kierkegaard. The difficulty is not shirked but rather voiced by one of the speaker's imaginary interlocutors in one of the longest sections of the poem, in which the integrity of the Gospel is called into question: Here is a tale of things done ages since; What truth was ever told the second day? Wonders, that would prove doctrine, go for nought, Remains the doctrine, love; well, we must love, And what we love most, power and love in one, Let us acknowledge on the record here, Accepting these in Christ, must Christ then be? Has he been? Did not we ourselves make Him? (370-77)
The allusion to Feuerbach is reinforced: 'T is mere projection from man's inmost mind, And, what he loves, thus falls reflected back. Becomes accounted somewhat out of him. (383-85)
Before any answer is given to this challenge the poem swerves off course to deal with a completely different problem, which concerns the cessation of miracles. This is a favourite topic of Browning's, one that he can deal with quite confidently: an assent that cannot be withheld because the evidence is compelling simply is not faith. Before man has reached maturity, says John, he requires adventitious aids to belief: fully grown he needs them no longer, no more than a gardener, once his seeds have come to fruition, needs the tickets he used to remind him where he first planted them. Similarly This book's fruit is plain, Nor miracles need prove it any more. (443-44)
The miracle that was originally required comes as a surprise: it has been invented for the occasion, for John claims to have performed it himself: I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ, Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!' (459-50)
Shaffer interprets this claim as a self-aggrandizing gesture on the part of John, intended to underline his position as Christ's favourite disciple; but it may rather be an adaptation of the story of the healing of the cripple by Peter and John (Acts 3.1-10), shifting the restoration of the power to walk
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to the restoration of sight that fits in better with Browning's purpose. The poet's defence of the miracle, at any rate, is straightforward: I say, that miracle was duly wrought When, save for it, no faith was possible. (464-65)
True faith, however, does not need miracles—after the childhood years during which immature minds had to be, as John puts it, 'spoon-fed with truth': faith grew, making void more miracles Because too much: they would compel, not help. (472-73)
Browning now returns to tackle the Feuerbachian challenge he had raised earlier. In yet another turn of his spiraling argument he states the objection more clearly: Since such love is everywhere, And since ourselves can love and would be loved, We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not. (505-507)
Here is a claim to self-sufficiency that John cannot tolerate: How shall ye help this man who knows himself, That he must love and will be loved again, Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, Rejecteth Christ through very need of Him? The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flags Loaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies. (508-13)
If you overcharge a stomach with food or a lamp with oil, then This is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest. (483-86)
This is scarcely an effective refutation of Feuerbach, who is allowed only the briefest of answers: But this was all the while A trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee, Thy story of the places, names and dates, Where, when and how the ultimate truth had rise, —Thy prior truth, at last discovered none, Whence now the second suffers detriment. (514-19)
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Short as it is, this, one might think, is already an effective refutation of a very specious argument. Feuerbach might have added that if the Christ of Christian belief (his real target) was simply a projection of human aspirations, then he had no further need of him, either for love or for true knowledge. But this further riposte is not allowed, and the poem swings back without further ado to the seemingly irrelevant question concerning miracles which, as we have seen, caused Browning no discomfort: Why refuse what modicum of help Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible T the face of truth—truth absolute, uniform? (522-24)
After this question (which has already been answered) the interlocutor switches to a different line of attack, ironically comparing John's approach with the old mythological account of Prometheus's discovery of fire: The fact is in the fable, cry the wise, Mortals obtained the boon, so much is fact, Though fire is spirit and produced on earth. (534-36)
Then follows the challenge: As with the Titan's so now with thy tale: Why breed in us perplexity, mistake, Nor tell the whole truth in proper words? (537-39)
If, then, the story of Christ is no more than a mythological rendering of a truth (human love?) that can be stated more directly, cannot we dispense with it altogether? Perhaps not. The story may nevertheless retain its hold on the human imagination. But the dying man shows no interest in this argument, turning instead to another of Browning's most cherished ideas, the man's place in the world and his fundamental difference from God: man is A thing nor God nor beast, Made to know that he can know and not more: Lower than God who knows all and can all, Higher than beasts which know and can so far At each beast's limit... (577-80)
From here Browning moves to the final brilliant simile, that of the sculptor or statuary. Here he comes close to Plato's KaAov vpsuSos or Wallace Stevens's supreme fiction: God's gift was that man should conceive of truth And yearn to catch it, catching at mistake,
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Is this a satisfactory answer? Opinions will differ. There is little doubt that Browning found it so, provoking thereby Thomas Hardy's exasperated comment that his smug optimism was 'worthy of a dissenting grocer'. For those, like Hardy, unprepared to make the leap of faith into 'truth itself, A Death in the Desert is unlikely to seem anything more than 'a falsehood like the truth'. Epilogue Browning was good at getting inside other people's skins; in fact, it was what he was best at. His most famous poem, My Last Duchess, was an early illustration of this chameleon-like skill; and many of his very greatest works figure in two collections, Men and Women (\ 855) and Dramatis Personae (1864) in which a remarkable series of vividly portrayed characters appear upon the stage he has constructed for them, all exhibiting the strange introspection d 'autrui that Charles du Bos rightly perceived to be Browning's special talent. Among these the St John of A Death in the Desert occupies a particular place. No one is likely to appeal directly to, say, Bishop Blougram(= Cardinal Wiseman) or Mr Sludge (= E.E. Home, the American medium) for insight into the poet's deepest beliefs, although no doubt some of these have slipped into the interstices. But A Death in the Desert is a different story. Having read, like his creator, the best-known works of Ludwig Feuerbach (Das Wesen des Christentums) and Ernest Renan (Vie de
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Jesus), the dying apostle attempts to confront their arguments and find a satisfactory answer to them. It might be objected that this in itself does not entitle us to treat St John's words as a direct expression of his creator's opinions. But at the end of the collection in which this poem appears, Dramatis Personae, there is an Epilogue for three speakers, the first unmistakably King David, the second later identified (by Browning) as Renan, and the third the poet himself, speaking for once in propria persona: 'Friends, I have seen through your eyes: now use mine!' (68). The first speaker, King David, whose voice represents a time and a culture without doubts, conclude triumphantly: For the presence of the Lord, In the glory of His cloud, Had filled the House of the Lord. (19-21)
At this point he is interrupted by the second speaker, Renan, who resoundingly interjects: Gone now! All gone across the dark so far, Sharpening fast, shuddering ever, shutting still, Dwindling into the distance, dies that star Which came, stood, opened once! We gazed our fill With upturned faces on as real a Face That, stooping from grave music and mild fire, Took in our homage, made a visible place Through many a depth of glory, gyre on gyre, For the dim human tribute. Was this true? (22-30)
Not, certainly, for Renan: contemplating the vast expanse of the sky, he asks despairingly, How shall the sage detect in yon expanse The star which chose to stoop and stay for us? (50-51)
All that he himself can see in the vault of heaven is 'a mist of multitudinous points'. Unlike St John, whose greatest work (the Gospel) depended upon his ability to use points in order to construct stars, Renan renounces any attempt to do the same, and gloomily reflects on the disappearance of a face that is as much the face of God himself as it is the face of Christ, God's human representative. In the 36 lines that conclude the poem, Browning reflects upon the diversity of humankind, each person fleetingly the center of the universe, 'king of the current for a minute', until 'the flock of waves' moves on to
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circle around another momentary king. Since the poet himself, throughout Dramatis Personae, has been acting in the manner of the waves, focusing briefly and tellingly upon one character after another, we cannot doubt his sincerity in celebrating the real if evanescent significance of each individual human being. This celebration, he reflects, is the work of the world as a whole, whose walls 'divide us, each from another, me from you'. If the world can do this, he concludes, 'Where's the need of Temple?' He confidently dismisses all that King David the first of his three speakers, had lauded: What use of swells and falls From Levites' choirs, Priests' cries, and trumpet-calls?
Not for him, then, the pomp and circumstance of organized religion. In the final triplet, however, he summons back a being whose definitive disappearance the second speaker, Renan, had just been lamenting: That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows.
This, then, is Browning's response to Renan, not an argument but a strongly-felt refusal to accept the latter's colourfully worded banishment of Christ from the universe. For Browning, as for John, there was evidently enough material in the historical points that (despite the efforts of David Strauss) were still visible, to construct (or recompose) a star. The disagreement persists into the twenty-first century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Culpepper, R.A. 1993 'Guessing Points and Knowing Stars: History and Higher Criticism in Robert Browning's "A Death in the Desert'", in A.J. Malherbe and W.A. Meeks (eds.), The Future of Christology: Essays in Honor ofLeander E. Keck (Minneapolis: Fortress Press): 53-65. Drew, P. 1854 The Poetry of Browning: A Critical Introduction (London: Methuen). Feuerbach, L. The Essence of Christianity (trans. Marian Evans; London: J. Chapman). 1854 Renan, E. 1974 Vie de Jesus (Paris: Gallimard). Shaffer, E.S. 1975 'Kubla Khan' and the Fall of Jerusalem: The Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and Secular Literature 1770-1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND: A GIRL IN THE GUILD
Alice Bach
'Feminist' might not be the first adjective of choice to describe Robert Carroll. But it would have to hover around the edges of any reminiscence or scholarly evaluation of his work. In July of 1999 Robert invited me to address the august group of scholars known as SOTS (the British Society for Old Testament Study). He particularly wanted me to end the final conference of the millennium with a talk about the situation of women's studies and feminism within the biblical guild. When I arrived in Glasgow and settled in with Robert and his wife Mary Anne, I can honestly say we never discussed feminism as theory, as goal of the guild. But Robert shopped for food, cooked curly pasta which he submerged in a thick rich sauce, kept our glasses filled, while Mary Anne and I did nothing much. Certain of the old feminist cries such as equality in the kitchen have become part of the fabric of life. And I must say that Robert cooked with as much wry pleasure as he read texts and kept his University's administration out of deep water. The Address to SOTS My first encounter with reader-response theory occurred when I was six years old. I was given a beautiful edition of Alice in Wonderland with hand-tipped colored plates. My eyes loved seeing the name Alice, my name, on every page. Of course I thought that the book had been written for me: in my narcissistic childlike world, I had become one of the Alices of literature. When I attempted to write my first novel, at the age of eight, I called it Alice's Adventures on Cape Cod. My bond with writing Alices grew stronger. Even as an adult, when I wrote (and published) a series of books about twin bears, named Ronald and Oliver, I was really writing about two sides of myself. It is certainly not news that writers write about
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themselves; most creative writing is after all dreaming on paper. While novel writing has always been considered light years away from scholarly writing, feminist theories have altered the timbre of scholarly writing through the acknowledgment of the shadow of the self that imbues all writing. The power of the self has acted as a hammer that cracked open the geode of biblical studies, revealing multi-faceted crystals, many of them gendered. Long after the literary theorists have flown, to imbibe the nectar of a prettier flower, feminist theory will, in my opinion, always be pivotal for its emphasis on the multiple subject positions of the reader. In delineating and demanding our own spaces, our bodies ourselves, educated white women became the first visible Other in the Academy, diffusing the spotlight of universalism and totalizing truth assumed by the former academicians—white men. Then came demands for equal time from blacks, Chicanes, queers, transsexuals. In the past 15 years reading as pornographer, reading as body builder, and reading as salmon fisherman have become fashionable. Even though one can uncover the ideological bias inherent in these interpretive texts, too often the blinkers of race, class, and even of theology have stayed in place. Thus, reading of the canonical unit and its traditional interpretive accompaniment has not escaped the well-defended borders of class, ethnicity, and race that are common to both ancient and modern biblical scholars. As more scholars pursue the continuing discourse we have with past interpreters, we will need to cut through partisan antagonisms as well as the adversarial roles that may be more easily defined. Clarifying issues is not enough; they need to be debated, refusing to grant either authors and editors or traditional commentators of biblical texts the authority they seek in order to control interpretation. Where Were You During the Gender Wars? Often my feminist students look at me starry-eyed, and ask: 'What did you do during the gender wars? Did you ride in a limo, give quotes to the press?' Oh what a major disappointment I am! I invented no trend or neologism; I never wore a skirt made of men's ties. When the so-called second wave of feminism hit the Academy in the late Sixties, I was nowhere near an ivory tower. A veteran of the 1968 Columbia University riots, I was beginning a career as a journalist. Working for a book publisher in New York City, championing such books as Look Out Whitey,
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Black Power's Goin' to Get Yo' Momma, and Soul on Ice, I was the closest version of a black editor conventional publishing felt comfortable with. As the black-power movement gained momentum, actual black people replaced white in editorial slots. And very soon thereafter, when we tired of pouring coffee and licking envelopes for radical men, women started marching for peace and justice, writing our own leaflets and speaking for ourselves. Proving once again that the political affects the personal, women developing leadership roles in political movements resulted in women's voices being more in demand, I caught the curl of the wave of women in visible roles in the media: I became a professional feminist. Let me make one thing clear: I am aware that the term 'feminist' is a term of advocacy, of activism. It is no more a neutral term of description than reader, professor, Labour MP. Suddenly, during the Watergate years, my opinion was sought: editors wanted my book reviews and essays. I interviewed writers like Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Drabble, and Edna O'Brien. I advised my sisters on how to cook soup for a mob, how to seduce a man with plants, how to have it all. What I thought as a woman was saleable. It never occurred to me that I was a young privileged white woman in a privileged job, whose opinions were not particularly threatening to the status quo. Sisterhood was powerful, but it was also becoming predictable. Did you write a book, Professor Bach, presenting your life as the distilled experience of your sex and publicize the book on hundreds of college campuses? Sorry, I created a picture book series for young children in which my male bears were gentle and my female bears were rugged and tough. Oh there were in-your-face feminists then. Dreaming of bears put me at a somewhat awkward position with my sexually inscribing sisters. That is, one was writing Fear of Flying, one was writing Vaginal Politics, and I was writing The Smartest Bear and His Brother Oliver. It was many years before I was able to bust out of the bland harmony of polite borders. By that time I was no longer creating picture books and writing for the Times Book Review. What did I do during the gender wars? Well, there were plenty of skirmishes left when I arrived in academia. In the mid-1980s many of the battle lines were already drawn, but before I had finished graduate school, it had become clear to me that women scholars were running the danger of reifying our own discourse, of becoming women who talk to women who listen.
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As a member of the feminist biblical guild, I have been surprised at what I see as a lack of engagement of philosophical and political issues. In many ways feminist scholars of ancient Mediterranean texts seem blind to their own life situations, both in the everyday world and also in the politics of academic institutions. As a New Yorker, I find the general aura of politeness in academia rather frustrating. While feminists certainly differ in interpretations of specific terms or narrative units, there is an assumption that feminist theorists working in the field possess a monolithic viewpoint, an essentialist/em/ww/ approach to reading the Bible. Feminists must stick together, although often we have no more in common than the languages of the ancient texts we study. At Stanford, it was assumed by my departmental colleagues that any problem with students that touched on women or needed sensitivity would be handled by me. There has arisen a mannerly but perfunctory nod to issues of religiosity, race, ethnicity, but as Toni Morrison has noted, 'in these matters, silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse. Evasion has fostered another, substitute language in which the issues are encoded, foreclosing open debate.'1 Morrison is concerned with the ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth- century Euro-American literary discourse arranges itself in relation to the African other. Biblical scholars can certainly be stimulated by her arguments in relation to our contemporary interpretive corpus relative to the silence about race in the critical writings of the guild, especially the effects of that silence upon the dominant culture. Further, the subject of ethnicity in the ancient literary texts has barely been mentioned in contemporary critical work. By this point in the development of feminist literary theory, I suspect readers in the biblical guild have absorbed many analyses with arguments that biblical narratives operate in the same way as modern narratives in which male characters attempt to hold steadily to the subject position through controlling the gaze. Not surprisingly the holder of the gaze has privileged 'looking' among the senses. Sight has always held a central place in Western culture, although it has been argued about the ancient Mediterranean world that the Greeks were a visual and the Hebrews an auditory culture. As I have argued elsewhere, the evocation of other senses
1. T. Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 12.
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served as potent strategies for biblical authors in their attempts to characterize female figures. In an effort to elude the victim/hero dichotomy commonly found in feminist and structuralist analyses of biblical narratives, I shall demonstrate what I hope is a more nuanced reading. By turning away from the dominant male gaze and reading through senses of smell and taste, we can produce a cultural reading that allows the Other to reinterpret the text. I am intentionally referring to the Other as nongendered to emphasize the point that to read as a feminist does not mean always to read as a woman, a biblicist, a salmon. For myself, the confusion of audiences results in a feeling that I am a New Age Persephone, spending half my time within the borders of Bible and the other half within feminist studies. I vacillate upon which world is ruled by Ceres and which by Hades. My time in each world has convinced me that there is not one pure world of light, one land within whose borders feminist scholars can rest. In the land of biblical thought, I hear the old warnings echoing from the ancient authors. When female figures such as Ruth, Hannah, and Tamar long to preserve the Covenant by having sons, they are rewarded, not only with the desired male heir but also with narratorial praise. When women become curious, like the woman in the Garden for a taste of that mysterious fruit, or Lot's wife for a last glimpse of home, they are cast out. When women try to form communities, they do not fare well either. Dinah goes out to visit the women of the land (Gen. 34) and gets raped by Shechem. After wandering the hills with her female companions, the daughter of Jephthah returns home to be sacrificed (Judg. 11). Leah and Rachel gnaw at each other, more eager to possess Jacob than to share female commonality. What I Should Have Said In the land of theory and politics, I struggle between the impatient call of the activist and the picture of myself as cozy reader. Trying to stake out my own world within worlds, I grow nothing but questions. How does one live in one world to the exclusion of the other? Doesn't one need to transform communities as urgently as one wants to transform the concepts of truth and objectivity? Is adding women's voices and experiences enough? As an academic do I fight to change the condition of women, or is my job solely to interpret the condition of women? Conventional wisdom among feminists indicates that success in academe mutes the activist voice. In the
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process of making it in academia, feminists become spectators, commentators in the arenas of activism. Cold comfort that we have planted deep the bulbs of feminist thought and that they shall continue to bloom in the terrain of higher education. Women of color seem to keep their passion even as they become academics. Gloria Anzaldua explains in her introduction to Making Face, Making Soul that women of color have a need for theories that not only explain 'what goes on between inner, outer, and peripheral I's within a person and within the personal I's and the collective "we" of our ethnic communities'.2 Anzaldua goes on to envision Borderlands, places where jobs and ethnic communities and academic feminists profitably intersect. Those borderland spaces need celebration as much as they demand protection. The reality of women's lives is what motivates Anzaldua to link feminism inside the classroom and inside the community. For her, feminist awareness and interest in women's studies developed from the 'patriarchal tyranny' she and her family experienced as she grew upon a 'Southern, black, father dominated, working-class household.. .where daily life was full of patriarchal drama'.3 The recognition of sexist oppression and strategies of resistance that are useful for her and other women grew out of her daily life, unlike the feminist analyses based on privileged white women's lives which she heard about in her first academic classes about women. To me this complaint seems at least equally about class as about race, as I think of the oft-quoted feminist short stories of Tillie Olsen, whose working class background closely parallels the patriarchal tyranny experienced by Bell Hooks. Black or white, what is needed is an additional element that links explicitly academic work with feminist action— an ethic of personal accountability. If feminism is not to become boringly fashionable, each of us must contend with the ripples and waves of the dominant culture. If feminism is not to become a remembrance of things passe, feminists will have to be more than scholars who devise theories about women. Feminists will have
2. G. Anzaldua, Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990), xxxv-xxxvi. 3. On patriarchal tyranny and strategies of resistance, see Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1984), 10. For Hooks' early interest in feminist thought, see idem, Teaching to Transgress: Education in the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 119-27.
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to accept the mantle of radicalist and place their feminism within a theoretical context of demanding social, political, and institutional change. This activist model differs from the girl in the guild model by its level of discomfort. Women as a topic of academic concern is necessary but certainly no longer sufficient. Since Robert had invited me to a conference of biblicists, I tried to earn my stripes by presenting a few feminist readings of an all-too-familiar text: the Garden story. The looks upon some faces of the audience members surprised me. Even my students have heard these readings year after year for a decade. When I see people cringe at the mention of gender related issues, I am comforted by writer Ellen Goodman's observation that 'in any period of change, people can get hit by a swinging pendulum'.4 What I Said in Conclusion Because dailiness, how one lives out theories, is a fulcrum of feminism, let me end with my impressions of the current situation—on the ground. At least in the American universities at which I have participated in feminist gatherings, contentment has replaced contention. As I look at my students, I see strong women who already know that who earns a living and who cooks dinner and who compromises is the bottom line of feminism. It's a state of mind; it's how we live now. We expect women to accept the responsibilities and enjoy the opportunities that were available only to men a generation ago. Richard Rorty has accorded feminist thought 'one of the lasting and significant moral achievements of the twentieth century'.5 But a kind of acrimonious gender politics has become a hot media topic and I wonder what the next generation will do in the gender wars? Will you be babes—in your face, taunting the world with your sexual choices? Will you rant on cable TV in five-minute sound bites, reading from a rolling prompter, extolling some women, belittling others? What I fear is the erasure of woman as subject of discourse. Cultural media has become a stew of sound bites and talking heads endlessly blending into each other. For many academics the ideal is a public intellectual on book tour, market-segmentation strategy, how to position the product to appeal to upscale under-thirties, to conservatives, to bondage fanciers. 4. E. Goodman, 'A Hyped-up Georgie Porgie', San Francisco Chronicle, 15 October 1966, A21. 5. R. Rorty, 'Fraternity Reigns', New York Times Magazine, 29 September 1966, 156.
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It's the new distraction—ideology in rapper's cadence. And so I warn my students, both women and men, that their suppressed gender wars are the new backlash. In the old backlash feminism was bad. Now feminism is fine so long as it is confined to theory, and precious little praxis. This maneuver lets men feel progressive and broad-minded, and it lets women feel that the most militant thing they can do is forget about all those pillowtalk spoilers like job discrimination and the Hyde Amendment. I suspect that the feminist movement will have its most permanent impact as praxis rather than theory; its political impact both within the Academy and within the larger community has led to the insistence of equity for women and people of color in employment, housing, and other human rights issues. Robert's voice persists. 'Everywhere I turn there are women—teaching, preaching, sitting in pubs. Aren't you tired of squeezing that old orange?' Robert would push me whenever our pub conversation veered toward the topic of women's issues. Not surprisingly we were both opposed to hierarchy, competition, racism, capitalism, imperialism, elitism. We both preferred cats over dogs, rain over snow and, I think, Irish whiskey over Scotch. What Remains to be Said At the very least feminism has widened the discourse, demanded attention for issues that are of concern to women. For the Academy, changing the curriculum to reflect the concerns of women and people of color is another mountain to climb. So long as the University still believes that women and people of color are welcome to study the theories and issues that reflect the dominant male agenda, feminist theories remain domesticated, confined to women's work. Clearly there has been the absence of debate about the presuppositions of the traditional university and the alternatives. What remains to be seen is whether feminist scholars gain the cultural authority necessary to translate intellectual expertise into public knowledge. Will women revert to cottage industries as a way of soothing the collective national pain radiating out from the destruction of 11 September? As the media continues to exult in the macho acts of firefighters, cops, and bomber pilots fighting back the elusive terrorists, I find my students, male and female, uninterested in issues of gender and race in our domestic society. Wrapped in the flag, they reject considerations of American imperialism and refuse to criticize governmental threats to other nations. Trying to combine the roles of scholar and activist in the classroom, I find some students unsettled by my bias. On the one hand advocacy
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scholarship keeps one rooted in the social movement from which many of us sprang; to others it threatens the bland security of objective' scholarship. For me the clarion comes from Charlotte Bunch, who, early among many voices, has called for 'more dialogue between those engaged in trying to make change in the world and those writing theories'.6 One might think that Bunch's statement is self-evident, since the venerable journal Academe announced in 1983 that feminism in the academy had already changed the way the academy must think about all sorts of topics: politics, children, wages, morality, thinking itself. In that same issue, published about two decades ago, this publication of the American Association of University Professors claimed that the old structures had begun to break, proclaiming that the old disciplinary boundaries and intellectual categories were soon to be reorganized. Clearly most of us remain confined behind the bars of disciplines that no longer reflect the dynamics of our scholarly investigation. In many parts of the world feminist theory resembles the struggles that women of color have delineated in the Unites States. In India, for example, academic feminists have thrown themselves into practical struggles, and feminist theorizing is closely tethered to practical commitments such as female literacy and the effort to get social recognition for problems of sexual harassment and domestic violence. These feminists know that they live in the middle of a fiercely unjust reality; they cannot live with themselves without addressing it more or less daily, in their theoretical writing and in their activities outside the seminar room. In the United States, however, feminist theory seems to be concealed between the high walls of academe. As Martha Nussbaum has noted in a deleterious review article of Judith Butler's recent writings on feminist theories, One observes a new, disquieting trend. It is not only that feminist theory pays relatively little attention to the struggles of women outside the United States. Something more insidious than provincialism has come to prominence in the American academy. It is the virtually complete turning from the material side of life, toward a type of verbal and symbolic politics that makes only the flimsiest of connections with the real situation of real 7 women.
6. H. Hartmann et al., 'Bringing Together Feminist theory and Practice: A Collective Interview', Signs 21.4 (1996). 7. M. Nussbaum, 'The Professor of Parody', The New Republic, available online at .
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Nussbaum's concern echoes the concerns of feminists of color who have for more than a decade in the United States decried their white 'feminist' colleagues' elitist and overly intellectualized focus. Their discomfiture has been so great as to refer to themselves by Alice Walker's neologism, womanist, as a way of closing a borderland against dominant feminist theorists. Perhaps Nussbaum and sociologist Patricia Hill Collins have seized upon the correct ideological stance, an 'ethics of caring', a conversion of theory and praxis. But even then, the problem remains of privileging one element over a convergence of concerns: whether it be Butler's focus upon sexual identity or Anzaldua's upon race and ethnicity, or some of the third-world women upon nation and postcoloniality. There is still a reliance upon one's own subject position. What is called for is flexibility, for feminists to recognize the fluidity of positions and the danger of retreating into binary oppositions, the either/or, inside/outside that has caused a reification of feminist theories. The most hopeful way to look at feminism—first world or third—is for women to think more positively about their relationships to each other, and to the different categories of social identity, until we break out of the kaleidoscope of binaries, the conventional geometry of feminist thought. Theory needs to imagine communities that are more complex than the we/they, feminist/womanist language with which we have identified ourselves. And then we need to go back to the streets. Surrounded by urban homelessness and joblessness, I wonder about the elitism of theory, the very comfort of the academy. Scholars consider theories as instruments for transforming reality, but even the most trenchant gender analysis will not keep one warm at night or feed a hungry person. Even governmental support and implementation of'women's issues' such as equal pay, universal day care and quality health care has proved more elusive than we had thought 30 years ago. What the academy can credit itself with is preserving the institutional memory of the second wave of feminist thought, of chronicling the changes, however few and however slow in coming, that have challenged Western patriarchal institutions. If only I could ask Robert how to draw my students out of the classroom and into the streets! 'The streets are crowded enough, Lass. Invite all of them into the pub, those on the streets and those in the ivory towers...'
WHAT WAS IN THE SCRIPTURE KNOWLEDGE SYLLABUS AT BERTIE WOOSTER'S PREP SCHOOL?
Carol Smitht
Introduction Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, like many British writers of his generation, makes constant reference to the Bible. He also makes copious allusions to literature, Shakespeare and the classics in his stories, and expects his readers to understand the meaning of the references, even if they are not familiar with their sources themselves. The Bible was an important part of the cultural environment of his time, and clearly, for him, the Bible is a source on a parallel with other literary works. It says something about the cultural atmosphere of the time, and presumably, about the priorities in the educational system, that Wodehouse could make such assumptions about his readers' knowledge in what were intended as light, entertaining books for a popular market. He expects that his readers will be able to make sense even of obscure biblical allusions. This was probably a reasonable assumption at the time he was writing (from between the Wars to about 1970), since his readers would most probably have had at least some biblical knowledge derived either from school or Sunday School. Even in the 1970s, adults reading Wodehouse would have been at school at least a decade, if not longer, before. That the situation has changed is evidenced by the fact that the British television adaptations of the Jeeves and Wooster stories produced in the 1990s omit the biblical references. Wodehouse quotes directly and indirectly from a large number of biblical books, but more frequently from the Old Testament than the New. The fact that Wodehouse uses so many biblical references is interesting. What is even more interesting, however, is how Wodehouse uses the Bible. He is familiar with so many stories and makes use of biblical references as a device to enhance the dialogue in his stories and to illustrate situations that, at least at first sight, have no relationship to the biblical stories at all. Wodehouse is in many ways years ahead of his time in the attitude he
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takes to the Bible. Many of the ways of reading the text we think of as so modern and rooted in the postmodernism of the end of the twentieth century, are there in the works of Wodehouse. He does not necessarily take on the viewpoint of the biblical writer. Nor does he treat the biblical text with particular respect. He takes stories that he wants to use, puts them into popular language and reinterprets them to suit his purpose. This is a result of his being a most remarkable storyteller, with a particular gift for dialogue, who can utilize practically any source material in an amusing and entertaining way. As is to be expected, Wodehouse, through the mouths of his characters, cites the Authorized Version (AV) of the Bible, and so I shall use that version here. Indeed, at the time he was writing, there were only a few new versions and those were not widely used. Sometimes, however, the words of the AV are paraphrased, with interesting results. The frequency of biblical references is greater in the Jeeves and Wooster stories than in, say, the Empress of Blandings series. Almost without exception, these books are narrated by his major character, Bertie Wooster. Joe Whitlock Blundell speaks of 'Bertie's inimitable stream of consciousness, liberally larded with allusions to the Bible, the Turf, Shakespeare, and a select handful of other writers'.1 Wodehouse is obviously conscious of his frequent use of the Bible, and justifies it by suggesting that Bertie Wooster won a Scripture Knowledge prize while at preparatory school. One has to assume that the kind of scripture knowledge Bertie Wooster claims to have to some extent reflects Wodehouse's own experience of learning about the Bible at school—both in the content of the lessons and the way they were taught. Indeed, the term 'Scripture Knowledge' is itself an interesting one. In my own days at junior school it had become 'Religious Knowledge', then became 'Religious Education' (or 'RE' as it was popularly known), and now seems to have been renamed as 'Religious Studies'. This probably reflects the move away from teaching Bible stories to children as the primary element in teaching the subject. However, given the biblical passages of which Bertie Wooster claims knowledge, one has to wonder what exactly was on the syllabus at his preparatory school. As will become clear, some of the stories that he cites probably did not make edifying subjects for study for 8 to 13 yearold boys!
1. Joe Whitlock Blundell, Introduction to The Plums of P. G. Wodehouse (London: The Folio Society, 1997), x.
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The Scripture Knowledge Prize Winning the prize for Scripture Knowledge at his preparatory school is Bertie Wooster's one intellectual achievement. He refers to it constantly, sometimes to justify his knowledge of the Bible. Here is a passage where Bobbie Wickham is trying to get Bertie Wooster to tell Aubrey Upjohn, his former headmaster (at the school where he won his Scripture Knowledge prize!) that his speech for the school prizegiving has been stolen and will not be returned unless he does what Bobbie wants. Bertie Wooster is, naturally, reluctant to take on the task. 'I do wish you wouldn't always be so difficult, Bertie. Your aunt tells me it was just the same when you were a child. She'd want you to eat your cereal, and you would stick your ears back and be stubborn and non-cooperative, like Jonah's ass in the Bible'. I could not let this go unconnected. It's pretty generally known that when at school I won a prize for Scripture Knowledge. 'Balaam's ass. Jonah was the chap who had the whale. Jeeves!' 'Sir?' 'To settle a bet, wasn't it Balaam's ass that entered the nolleprosequiT 'Yes, sir'. 'I told you so', I said to Bobbie.2
Balaam's ass is mentioned again in connection with the Scripture Knowledge Prize in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. Bertie is asking his Aunt Dahlia how she managed to get her husband, who is notorious for not wanting to part with his money, to subsidize her women's magazine, Milady's Boudoir. 'How did you do it? From what you were saying on the phone last night I got the impression that he was in more than usually non-parting mood these days. You conjured up in my mind's eye the picture of a man who was sticking his ears back and refusing to play ball, like Balaam's ass'. 'What do you know about Balaam's ass?' 'Me? I know Balaam's ass from soup to nuts. Have you forgotten that when a pupil at the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn's educational establishment at Bramley-on-Sea I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge?' Til bet you cribbed'. 'Not at all. My triumph was due to sheer merit'.3 2. P.O. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, in The Jeeves Omnibus, IV (London: Hutchinson, 1992), 298. The quotations, and page references, in this paper are all taken from the series of omnibus editions of the Jeeves and Wooster stories published by Hutchinson.
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At the instigation of this same Aunt Dahlia, Bertie attends a school prizegiving at which the prizes are being presented by Gussie Fink-Nottle, who is at that time in a very inebriated condition. He tells us that [the headmaster] started paging G.G. Simmons. A moment later the latter was up and coming, and conceive my emotion when it was announced that the subject on which he had clicked was Scripture Knowledge. One of us, I mean to say. G.G. Simmons was an unpleasant, perky-looking stripling, mostly front teeth and spectacles, but I gave him a big hand. We Scripture-knowledge sharks stick together.4
Gussie Fink-Nottle decides to test the boy's knowledge of Scripture, and what he says may give some clues as to how the Bible was perceived by the average preparatory schoolboy at that time. Gussie addresses G.G. Simmons as follows: 'So, you've won the Scripture-knowledge prize, have you?' 'Sir, yes, sir'. 'Yes', said Gussie, 'you look just the sort of little tick who would. And yet', he said, pausing and eyeing the child keenly, 'how are we to know that this has all been open and above board? Let me test you, G.G. Simmons. What was What's-His-Name—the chap who begat Thingummy: can you answer me that, Simmons?' 'Sir, no, sir'. Gussie turned to the bearded bloke. 'Fishy', he said, 'Very fishy. This boy appears to be totally lacking in Scripture knowledge'.5
That the subject appears to have had little status is apparent from Gussie's next comments: 'But let me tell you that there's nothing to stick on side about in winning a prize for Scripture knowledge. Bertie Wooster.. .won the Scriptureknowledge prize at a kids' school we were at together, and you know what he's like. But, of course, Bertie frankly cheated. He succeeded in scrounging that Scripture-knowledge trophy over the heads of better men by means of some of the rawest and most brazen swindling methods ever witnessed even at a school where such things were common. If that man's pockets, as 3. P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, in The Jeeves Omnibus, IV, 62. 4. P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, in The Jeeves Omnibus, II, 150. 5. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, 151. (Most of this piece of dialogue is omitted from the episode dealing with this incident in the British television series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.)
SMITH What was in the Scripture Knowledge Syllabus?
399
he entered the examination room, were not stuffed to bursting point with lists of the kings of Judah—' I heard no more. A moment later I was out in God's air, fumbling with a fevered foot at the self-starter of the old car.6
This reveals a situation where 'Scripture Knowledge' was very much learning what were perceived as 'facts'—who were the kings of Judah, and so on. Interestingly, this reflects how history generally was taught at this time. For example, my grandmother could recite all the kings and queens of England in the correct order, having learnt them by rote as a child. Within our discipline there has been criticism of the use of such methods, not only in schools, but in the academy generally. In a 1993 volume, The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible? edited by David Clines and Cheryl Exum, the 'old methods' are castigated and the 'new' ones are extolled. Here is a passage from their Introduction. In their view, it is the tendency of the 'new literary criticism' in general, if only in its very plurality, to call into question the values embedded in the traditional scholarship. In biblical studies such values include an often unspoken privileging of the ideology set forth or assumed by the texts, which the new literary criticism will surely expose.
One hesitates to disabuse such earnest promoters of all things new in biblical studies as Clines and Exum of their academic illusions, but it appears that P.O. Wodehouse got there first: in fact, several decades before they did! As intertextual readings have become so prevalent, I shall endeavour to intertwine some of Exum and Clines' insights with those of Wodehouse in the course of this essay. As Robert Carroll says in the same volume,9 'Every text makes its readers aware of other texts. It insists on an intertextual reading.'
6. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, 151. 7. J. Cheryl Exum and David J.A. Clines (eds.), The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 143; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). 8. Exum and Clines (eds.), The New Literary Criticism, 14. 9. Robert P. Carroll, 'Intertextuality and the Book of Jeremiah: Animadversions on Text and Theory', in Exum and Clines (eds.), The New Literary Criticism, 55-78 (58).
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Used in a Different Context In the Bertie Wooster books, Wodehouse uses the Bible in several different and some very imaginative ways. As might be expected, he makes passing references to biblical passages or stories, without acknowledging that he is doing so. So, Wodehouse says, when describing Aunt Dahlia entering Bertie Wooster's room, 'there was a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and the relative had crossed the threshold at fifty m.p.h. under her own steam'.10 Here, the reference is to the description of the coming of the Holy Spirit recounted in Acts 2.2, but it is divorced from its original context. A similar movement from the original meaning occurs in Joy in the Morning. (Even the title of this book is a reference to Ps. 30.5: 'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning'.) Jeeves is trying to persuade Bertie to accede to 'Nobby' Hopwood's request that he go to Steeple Bumpleigh, which Bertie is reluctant to do, as it is the home of his Aunt Agatha. Jeeves says: 'The young lady tells me the fish are biting there just now'. 'No, Jeeves. I'm sorry. Not even if they bite like serpents do I go near Steeple Bumpleigh'. 'Very good, sir'.11
This is clearly a reference to Proverbs 23, but there the reference to biting serpents is in the context of a warning against wine: Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder, (w. 31-32)
The phrase has been picked up and reapplied as a general metaphor to do with biting. Another example is to be found in Jeeves in the Offing. Aunt Dahlia, in her younger days, had hunted with some of the most famous hunts in the country, such as the Quora. Bertie comments, when she utters 'an exclamation, far from suitable to mixed company' that 'she had no doubt picked [it] up from fellow-Nimrods in her hunting days'.12 This alludes to the genealogy in Gen. 10.8-9, where we are told that
10. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, 29. See Acts 2.2, where the 'sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind' is a sign of the coming of the Holy Spirit. 11. P.G. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning, in The Jeeves Omnibus, II, 220. 12. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, 16.
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Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, 'Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord'.
Nimrod as a generic term for a hunter is, of course, famously used in Elgar's Enigma Variations. One assumes, however, that in the context of Genesis, Nimrod hunted for food and not sport. One can assume that Exum and Clines would approve of such an approach. They say: the new criticism regards texts as coherent intelligible wholes more or less independent of their authors, creating meaning through the integration of their elements.13
In fact, in the passages I have just quoted, Wodehouse could be said to go even a step further than this, taking a very postmodern view that sees meaning as existing only in the immediate context, rather than by referring to any previously predetermined 'meaning'. Used with 'Original Meanings' Other biblical phrases are used with much more relationship to their original meanings. For example, when Bertie is trying to escape from the awful Florence Craye, he dashes to a bar: Seldom, if ever, had I felt in such sore need of a restorative. I headed for my destination like a hart streaking towards cooling streams, when heated in the chase, and was speedily in conference with the dispenser of life savers [the barman].14
When referring to his cousin Edwin, Bertie Wooster says this: There's a lad, Jeeves. There's a boy who makes you feel that what this country wants is somebody like King Herod.15
The Code of the Woosters begins with Bertie Wooster waking with a hangover: On the previous night, I had given a little dinner at the Drones [club] to Gussie Fink-Nottle as a friendly send-off before his approaching nuptials with Madeline, only daughter of Sir Watkyn Bassett, CBE, and these things take their toll. Indeed, just before Jeeves came in, I had been dreaming that
13. Exum and Clines (eds.), The New Literary Criticism, 15. 14. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning, 228. 15. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning, 278. See Mt. 2.
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Sense and Sensitivity some bounder was driving spikes through my head—not just ordinary spikes, as used by Jael the wife of Heber, but red-hot ones.16
Wooster is given one of his butler Jeeves's famous 'pick-me-ups' and is then embroiled in a preposterous situation. A few pages later, another biblical reference appears to describe his response to this: A most unnerving experience all this had been for a man of sensibility, as you may well imagine, and my immediate reaction was a disposition to.. .return to the flat and get another of Jeeves's pick-me-ups. You know how harts pant for cooling streams when heated in the chase. Very much that sort of thing.
This is originally from Ps. 42.1, 'As the hart panteth after the water brooks so panteth my soul after thee, O God', but here it is quoted in the form found in the hymn based on the psalm: 'As pants the hart for cooling streams'. A couple more examples. The first is a reasonably well-known reference, the second more obscure. Bertie Wooster has been involved in yet another complicated plot, this time involving a silver cow-creamer, much beloved by his Uncle Tom, who collects old silver. This item has disappeared, and Bertie discusses the matter with Sir Roderick Glossop, a nerve specialist, who is at the time impersonating a butler, and Bobbie Wickham, a girl who has previously talked Bertie into all sorts of difficult situations: 'Hullo, souls', [Bobbie] said. 'How goes it: You look a bit hot and bothered, Bertie. What's up?' I made no attempt to break the news gently. Til tell you what's up. You know that cow-creamer of Uncle Tom's?' 'No, I don't. What is it?' 'Sort of cream jug thing, ghastly but very valuable. One would not be far out in describing it as Uncle Tom's ewe lamb. He loves it dearly'.17
This comes from the parable of the ewe lamb told by Nathan in the court of David after the king has taken Bathsheba from her husband, Uriah the Hittite, and caused the man to be killed (2 Sam. 12.1-6). Like many of Wodehouse's references, it comes from a well-known story. However, other passages are not so well known. Later in the same book, Bertie Wooster's Aunt Dahlia is being very unsympathetic when she discovers 16. P.O. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters, in The Jeeves Omnibus, I, 195. SeeJudg.4.17-22. 17. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, 217.
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that he has been discovered by Wilbert Cream's mother while searching for the aforementioned silver cow-creamer. When Bertie tells her that he was discovered halfway under the dressing table, she finds it very amusing. But my words were lost in the gale of mirth into which she now exploded. I had never heard anyone laugh so heartily, not even Bobbie on the occasion when the rake jumped up and hit me on the tip of the nose... I was about to tell her that what I had hoped for from a blood relation was sympathy and condolence rather than this crackling of thorns under a pot, as it is some18 times called, when the door opened and Bobbie came in.
See Eccl. 7.6: 'For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools; this also is vanity'. Could this have been a verse quoted at giggling schoolboys by an irritated master or an exasperated school chaplain? Attributed Biblical References Other biblical quotations come with an acknowledgment that they derive from the Bible, at sometimes more clearly than others. One such that is (a little vaguely) attributed appears when Bertie is describing a dinner he eats in Sir Watkyn Bassett's house. He has just discovered that the engagement between Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett has been broken off and is terrified that Madeline, who thinks he is secretly in love with her, due to a misunderstanding, will wish to marry him. This is a prospect BertieWooster does not relish. He describes a wonderful dinner, then goes on: All wasted on me, of course. As the fellow said, better a dinner of herbs when you're all buddies together than a regular blow-out when you're not.19
This refers to Prov. 15.17: 'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred with it'. We may also compare the occasion when Bertie Wooster is attempting (unsuccessfully) to reason with an actress, Corky Pirbright, who has embroiled him in yet another ridiculous situation: She broke into speech again, as girls always do. I have had a good deal of experience of this tendency on the part of the female sex to refrain from
18. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, 258. 19. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters, 282.
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Sense and Sensitivity listening when you talk to them, and it has always made me sympathise with those fellows who tried to charm the deaf adder and had it react like a Wednesday matinee audience.20
This is a reference to Ps. 58.3-5: The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.
Another acknowledged citation comes when Corky is described: She smiled in a steely sort of way, like one of those women in the Old Testament who used to go about driving spikes into people's heads.21
In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Bertie is trying to bring about a reconciliation between Lady Florence Craye and D'arcy (Stilton) Cheesewright, but without much success. He says: Once more I had that sense of not making progress. Her face, I observed, was cold and hard.. .and I began to understand how the birds in Holy Writ must have felt after their session with the deaf adder. I can't recall all the details, though at my private school I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge, but I remember that they had the dickens of an uphill job trying to charm it, and after they had sweated themselves to a frazzle no business resulted. It is often this way, I believe, with deaf adders.22
In Right Ho, Jeeves, Bertie has to convince Tuppy Glossop, who has threatened 'to kick [his] spine up through the top of [his head]',23 and is currently chasing him around a garden bench, that he is not in love with Tuppy's fiancee, Angela. Having succeeded, Bertie describes his feelings in this way: I don't say I actually came out from behind the bench, but I did let go of it, and with something of the relief which those three chaps in the Old Testament must have experienced after sliding out of the burning fiery furnace.
Although not named here, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are also favourites of Wodehouse's, and he mentions them elsewhere. In Jeeves and the Song of Songs (note the title of this story!), the three are described as being unwilling to enter the furnace. The context is Bertie preparing to 20. 21. 22. 23.
Wodehouse, The Mating Season, in The Jeeves Omnibus, III, 254. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, 262. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, 63. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, 121
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405
sing 'Sonny Boy' to an audience 'with a grim look' at the Oddfellows' Hall at Bermondsey East: The mere sight of them gave me the sort of feeling Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego must have had when preparing to enter the burning, fiery furnace.24
However, as with other stories, Wodehouse changes his viewpoint to suit his literary needs. In Joy in the Morning, the cottage that Bertie is renting is burned down by Edwin the Boy Scout when he is trying to be helpful. Wee Nooke was burning lower now, but its interior was still something which only Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego could have entered with any genuine enjoyment.25
How very postmodern of Wodehouse, to hold more than one view of the same text at once! Another, less direct, reference explicitly mentions the Old Testament. Bertie is describing the occasion when he sneaked into the headmaster's study to steal some biscuits and discovered the headmaster sitting at his desk: on the occasion to which I allude, after a brief pause—on my side of embarrassment, on his of working up steam—the Rev. Aubrey had started to give a sort of character sketch of the young Wooster, which until now I had always looked upon as the last word in scholarly invective. It was the kind of thing a minor prophet of the Old Testament might have thrown together on one of his bilious mornings. r\r
Identifying with the Biblical Characters The third way Wodehouse uses the Bible can be seen as a development of the second way I have mentioned and is perhaps the most interesting. He comments on certain passages, often by including discussion of them by his characters. I have already mentioned Jael the wife of Heber. She is a favourite of Wodehouse's and appears on several occasions. In Ring for Jeeves, a later work, which is not narrated by Bertie Wooster, Monica asks Jeeves for details of the story: 'Jeeves', said Monica. 'M'lady?' 24. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Song of Songs, in The Jeeves Omnibus, III, 425-42 (435). 25. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning, 282. 26. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning, 340.
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Sense and Sensitivity 'What was the name of the woman who drove a spike into her husband's head: It's in the Bible somewhere'. '1 fancy your ladyship is thinking of the story of Jael. But she and the gentleman into whose head she drove the spike were not married, merely good friends'. 'Still, her ideas were basically sound'. 'It was generally considered so in her circle of acquaintance, m'lady'. 'Have you got a medium-sized spike, Jeeves? No? I must look in at the ironmonger's'.
Here, Jael's action seems to be being seen positively, which is, of course, in line with the biblical view. In an earlier reference, she is seen more negatively, which is a counter-reading. Bertie is discussing with his cousin Angela her engagement to Gussie Fink-Nottle, which she has entered into merely to 'score off Tuppy', her previous fiance. 'I'm surprised at you, young Angela'. '1 don't see why'. I curled the lip about half an inch. 'Being a female, you wouldn't. You gentler sexes are like that. You pull off the rawest stuff without a pang. You pride yourselves on it. Look at Jael, the wife of Heber'. 'Where did you ever hear of Jael, the wife of Heber?' 'Possibly you are not aware that I once won a Scripture-knowledge prize at school?' 'Oh, yes. I remember...' '...Well, as I say, look at Jael, the wife of Heber. Dug spikes into the guest's coconut while he was asleep, and then went swanking about the place like a Girl Guide. No wonder they say, "Oh, woman, woman!"' 'Who?' 'The chaps who do. Coo, what a sex!'28
Once more, Wodehouse takes two different attitudes towards the same passage. This could be seen as reflecting an ambiguity about the role of Jael, a motif that has been picked up by commentators, particularly feminist ones. Adrien Janis Bledstein, for example, makes this comment, (and note how she, like Wodehouse, puts a sexual innuendo into the relationship between Jael and Sisera).29
27. Wodehouse, Ring for Jeeves, in The Jeeves Omnibus, III, 149-50. 28. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, 164-65. 29. A.J. Bledstein, 'Is Judges a Woman's Satire of Men who Play God?', in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Judges (Feminist Companion to the Bible, 4; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 34-54 (40).
SMITH What was in the Scripture Knowledge Syllabus?
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As a seductress, Jael invites Sisera into her tent, then advises him not to be afraid. Like a mother she covers him with a blanket and serves him with milk. He commands her to stand guard and to dissemble regarding his presence. These actions are aligned with the expected behavior of a woman as lover, advisor, mother and loyal servant. However, in Judges 4 the typescene now inverts: 'Jael wife of Heber took a tent pin and grasped the mallet. She approached him stealthily and drove the pin through his neck till it went down to the ground. He was fast asleep and weary. So he died' (4.21). This is a doubly-ignoble death for a hero, both off-guard and done in by a woman.
Sometimes Wodehouse takes this even further, and has his characters discuss biblical characters as if they are almost personally known to Wodehouse characters. Bertie Wooster's Aunt Dahlia is in despair after yet another plan of his has gone awry, leaving her daughter engaged to Gussie Fink-Nottle, and her superb cook, Anatole ('God's gift to the gastric juices') having given notice. Here is how she discusses the situation with Bertie: '.. .If the prophet Job were to walk in to the room at this moment, I could sit swapping hard-luck stories with him till bedtime. Not that Job was in my class'. 'He had boils'. 'Well, what are boils?' 'Dashed painful, I understand'. 'Nonsense. I'd take all the boils on the market in exchange for my troubles. Can't you realize the position? I've lost the best cook in England. My husband, poor soul, will probably die of dyspepsia. And my only daughter, for whom I had dreamed such a wonderful future is engaged to be married to an inebriated newt fancier. And you talk about boils!' I corrected her on a small point: 'I don't absolutely talk about boils. I merely mentioned that Job had them'.30
In the television dramatization of this story, this part of the dialogue is almost completely omitted. Aunt Dahlia moves straight into saying, 'And my only daughter, for whom I had dreamed such a wonderful future...' In Joy in the Morning, Nobby, who is in love with Boko Fittleworth, is trying to work out some way of arranging a meeting between Bertie's Uncle Percy and a business associate. Jeeves suggests that they could be anonymous if they met at a fancy dress ball to be held that evening. 30. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, 175-76.
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Sense and Sensitivity I could not wholly subscribe to this. 'I spot a fatal flaw'. 'What do you mean, a flaw?' 'Well, try this on your pianola. Where, at such short notice, can Uncle Percy procure a costume: He can't go without one. Fancy dress, 1 take it, is obligatory. In other words, we come up against the snag the Wedding Guest ran into'. 'Which Wedding Guest? The one who beat his breast?' [An unacknowledged reference to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]] 'No, the chap in the parable, who was invited to a wedding but, having omitted to dress the part, got slung out on his ear'.31
A similar situation arises when Esmond Haddock loves Corky Pirbright. He is terrified of his aunts, who do not wish him to marry an actress. Corky, however, will not believe that he truly loves her until he defies his aunts. Bertie calls on Jeeves to try to help Haddock resolve the situation. '.. .You see the posish, Jeeves: As he rightly says, however much you may want to defy a bunch of aunts, you can't get started unless they give you something to defy them about. What we want is some situation where they're saying "Go", like the chap in the Bible, and instead of going he cometh. If you see what I mean?' 'I interpret your meaning exactly, sir, and I will devote my best thought to the problem'.32
Acting Out Biblical Stories The idea that a parallel can be made with actions in the Bible is taken further in The Mating Season. Gussie Fink-Nottle has come completely under the spell of the beautiful Corky Pirbright, who can persuade him to do anything she wants. There is a sub-plot in this story about Police Constable Dobbs, who is in love with one of the parlourmaids, but whose engagement has foundered because he makes derogatory remarks about religion. Corky, who feels this strongly, because she is the niece of the local vicar, determines to have her revenge on Dobbs for this and other perceived misdemeanours. Bertie Wooster discovers Gussie fleeing from the home of Constable Dobbs, where Dobbs had been observed shovelling frogs out into the garden. Bertie asks for an explanation:
31. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning, 369. See Mt. 22.1-14. 32. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, 349. See Mt. 8.5-13 (9); Lk. 7.1-10.
SMITH What was in the Scripture Knowledge Syllabus?
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'What had you been doing?' 'Who, me?' 'Yes, you'. 'Oh', said Gussie in an offhand way, as if it were only what might have been expected of an English gentleman, 'I had been strewing frogs'. I goggled. 'Doing whatT 'Strewing frogs. In Constable Dobbs's boudoir. The Vicar suggested it'. 'The Vicar?' 'I mean it was he who gave Corky the idea. She had been brooding a lot, poor girl, on Dobbs's high-handed behaviour in connection with her dog, and last night the Vicar happened to speak of Pharaoh and all those Plagues he got when he wouldn't let the Children of Israel go. You probably recall the incident? His words started a train of thought. It occurred to Corky that if Dobbs were visited by a Plague of Frogs, it might quite possibly change his heart and make him let Sam Goldwyn [Corky's dog, imprisoned by Dobbs] go. So she asked me to look in at his cottage and attend to the matter. She said it would please her and be good for Dobbs and would only take a few minutes of my time. She felt that the Plague of Lice might be even more effective, but she is a practical, clear-thinking girl and realized that lice are hard to come by, whereas you can find frogs in any hedgerow'.33
Genesis 19 is mentioned on numerous occasions. For some reason, this story was particularly popular with Wodehouse and he refers to it in numerous different ways. In Carry On, Jeeves, one of Bertie Wooster's friends is required by a rich aunt to go to New York and lead the exciting life she felt she was too frail to live herself. Being a country lover, Rocky finds this prospect appalling, whereas Bertie Wooster, as a lover of the city, finds New York very much to his taste. Rocky describes his feelings to Bertie, and in fact refers to Gehenna as well as Sodom and Gomorrah: 'To have to come and live in New York! To have to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, overheated hole of an apartment in this Heavenforsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St Vitus's dance, and imagine they're having a good time because they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I loathe New York, Bertie...here's a blight on it. It's got moral delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than a day in it makes me sick...' I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of the Plain. 33. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, 311-12. 34. P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves, in The Jeeves Omnibus, II, 496.
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Notice how Bertie Wooster allies himself with those living in the Cities of the Plain and does not assume the world-view of the biblical writer, who condemns Sodom and Gomorrah. He may thus be said to be using the techniques of the 'new literary criticism', even, perhaps, setting out on a process of deconstruction of this text. There are also references to other parts of Genesis 19. Wodehouse cites the story of Lot's wife in passing on occasion. He also 'retells' the story in his own inimitable way. In Joy in the Morning, Bertie Wooster's Uncle Percy, after getting himself into a very difficult situation that is bound to bring censure from his formidable spouse, Bertie's Aunt Agatha, is told by Jeeves that her ladyship has returned unexpectedly. Bertie describes his response: I don't know if the name of Lot's wife is familiar to you, and if you were told about her rather remarkable finish. I may not have got the facts right, but the story, as I heard it, was that she was advised not to look round at something or other or she would turn into a pillar of salt, so, naturally imagining that they were simply pulling her leg, she looked round, and—bing—a pillar of salt. And the reason I mention this now is that the very same thing seemed to have happened to Uncle Percy. Crouching there with his fingers riveted to the marmalade jar, he appeared to have turned into a pillar of salt. If it hadn't been that his ginger whiskers were quivering gently, you would have said that life had ceased to animate the rigid limbs.35
Lot's wife appears again in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. On this occasion, she is mentioned by Bertie Wooster's Aunt Dahlia and a kind of commentary is provided by Bertie himself. In this story there has been a lot of toing and froing about a necklace. Aunt Dahlia is present when her husband opens the safe in which the necklace is kept, knowing full well that it is not there: 'What I thought I was doing, joining the party, I don't know, but I suppose I had some vague idea of being present when Tom got the bad news and pleading brokenly for forgiveness. Anyway, I went. Tom opened the safe, and I stood there as if I had been turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife'. I recalled the incident to which she referred, it having happened to come up in the examination paper that time I won that prize for Scripture Knowledge at my private school, but it's probably new to you, so I will give a brief synopsis. For some reason which has escaped my memory they told this Mrs. Lot, while out walking one day, not to look round or she would be
35. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning, 408.
SMITH What was in the Scripture Knowledge Syllabus?
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turned into a pillar of salt, so of course she immediately did look round and by what I have always thought an odd coincidence she -was turned into a pillar of salt. It just shows you, what? I mean to say, you never know where you are these days.36
There are many passing references to this story (for example, 'Lot's wife couldn't have been stiffer'37), but there is further lengthy one in Jeeves in the Offing, and it focuses on a slightly different aspect. Roberta Wickham (Bobbie) has had a difference of opinion with her fiance, Reginald (Kipper) Herring. She enters a room in which he is sitting and freezes up: Then her eye fell on Kipper and she stiffened in every limb, rather like Lot's wife, who, as you probably know, did the wrong thing that time there was all that unpleasantness with the Cities of the Plain and got turned into a pillar of salt, though what was the thought behind this I've never been able to understand. Salt, I mean. Seems so bizarre somehow and not at all what you would expect.38
Wodehouse is not alone in wondering why a pillar of salt. Several theories have been put forward, and it has been pointed out that the Cities of the Plain are near the Dead Sea, which is renowned for its salt, but no satisfactory explanation of the story has really been found. Once again, Wodehouse is deconstructing the biblical text to discover why it might have been written in a particular way. Wodehouse refers to many female characters. Another is Jezebel. In Jeeves in the Offing, Kipper Herring tells Bertie that he has written a letter to Bobbie Wickham in which he calls her a 'carrot-topped Jezebel'. He now wishes he had not done so. Bobbie decides that she will marry Bertie Wooster instead, a prospect which terrifies him. He discusses the matter with Jeeves while driving him down to Brinkley Court: 'The core of the matter is', I said...'that in Roberta Wickham we are dealing with a girl of high and haughty spirit'. 'Yes, sir'. 'And girls of high and haughty spirit need kidding along. This cannot be done by calling them carrot-topped Jezebels'. 'No, sir'. 'I know if anyone called me a carrot-topped Jezebel, umbrage is the first thing I'd take. Who was Jezebel, by the way? The name seems familiar, but I can't place her'. 36. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, 131-32. 3 7. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, 136. 38. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, 266.
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Sense and Sensitivity 'A character in the Old Testament, sir. A queen of Israel'. 'Of course, yes. Be forgetting my own name next. Eaten by dogs, wasn't she?' 'Yes, sir'. 'Can't have been pleasant for her'. 'No, sir'. 'Still, that's the way the ball rolls. Talking of being eaten by dogs, there's a dachshund at Brinkley who when you first meet him will give you the impression that he plans to convert you into a light snack between his regular meals. Pay no attention. It's all eyewash... '39
Notice how, once again, Wodehouse takes a view that is not in accordance with that of the biblical writer. As far as the biblical world-view is concerned, Jezebel deserves all she gets. Once again, Wodehouse anticipates to some extent, later perspectives on the story of Jezebel. In her presidential address to the SBL in 1994, Phyllis Trible makes the point that it is the biblical writer's view of Jezebel, particularly as an opponent of Elijah, that has predetermined our negative impression of her. Trible suggests that if you reverse 'the context in which their stories appear', you might see things differently, and also perceive similarity between Elijah and Jezebel.40 In a pro-Jezebel setting Elijah would be censured for murdering prophets, for imposing his theology on the kingdom, for inciting kings to do his bidding, and for stirring up trouble in the land... By contrast, Jezebel would be held in high esteem for remaining faithful to her religious convictions, for upholding the prerogatives of royalty, for supporting her husband and children, and for opposing her enemies unto death.
In addition, the juxtaposition by Wodehouse of the dogs who ate Jezebel with the dachshund at Brinkley Court must surely be an example of the kind of intertextuality defined by Carroll as the literary object/event/word as an 'intersection of textual surfaces'. It is not simply generated by a writer, but is a complex production formed by prior textual events and the interaction of writers/redactors/readers with such a contexting textuality.41
39. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, 250. 40. P. Trible, 'Exegesis for Storytellers and Other Strangers', JBL 14 (1995), 3-19. 41. Carroll, 'Intertextuality', 57-58.
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Clergy and the Bible in Wodehouse Many clergymen appear in the Jeeves and Wooster stories, and a discussion of how they are presented falls outside the remit of this essay. However, we cannot leave this subject without referring to a story which has as part of its plot line the scepticism of a Police Constable Dobbs about certain biblical stories. This reflects some of the tensions provoked by academic biblical criticism that must have been around as Wodehouse was growing up. In The Mating Season, Corky Pirbright is staying with her Uncle Sidney, a country vicar. She dislikes Dobbs and discusses the matter with Bertie Wooster. Notice how Corky equates a failure to take the Bible literally with atheism: 'I'm devoted to poor old Uncle Sidney, and this uncouth bluebottle is a thorn in his flesh. He's the village atheist'. 'Oh, really? An atheist, is he? I never went in for that sort of thing much myself. In fact, at my private school I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge'. [That ubiquitous prize again!] 'He annoys Uncle Sidney by popping out at him from side streets and making offensive cracks about Jonah and the Whale... When he isn't smirching Jonah and the Whale with his low sneers, he's asking Uncle Sidney where Cain got his wife'.42
It seems that Constable Dobbs is following some of the usual arguments of those who want to oppose taking the Bible literally. However, it is a rather literalistic view of the way the divine operates that brings about Dobbs's conversion. As part of the plot he has been socked on the head by a rubber truncheon wielded by Jeeves. Dobbs interprets this as being a divine thunderbolt. (Although one feels that the dropping of thunderbolts was more the trademark of the Greek gods than the biblical deity.) Dobbs comes to the vicar, who 'drew himself up austerely, suggesting in his manner that one crack out of the zealous officer about Jonah and the Whale and he would know what to do about it'.43 Dobbs explains what has happened: 'Well sir, I'm no fool', continued Ernest Dobbs. 'I can take a hint. "Dobbs", I said to myself, "no use kidding yourself about what this is, Dobbs. It's a warning from above, Dobbs", I said to myself, "it's time you made a drawstic [sic] revision of your spiritual outlook, Dobbs", I said to myself. So, if you follow my meaning, sir, I've seen the light, and what I wanted to 42. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, 92. 43. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, 352.
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Sense and Sensitivity ask you, sir, was Do I have to join the Infants' Bible Class or can I start singing in the choir right away?'44
Bertie Wooster's commentary on this revelation has a biblical feel to it: I mentioned earlier in this narrative that I had never actually seen a shepherd welcoming a strayed lamb back into the fold, but.. .was able to recognize that this was what was going to happen now. You could see from his glowing eyes and benevolent smile, not to mention the hand raised as if to bestow a blessing, that this totally unexpected reversal of form on the part of the local backslider had taken the Rev. Sidney's mind right off the church organ.45
The Mating Season, in which this story line appears, was published in 1949. It shows that not only did Wodehouse expect his readers to know the biblical stories, he also expected them to understand how biblical criticism was changing perceptions of them (see below). Now to return to the title of this paper: 'What Was in the Scripture Knowledge Syllabus at Bertie Wooster's Prep School?' The answer must be, 'quite a lot'! Bertie Wooster is always portrayed as being one of the world's great chumps. Indeed, his 'gentleman's personal gentleman', Jeeves, describes him as 'mentally negligible'. Bertie's only academic achievement is to win the Scripture Knowledge Prize. And yet, on the evidence of the books narrated by him, the teacher of Scripture Knowledge at his preparatory school made him familiar with most of the less salubrious stories contained in the Bible, and acquainted with the behaviour of some the Old Testament's most notorious women. What is more, he apparently instructed his pupils not only in the implications of the coming of the old literary criticism, but of the new literary criticisms, also, even though they had not yet been written about in scholarly circles! Afterword About 50 years earlier, Thomas Hardy had also dealt with how scholarly biblical criticism had affected perceptions of the biblical stories. It is interesting that, unusually for him, Hardy chose to do so in a lighthearted, even comic, poem, The Respectable Burgher on 'The Higher Criticism '.46 44. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, 353. 45. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, 353. 46. Thomas Hardy, Selected Poems (ed. Tim Armstrong; London: Longman, 1993), 91-93.
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Since Reverend Doctors now declare That clerks and people must prepare To doubt if Adam ever were; To hold the flood a local scare; To argue, though the solid stare, That everything had happened ere The prophets to its happening sware; That David was no giant-slayer, Nor one to call a God-obeyer In certain details we could spare, But rather was a debonair Shrewd bandit, skilled as banjo-player; That Solomon sang the fleshly Fair, And gave the Church no thought whate'er, That Esther with her royal wear And Mordecai, the son of Jair, And Joshua's triumphs, Job's despair, And Balaam's ass's bitter blare; Nebuchadnezzar's furnace-flare, And Daniel and the den affair, And other stories rich and rare, Were writ to make old doctrine wear Something of a romantic air; That the Nain widow's only heir, And Lazarus with cadaverous glare (As done in oils by Piombo's care) Did not return from Sheol's lair; That Jael set a fiendish snare, That Pontius Pilate acted square, That never a sword cut Malchus' ear; And (but for shame I must forbear) That [Jesus Christ] did not reappear!... —Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair, All churchgoing will I forswear, And sit on Sundays in my chair, And read that moderate man Voltaire.
What is particularly interesting here is how many of the same biblical stories are used by Hardy and by Wodehouse. Hardy lived from 1840 to 1928, Wodehouse from 1881 to 1975. The overlap maybe greater than it appears merely from looking at these dates, since it is likely that in such a settled period the kind of education these two men received and the kind of cultural atmosphere in which they grew up would have been quite similar.
INTERPICTORIALITY:
THE LIVES OF MOSES AND JESUS IN THE MURALS OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL*
William Johnstone Almost the last communication I had from Robert Carroll was a letter dated 9 May 1999. With characteristic intellectual curiosity and vigour, he was offering assistance in a conference I was organizing to mark the bicentenary of the death of the pioneering biblical critic Alexander Geddes: I would like to do something for the Alexander Geddes conference because I feel I know so very little about the man or his work... I remember alluding to his work in that OUP World's Classics Bible I edited some years ago... but I would appreciate the opportunity of doing some work on him for a paper. Having to write a lecture, paper or article is still, in my opinion, one of the best ways of finding out about a person, subject or topic.
It is a matter of great regret that, instead of his writing a paper for me, I should now be writing this article in a memorial volume for him. But I hope that to write in the spirit of his offer to me will result in a contribution worthy of his memory. For this essay too will be on a topic in the history of interpretation, though of a period rather earlier than that of Geddes (1737-1802) or even of the AV to which Robert alluded (Carroll and Prickett 1997); and I hope that in the process of writing it I too will learn much. The title, 'Interpictoriality', as will be seen below, arises naturally from the topic but would, I hope, have amused Robert with his restless and appreciative eye for the alternative and the novel. The topic arises from the commission to contribute the volume on Exodus to the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary series. Among the specifications of the series is that it should be 'visually stimulating', 'pleasing to the eye'; 'fine art' in particular should take its place among an array of mediums 'to illustrate the truths of the Bible for a visual generation' * A draft of this paper was read at the XVIIth Congress of the International Organisation for the Study of the Old Testament in Basel, August 2001.
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and so 'bring the text to life'. Further, it is recognized that the history of interpretation supplies a significant resource for the task of interpretation; but that resource is to be sought not only 'in traditional commentary on the Bible but also in literature, theater, church history, and the visual arts' (Brueggemann 2000: xv-xvi). Fine art is thus included to appeal to the reader at two levels, the affective and the cognitive. Art should be appreciated for its own sake, to decorate and to gladden the eye. But it should also appeal to the mind, to instruct and to aid understanding. But the precise reason for choosing any particular 'old master' out of the huge range available, and its particular relevance for the task of exegesis, may not always be self-evident.1 There is inevitably an element of randomness in selection and I cannot deny that serendipity had a part to play in the choice of subject for the present discussion. I revisited the Sistine Chapel in 1999 to admire again the great Michelangelo frescoes, the scenes of origins from Genesis on the ceiling and the Last Judgment on the altar wall, only to be overwhelmed by the dawning realization of the relevance for my task of the six murals on the life of Moses on the south wall, which I had hitherto entirely overlooked. The following essay seeks to explore the rationale for the inclusion of portrayals of scenes from the life of Moses such as these in a commentary on Exodus.2 But at the very outset, the question of principle, the relevance and even appropriateness of art to illustrate the text of Scripture, must be raised. The question is posed in particularly acute form by the text of the Pentateuch itself in the studied aniconism, even apparent anti-iconism, of the second commandment: 'Thou shalt not make unto thee.. .any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath...' 1. For comparable essays in the association of art with the biblical text, and for some discussion of rationale, see Sawyer 1996; Rogerson 2000. 2. I have consulted three main discussions of these murals: Steinmann 1901; Ettlinger 1965; Lewine 1993.1 have found Ettlinger to be the most valuable, not least for its corrections of Steinmann: despite its monumental size, Steinmann frequently seems to make the wrong decisions; e.g., in the fifth Moses panel the stoning scene in the right foreground is taken as referring to the death of the blasphemer in Lev. 24.1023, rather than to the threat to Moses himself in Num. 14.10; and the two figures standing on a cloud in the extreme left foreground as referring to Eldad and Medad of Num. 11.26-27 (identified with the Dominicans and the Franciscans, 271), rather than to the sons of Korah in Num. 26.11 (Lewine 1993: 234). Lewine seeks to establish a thesis about the liturgical use of texts in the various city churches in Rome from Advent to Whit that seems to me to be too imprecise. Phillipps 1915 is essentially a popular presentation of Steinmann.
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(Exod. 20.4; one may recall other passages like Deut. 4.12, which emphatically states that, at the Mountain, Israel saw no form but only heard a voice). Much ink and even blood has been spent on interpreting the significance of that prohibition down the centuries. As John McManners points out, for example, it was precisely in the period of Michelangelo that iconoclastic controversies raged and representational art in churches was rejected by the Reformers on the basis of just such texts, as the whitewashed walls of the churches in Zwingli's Zurich amply testify (McManners 1990: 8-9). Vivian Mann, of the Jewish Museum and Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, suggests at least a preliminary answer from the Jewish side. Exodus itself provides the Biblical warrant for the creative and representational arts. Structures like the Tabernacle have to be designed and decorated. Moses needed Bezalel, 'to design works that embodied the commission of his Divine patron, something that Moses, the Lawgiver, was unable to do' (cf. Exod. 35.30-36.1). Thus, '[t]he earliest Hebrew text to describe an artist celebrated.. .abilities to think visually' (Mann 2000: 5). A still more dynamic appreciation of Bezalel's artistic genius is given by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg in her rendering of Midrashic and Rabbinic tradition: [The Tabernacle] presents not just an architectural challenge, or a test of craftsmanship... It is a symbolic world that mirrors God's own creation of the world, a formal expression of a large imagining. Without learning all the details, Bezalel improvises and achieves a kind of affinity with God in his work... [I]s his intuition, as we have suggested, free to create entirely new combinations of elements, to think new thoughts whose fitness for God's presence is manifested not in the exactness of the replica but in the intensity of the vision?' (Zornberg 2001: 478; the whole section 465-94 is relevant)
The question about the appropriateness of including Sistine murals on the life of Moses in a commentary on Exodus is heightened by the fact that in the Sistine Chapel each of them is counterpointed with a matching mural of scenes from the life of Jesus. They are arranged in parallel to show correspondences; they are presumably to be interrelated by means of a mutuality of interpretation. What is implied by this 'interpictoriality'? Which of the many models of the place of the Hebrew Bible within the Christian Bible, of the relation of the Old Testament to the New, of Law to Gospel, are implied by this juxtaposition? The question is heightened still further by the fact that these murals of the life of Moses are contained within a Christian church, from some viewpoints the central shrine of Christendom, given that it lies at the heart of the Vatican and is the place where Popes are elected. What ideas were in the minds of Sixtus IV, who
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commissioned the murals, and of the painters who executed them—and occur to the modern viewer? Such questions make clear that the title of this essay is not just inspired by the physical collocation of these two series of murals but deliberately echoes the term in recent times in vogue in biblical studies, 'intertextuality'. But first, the murals may be set in historical context. The Sistine Chapel was commissioned by the Pope from whom it takes its name, Sixtus IV dellaRovere (1471-84), in 1475. The great frescoes of Michelangelo, with which the Sistine Chapel is so synonymous, were painted in the first half of the following century: the ceiling in 1508-12, and the Last Judgment in 1535-41. The six murals depicting the life of Moses on the south wall and the six depicting the life of Jesus on the north were painted a generation earlier by Perugino, Botticelli, Rosselli, Ghirlandaio, and Signorelli and their schools and were completed by the time of the dedication of the Chapel on 15 August 1483 (Ettlinger 1965: 14). (Two earlier matching frescoes on the west wall depicting the finding of the infant Moses in the Nile on the south side and the Nativity of Jesus on the north, both by Perugino, have been replaced by Michelangelo's Last Judgement; the two on the east wall, depicting the dispute over the body of Moses between the Devil and the archangel Michael, alluded to in Jude 9, by Signorelli and the resurrection of Jesus by Ghirlandaio, were repainted by others in the sixteenth century after the wall collapse of 1522.3) What, then, is being stated or claimed in these scenes from the life of Moses by their systematic collocation in parallel with scenes from the life of Jesus, and by their location in a Papal chapel? These frescoes, standing in the tradition of narrative painting (Ettlinger 1965:6), each contain multiple scenes (from two to eight in each panel); my initial expectation was that each scene in the life of Moses would be co-ordinated with a matching incident in the life of Jesus in such a way as to find exact correspondences, to read Christological significance into every detail. I assumed that to achieve this set of correspondences liberal use of allegory, typology, and symbolism would have been employed. The account of the life of Moses would not be taken seriously in its own terms but would simply be used in a kind of Christian imperialism to prefigure the life of Jesus and so be appropriated, superseded even. In the event, the answer turns out to be, at least to me, surprising and, at least to a degree, reassuring. 3. Giudici et al. 1998: 42. This guidebook provides full colour reproductions of the frescoes; see also Mancinelli 1993. There are numerous websites, e.g., Kren and Marx; christusrex.
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The first impression is, nonetheless, borne out by the titles attached to the main panels. They have been worded in such a way as to emphasize the correspondence of each pair on the facing walls.4 First pair (Pietro Perugino, 1450-1523, probably the overall director of the project [Ettlinger 1965: 31]; this Jesus panel is the only one signed): Observatio antiquae regenerationis a Moiseper circoncisionem (Exod. 4). Institutio novae regenerationis a Christo in baptismo (Mt. 3). Second pair (Sandro Botticelli, 1445-1510): Temptatio Moisi legis scriptae latoris (Exod. 2-3). Temptatio lesu Christi latoris evangelicae legis (Mt. 4.1-11). Third pair (Cosimo Rosselli, 1439-1507, for Moses; Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1448-94, for Jesus): Congregatio populi a Moise legem scriptam accepturi (Exod. 14-15). Congregatio populi legem evangelicam recepturi (Mt. 4.18-22). Fourth pair (Rosselli): Promulgatio legis scriptae per Moisem (Exod. 19—34). Promulgatio evangelicae legis per Christum (Mt. 5-8). Fifth pair (Botticelli for Moses; Perugino for Jesus): Conturbatio Moisi legis scriptae latoris (Num. 14.1-10; 16). Conturbatio Jesu Christi legis latoris (Jn. 8.59; 10.31; Mt. 16.13-20). Sixth pair (Luca Signorelli, c. 1450-1523, for Moses; Rosselli for Jesus): Replicatio legis scriptae a Moise (Deut. 31.22-30; 34). Replicatio legis evangelicae a Christo (Mt. 26-27; Jn. 14-16).
The coincidence of wording between each of these pairs of titles in the two series could hardly be more precise. The intention must be to portray the exact correspondence between episodes in the life of Moses and of Jesus: initiation, temptation, preparation of the people, promulgation of the law, rejection of the legislator, repetition of the law. No doubt contrasts are implied in which the superiority of the New Testament over the Old is assumed: new vs. old; baptism vs. circumcision; the law of the gospel vs. the written law. But there is little note of stridency; circumcision is termed, after all, a rite of regeneration. Again it might be thought that primacy in the choice of themes and wording is given exclusively to the New Testament: the reversal of the sequence of events in Exodus in the first two panels of the life of Moses (Exod. 4 before Exod. 2) is 4. More precise biblical references are given below in connection with the discussion of the individual scenes. Dates and attributions are mostly from Kren and Marx.
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dictated by the sequence of events is Matthew 3—4; 'temptation' would hardly have occurred to the reader as the obviously appropriate term for the experiences of Moses in Exodus 2-3 (the more appropriate occasion might have been provided by Moses' fasting at Horeb for 40 days and 40 nights, Deut. 9.18); the miracle of the crossing of the Red Sea seems remarkably understated in panel 3 as 'the congregation of the people about to receive the written law' and seems to be constrained by the material in Mt. 4.18-25. But there is reversal of sequence within the Jesus cycle as well: the Matthew ch. 3 panel shows Jesus as already preaching, which may, however, just be artistic licence to produce symmetry in the painting. And the influence is not all one way: the term 'legislator' in the second pair surely fits Moses better than Jesus and leads on to obscure the fact that in the third pair the New Testament side is actually about the calling of the first disciples. 'Repetition of the law' in the titles of the last pair is dictated by Deuteronomy and hardly does justice to the passion narrative of Matthew 26-27; it fits at best the farewell discourse of John 14-16. The harmony and integration of the series as a whole are, indeed, to be appreciated: the 'naive realism' of the multiple scenes;5 the shared horizon from panel to panel; the generally uniform rural background (even where the biblical narrative sets the scene indoors, as in the first Moses panel [Steinmann 1901: 298]); the standardization of the size of the figures, 'arranged in a homogeneous frieze-like composition, which moves along the chapel walls like a procession' (Ettlinger 1965:42); the regular 'colour-coding' of the apparel of the principal characters, especially Moses in green and gold, and Jesus in blue and red. So too to be admired is the composition of most of the panels.6 The prevailing use of the 'triptych' formula, an inward and outward movement, often descending towards the centre, pivoting on a strongly marked central feature with even the birds in the air contributing to this focus (Ettlinger 1965: 36). But when the 50 or so scenes on these panels are studied in detail, it becomes clear that the titles are quite generalized and the uniformity of composition by no means stifles the individuality of each scene. A review of the content reveals how little correspondence in detail has in the event been sought between the two series: 5. Ettlinger 1965: 6, who remarks that this is not to be confused with primitive understanding. 6. Rosselli's Promulgated legis scriptaeper Moisem, with its crowded canvas, is generally held to be the weakest compositionally (though Rosselli won the Papal competition for best work; Steinmann 1901: 278).
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First Pair: Moses I 7 Four scenes: 1. Left background: Moses' carefree life as shepherd of Jethro's flocks (cf. Exod. 3.1); 2. Centre background: Moses, with his wife and two sons, takes leave of Jethro (Exod. 4.18-20); 3. Left foreground: Moses returning to Egypt encounters the angel of the Lord on the way (cf. Exod. 4.24); 4. Right foreground: Zipporah circumcizes her younger son (Exod. 4.25-26).
7. In the dicussion of the panels that follows, I shall use Moses I-VI and Jesus I-VI as shorthand. The images appearing in this article are reproduced with the kind permission of the Vatican Museum.
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First Pair: Jesus I Jesus (four scenes): 1. Left background: John preaches repentance (Mt. 3.1-12); 2. Central axis (foreground): baptism of Jesus; 3. Central axis (upper): the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, and God the Father in the mandorla (Mt. 3.13-17); 4. Right background: Jesus preaches repentance (Mt. 4.17).
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Second Pair: Moses II (As the viewer turns at the altar steps, the Moses panels on the south wall are now, on the whole—in contrast to the first panel above—to be 'read' from right to left; the Jesus panels conversely on the north wall continue to be read left to right.) Eight 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
scenes: Right foreground: Moses slays the Egyptian taskmaster (Exod. 2.11-12); The wronged Hebrew is comforted; Moses flees (Exod. 2.14-15); Middle background: Moses drives away the Midianite shepherds (Exod. 2.17-19); Centre foreground: Moses waters the sheep of Jethro's daughters (Exod. 2.17-19); Left background: Moses removes his shoes at the burning bush (Exod. 3.1-5); Moses commissioned by God (Exod. 3.7-12); Left foreground: Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt (Exod. 12.34).
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Second Pair: Jesus II 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Left background: the temptation to turn stones into bread (Mt. 4.3-4); Centre background: the temptation to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple (Mt. 4.5-7); Right background: the temptation to worship the Devil to gain all the kingdoms of the world; angels minister to Jesus (Mt. 4.8-11); Left middleground: angels prevent the dashing of the foot against a stone (Mt. 4.6); Foreground: Jesus as acolyte receives the prerogatives of priesthood.8
8. This is the interpretation of Ettlinger (1965: 86), against the view of Steinmann (1901), that it represents the cleansing of the leper (Lev. 14.1-7). The interpretation provides a warrant for Jesus's status as priest otherwise unattested in the Gospels (but frequent in Hebrews, e.g., 9.11-28).
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Third Pair: Moses in Two scenes: 1. Right background: Moses at Pharaoh's court (e.g. Exod. 10.21-29); 2. Foreground: crossing of the Red Sea (Exod. 14.1-15.21).
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Third Pair: Jesus III Three 1. 2. 3.
scenes: Left background: Peter and Andrew casing their net into the sea (Mt. 4.18); Foreground: calling of Peter and Andrew (Mt. 4.19-20); Right background: calling James and John in the boat with Zebedee their father (Mt. 4.21-22).
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Fourth Pair: Moses IV Six scenes: 1. Centre background: Moses receives the two tablets of the Decalogue on top of the mountain; Joshua beneath looks down on the people (Exod. 24.12, 13);9 2. Centre foreground: Moses smashes the tablets (Exod. 32.19); 3. Right foreground: the people worship and dance round the golden calf (Exod. 32.1-6); 4. Right background: the execution of 3000 by the Levites (Exod. 32.25-29); 5. Left background: Israel worship at their tent doors while Moses communes with God (Exod. 33.7-11);10 6. Left foreground: Moses returns with the second set of tablets; the people shield their eyes from his radiant face (Exod. 34.29-30).
9. The figure of Joshua is commonly held to be sleeping (Steinmann 1901: 233; Lewine 1993: 61) 10. Steinmann 1901: 233,alleges that atthe top left there is a portrayal, not visible to the naked eye from a distance, of Moses1 intercession.
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Fourth Pair: Jesus IV Four scenes: 1. Left and centre foreground: the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5.1); 2. Right background: Jesus descends from the Mount (Mt. 8.1); 3. Right foreground: the healing of the leper (Mt. 8.2-4); 4. Centre background: Jesus prays alone on a hill (Mt. 14.23).
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Fifth Pair: Moses V Three scenes: 1. Right foreground: the people threaten to stone Moses (Num. 14.1-10); 2. Centre foreground: Koran, Dathan and Abiram attempt to usurp the priesthood (Num. 16.1-19); Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu are consumed because they 'offered strange fire' (Lev. 10.1-2); Eleazar, one of Aaron's surviving sons, brandishes the thurible between Moses and Aaron; 3. Left foreground: the earth swallows up the rebels (Num. 16.20-35) but the sons of Korah are miraculously preserved on a cloud (cf. Num. 26.11).
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Fifth Pair: Jesus V Three scenes: 1. Left background: the tribute money (Mt. 17.24-27 or Mt. 22.15-22?); 2. Centre: the gift of the keys (Mt. 16.13-20); 3. Right background: the stoning of Jesus (Jn. 8.59; 10.31).
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Sixth Pair: Moses VI Five scenes: 1. Right foreground: Moses repromulgates the Law (Deut. 29.1-31.6); 2. Left foreground: Moses appoints Joshua as his successor (Deut. 31.7-8);11 3. Central background: Moses is shown from Mt Nebo the promised land that he will never enter (Deut. 34.1-4); 4. Central middleground: Moses descends Mt Nebo; 12 5. Left background: mourning for Moses.
11. There is no mention of the transfer of the golden staff in the biblical narrative; in Num. 27.18-23 Joshua's induction is by the laying-on of hands. 12. There is no biblical warrant for the last two elements; indeed the last seems to contradict Deut. 34.5-6, where the Lord himself buries Moses in a location unknown to humans.
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Sixth Pair: Jesus VI 1. 2. 3. 4.
Foreground: last supper (Mt. 26.20-29), Judas in form of Devil (Jn. 13.2); basin and ewers for footwashing (Jn. 13.1-15); Background three panels: left, agony in the garden (Mt. 26.36-46); centre, the betrayal (Mt. 26.47-56); right, crucifixion (Mt. 26.33-56).
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We return to the question how to define the nature of these parallels. It is striking how non-mechanical they are;13 how free within the overall framework of the scheme each Testament is left to tell its own stories on its own terms: the fifth pair is the most strongly interlinked (the motif of the arch of Constantine on both; the topic of stoning); but it is only by inference that other features can be related, e.g., that the golden bowl with manna in the sixth pair (= Heb. 9.4; not Exod. 16.33-34) is intended—if it is—as a parallel to the Eucharist. The reassuring aspect of this study is thus that the 'plain sense' of Scripture predominates after all. The series seek to attract and to entertain by their beauty but their fundamental purpose is to instruct: they impart and presuppose biblical knowledge; they remind the attentive viewer of details and the interconnection of details in the text; they stimulate reflection by the association of representations. But the question then remains: how, conceptually, can the text of the Hebrew Bible be left largely free to be itself and yet be part of Christian scripture? Some of the conventional definitions of the relationship between Old and New Testaments seem hardly adequate in the light of these non-mechanical parallels: promise and fulfilment; prophecy and fulfilment; typology of prototype and antitype.14 The danger in such models is that fulfilment renders promise unnecessary; the prototype becomes redundant in the eschaton of the antitype; the Old Testament becomes but a pale set of presuppositions and explanations for New Testament applications. But here in the Sistine Chapel the Old is given and has retained full significance; validity without abrogation. How is this retention of the Old Testament prototypes in the freshness of their individualism to be understood? Perhaps the surest guide to the conceptions within which Sixtus IV as commissioner of the murals and the painters as executors of his commission worked is provided by the biblical commentary of the period.15 By 13. Steinmann, 1901: 239 n. 2, quotes Sixtus IV: 'nee figura et figuratum debent omnino convenire' and notes (240) that Moses IV and Jesus IV are parallel only in the main topic; there is no correspondence in Jesus IV to the dance round the golden calf, the punishment of the rebellious, and the manifestation of the glory of God in Moses IV. 14. To cite but some of the classical models considered in Westermann 1963. Steinmann 1901 speaks of 'typologische Beziehungen' (e.g. 228), 'Bild und Vorbild' (e.g. 242). 15. There must have been other influences, not least in the wake of the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The fifteenth-century Catalogue to the Vatican Library, of which Sixtus IV, a distinguished scholar in his own right, was patron, reveals the astonishing
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common consent the biblical commentator recognized as one of the chief authorities behind the portrayal of these biblical stories in the Sistine Chapel is Nicholas of Lyra.16 It would not be surprising if this were the case. Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270-1348) is acknowledged as the most significant Christian interpreter of Scripture and Hebraist in the West since Jerome (Cross and Livingstone 1983: s.v.). A native of the twin villages of La Vieille Lyre and La Neuve Lyre in Normandy,17 he came into early contact with rabbinical learning, probably in nearby Evreux (Krey and Smith [eds.] 2000:1). His greatest work is the Literal Postill (literal commentary, Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam), written 1322-31; the Moral Postill followed in 1339. Lyra's postills are extant in more than 800 MSS and his was the first biblical commentary to be printed (Rome, 1471-72, dedicated, be it noted, to Sixtus IV). There are about 50 early printed editions (Krey and Smith [eds.] 2000: 8-12). The significance of Nicholas is confirmed by a local Aberdeen curiosity. R.S. Rait, author of the quatercentenary history of the University of Aberdeen in 1895, records how, according to the terms of an early sixteenth century revized charter, students in theology in Aberdeen 'are to lecture in turn every day, after dinner and after supper, on De Lyra's treatises, with special reference to portions of Scripture read by one of the arts students before these meals. De Lyra', Rait adds, 'is the only theological textbook of which mention is made' (Rait 1895: 74).1S The biblical interpretation of Nicholas of Lyra provided the staple of theological education in European universities before the Reformation, even in far-flung universities like those in Scotland. I have long been conscious of an unpaid debt to Nicholas of Lyra.
range of resources available, e.g., the Latin translations of Philo's De vita Mosis and of Athanasius, 1478, both dedicated to him (Ettlinger 1965: 68; Mttntz and Fabre 1970). 16. So by both Ettlinger 1965 and Lewine 1993 (see the index in both works). 17. Local tradition has it that Nicholas was a native of La Neuve Lyre (Molkhou 1995: 7). 18. By happy accident, Rait provides a link between the University of Aberdeen, where I have taught, and the University of Glasgow, where Robert Carroll taught and which is my alma mater. Rait, an Aberdonian by upbringing, studied at the University of Aberdeen, later at Oxford where he also taught, before becoming Professor of Scottish History and Literature in the University of Glasgow (1913-29), and finally, as Sir Robert Rait, Principal (1929-36).
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I have been able to work with two editions of Lyra's Postills that have been in the possession of the University of Aberdeen virtually since its first students took up residence (Lyra 1481; 1502).19 The later, the more useful of the two, includes both Lyra's literal and moral postill and sets his work within the Glossa Ordinaria20 in both the interlinear and the marginal versions. A surprising feature, reassuring, indeed, is the note of scholarly debate, even controversy, preserved in the commentary: the additions of Paul, bishop of Burgos (d. 1435), a converted Rabbi, who tried to correct both Lyra's Hebrew and his alleged lack of understanding of Aquinas, are included. These comments are rebutted in turn by Matthias Doring of Thuringia (d. 1469 [Krey and Smith (eds.) 2000: 12]). The vehemence of the debate is remarkable: at the end of Exodus 1, for instance, Doring refers to Burgos as calumniator, at the end of Exodus 2, as mendax. A page, folio 126 recto, from Exod. 2.11-19, which includes much of the text illustrated in Moses II (Botticelli, The Temptation of Moses),21 is reproduced in Plate 1 and provides a convenient point of entry into discussion of the matter. The text of the Vulgate, with the interlinear Glossa Ordinaria (Glos. Ord.) embedded in the text, is surrounded by the commentators, the marginal Glossa and the Literal Postill of Nicholas of Lyra on the left, and the Literal Postill of Nicholas continued on the right (despite the heading), with his Moral Postill in the 14 lines at the foot.
19. It has been helpful to be able to compare these two editions, not simply because they vary in the sometimes extreme compression with which they abbreviate the Latin text, but because there are some typographical errors in the 1502 edition. There is, e.g., a fine example of homoioteleuton in connection with Lyra's comment on Exod. 31.18 on the two tablets of the Decalogue. In the 1502 edition one is startled to read: secundum doctores nostros in una tabula erant scripta ut patebit capi[te] se[quenti]. The 1481 edition reads, correctly: secundum doctores nostros in una tabula erant scripta tria precepta: in alia septem. Secundum hebreos vero in qualibet tabula erant quinque scripta ut patebit capifte] sefquenti]. Lyra gives Augustine as the authority behind the first view (three precepts governing relations between humankind and God; seven on interpersonal relations), and Rashi and the 'doctores hebraici' behind the second. 20. Cross and Livingstone 1983, s.v.: 'GLOSSA ORDINARIA, the standard mediaeval commentary on the Bible. It was drawn up chiefly from extracts from the Fathers, and was arranged in the form of marginal and interlinear glosses... Gilbert the Universal, who taught at Auxerre before becoming Bp. of London (1128-34), was responsible for the Pentateuch...the text pr. with the works ofNicholas of Lyra is complete...' 21. It might have been more logical to reproduce a folio including part of Exod. 4, the biblical text behind Moses I: unfortunately the relevant folio in the Aberdeen copy is disfigured by a mould stain.
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Any resemblance to a Rabbinic Bible is entirely intentional.22 The notes (a, b, etc.) embedded in the Vulgate text refer to the interlinear Glossa; those down the left side of the Vulgate text refer to the marginal Glossa; those down the right side to Lyra's Postill, both the Literal and the Moral (because verse numbering is not used, references below will include this system). The work is a triumph of the compositor's art: from folio to folio these different levels of commentary are kept in phase. This folio well illustrates too the nature of these respective commentaries. The claim that Nicholas was doctor planus et utilis (repeated frequently in Krey and Smith [eds.] 2000) seems to me to be well founded. His commitment in the Literal Postill to the plain sense of the text, gained by an exegesis that is recognizably 'grammatico-historicar, supported by judicious appeal to secondary authorities, not only the latini, the doctores catholici, but also the hebrei, pre-eminently Rashi, stands in contrast to the prevailing, but by no means exclusively, allegorical interpretation of the Glossa. Yet a link between the two levels is provided by Lyra's own Moral Postill. 'The meaning of every single scene [in the Sistine murals]—on all its levels—would have been obvious to any theologian' (Ettlinger 1965: 118). I should like to propose that an edition of Lyra like the one illustrated, with its complex 'three-dimensional' levels of text and interpretation, gives access to the levels of understanding of the biblical text that must have been familiar to the mediaeval scholars who instructed the painters of the Sistine Chapel and is thus a reliable handbook to the interpretation of the Sistine murals and their possible layered levels of meaning. A brief look at Lyra's Literal Postill on this folio gives its general flavour. One of Lyra's favourite opening phrases is hie consequenter describitur, prefaced to a brief analysis of the structure of the section of text under discussion (n. h [on v. 15]; without consequenter at the beginning of the comment on v. 11, on the previous folio, and in n. 1 [on v. 16]). While it is true that this often prefaces a mere paraphrase of the text, frequently with verbatim citations,23 its importance is not to be overlooked: 22. The layout of the Rabbinic Bible—and the drop-down menus of the contemporary computer—is acknowledged by the Smyth & Helwys editors as the inspiration for the layout of their series. 23. Pharao. Hie consequenter describitur conditio moysi tempore adversitatis: ubi primo describitur eius persecutio: secundo divina consolatio/ibi: Erant autem [= quotation from v. 16]. Circa primum dicitur: Audivitque pharao sermonem hunc [= resumption of the beginning of v. 15] videlicet quod moyses unum occiderat de
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meaning is sought in the first instance 'horizontally' within the immediate context. Matters of greater substance concern the authorities Lyra uses to resolve particular interpretative issues in the text: in this section, Rashi, the New Testament, and Josephus. In n. a on v. 11, he cites the view of the hebrei that the Hebrew victim of the Egyptian overseer's assault was married to Salomith (that is, Shelomith, Lev. 24.14), a very beautiful woman (cf. Reif 1996: *89-*90). The Hebrew was made to rise early and was sent to work so that in his absence the Egyptian overseer could have intercourse with his wife; when the Hebrew remonstrated with the overseer, he was subjected to a severe beating. This midrashic expansion is contained in Rashi (with some variations: e.g., the Hebrew is made to rise at night).24 It provides us, I suggest, with the identity of the woman comforting the Hebrew in the extreme right foreground of Botticelli's Moses II: she is Shelomith, his wife abused by the Egyptian. Part of the reason for including this story is to heighten the Egyptian's guilt in order to exonerate Moses for killing him. This is the issue to which Lyra turns in n. d on v. 12. There are two problems. First, how could Moses have performed this act when he had not been appointed judge? The answer is provided by Acts 7 (v. 25: 'he supposed his brothers would have understood how God would deliver them by his hand'):25 knowing pr[a]epositis regis ad vindicandum unum ex hebreis quos exosos habebant [= interpretative summary of the narrative in w. 11-12; the biblical text does not say, though it might imply, that Moses' victim was one of the Egyptian overseers]. The note provides typical examples also of the sometimes highly compressed abbreviations used by the compositors, e.g., tpe = tempore. 24. The 'hebrei' are cited no fewer than four further times in this folio alone; each time the material is to be found in Rashi. The two Hebrews fighting one another are identified as Dathan and Abiram in Lyra's n. e on Exod. 2.13 (is there an implied link with their appearance in Botticelli's Moses V?). Forn. k on Exod. 2.15, Moses' capture but escape from the sword, Rashi provides the source, Exod. 18.4, Moses' explanation of the choice of the name, Eliezer, for his second son. In n. 1 to Exod. 2.16 Lyra records the interpretation that the title 'priest' means simply 'magnate', cf. 2 Sam. 8.18 where it is given to David's sons. In n. p on Exod. 2.18 he provides the etymology of the name 'Jethro' that Rashi supplies in the context of Exod. 18.1: 'the one who added ("in')' sc. the rule about the appointment of tribal leaders (Exod. 18.21-22). Rashi supplies there too the etymology of 'Hobab', to which Lyra refers, and the note on Jethro's conversion to Judaism. 25. Further biblical cross-references are made in n. 1 to Exod. 2.16, as already noted, and in n. o to Exod. 2.17 to Gen. 29.3 for the apparent custom of first gathering all the flocks before watering them.
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by divine revelation that he had been appointed liberator, by divine election Moses possessed authority to avenge injustices done to his brothers and he assumed that this would be recognized by them. Second, the seemingly excessive punishment of death for a blow, in apparent violation of the lex talionis in Exod. 21.23-25 [the reference is supplied in the margin], is explained by the fact that adultery was involved. Lyra, using material in Josephus Antiquities [2.2S3],26 alludes to Moses' own married status (his marriage to the Cushite woman, Num. 12.1). Whatever one may think of the quality of Lyra's sources from the point of view of history, he is attempting at least partly to understand the dynamics of the narrative in realistic terms: for the most part the Old Testament is interpreted historice—the sections in Lyra where is it is explicitly interpreted allegories or moraliter are much briefer—and this historical interpretation is amplified by narratives from other sources to round out a 'historical' picture. It must be acknowledged, however, that there is also apparent in his comments an embarrassment at anomalies in the text and a desire to explain away difficulties that confront a harmonistic reading of the text within the wider context not just of the story itself but of the Christian Bible as a whole. The contrast between Lyra's Literal Post ill and the interpretations of the Glossa Ordinaria is marked. Here there is direct identification of the old and the new dispensations, as already the interlinear comments on v. 11 make clear: Moses [Christ]27 having gone out [from the Father, or the Jews] to his brothers ['I shall proclaim your name to my brothers' (Ps. 22.22, understood as spoken by David/Christ)] saw their affliction [in the world] and an Egyptian [the Devil"8 injurious to us in this pilgrimage] smiting one of the Hebrews [those who quickly pass through the way of this age] his brothers [we all in Christ are brothers: we have one Father, God]. 26. Josephus is cited again in this folio in n. i to Exod. 2.15 on the prediction, about the time of Moses' birth by an Egyptian priest, of the birth of a deliverer of the Hebrews (Ant. 2.235). For the use of Josephus as source for non-biblical materials in the Sistine Murals, see the storm over the Red Sea in Moses III added from Josephus (Ant. 2.343; cf. Lewine 1993: 56); the grounded ship in Moses V, an embellishment of Josephus's account of the earthquake accompanying the destruction of Korah and his gang (Josephus, Ant. 4.51; Lewine 1993: 79). 27. This identification is routine, v. 15 n. b; v. 17. 28. Again a routine identification, v. 12; v. 15, where equated with Pharaoh; v. 16, with the priest of Midian, as formerly Midian was subjected to the superstition of the gentiles.
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Other identifications are irresistible to the mediaeval Christian mind: for example, Jethro's seven daughters (v. 16) illustrate the church of the seven-fold spirit drawn from the gentiles (cf. Rev. 5.6); the water they draw is the water of baptism or of celestial doctrine; the Midianite shepherds (v. 17) are 'the philosophers of the gentiles, the scribes and pharisees of the Jews, or the priests of the idols'. The extracts in the marginal Glossa are attributed to Augustine and Isidore of Seville. Here too identifications between Moses and Christ, and between the Egyptian and the Devil, are made. The scriptural citations are of a homiletical character: for example, the burying of the Egyptian in the sand (v. 12) gives rise to a cross-reference to the text at the end of the Sermon on the Mount about the wise man who built his house on rock, that is, on the true church, and the foolish man who built his house on sand (Mt. 7.24-27). But Lyra's own allegorical interpretation in the Moral Postill seems to be entirely in line with the Glossa. On 2.11 he merely slightly amplifies: Moses went out to his brothers as Christ went out in his thirtieth year29 to preach to his brothers the Jews, since he was Jewish by birth, thus fulfilling Ps. 22.22. In n. c to Exod. 2.12 at the foot of the folio he reproduces the equation of the Egyptian with the Devil whom Christ restrains by his virtue and consigns to hell (with a cross-reference to the plea of the demons in Lk. 8.31). In n. d to Exod. 2.13, the struggle between the Hebrews is the injustices the Jews inflict on one another, for which Christ frequently chided them in his sermons. The polemic is continued in n. h to Exod. 2.15, 'When Pharaoh heard this report etc.: by which is designated that the Devil sought the death of Christ by means of the Jews'.30 The prevailing Christological interpretation continues in the final note (k on Exod. 2.15): 'by the flight of Moses to the priest of Midian is to be understood the ascension of Christ to the Father who is to be understood by the name of the priest understood etymologically as "one giving sacred rites'".31 Lyra's Hebraic learning is thus placed in the service of his Christian homiletics.32 29. Lyra seems unperturbed by the reference in Acts 7.23 to the fact that Moses was 40 years of age at the time! 30. There are two misprints in the text of this note alone: quoo for quod; diaboluss for diabolus. 31. See Rashi's etymology of 'Jethro' above, as 'one who added a parsha in the Torah'. 32. Such observations can be multiplied many times over in Lyra's commentary. For example, his knowledge of the MT is exemplified in, e.g., Exod. 3.2; 4.18; 15.7;
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Exodus 14, the narrative of the crossing of the Red Sea, the major text behind Rosselli's Moses III, provides further good examples of Lyra's attempts to understand 'grammatico-historically', to round out the biblical narrative from non-biblical sources,33 and to prefer an interpretation from Rashi on grounds of historical probability, even if that means rejecting a traditional Christian view; yet it also shows how far Lyra is from a critical standpoint with regard to the biblical material itself. On 14.3 he cites Josephus on the trapping of Israel by the Egyptians 'between inaccessible steep slopes and the sea' (Ant. 2.324 [following the translation of Feldman 2000]). On 14.22 he prefers the interpretation of the hebrei that Israel crossed the Red Sea as a single group over that of the doctores catholici who argue on the basis of the plural 'divisions' into which the Sea was divided according to Ps. 136.13 that Israel crossed tribe by tribe (this interpretation is cited by Origen in the marginal Glos. Ord. on 14.15 under the marginal note historice). Lyra objects: if a tribe had not had Moses in its midst would it have dared to cross? The plural in the Hebrew of Psalm 136, he remarks, merely expresses a complex unity, as in Gen. 46.23 where the plural,' sons of Dan', is used though only one is listed. But he is in difficulties in connection with what is meant by 'the shore of the sea' on which the Israelites saw the dead Egyptians washed up in 14.31. The problem arises in part from the divergencies of the wilderness itinerary in Numbers 33 from the Exodus account. In Num. 33.8, when Israel cross the Sea they arrive in the wilderness of Etham. But according to Exod. 13.20 Etham is still on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea. Some Christian writers therefore hold that the path through the Red Sea was semicircular, so that Israel arrived back on the same side of the Sea as that from which they started. Lyra, following Josephus (Ant. 2.341,349), will have none of this: Israel passed through to the opposite bank on which the arms of the
etc. Sometimes the Vulgate reading is allowed to prevail: e.g., in Exod. 4.26 the subject of the much-debated 'and he let him go' of MT is understood, by the convenient ambiguity of gender in 'dimisit', as 'she, namely, Zipporah, let him, Moses, go' and returned to her father, as is implied in Exod. 18.2. Rashi is frequently explicitly mentioned by name, e.g., on Exod. 15.17; 31.18; 32.15-16; 34.29-31. 33. Elegant use of his classical learning is in evidence in his quotation from Cicero in connection with God's statement 'I shall be glorified in Pharaoh' (14.4 and again on 15.1): 'gloria est longe latequepr(a)econium'; longe: quia usque ad istatempora.. .late: quia per orbem universum. He alludes to Aristotle's Ethics in connection with Exod. 32.27.
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Egyptians were miraculously washed up. He prefers a different harmonistic solution: two different places must have shared the same name, Etham. Lyra's views, whether directly or not, are reflected in Rosselli's mural. There are many details of the Sistine frescoes that can be illuminated from the compendium of materials in Lyra's Commentary, whether in Lyra's own Postills or in the Glossa Ordinaria. In some cases the allegorical is overt in the mural and preferred to the plain sense of Scripture. In Moses I, the circumcision of Moses' younger son, Eliezer, provides an instance. Exodus 4.25 does not actually specify which of the two sons is involved (we hear of the birth of the older only, in Exod. 2.22; the fact that there is more than one is indicated by the plural in 4.20 and that there are only two by 18.3-4). But the whole point of the narrative is based on its being the first-born, Gershom, who is being circumcised, as the wider context also implies (all the material from Exod. 4.22, if not earlier, to 12.29, if not more, is based on the theme of the first-born). The reason for the preference for the younger son is clear from the Glossa: mystically, Zipporah signifies the church of the gentiles; the sharp stone with which she circumcised her son is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, or represents Christ, the stone, referred to in 1 Cor. 10.4. The preference for the younger is a recurrent motif: Jacob, Joseph, the prodigal, and here, in particular, the Gentiles represented by the younger son, Eliezer, taking the place of the older son, Gershom, the Jews (cf. Lewine 1993: 27-30). More frequently, however, it appears that it is the 'plain sense' of the biblical narratives that is being reproduced in the Sistine murals. But the literal is open to the possibility of the moral, as it is in Lyra's Postills; the obliteration of the time difference between the Old Testament and the New, the identification of the different periods and persons (Moses is Christ, etc.), does not force itself upon the viewer but may be so understood, as the following examples suggest: Moses II Zipporah carries a spindle: compare the tradition of the Virgin Mary spinning yarn for the veil of the Temple (Lewine 1993: 37). The burning bush is traditionally an emblem of the Virgin conceived without being consumed by the fires of concupiscence (Lewine 1993: 39 n. 50).34 34. One may cite the triptych of the Burning Bush in the cathedral of St Sauveur at Aix-en-Provence, painted c. 1475 by Nicolas Froment, which portrays the Virgin and Child in the centre of the conflagration.
JOHNSTONE Interpictoriality 443 Moses' commission in Exod. 3.10 includes preaching to those imprisoned in limbo (Lyra, in the light of a homily of Gregory the Great). Moses HI Pharaoh's chariot is the pride of this passing world (Glos. Ord. on Exod. 14.6). Pharaoh musters his chariots to fight against the faith of the Holy Trinity (Glos. Ord. on 14.7). The Red Sea by which Israel is encamped when the Egyptians overtake them is the flood of temptations (Glos. Ord on 14.9). The protecting angel is the doctors of the church; the pillar of cloud the knowledge of Scripture (Glos. Ord on 14.19). The dual nature of the pillar of cloud and fire signifies the humanity and divinity of Christ (Lyra, Moral Postill on 14.20). The Red Sea signifies baptism consecrated by the blood of Christ (Isidore in the marginal Glos. Ord. on 14.21). The wall of water on right and left is protection in prosperity and adversity (Glos. Ord. on 14.29). The day of the crossing of the Red Sea is the day of baptism (Glos. Ord. on 14.30). 'You have extended your hand', that is, on the cross (Glos. Ord. on 15.12; so again on 15.16; Origen has a note to similar effect on 15.14). Glos. Ord. adds a phrase to 15.19: 'the children of Israel,^b//ow/«g Christ, walked on dry ground'. hi Exod. 15.25 the bitter waters of Marah signify the tribulations of this present life; the wood cast into them to make them sweet is the cross, that is, the passion of Christ (alluded to in Lyra's Moral Postill on Exod. 15.15). Moses IV Joshua 'by name and action signifies Christ' (Bede in Glos. Ord. on Exod. 24.13). hi Exod. 24.9-18, Joshua's sudden mention among those ascending the mountain, and equally sudden concealment in the text only to reappear later, signifies the New Testament concealed in the Law (ibid.).35 The breaking of the tablets of the Decalogue is the sign of the emptying out of legalism in the advent of Christ (Lyra, Literal Postill on Exod. 32.19). The levites' girding of the sword on their femurs is their preference for the study of preaching over the voluptuous desires of the flesh; their passing through the midst of the camp is their life within the church; to rush from gate to gate is to denounce the entrances by which vices enter the mind (Gregory the Great in the Glos. Ord. on Exod. 32.27; Lyra's rational inter35. On a critical view, Exod. 24.12*, 13,18* belong to the version presupposed by Deuteronomy in which Joshua is the trusted servant and successor to Moses; Exod. 24.9-11, 12*, 14-18* are contributed by P for whom Aaron is Moses' significant associate.
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36. It is striking that Lyra includes illustrations at only a dozen places in the Pentateuch, almost all of them in contexts where specifications are given which the critic would recognize as the work of P: the arrangement of Noah's ark in Gen. 6, various items in the construction and furnishing of the Tabernacle in Exod. 25-28, the arrangement of the contents of the two tablets of the Decalogue in Exod. 32, the layout of the camp in Num. 4, and the 'suburbs' in Num. 35. 37. The sometimes exotic repertoire of Christian allegorical symbolism is presented inReau 1956.
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In the Jesus murals a recurring motif is the numeral '8', as in the octagonal Temple in Jesus V, the last supper in an octagonal chamber, with octagonal coffered ceiling in Jesus VI. A fine account of the symbolical significance of the numeral eight (and seven) is given in the Glos. Ord. on Deut. 34.7 on the reason for Moses' living to the age of 120: 120 is the sum of all the digits from 1 to 15; 15 is made up of the two symbolical numbers, '7' and '8'. '7' refers to the sabbath; '8' to circumcision; applied to the New Testament '7' refers to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and '8' to the resurrection of Jesus.38 Does Nicholas of Lyra, then, provide any help in understanding the theoretical issue raised above: how can the narratives of the Hebrew Bible be left largely free to be themselves in the murals of the Sistine Chapel and yet remain part of Christian iconography? It may be suggested that Lyra's theory of how the Hebrew Bible in its plain grammatico-historical sense witnesses to Christ, his theory of the duplex sensus litteralis of Scripture, is of relevance in answering this question. According to Lyra's theory, a scriptural text has a double literal sense: it signifies not only its surface meaning in its own terms, but also a more fundamental, essentially christological, level of meaning. To elucidate what he means, Lyra uses an analogy, drawn from the Oxford Hebraist, Roger Bacon (d. 1292), of the inn-sign (Klepper 2000: 310 n. 79; Zier 2000: 191). The plain sense of the inn-sign is duplex: the overt surface sign is a circle; but at the same time that circle indicates that wine is available in the wine-cellar within. The letter of the Old Testament provides narratives that can be read at face value (and painted with naive realism on the walls of the Sistine Chapel); but, since Christ is the subject-matter of Scripture (and the ultimate author of Scripture is God), the inner meaning of these seemingly naive narratives is christological. This is why in so many of the comments of Lyra and his predecessors in the Glossa Ordinaria cited above, and in many others besides, phrases have been repeatedly used with the verbs 'to signify' (significare\ occasionally the noun signum), 'to be understood' (intelligi) or simply, 'that is' (id [est], 'i.e.').39 The 'moral' reading is 3 8. The note ingeniously ends: cxx ergo eos significant qui vel in veteri vel in novo testamento legis et evangelii prfajecepta implere student. 39. E.g., Moses' flight to Jethro the law-giver moraliter intdligitur as the ascension of Christ to the Father; Zipporah mystice signified! the church of the Gentiles; by Moses shepherding his father-in-law's flock allegorice significatur John the Baptist shepherding the faithful followers of Christ his kinsman; moraliter intelligitur the preacher tending the Lord's flock by his example; by Pharaoh and his hosts moraliter
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inseparable from the 'literal' reading; the New Testament can be read off the page of the Old in such a way as to equate and identify the one with the other and to obliterate any sense of distance in time; the fusing of horizons is complete.40 Nicholas's commitment to 'grammatico-historical' exegesis is thus governed by his theory of'the senses of Scripture'.4' It is only by securing the plain meaning of the text that, somewhat paradoxically, the inner mystical or spiritual meaning which depends on it, and of which Lyra is such a powerful exponent,42 can be grasped: since these spiritual meanings depend on the plain sense, they make the accurate rendering of the plain sense all the more essential.43 In rabbinical terms, we might hazard, do justice to the peshat and the derash will look after itself.44 significatur the Devil, and his angels; the wood at Marah moraliter intelligitur as the cross of Jesus; etc. 40. Ettlinger, in his important Chapter 5, 'Typology and World History', appositely quotes a phrase of Sixtus IV himself in his treatise on the blood of Christ, which perhaps clinches the relevance of the point to the Sistine Chapel: 'Moses noster Christus' (95; the point is already made by the Glossa Ordinaria on Exod. 2.11; cf. Moses reading from an anachronistic Christian codex in Moses VI). Ettlinger comments: "The whole purpose of the ingenious exercise [typology] may be summed up in the often quoted words of St. Augustine: "The Old Testament is nothing but the New covered with a veil and the New nothing but the Old unveiled" [De civitate Dei, 16.26]' (95). 41. To quote the subtitle of the Krey and Smith volume (2000), which explains throughout Lyra's theory of the duplex sensus litteralis. See the subject index under 'Exegesis': double literal sense, esp. 125, the reference to Lyra's preface to Psalms. 42. De Lubac 2000: 37, cites Lyra's commendably clear separation of the mystical or spiritual meaning of scripture into the three-fold division of the analogical (what is to be believed), the tropological (what is to be done), and the anagogical (what is to be hoped for). 43. Patton 2000: 39: 'what these texts signify literally must be understood, so that what they signify ultimately, although indirectly, can be revealed'. 44. Van Liere 2000:70-71, stresses Lyra's appreciation of'peshat, the plain meaning of the text' but rejection of'derash, a form of inferential, homiletic interpretation' (also 76-77). A rejection of derash does not seem to me to be borne out by the texts in Exodus studied above: Lyra's 'moral sense' can be construed as Christian midrash. The definition of midrash by Neusner 1975: 52, which I have used elsewhere, is apposite in this regard: 'Midrash.. .represents.. .creative philology and creative historiography. As creative philology the Midrash discovers meaning in apparently meaningless detail... As creative historiography, the Midrash rewrites the past to make manifest the eternal Tightness of Scriptural paradigms. What would it be like if all people lived at one moment? ... Midrash thus exchanges the stability of language and the continuity of history for the stability of values and the eternity of truth'.
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But a still wider theoretical framework is required to do justice to the Sistine murals. Wider interests, besides those of mediaeval Christian biblical exegetes in the integration of the horizons of the Old and New Testaments, are reflected in the allusions to the classical world and to the world of Sixtus IV's contemporaries, which these murals contain. The classical world is integrated into the scenes in several ways. For example: 1. The architecture of ancient Rome is incorporated: the triumphal arch of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and the Colosseum in the centre background of Jesus I. 2. The arch of Constantine reappears in Moses V in dilapidated state and twice symmetrically in Jesus V in repristinated condition. Its significance is now apparent: its original dedication to Constantine as liberatori urbis.fundatori quietis (Ettlinger 1965: 113 n. 1) is replaced in Moses V with the inscription: nemo sibi assummat honorem nisi vocatus a Deo tanquam Aron (cf. Num. 16.40//Heb. 5.4), the claim to exclusive priesthood by Aaron/ Christ, recited by the cardinals in the Office while they are engaged in electing a new Pope in the Sistine Chapel (Lewine 1993: 81). In Jesus V the somewhat garbled inscription runs across the two arches: im[m]ensu[m] salomo templum tu hoc quarte sacrasti sixte opibus dispar religioneprior ('You, Sixtus IV, unequal to Solomon in wealth but surpassing in religion, have consecrated this immense temple'), the Papal claim to spiritual and temporal power as new Solomon/Constantine (cf. the tribute money on Jesus V).45 3. The boy with grapes and the snake entwined on his leg {Jesus II, right foreground) is based on the Hellenistic model of the girl with snake and becomes a Christological allegory of innocence trampling on sin (Ettlinger 1965: 88). 4. The pillar of fire is portrayed like a classical column in Moses III. 5. A recurrent motif is the spinario, the 'thorn-puller', the classical bronze interpreted in Middle Ages as the extraction of the thorn of original sin by baptism (compare the posture of the newly
45. Ettlinger 1965: 112, comments on the so-called Donation of Constantine, that the first Christian emperor was only granting what he was empowered to grant: 'all legitimate temporal power depends on papal power'.
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6.
baptized in the right foreground of Jesus I; Moses at the burning bush in the left background of Moses II).46 The nude prominent in the foreground of Moses VI sums up the claim to the integration of classical civilization. Ettlinger (1965: 72) convincingly argues that the scene portrays Deut. 29.10-11 [9-10 MT]: 'You stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, both he who hews your wood and he who draws your water' (RSV). The young man seated on the stump represents the Gentiles, 'the sojourner in your camp.. .who hews your wood', in classical nudity as opposed to the fully clothed Israelites. His posture too is that of the spinario.
But yet one further horizon is integrated into the Sistine murals: events and personages of Sixtus IV's own time. For example: 1. First and foremost, Sixtus IV himself was read into these murals. His portrait was included in Perugino's original fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin on the west wall destroyed to make way for Michelangelo's Last Judgment.47 2. Thus in Moses V, Aaron to right of altar is attired as High Priest in blue and gold, the della Rovere Papal colours, and wears the Papal tiara adopted by Sixtus IV's immediate predecessor, Paul II (Lewine 1993: 47). 3. Zipporah's gown in Moses II has a girdle of acorns: Sixtus IV's family name, della Rovere, is derived from Latin robur ('oak'); in Jesus II there are oaks to the right of the Temple; in Jesus VI in the octagonal medallion in the centre of the ceiling there is an oak tree. 4. The ark of the covenant in Moses VI is decorated with Papal gold and purple (and irises: Iris is the messenger goddess of Olympus) (Lewine 1993: 86). 5. The portraits of many other fifteenth-century figures throng the murals, involved in the action as interested by-standers. The 46. Lewine 1993: 23 and Fig. 7. The original, dating from perhaps the first century BCE was donated by Sixtus IV to the Museo dei Conservatori; see, e.g., Leoncini 1996: 402. 47. Ettlinger 1965:24 and PI. 34 c, 'Drawing after the lost altarpiece of the Sistine Chapel'.
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6.
architect of the Sistine Chapel, for instance, holding his compasses stands in the right foreground of Jesus V.48 The incorporation of two specific incidents in particular is canvassed by Steinmann (popularized by Phillipps). It is claimed that in Moses III, the battle of Campo Morto on 21 August 1482 is alluded to, with Duke Alfonso of Calabria portrayed as the drowning Pharaoh; Moses V, the rebellion of Korah, is related to the unsuccessful attempt of Archbishop Andreas Zamometic to reconvene the Council of Basel in 1482. Ettlinger, while not denying the general background of challenges to Papal authority from the conciliar heresy, and acknowledging the incorporation of contemporary portraits, argues convincingly against both of these specific identifications on grounds of the chronology of the painting of the frescoes: the events are too contemporary to be included.49 Even so, for present purposes it is sufficient to note that the incorporation of contemporary references in the Sistine murals is incontestable.
The point that Sixtus IV's own time is being read into the Sistine murals and so made contemporaneous with the biblical world of both Old and New Testament and with the glorious classical past may perhaps be clinched by another observation. It is a commonplace in the guidebooks that the Sistine Chapel is modelled on Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. This would appear to be so in terms of its internal proportions.50 The 48. Identified by Steinmann 1901: 133, as Giovannino de' Dolci. In Steinmann's discussion of the Humanists under Sixtus IV (51) he identifies, e.g., the antiquarian Pomponius Laetus also in Jesus V, and Johannes Argyropulos, the translator of Aristotle, in Jesus III. Steinmann also acknowledges, however (300), that many of the portrait heads are unidentified, e.g., the four between Moses and Zipporah in the right foreground of Moses I or (494) the beardless youth in the procession out of Egypt in left foreground of Moses II. 49. Ettlinger, 1965: 17-27, 42. Steinmann (1901: 432) concedes that on his interpretation Moses III would have to have been completed by Cosimo 'and an unknown pupil of Rosselli'. Lewine, however, remains impressed about the reference to Zamometic: Heb. 5.4 is cited by Sixtus IV at the end of the bull excommunicating him (Lewine 1993: 8 I n . 147). 50. Ettlinger supplies the dimensions, 40 * 13.60 m (1965: 12) but disputes the claim that the Sistine Chapel is modelled on Solomon's Temple (91), despite the inscription on the triumphal arch on the Jesus V fresco comparing Sixtus IV favourably to Solomon. It is striking however that these dimensions almost correspond in proportion to the 3:1 ground-plan of Solomon's Temple (60 x 20 cubits, 1 Kgs 6.2). Giudici
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orientation of Sistine Chapel towards the west ('occidentation' should one say?) places the altar in a location equivalent to the Holy of Holies in the Temple. That the Sistine Chapel may indeed be modelled on Solomon's Temple is perhaps confirmed by another Aberdeen curiosity. The University of Aberdeen was founded within a generation of the Sistine Chapel in 1495 by the local Bishop, William Elphinstone, under the authority of a bull issued by Pope Alexander VI Borgia (1492-1503). Its Chapel was founded on 2 April, 1500. It has been suggested that the foundation date of the Chapel was chosen to coincide with the date of the commencement of the construction of Solomon's Temple recorded in 2 Chron. 3.2, as calculated by none other than Nicholas of Lyra.51 What is being claimed when the central chapel of Western Christendom, and a daughter chapel, also a Papal foundation, in far-flung Scotland, are modelled on Solomon's Temple? Is it simply that when one builds a chapel one should look for biblical specifications for its construction? Or are there more far-reaching claims: Solomon's Temple provides the authoritative prototype for a Papal foundation, which is thus in continuity with it, is its equivalent or counterpart, in the new dispensation? Is this a statement that the Church is the true heir of Israel, in worthy and appropriate continuity, in which type and antitype harmoniously relate to one another? Or is the Sistine Chapel an updated version, replacing and superseding Solomon's Temple? Or is something more subtle and fundamental being claimed: the Sistine Chapel is a replica of Solomon's Temple, it simply is Solomon's Temple,52 in order to incorporate it as integral to the Christian heritage? The last is, I think, the correct answer (though the others are available to be read into it): it matches the ahistorical, timeless, supratemporal conceptuality of midrash so influential on Lyra. Where can one find, then, the necessary conceptuality for the merging of all of these horizons that we see in the Sistine murals: the Old Testament, the New Testament, the classical past, and the contemporary world? 'Typology' is a favoured category.53 But typology is a mechanical and (1998: 6) makes the coincidence exact by giving the measurements as 40.23 x 13.41 m (cf. Mancinelli 1993: 3,40.93 * 13.41m). 51. Edwards 1985: 7-11.1 should like to record my thanks to colleagues, Dr Edwards, formerly Head of the Department of Classics, for discussing with me some points of interpretation of Lyra, and E. Bracegirdle, of History of Art, for commenting on this essay. 52. Like 'Moses noster Christus', and just as Joshua is Jesus. 53. See Steinmann above. I do not think that Ettlinger has got quite right the overall significance of the symbolism: it is not the typology of the religious leader ('The theme
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ambiguous instrument, as noted above. It does not even fit the physical lay-out of the parallel murals which would require the Moses panels on the south wall to be merely the prototype of the Jesus panels as antitype on the north (Lyra, for instance, would find that inadequate), nor does it do justice to the freedom and independence in which each individual scene is executed. Subtler understandings of typology are available: not in terms of finding correspondence between discrete points on the time-line, but of an ahistorical overlapping of images which creates an intensification of meaning in both prototype and antitype.54 But one wonders whether the term, 'typology', has not then been strained to breaking-point. A wider category that does justice to this merging of horizons in the Sistine murals—the non-mechanical freedom in relating Old and New Testament scenes, the obliteration of time-consciousness in the identification and equation of individuals and events, the inclusion of cultural references to the past and the allusion to contemporary happenings, and the biographical and even autobiographical inclusions—is supplied by a concept current in modern scholarship, 'intertextuality', which has, of course, partly inspired the title of this paper. Kirsten Nielsen expounds the presuppositions of intertextuality succinctly and helpfully: 'Just as no text comes into being independently of other texts, so do we never read any text independently of other texts. Each and every text forms part of a network of texts from which it derives its meaning' (Nielsen 2000: 17).55 Patricia Tull in the same collection of papers instances Second Isaiah's 'intertextual' use of earlier prototypes: to enable 'the events of his present
throughout...is the authority and function of the religious leader' [Ettlinger 1965: 109]): i.e. Moses/Christ/Pope as law-giver, leader, and priest, so that Moses becomes typuspapae (116). Rather, Moses/Jesus as law-giver, leader, and—in principle—priest hands over executive authority to Aaron/Peter, as Steinmann (1901:241) correctly observes. 54. Cf. Allison 1993:242: 'Matthew did not envisage the exodus, the eucharist and the messianic banquet as three discrete events on the world's time line; instead they were for him superimposed images and all three reproduced a fundamental pattern of Jewish religious experience, one involving redemption, bread and covenant'. 55. Nielsen acknowledges that the term is the coinage of Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian-born, Paris-centred literary critic, who, it is surely significant for our purposes to note, is also an art critic and psychoanalyst. See, e.g., Kristeva 1980: 66: 'any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another'. Is not an art-work also a 'mosaic of quotations'?
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to assume the garments of historical significance' (Tull 2000: 78).56 Intertextuality is thus a way of appreciating how texts of the past are absorbed as meaningful by the interpreter in order to find enhanced meaning in contemporary experience. This is already familiar in historical-critical study; but Nielsen dynamically develops the range of the intertextual perception. She reads, for example, the text of Naboth's vineyard in 1 Kings 21 in the light not only of other Old Testament texts, Isa. 5.1-7, Song of Songs, and Hosea 1-2, but also, appropriately for our discussion, of the New Testament text, Acts 6-7. Historically critically, we know that Acts at least is later than 1 Kings and thus the direction of any literary dependency. But '[i]n an intertextual literary analysis.. .we also have the possibility of allowing the dialogue between the texts to go in the opposite direction, and to see if there are elements in a later text that help us to read the earlier one' (Nielsen 2000: 29-30). And she adds the legitimacy of reading the text autobiographically. The temporal priority of one text over another is immaterial; texts are reciprocally interpretative irrespective of date. If that is true of literary texts, how much more must it be true of paintings, not least these murals in the Sistine Chapel which stand not only in interpictorial relationship with one another and have their own internal crossreferences, but for whose interpretation we have to bring so much of our own perceptions? It may be that art illustrates visually in the most vivid way possible the processes involved in reading a text that intertextuality seeks to appreciate: not only that there are interconnections between portrayals and levels embedded within the artefact itself but also that there is an interaction between artefact and interpreter.57 If intertextuality is an 56. The title of the Smyth & Helwys commentary series provides another example of the desire to reclaim the past in order to provide warrant for the continuing concerns of the community of faith. John Smyth (c. 1554-1612) and Thomas Helwys (c. 15501615) were early English independents (Cross and Livingstone 1983: s.v.): in using their names, the series thus aligns itself with, and reaffirms, their conscientious stand for truth without fear or favour of State or Church. The murals of the Sistine Chapel themselves similarly reclaim a dual biblical past in order to provide warrant and authority. 57. The point is expressed by Ettlinger under the term 'iconology': 'Iconology... recognizes both the pertinacity of pictorial symbols and the force of the ever-changing historical context which transforms images... Even if the iconography of some individual scenes in the Sistine Chapel might be identical with that of a previous rendering of the same subject, such similarity in itself does not point any lesson or offer an explanation. We have to ask what considerations may have prompted those who planned the Sistine frescoes to include the particular configuration' (Ettlinger 1965:6).
JOHNSTONS Interpictoriality 453
operational framework that provides a set of midrashic permissions including the legitimacy, indeed the necessity, of allowance for the interpreter's standpoint, no less can it be true of interpictoriality with regard to the murals of the Sistine Chapel. Distance in time and temporal priority are equally irrelevant. Nicholas of Lyra's comment on Exod. 32.19 provides a fitting conclusion: magis movent animum visa quam audita.58 That fits both the murals in the Sistine Chapel and the specification of the Smyth & Helwys commentary series.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Allison, D. 1993 The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress). Ben Isaiah, A,, and B. Sharfman, in collaboration with H.M. Orlinsky and M. Charner 1950 The Pentateuch andRashi 'x Commentary: Exodus (Brooklyn, NY: SS&R). Brueggemann, W. 2000 Kings (Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, 8; Macon, GA; Smyth & Helwys). Carroll, R.P., and S. Prickett (eds.) 1997 The Bible: Authorized King James Version (World Classics; Oxford: Oxford University Press). christusrex http.//www.christusrex.org/wwwl/sistine/0-Tour.html Cross, F.L., and E.A. Livingstone (eds.) 1983 Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd, rev. edn). Edwards, G.P. 1985 'William Elphinstone, His College Chapel, and the Second of April', Aberdeen University Review 51: 1-17. Ettlinger, L.D. 1965 The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal Primacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Feldman, L.H. 2000 Judean Antiquities, in S. Mason (ed.), Flavins Josephus: Translation and Commentary, III (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Giudici, V., et al. 1998 The Sistine Chapel: Its History and Masterpieces (Rome: Edizioni Musei Vaticani).
But to be truly 'interpictorial', he would have had to say more about the processes of interpretation, of reception and reworking, going on in the viewer's eye and brain. 58. The irony that this refers to the golden calf would have appealed to Robert Carroll's iconoclastic sense.
454 Klepper, D.C. 2000
Sense and Sensitivity
'Nicholas of Lyra and Franciscan Interest in Hebrew Scholarship', in Krey and Smith (eds.) 2000: 289-311. Kren, E., and D. Marx Web Gallery of Art, www.kfki.hu/~arthp/tours/sistina/ sidewall.html Krey, P.W.D., and L. Smith (eds.) 2000 Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture (Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 90; Leiden: E.J. Brill). Kristeva, J. 1980 Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York: Columbia University Press). Lemaire, A., and M. Saeb0 (eds.) 2000 IOSOT: Congress Volume; Oslo 1998 (VTSup, 80; Leiden: E.J. Brill). Leoncini, L. 1996 'Spinario', in J. Turner (ed.), Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan), XXEX: 402. Lewine, C.F. 1993 The Sistine Chapel Walls and the Roman Liturgy (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press). Lubac, H. de 2000 Mediaeval Exegesis, II (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). McManners, J. (ed.) 1990 The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Mancinelli, F. 1993 The Sistine Chapel (Rome: Edizioni Musei Vatican!). Mann, V.B. 2000 Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Molkhou, P. 1995 La Neuve-Lyre: L'Histoire en mouvement (La Neuve-Lyre, Normandy: published by the local Commune). Miintz, E., and P. Fabre 1970 La bibliotheque du Vatican au XVe siecle (Amsterdam: Van Heusden). Nicholas of Lyra 1481 Biblia latino cum postillis Nicolai de Lyra et exposition/bus Guillelmi Britonis in omnes prologos S. Hieronymi et additionibus Fault Burgensis replicisque Matthias Doering (Venice: Johannes Herbert). 1502 Bibli[a]e iampridem renovat[a]eparsprima: complectens pentateuchum: una cum glos[s]a ordinaria: et litterali moralique expositione Nicolai de lyra necnon additionibus Burgensis; ac replicis Thoringi: novisque distinctionibus et marginalibus summariisque annotationibus (Basel: n.p.). Neusner, J. 1975 Between Time and Eternity (Encino: Dickenson). Nielsen, K. 2000 'Intertextuality and Hebrew Bible', in Lemaire and Sa;b0 (eds.), 2000: 17-31.
JOHNSTONE Interpictoriality 455 Patton, C. 2000
'Creation, Fall and Salvation: Lyra's Commentary on Genesis 1-3', in Krey and Smith (eds.), 2000: 19-43.
Phillipps, E.M. 1915 The Frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel (London: Murray). Rait, R.S. 1895 The Universities of Aberdeen: A History (Aberdeen: Bisset). Reau, L. 1956 Iconographie de I'art chretien. III. Ancien Testament (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Reif, S.C. 1996 'Classical Jewish Commentators on Exodus 2', in M. Bar-Asher (ed.), Studies in Hebrew and Jewish Languages (Festschrift S. Morag; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute): *73-* 112. Rogerson, J.W. (ed.) 2000 Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Sawyer, J.F.A. 1996 The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Steinmann, E. 1901 Die sixtinische Kapelle. I. Bau und Schmuck der Kapelle unter Sixtus IV (Munich: Bruckmann). lull, P.K. 2000 'The Rhetoric of Recollection', in Lemaire and Sffib0 (eds.), 2000: 71-78. Van Liere, F. 2000 'The Literal Sense of the Books of Samuel and Kings: From Andrew of St Victor to Nicholas of Lyra', in Krey and Smith (eds.), 2000: 59-81. Westermann, C. (ed.) 1963 Essays on Old Testament Interpretation (London: SCM Press). Zier, M. 2000 'Nicholas of Lyra on the Book of Daniel', in Krey and Smith (eds.), 2000: 173-93. Zornberg, A.G. 2001 The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus (New York: Doubleday).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT CARROLL'S WRITINGS
1969 1 'The Elijah-Elisha Sagas: Some Remarks on Prophetic Succession in Ancient Israel', VT 19:400-15. 1971 2 'Psalm LXXVIII: Vestiges of a tribal polemic', PT21: 133-50. 1974 3 'Some Implications of Structuralism for Old Testament Studies', Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society 24: 14-33. 1976 4 (Editor) Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society 25 5 'A Non-Cogent Argument in Jeremiah's Oracles against the Prophets', ST 30: 43-51. 6 'Postscript to Job', The Modern Churchman 19: 161-66. 7 'Prophecy, Dissonance and Jeremiah XXVI', Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society 25: 12-23. 1977 8 'Ancient Israelite Prophecy and Dissonance Theory', Numen 24: 135-51. 9 'Rebellion and Dissent in Ancient Israelite Sciety', ZAW89, 176-204. 10 'The Aniconic God and the Cult of Images', ST31: 51-64. 11 'The Sisyphean Task of Biblical Transformation', 57730: 501-21. 1978 12 'Inner Tradition Shifts in Meaning in Isaiah 1-11', ExpTim 89: 301-304. 13 'Second Isaiah and the Failure of Prophecy', ST 32: 119-31. 1979 14 When Prophecy Failed: Reactions and Responses to Failure in the Old Testament Prophetic Traditions (London: SCM Press). 15 When Prophecy Failed: Cognitive Dissonance in the Prophetic Traditions of the Old Testament (A Crossroad Book; New York: The Seabury Press). 16 (Editor) Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society 26. 17 'Twilight of Prophecy or Dawn of Apocalyptic?', JSOT 14: 3-35. 1980 18 'Canonical Criticism: A Recent Trend in Biblical Studies?', ExpTim 92: 73-78. 19 'Childs and Canon', IBS 2: 211-36. 20 'Prophecy and Dissonance: A Theoretical Approach to the Prophetic Tradition', ZA W92: 108-19. 21 'Translation and Attribution in Isaiah 8. 19f.', BT 31: 126-34.
458
Sense and Sensitivity
1981 22 From Chaos to Covenant: Uses of Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah (London: SCM Press). 23 From Chaos to Covenant: Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah (New York: Crossroad).
1982 24 'Eschatological Delay in the Prophetic Tradition?', ZAW94: 47-58. 25 'Prophecy and Vision', Movement 52: 8-11. 1983 26 'Poets not Prophets: A response to "Prophets through the Looking-Glass"', JSOT 27: 25-31. 27 'Dissonance, Cognitive', in A. Richardson and J. Bowden (eds.), A New Dictionary of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press): 158-59. 1984 28 'Theodicy and the Community: The Text and Subtext of Jeremiah V 1-6', in A. S. van der Woude (ed.), Prophets, Worship and Theodicy: Studies in Prophetism, Biblical Theology and Structural and Rhetorical Analysis and on the Place of Music in Worship (OTS, 23; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 19-38. 1985 29 'Cultural and ideological readings of the Bible', Third World Book Review 1/4-5:44-47. 1986 30 Jeremiah: A Commentary (OTL; London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Westminster Press). 1987 31 'From Amos to Anderton', Theology 90: 256-63. 1988 32 'Dismantling the Book of Jeremiah and Deconstructing the Prophet', in M. Augustin and K.-D. Schunck (eds.), 'Wunschet Jerusalem Frieden': Collected Communications to the Xllth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Jerusalem 1986 (Beitrage zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums, 13; Frankfurt: Peter Lang): 291-302. 33 'Inventing the Prophets', IBS 10 (Weingreen Festschrift Volume): 24-36. 34 'They Set Us in New Paths. II. What Gets Lost in Untranslation: The Old Testament', ExpTim 100 (Enlarged Centenary Year Volume): 44-48. 1989 35 Jeremiah (OTG; Sheffield: JSOT Press). 36 'Prophecy and Society', in R.E. Clements (ed.), The World of Ancient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives. Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 203-25. 37 'War', in M. Smith and R. J. Hoffmann (eds.), What The Bible Really Says (Buffalo: Prometheus Books): 147-70. 38 'Radical Clashes of Will and Style: Recent Commentary Writing on the Book of Jeremiah', JSOT45: 99-114. 1990 39 'Is Humour Also Among the Prophets?', in Y.T. Radday and A. Brenner (eds.), On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Almond Press): 169-89.
Bibliography of Robert Carroll's Writings
459
40 'Whose Prophet? Whose History? Whose Social Reality? Troubling the Interpretative Community Again: Notes Towards a Response to T.W. Overholt's Critique', JSOT4S: 33-49. 41 'Amos' (19-21), 'Authorship' (72-74), 'Cognitive Dissonance' (123-24), 'Commentary' (132-34), 'Duhm, B.' (181-82), 'Eschatology' (200-203), 'Habakkuk' (268-69), 'Ideology' (309-11), 'Irony' (325-26), 'Jeremiah' (331-33), 'Joel' (357-58), 'Micah' (451-52), 'Obadiah' (496-97), 'Torrey, C. C.' (696-97), inRJ. Cogginsand J.L. Houlden (eds.), A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (London: SCM Press).
1991 42 Wolf in the Sheep/old: The Bible as a Problem for Christianity (London: SPCK). 43 The Bible as a Problem for Christianity (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International). 44 'Arguing about Jeremiah: Recent Studies and the Nature of a Prophetic Book', in J.A. Emerton (ed.), Congress Volume: Leuven 1989 (VTSup, 43; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 222-35. 45 'Textual Strategies and Ideology in the Second Temple Period', in P.R. Davies (ed.), Second Temple Studies. I. Persian Period (JSOTSup, 117; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 108-24 1992 46 (Editor) Text as Pretext: Essays in Honour of Robert Davidson (JSOTSup, 138; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). 47 (Editor, with E. Ulrich, J.W. Wright and P.R. Davies) Priests, Prophets and Scribes: Essays on the Formation and Heritage of Second Temple Judaism in Honour of Joseph Blenkinsopp (JSOTSup, 149; Sheffield: JSOT Press). 48 'Coopting the Prophets: Nehemiah and Noadiah', in Ulrich, Wright, Carroll and Davies (eds.), Priests, Prophets and Scribes: 87-99 49 'Night Without Vision: Micah and the Prophets', in F. Garcia Martinez, A. Hilhorst and C. J. Labuschagne (eds.), The Scriptures and the Scrolls: Studies in Honour of A. S. van der Woude on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (VTSup, 49; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 74-84. 50 'The Discombobulations of Time and the Diversities of Text: Notes on the Rezeptionsgeschichte of the Bible', in R.P. Carroll (eds.), Text as Pretext: Essays in Honour of Robert Davidson (JSOTSup, 138; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 61-85. 51 'The Myth of the Empty Land', in D. Jobling and T. Pippin (eds.), Ideological Criticism of Biblical Texts (Semeia 59): 79-93. 52 'Israel, History of (Post-Monarchic Period)', in ABD, HI: 567b-76b. 1993 53 'Hebrew, Heresy, and Hot Air: Biblical Studies in Glasgow Since 1900', in W.I.P. Hazlett (ed.), Traditions of Theology in Glasgow 1450-1990 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press): 87-98. 54 'Inscribing the Covenant: Writing and the Written in Jeremiah', in A.G. Auld (ed.), Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson (JSOTSup, 152; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 61-76. 55 'Intertextuality and the Book of Jeremiah: Animadversions on Text and Theory', in J.C. Exum and D.J.A. Clines (eds.), The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 143; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 55-78. 56 'War in the Hebrew Bible', in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Greek World (Leicester-Nottingham Studies in Ancient Society, 4; London: Routledge): 25-44.
460
Sense and Sensitivity
57 'As Seeing the Invisible: Ideologies in Bible Translation', JNSL 19: 79-93. 58 'The Hebrew Bible as Literature: A Misprision?' (Growth Points in Biblical Studies) ST 47.2: 77-90.
1994 59 (Editor, with A.G. Hunter) Words at Work: Using the Bible in the Academy, the Community and the Churches: Essays in Honour of Robert Davidson (Glasgow: Trinity St Mungo Press). 60 'Of Prophets and Prime Ministers', in R.P. Carroll and A.G. Hunter (eds.), Words at Work: Using the Bible in the Academy, the Community and the Churches; Essays in Honour of Robert Davidson (Glasgow: Trinity St Mungo Press): 25-40. 61 'So What Do We Know about the Temple? The Temple in the Prophets', in T. C. Eskenazi and K. H. Richards (eds.), Second Temple Studies. II. Temple Community in the Persian PmW (JSOTSup, 175; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 34-51. 62 'Toward a Grammar of Creation: On Steiner the Theologian', in N.A. Scott Jr and R.A. Sharp (eds.), Reading George Steiner (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press): 262-74. 63 'On Representation in the Bible: An Ideologiekritik Approach', JNSL 20: 1-15. 64 'Strange Fire: Abstract of Presence Absent in the Text. Meditations on Exodus 3' [for George Steiner at Sixty-Five], JSOT61: 39-58. 1995 65 'Cracks in the Soul of Theology', in J.L. Houlden (ed.), The Interpretation oftheBible in the Church (London: SCM Press): 142-55. 66 'Desire Under the Terebinths: On Pornographic Representation in the Prophets—A Response', in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to The Latter Prophets (The Feminist Companion to the Bible, 8; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 275-307. 67 'Revisionings: Echoes and Traces of Isaiah in the Poetry of William Blake', in J. Davies, G. Harvey and W.G.E. Watson (eds.), Words Remembered, Texts Renewed: Essays in Honour of John F.A. Sawyer (JSOTSup, 195; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 226-41. 68 'Synchronic Deconstructions of Jeremiah: Diachrony to the Rescue? Reflections on Some Reading Strategies for Understanding Certain Problems in the Book of Jeremiah', in J.C. de Moor (ed.), Synchronic or Diachronic? A Debate on Method in Old Testament Exegesis (OTS, 34; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 39-51. 69 'The Biblical Prophets as Apologists for the Christian Religion: Reading William Robertson Smith's The Prophets of Israel Today', in W. Johnstone (ed.), William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment (JSOTSup, 189; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 148-57. 70 'An Infinity of Traces: On Making an Inventory of Our Ideological Holdings. An Introduction to Ideologiekritik in Biblical Studies', JNSL 21.2: 25-43. 1996 71 When Prophecy Failed (Xpress Reprints; London: SCM Press). 72 From Chaos to Covenant (Xpress Reprints; London: SCM Press). 73 Jeremiah: A Commentary (reprinted as paperback edition: London: SCM Press). 74 'Manuscripts Don't Burn—Inscribing the Prophetic Tradition: Reflections on Jeremiah 36', in M. Augustin and K.-D. Schunck (eds.), 'Don ziehen Schiffe dahin': Collected Communications to the XlVth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Paris 1992 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang): 31-42.
Bibliography of Robert Carroll's Writings
461
75 ' "Whorusalamin": A Tale of Three Cities as Three Sisters', in B. Becking and M. Dijkstra (eds.), On Reading Prophetic Texts: Gender-Specific and Related Studies in Memory ofFokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes (Biblical Interpretation Series, 18; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 67-82. 76 'He-Bibles and She-Bibles: Reflections on the Violence Done to Texts by Productions of English Translations of the Bible', Biblnt 4: 257-69. 77 'Jeremiah, Intertextuality and Ideologiekritik\ JNSL 22.1: 15-34. 78 'Surplus Meaning and the Conflict of Interpretations: A Dodecade of Jeremiah Studies (1984-1995)', CR:BS4: 115-59.
1997 79 Wolf in the Sheepfold: The Bible as Problematic for Theology (London: SCM Press). 80 (Editor, with S. Prickett), The Bible: Authorized King James Version (The World's Classics; Oxford: Oxford University Press). 81 'Madonna of Silences: Clio and the Bible', in L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Can a 'History of Israel' Be Written? (JSOTSup, 245; ESHM, 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 84-103. 82 'Deportation and Diasporic Discourses in the Prophetic Literature', in J.M. Scott (ed.), Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, 56; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 63-85. 83 'Blindsight and the Vision Thing: Blindness and Insight in the Book of Isaiah', in C.C. Broyles and C.A. Evans (eds.), Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition (VTSup, 70.1; FIOTL, I/I; 2 vols.; Leiden: E.J. Brill), I: 79-93. 84 'Razed Temple and Shattered Vessels: Continuities and Discontinuities in the Discourses of Exile in the Hebrew Bible. An Appreciation of the work of Peter R. Ackroyd on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday', JSOT 75: 93-106. 85 'Clio and Canons: In Search of a Cultural Poetics of the Hebrew Bible', in S.D. Moore (ed.), The New Historicism (Special issue of Biblnt 5.4): 300-23. 1998 86 'Jonah as a Book of Ritual Responses', in K.-D. Schunck and M. Augustin (eds.), 'Lasset uns Brucken bauen': Collected Communications to the XVth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Cambridge 1995 (42; Frankfurt: Peter Lang), 261-69. 87 'Poststructuralist Approaches: New Historicism and Postmodernism', in J. Barton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 50-66. 88 'Exile! What Exile? Diaspora and the Discourses of Deportation', in L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Leading Captivity Captive: 'The Exile' as History and ideology (JSOTSup, 278; ESHM, 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 62-79. 89 'Lower Case Bibles: Commodity Culture and the Bible', in J.C. Exum and S.D. Moore (eds.), Biblical Studies/Cultural Studies: The Third Sheffield Colloquium (JSOTSup, 266; Gender, Culture, Theory, 7; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 46-69. 90 'Cultural Encroachment and Bible Translation: Observations on Elements of Violence, Race, and Class in the Production of Bibles in Translation', in R.C. Bailey and T. Pippin (eds.), Race, Class, and the Politics of Bible Translation (Semeia 76): 39-53. 91 'Biblical Ideolatry: Ideologiekritik, Biblical Studies and the Problematics of Ideology', JNSL24.1: 101-14.
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1999 92 'Halfway Through a Dark Wood: Reflections on Jeremiah 25', in A.R.P. Diamond, K.M. O'Connor and L. Stulman (eds.), Troubling Jeremiah (JSOTSup, 260; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 73-86. 93 'The Book of J: Intertextuality and Ideological Criticism', in O'Connor and Stulman (eds.), Troubling Jeremiah: 220-43. 94 'Something Rich and Strange: Imagining a Future for Jeremiah Studies', in O'Connor and Stulman (eds.), Troubling Jeremiah: 423-43. 95 'The Mega O: Apocalyptic Ethics LA Style', in S. Brent Plate (ed.), The Apocalyptic Imagination: Aesthetics and Ethics at the End of the World (Glasgow: Trinity St Mungo Press): 95-109. 96 'The Spectre at the Feast: Fundamentalism and Biblical Hertneneutics', in Marryn Percy (ed.), Fundamentalism, Church and Society (= The Proceedings of a One-Day Conference on 'Fundamentalism in Church & Society' held in Sheffield, 30 May 1998.) (London: SPCK). 2000 97 'The Loss of Armageddon, or, 621 and All That: Biblical Fiction, Biblical History and the Rewritten Bible', in J.C. Exum (ed.), Virtual History and the Bible (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 104-14. 98 'The Reader and the Text', in A.D. Mayes (ed.), Text and Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 99 '(South) Africa, Bible, Criticism: Rhetorics of a Visit', in Gerald O. West andMusa W. Dube (eds.), The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories and Trends (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 184-202. 100 'The Loss of Armageddon, or, 621 And All That: Biblical Fiction, Biblical History and the Rewritten Bible', Biblnt 8.1-2: 104-14. 101 'Century's End: Jeremiah Studies at the Beginning of the Third Millennium', CR:BS 8: 18-58. 102 'Biblical Translation', in A. Hastings, A. Mason and H. Pyper (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 712b-14a. 103 (Edited with Preface) F. Deist, The Material Culture of the Bible: An Introduction (The Biblical Seminar, 70; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).
2001 104 'City of Chaos, City of Stone, City of Flesh: Urbanscapes in Prophetic Discourses', in L.L. Grabbe and R. Haak (eds.), 'Every City Shall Be Forsaken': Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East (JSOTSup, 330; Sheffield Academic Press). 105 'Exile, Restoration and Colony: Judah in the Persian Empire', in Leo G. Perdue, Companion to the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). 106 'Jewgreek Greekjew: The Hebrew Bible is All Greek to Me. Reflections on the Problematics of Dating the Origins of the Bible in Relation to Contemporary Discussions of Biblical Historiography', in L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (JSOTSup, 317; EHSM, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press): 91-107. 107 'YHWH's Sour Grapes: Images of Food and Drink in the Prophetic Discourses of the Hebrew Bible', in A. Brenner (ed.), Food and Drink in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament (Philadelphia: SBL).
INDEXES
INDEX OF REFERENCES
OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis 1-3 1 1.1-2.3 1.1-6 1.2 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.9 1.10 1.11-12 1.14 1.24-25 1.26 1.27 1.28 1.31 2-3 2.3 2.8 2.21 3 3.8 3.14-19 3.20 3.24 4 4.1-16 4.10 4.13 4.16
114 108 367 363 111, 112 363 231 363 105 105 111 363 111 107, 109 109 107, 109 114 108, 364 363 111 110 114 111 105 229 111 34 105 230 230 111
5 5.3 6
6.3 6.17 7.15 7.22 8.1 9.2-3 9.2 11 11.28 12 15.12 15.15 16.11-12 18.10 18.11 18.13 20 22 22.3 24.34-35 25.8 25.19-24 25.25 25.29-34 26 26.35 27.20 27.28 27.34
307 109 444 111 111 111 111 111 109 107 108 230 35 110 309 136 230 304 304 35 12, 303 128 46 309 34 34 34 35 34,35 35 35 35
27.41 27.46 28.1 28.9 28.12-15 29.3 29.13-14 29.23-30 31. -43-55 31.19 31.20 32 32.13-15 32.22-32 32.23-24 32.26 32.29 32.30 32.31 32.32 33-34 33.4-11 34 34.30 35.2 35.28-29 36.10-29 36.31-39 36.40-43 38-41 38 38.27-30
36 35 36 36 36 438 36 36 36 36 36 371 128 371 371 371 372 372 372 372 133 36 37, 389 37 37 37 37 37 37 108 232, 306 37
464 41.43 42.26 42.38 44.29 44.31 45.19 46.23 48.11 49.14-15 Exodus 1 2-3 2 2.11-19 2.11-12 2.11
2.12 2.13 2.14-15 2.15 2.16 2.17-19 2.17 2.22 2.23 2.24 3 3.1-5 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5
3.6 3.7-12 3.10
4 4.9 4.18-20 4.18 4.20 4.24 4.25-26 4.25 4.26
Sense and Sensitivity 129 128 309 309 309 129 441 68 136
436 420,421 369, 420, 436 436 424, 438 437-40, 446 438-40 438, 440 424 437-40 437-40 424 438-40 442 369 369 369, 371 424 369, 422 369, 440 369 370 370 370 424 443 420, 436 106, 107 422 440 442 422 422 442 441
8.18 10.21-29 12.29 12.34 13.20 14-15 14 14.1-15.21 14.3 14.4 14.6 14.7 14.9 14.14 14.15 14.16 14.19 14.20 14.21 14.22 14.29 14.30 14.31 15 15.1 15.2 15.4 15.7 15.9 15.12 15.14 15.15 15.16 15.17 15.19 15.20-21 15.20 15.21 15.25 16.20 16.33-34 18-20 18.1 18.2 18.3-4
438 426 442 424 441 420 441 426 441 441 443 443 443 200 441 106 443 443 443 106, 282, 441 106,282, 443 443 441 102,271 134,227, 441 271 134 440 227 55, 443 443 443 443 441 106, 443 311
53 134 226, 443 227 434 250 438 441 442
18.4 18.21-22 20.1 20.4 20.5 20.12 20.23 21.23-25 22.17 23.12 24.9-18 24.9-1 1 24.12 24.13 24.14-18 24.18 25-28 25.3 25.11 25.24 29-34 31.18 32 32.1-6 32.4 32.15-16 32.19 32.25-29 32.27 32.31 32.34 33.7-11 34.6-7 34.6 34.7 34.29-31 34.29-30 35.30-36.1
438 438 231 108,418 71 316 46 439 53 128 443 443 428, 443 428, 443 443 443 444 46 46 46 420 436, 441 444 428 265 441 428, 443, 453 428 441,443 46 71 428 72 113-15 71 441,444 428 418
Leviticus 5.29 9.1 10.1-2 10.9 10.11 11 12.2
283 227,231 430 444 444 153 47
465
Index of References 12.5 13.19 13.24 13.42-32 14.1-7 15.33 18.25 19.32 20.18 20.27 24.10-23 24.14
47 34 34 34 425 47 71 309 47 53 417 438
Numbers 4 5.29 6.3 6.13 11.5 11.26-27 12.1 14.1-10 14.10 14.18 16.1-19 16.20-35 16.35 16.40 21.17-18 22-24 22 22.22 24.18-19 25.2 25.6-18 26.11 27.18-23 29,14-21 29.29-30.1 31.17 32.17 33 33.8
444 227 226 227 106 417 439 420, 430 417,444 71, 113 430 430 444 447 286 37 129, 137 128 37 54 103 417,430 432 37 227 227 283 441 441
Deuteronomy 37 2 2.5 37 2.6 37
2.22 4.12 4.14-19 4.16 4.18 4.23 4.25 5.8 5.9 5.16 7 7.25 8.13-14 9.18 11.4 11.14 15.18 17.14-20 17.17 18.9-11 18.11 18.15-19 20 20.1-20 20.4 20.17 20.18 22.17 23.8 27.15 29.1-31.6 29.9-10 29.10-11 29.17 31.7-8 31.22-30 32.25 33.17 34.1-4 34.5-6 34.6 34.7 34.9 514
37 418 105 108 107-109 108 108 108 71 316 169 46 46 421 134 226 128 61 46 61 51 61 291 292 294 294, 295 295 226 37 108 432 448 448 46 432 420 309 231 432 432 444 445 444 128
Joshua 1-12 1-5
182 182
1-2 1.8 2.8-11 4.13 7.2 8.1-2 8.3 8.9 8.12 8.17 8.23 8.25 8.28 8.29 8.30-33 9.9-10 11.6-9 11.18-20 11.23 12.16 13.1-6 13.13 15.63 16.10 17.11-13 17.12-18 18.28 21.41-43 24 24.6
185 226 51 186 184 184 186 184 184 184 184 184 184 21, 184 185 51 134 183 183 184 182 183 183-85 183 185 183 184 183 37 134
Judges 1 1.14 3.24 4.4 4.17-22 4.21 5.3 8.32 11 11.39 13-16 16.17 16.30 17-18 19.23 19.28
183 128 34 53,311 402 110 227 309 389 84 51 34 52 109 38 128
466
Sense and Sensitivity
20 20.18-27 20.28
91 91 91
Ruth 1.12 4.13 4.15
304 361 309
1 Samuel 2.25 2.30 3.14 4.8 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.4-5 8.23 10.9 128 13.8-15 14.18-19 14.24 14.31-35 14.37-42 14.45 15 15.1-35 15.3 15.15 15.17-19 15.22-23 15.22 15.27-38 15.27-28 16.12 16.14 16.15-23 16.23 17.42 18.10 19.9-10 19.9 19.23-24 20.18-19 22.15 23.2-4
68,70 68,70 68,70 51 68 68 61 61 53 169 60 61 52 52 52 52 84 57, 103 61 134 52 61 53 61 61 56 34 51 51 51 34 51 51 51 51, 169 66 52 52,60
23.6-12 23.9-12 24.3 25.1 25.16 25.18 25.20 26 26.12 28.4 28.8 28.11-12 28.12-19 28.13 28.15 28.20-25 28.22-23 28.23 28.24 29.1 29.6 29.15 30.7-8 31.4 2 Samuel 1 1.12 3 4 5.19 5.22-25 6.5 6.15 6.23 8.4 8.13 10.1-5 11.25 12.1-6
12.5 12.8 12.9 12.10 12.14 12.16 12.18
52 52 34 51,61 282 128 128 110 110 52 53 54 54 54,55 56 57 55 53 56 52 52 52 52,60 52
79 68 78 79 61 61 68 68 362 134 40 304 78 57, 227, 402 78 68 68 68 74 54 84
12.19 12.21 12.23 13.12 13.30-39 13.30 13.37 13.39 14.2 14.16 14.26 16.3 18-19 18.9 18.14 18.24 18.25 18.26 18.27 18.28-32 18.28-29 18.29-30 18.31-33 18.33 19.32-39 21.1-4 24 24.1 24.10-17 24.10 24.12-13 24.17 28.3-25 28.3-11
83 73 73, 78, 79, 82, 85 38 80 80 80 81 76 53 34 68 367 130 367 367 367 367 367 84 368 368 368 79 308 68 64,66 64 66 65 65 64,65 49 51
1 Kings 1 1.33 2.6 2.9 3.4-15 5.13 5.17 5.27-29 6.2-6 6.2 6.17
307 130 309 309 153 106 130 145 136 145, 449 136
467
Index of References 6.20-22 9 9.28 10.25 10.28 10.29 11.15-16 12 12.21 13.11-30 13.24 13.29 14.21 14.25-26 16 19 19.5 20.7 20.31 21 22 22.5-6 22.17 22.30 2 Kings 1-3 2.11 3.27 4.10 4.24 6.1-7 6.26 9.22 14.13-14 16.10 18.2 21.7 21.11-16 22 22.11 22.14-20 22.14 23.11 24.3-4 24.6 24.13 24.18-25.30
46 145 46 130 129 129 40 303 68 137 129 128 305 41 188 102 110 46 68 452 91 91 92 52
188 136 84 227 128 182 128 53 41 269 269 109 67 9 23 311 53 129 67 22 46 92
1 Chronicles 13.8 15.28 18.4 21.1 21.3 21.17 29.28
68 68 134 64 283 64 309
2 Chronicles 1.17 3.2 10 11.1 12.13 21.16-17 25.11-12 32.18 33.7 33.12-20 33.19 34.22-28
129 450 303 68 305 41 40 282 109 67 68 311
Ezra 1.4 2
2.2 2.68 3.10-13 6.3 6.16 9.1-2 9.8 9.14 9.15 10 Nehemiah 3.3 5.1-5 6 6.14 7 7.58-73 7.64 7.65
144, 146 146, 147, 150, 151 149 152 145 144, 145 146 42 146 146 146 42
106 150 157 53,311 146, 147, 151 150 151 151
7.69 8.9 9.11 9.17 10.2 11.1 11.18 12.39 13.16 13.23-27 33.14
151 151 106, 134 113 151 318 318 106 106 42 106
Esther 6.8
129, 136
Job
2.67 4.13 12.8 12.9 23.10 28.17 31.10 31.24 32-37 33.15 37.22 39.19-25 39.20 40.31 41.24
202 110 107 107 46 46 319 46 308 110 46 129 133 106 309
Psalms 8 8.5 8.9 10.4 14.1 19.10 22.22 30.5 32.9 37.2 46 46.2 46.3 53.2 58.1-4
105 267 107 108 108 46 439, 440 400 134 200 444 444 444 108 227
Sense and Sensitivity
468 58.3-5 66.6 71.18 71.20 74.9 74.12-17 74.17 76 76.6 86.15 89.6-15 89.13 89.33 92.15 95.5 97.7 103.8 105.1 105.29 106.28 106.30 107.23-32 115.3 119.127 119.72 135.15 136 137 137.7 145 145.8-9 Proverbs 1-9 1.8
2 2.1-12 2.13-22 3.1 3.21 4.2 5.5 6.20 6.23 7.2 8.18-21
9.10
404 106 309 55 89 105 105 110 110 113 105 105 71 309 105 109 113 271 107 54 68 171 46 46 46 46 441 40 40 113 113
53, 280 280 280 280 280 281 121 281 275 281 281 281 122 281
9.12 10.8 13.14 13.15 15.17 16.31 17.17 20.29 21.25 22.1 23 23.22 23.31-32 25.28 28 28.4 28.7 28.9 29.18 31.5
287 121 281 281 403 309 34 309 281 46 400 304 400 282 281 281, 284 281 281 281 287
Ecclesiastes 3.18-21 3.19-21 4.13 7.6 9.12 12.1-7 73.22
105 111 308 403 106 308 227
Song of Songs 1.9 133 4.12 275 5.7 282 34 5.10 282 8.9-10 8.13 272 Isaiah 1-12 1.2 1.4 1.8 1.9 1.15 1.26 2
2.3 2.4 2.6 2.7-8
2.9 2.10-21 2.11-17 2.18-20 2.20 3.9-11 3.11 3.12 3.16-17 3.18-24 3.23 3.26 4 4.1 4.3-4 4.3 5 5.1-7 5.1 5.16 5.20 5.28 6
6.1-8.18 6.1-5 6.1-2 6.1
6.2 6.3 261,271 269 272,318 274 255, 274 255 254 46, 253
6.4-5 6.4 6.5 6.6
251,253 252, 253, 257 46 46 46 47 46 46 46 255 255 321 319 319 265 273 264
319 320 318 264 452 274 272 45 129 248, 249, 261, 262, 265,271, 272, 274 262 272 273 227, 264, 267, 270, 273 275 268,271, 273, 274, 317 274 270,271, 273, 274 264, 273 272, 274, 275
Index of References 6.8 6.9-10
6.10 6.11 6.13 7-8 7 7.3 7.6 7.14
7.15 8 8.1-4 8.1-2 8.3 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.11 8.19-20 8.21 9 9.1-6 9.5 9.6 9.27 10.15 10.18 10.32-12.6 11 11.1-10 11.1 11.2 11.6 11.9 11.11-16 11.16 12 12.1-2 12.1 12.2 13-23 13.8
311 246, 255, 269 268 271 272 91,250 262 250, 252, 263 250 246, 257, 263, 274, 320 270 262, 274 261,262 263 274,311 251 275 317 313 53 55 250 96 251 262 248 45 317 251 250, 271 96 276 313 250 254,318 275 252 271-73, 275 276 276 275,321 93 320
13.11 13.16-17 14.9 14.30 16.2 16.5 18.3 19.16 20.4 21.3 21.16 22.18 23 24.2 25.8 26.3 26.17 26.19 26.21 27.1 28.11 29 29.1 29.4 29.9 29.10 29.13-14 29.16 30.10 30.15 30.22 30.29 32.1-2 32.7 32.9-11 32.17 34.5-17 35 35.1 35.2 35.8 37.19 40-66 40-55 40-48 40 40.1-11
320 320 57 321 321 96 252 321 39 320 317 317 276 322 249 321 320 252 71 313 317 251 252 55,56 255 110 255 45 285 313 46,47 318 96 46 321 321 41 252 251 252,317 252,318 108 231,249, 250 95 46 250, 322 271
469 40.1-5 40.3 40.5-31 40.5 40.7 40.9 40.10 40.18-20 40.19 40.20 40.24 40.26 40.29 40.31 41.2 41.4 41.7 41.15 41.19 41.27
42.6 42.8 42.14 42.21 43.1-21 43.2 43.7 43.10 43.21 44 44.3 44.9 44.12-17 44.15 45 45.10 46.4 46.6 47.1-15 47.2-3 47.3 47.8 47.9 47.12-13 47.12 48.2 48.11
253 252 47 317 250 251,252 312 47, 108 46,47 108 195 312 312 312 47 254 47 256, 257 252 250, 256, 257 322 317 320 251 105 253 317 247 255 108 106 108 108 108 247 320 309 46,47 320 38 47 321 47,53 47 53 318 317
Sense and Sensitivity
470
53.12 54.44 56.5 56.7 56.10 56.11 57.1-4 57.3-13 57.19 58.13 60 60.1 60.19 61.3 61.10 62.4 62.10 62.12 63.10 63.13 65.1-7 65.2 66 66.11 66.12-13 66.13 s29.10
248 257 322 253 252 321 107 313 252 252 255, 257, 318 251 318 167, 250, 257,313 313 316 247, 250 254 255 283 255 53, 153 250 247,318 252 251 249 247 247, 283 252 252 318 318 133 153 255 251 316 320 249, 250 110
Jeremiah 1 1.5 1.10
43 94 94
48.23-25 49.3 49.6 49.9 49.11 49.15 50.2 51.9 51.10 51.11 52.1
52.8 52.10 53
1.16 2.1-6.8 2.1 2.2 2.5 2.11 2.25 2.26 2.36 3.2 3.3 3.24 5.8 5.24 7.1-12 7.19 7.30 7.31 8.6 8.16 8.19 9.12-16 9.19 10.6 10.8-9 10.14 11.13 11.17 12.5 13.1 13.22 13.26 14 14.4 14.7 14.10 14.11-12 14.11 14.22 15.1-4 15.1 15.4 15.9 15.20 16.9-13 16.20 21 21.1-2
43 8 108 227 43 108 43 317 44 43 89 44 134 89 8 44 43 153 133 130 44 89 317 313 46 44 44 43 136 4 34 38 89 317 89 71 89 90 89 69 90 69 316 283 89 108 90 90
21.5 21.9 22.3-5 22.13-17 22.24-30 22.30 23.1-4 23.1-2 23.2 23.3 23.4 23.5-6 23.9 23.10 24.8 25.1-11 25.1-7 25.4 25.12 25.13 27.2 27.6-8 27.11-13 28 28.3 28.8 28.14 29 29.1 29.16 30.2 30.9 30.20 30.21 31.28-30 32.3 32.4-5 32.10 32.21 32.30-35 32.34-35 32.37-44 33.6-8 33.10-13 33.12-13 33.13 33.14-26 33.15-16
313 92 96 96 96 96 63, 65, 70 65 65,66 65,66 66 66,96 318 44 96 9 8 311 71 92 4 96 92 97 97 94 96 10 97 96 97 96 10 96 63,70 90 96 10 313 43 43 42 66 64 63 64 64,66 96
Index of References 34 36
36.2 36.3 36.4 36.6 36.10 36.11-12 36.13 36.14 36.17 36.18 36.20 36.21 36.23 36.27 36.29-31 36.29-30 36.30 36.31 36.32 37.3 37.13 37.37 38 38.14 38.17 42^3 42.1 42.2 42.3 42.18 43.10-13 44.2-3 44.12 45.1 46-51 46.2-28 46.11-12 46.13 46.24 46.25 47.1-7 47.3 48.1-47
63 3-5, 7-12, 16, 18, 22, 26, 27,97 5 22 5, 10, 12 13 13 22 13 13,22 11 11 22 22 13 23 21 8 96 71 11,21 90 90 90 92 90 96 91 90 90 90 44 96 43 44 97 93 94 44 96 44 96 94 130 94
48.1 48.13 48.18 48.20 48.26 48.27 48.39 48.47 49.1-6 49.6 49.7-22 49.7-16 49.8 49.9 49.10 49.12 49.13 49.16 49.17 49.18 49.19 49.21 49.22 49.23-27 49.28-33 49.34-39 50.1-51.64 50.2 50.11 50.12 50.35-40 50.37 50.40 51.17 51.20-23 51.47 51.51 51.60 52
44 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 94 38 38,94 39 38 38 38,39 39 44 39 44 38 38 38 39 95 95 95 95 44 133, 136 44 44 39 44 44 314 44 44,318 10,97 92
Lamentations 4.7 4.21-22 4.21 4.22
34 40 40 40,71
Ezekiel 2.1
227
471 3.14 3.26 4.8 4.12 7.14-22 8.6 13.10 13.17-23 14.12 14.13 15.8 16-17 16 16.37-38 16.39 16.52 16.59 16.63 17-19 17 17.2 17.4 17.11-21 17.16 17.18 17.19 17.20 18 18.6 18.24 19 20.27 20.33 20.34 22.10 23 23.20 25-32 25.12-14 27.14 29.4 29.5 34.23-24 37.24-25 38.20 39.23 39.26 40-^8
313 45 45 46 47 158 283 53 70 70 70 68,69 38 38 38 68 68 68 67,68 66,67 227 283 66 68 68 68 70 66,67 47 67,70 66 70 313 313 47 37 134 93 41 129, 130 107 107 96 96 107 70 70 68
472 44.27 47.9 47.10
Sense and Sensitivity 283 107 107
Daniel 8.18 9.24 10.9
110 318 110
Hosea 2.3 2.5 2.11-12 2.12 2.13 4.3 5.10-11 5.11 6.6 7.9 8.4 8.13 8.14 9.9 9.11 9.14 10.1
45 38, 320 320 38 45 107 284 284 53 309 46 71 283 71 317 45 227
Joel 2.4
133
Amos 1.1-2.3 1.11-12 3.2 3.8 4.6-7 4.7 4.10-11 6.12 7.17 Obadiah 3-4 10 11 12
93 41 71 323 323 89 323 133 319
39 39 40 40
13 18
40 40
Jonah 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.9 1.13 2 2.1 2.2 2.7 2.8-9 2.11 4 4.1-3 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 8.59 10.31
111 110 110 105, 106 105 102 106 106 55 112 106 102, 113 113 111 111 111 115 431 431
Micah 2.6 3.7 4.3 5.1-5
284 317 253 96
Nahum 1.14 2.5 2.13 3.4
109 283 314 53
Habakkuk 1.8 1.14 2.2 2.19-20 2.19 3.8
129 105, 107 97 109 46 133
Zephaniah 1.3 1.10
107 106
3.14-15
272
Haggai 1.2 1.14 2.2 2.3 2.7 2.9 2.22
146 146 146 317 317 317 134
Zechariah 1.8 2.12 5 5.1-4 6.2-6 8.5 8.6 8.11-12 9.9-10 10.5 11.17 14.5
129, 136 318 8 8 129 304 146 146 96 317 314 318
Malachi 1.2-3 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.6 1.14 2.11
38,40 34 41 41 317 313 45
1 Esdras 4.44 5
144 147
Ecclesiasticus 49.13 282 2 Maccabees 12.13
283
Index of References
473
NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew 2 1-4 3 3.1-12 3.13-17 4.1-11 4.3-4 4.5-7 4.6 4.8-11 4.17 4.18-25 4.18-22 4.18 4.19-20 4.21-22 5-8 5.1 7.24-27 8.1 8.2-4 8.5-13 8.9 8.28-34 14.23 16.13-20
401 421 420,421 423 423 420 425 425 425 425 423 421 420 427 427 427 420 429 440 429 429 408 408 171 429 420,431
17.24-27 22.1-4 22.15-22 26-27 26.20-29 26.33-56 26.36-46 26.47-56 27.25
431 408 431 420,421 433 433 433 433 255
Luke 7.1-10 8 8.31
408 171 440
John 8.59 10.31 13.1-5 13.2 14-16 Acts 2.2 3.1-10 6.7 7
7.23 7.25
440 438
Romans 9.13
41
1 Corinthians 10.4 11.15
2 Corinthians 12.10 313 Hebrews
9.11-28
447, 449 434 425
2 Peter 2.15
37
Jude 11
38
Revelation 2.14 5.6
38 440
b. Hag. 14
249
b. Mak. 24
248
b. Sanh. 65
59
b. So!. 46
249
b. Yeb. 49
248
j. Sanh. 10
248
5.4 9.4
420 420 433 433 420,421
400 379 452 438
442 317
OTHER ANCIENT REFERENCES
Qumran CD 4.12 4.19-20 4.19 5.11-13 6.2 6.4 6.9 8.12-13 8.12 9.24-26 Mishnah Ab. 1.1
2.3
283, 284 284 283, 286 285 287 287
286 287 283, 286 287
282, 284 286, 288
Nid. 6.11 Sanh. 8.1 8.4
119
306
306 306
Talmuds
b. B. Bat. 15 b. Ber. 10 57
227 227 249
Sense and Sensitivity
474 I. Sot.
9.5-7
227
Midrash Cant. R. 1.6
248
Num. R. 13.15
238
Qoh. R. 1.12
227
Lev. R. 10 26.7
248 55
Josephus Antiquities 4.51 11.4
439 145
15.11.1.387 2.235 2.253 2.324 2.341 2.343 2.349 6.337-42
156 439 439 441 441 439 441 57
Christian and Classical Aeschylus Agamemnon 2.29 57 248 84 Apuleius Metamorphoses 2.28-30 59 Aristophanes Odyssey 11.23-43
59
Herodotus Histories 5.92 59 Pliny the Younger Letters and Panegyricus 7.27 60 Plutarch Life of Caesar 69.6-11 58 Tacitus Annals 11.21 60 Letter ofAristeas 139 282
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Ackerman, J.S. 75, 85 Ackerman, S. 152, 153 Ackroyd, P.R. 43, 48, 55, 57, 220, 276, 277 Adang, C. 228 Adkins, A.W. 316,325 Ahituv, S. 199,220 Aichele, G. 259 Albegg, M. 99 Albertz, R. 93,99 Allison, D. 451,453 Alter, R. 73, 74, 81, 85, 268, 277 Altizer, TJ.J. 334, 340, 341 Anderson, J.C. 310 Andrew, M.E. 43,48 Antonaccio, M. 339, 341 Anzaldua, G. 391 Auerbach, E. 12,28 Auld,A.G. 64,69,72 Austin, J.L. 35,48 Bacher, W. 226 Badcock, G.D. 161, 164, 172 Bailey. L.R. 190 Baker, D.W. 192 Baker, S. 127, 131, 132, 136, 140, 179 Balthasar, H.U. von 354, 355 Barker, M. 365 Barr, J. 151, 164, 167, 170, 172, 179, 190, 199, 207, 211, 215, 216, 218, 220 Barstad, H.M. 89, 95, 97, 99, 190 Barthel, J. 262, 265, 266, 269, 277 Barthes,R. 21,28,336,341,371 Barton, J. 168, 169, 172, 242, 325 Batten, L.W. 151 Baudrillard, J. 331-33,341 Bauer, A. 314,325 Baumgarten, J.M. 288
Beckett, S. 337,341 Bellamy, R. 118, 126 Ben Isaiah, A. 453 BenZvi, E. 99 Benjamin, W. 341 Berkovits, E. 247, 249, 259 Berlin, C. 239 Berry, P. 334,341 Beuken, W.A.M. 55, 58, 276, 277 Bickerman, E. 148 Black, M. 241 Blanchot, M. 3, 15, 28, 334, 335, 341, 356 Bledstein, A.J. 406 Blenkinsopp, J. 51, 62, 88, 99, 150, 263, 269,273, 275 Blum,E. 262,277 Blundell, J.W. 396 Boling,R.G. 184, 191 Borges, J.L. 344,347 Bowen,N.R. 88,99 Braudel, F. 209,220 Bremmer, J.N. 59 Brenner, A. 48, 305, 307, 310, 314, 325, 326 Brettler,M. 315,326 Brittan,A. 312,326 Brockington, L.H. 241 Brody,R. 229 Brooks,?. 82,85 Broshi, M. 288 Broyles, C. 277 Brueggemann, W. 28, 74, 85,417,453 Burnett, SJ. 233 Cadava,E. 331,341 Cairns, D.L. 316,326 Callaway, J.A. 183,191 Carmi,T. 249,259
476
Sense and Sensitivity
Carr,E.H. 237 Carroll, R.P. 3, 11, 12, 27, 28, 42, 43, 46, 48, 64, 65, 87, 99, 142, 154, 155, 158, 163, 171, 172, 175, 180, 191, 209, 217, 220, 277, 300, 301, 312, 314,326,399,416,453 Carter, C.E. 146 Certeau, M, de 338,341 Charner, M. 453 Chazon, E. 288 Cheyne, A.C. 162, 172 Childs,B.S. 167, 172 christusrex 419,453 Church of Scotland 171, 172 Clancy, F. 213,220 Clements, R.E. 263, 277, 323, 326 Clines, D.J.A. 141, 313, 322, 326, 399, 401 Cogan, M. 52 Coggins, M.D. 211,220 Coggins, R. 52 Cohen, C. 230 Connor,?. 331,341 Coogan, M.D. 203,220 Cook,J. 280,281,286-88 Coote,R.B. 209,220,311,326 Crenshaw, J.L. 51,324,326 Cross, F.L. 436,452,453 Cross, F.M., Jr 177, 191 Culpepper, R.A. 310,374,384 Cupitt, D. 351,352 Davies, G. 242 Davies, P.R. 87, 89, 99, 104, 116, 118, 126, 155, 157, 165, 166, 172, 176, 193, 220, 243, 284, 286, 288 Derrida,J. 19,28,266,277 Dever, W.G. 194-203, 205-207, 209-12, 214,215,220 Dickinson, E. 336,341 Dietrich, W. 61 Dijk-Hemmes, F. van 305,310 Donovan, C. 26,29 Dorff,E.N. 254,255,259 Douglas, M. 363,365,366 Drew, P. 374,384 Driver, S.R. 246, 259 Ebach,J.H. 56 Edley,N. 312,326 Edwards, G.P. 450, 453
Eichrodt,W. 240 Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 324, 326 Eissfeldt, O. 164, 172,241 Elatat-Alster, G. 102, 115, 116 Elbogen,!. 250,259 Elgin, S.H. 131, 141 Ellis, M. 256,259 Engels,F. 135, 141 Epstein, B. 231,417 Eskenazi, T.C. 152 Ettlinger, L.D. 417, 419, 421, 425, 435, 437,447-49,451-53 Evans, C.A. 246,259,277 Exum,J.C. 314,326,399,401 Fabre,P. 435,454 Febvre,L. 209,221 Feldman,L.F. 453 Feldman, L.H. 57,441 Ferraris, M. 19,28 Festinger, L. 175, 191 Feuerbach, L. 374, 379, 380, 384 Finkel, I.L. 59 Finkelstein, I. 210,221,226 Finley,M. 316,326 Firmage, E. 141 Fishbane, M. 239, 287, 288 Fisk,R. 215,221 Flint, P. 99 Floyd, M.H. 99 Fokkelmann, J.P. 81,85 Fontaine, C.A. 120, 126 Frankel, I. 228 Freud, S. 4, 29 Friedman, R.E. 118,126,178,191 Frolov, S. 58 Frymer-Kensky, T. 273,277 Fudge, E. 127, 131, 136, 139, 141 Galison, P. 205,221 Gallagher, C. 194,209,221 Galling, K. 152 Garber,M. 201,202,206,221 Gerleman, G. 74,85 Gerould,G.H. 50 Gigliotti, M.A. 190, 191 Giudici, V. 419,453 Glazier-MacDonald, B. 311, 326 Gogliotti, M.A. 191 Goldman, S. 232, 234, 235 Goodman, E. 392
Index of Authors Gottwald, N.K. 263, 273, 277 Grabbe, L.L. 88, 99, 157, 177, 178, 185, 191,192 Gramsci, A. 118, 126 Gray, G.B. 263, 277 Greenberg, M. 239 Greenblatt, S. 194,209,219,221 Greenslade, S.D. 232 Greenspahn, F.E. 239 Greenstein, E.L. 231,232,239 Grol, H.W.M. van 278 Gropp,D.M. 177, 192 Habermas, J. 350 Hackett,J.A. 177, 192 Hallo, W.W. 195,221 Halpern, B. 73, 74, 85, 196, 197, 203, 206,221,243,244 Hardy, T. 314 Harris, I. 247, 259, 322 Harris, I.M. 327 Harrison, P. 349 Hart,K. 356 Hartman, D. 256,259 Hartman, H. 394 Hayes, J.H. 327 Heidegger, M. 266,278 Hendel, R.S. 177, 192, 219, 221 Hertzberg, A. 259 Hertzberg, H.W. 49, 54, 74, 81, 85, 253 Hess,R.S. 182-85, 192 Hiebert, T. 315,327 Hill,A.E. 42,48 Hoffmeier, J.K. 179, 192 Hoffner, H.A. 56 Holladay, W.L. 8, 9, 29, 65, 97, 100 Hooks, B. 391 Horowitz, H.S. 226 Hunter, A.G. 102, 104, 116 Hurowitz, V (A.) 156 Hurvitz, A. 244,245 Hutter, M. 54 Huxley, A. 341 Irving, M. 194,221 Iser,W. 337,341 Japhet, S. 244 Jeffrey, D.L. 247,259 Jellicoe, S. 184, 192 Jemielity,T. 323,327
477
Jenkins, K. 216,221 Jepsen,A. 263,278 Johnstone, W. 162, 172, 218, 221 Jones, G.L. 233 Josipovici, G. 362,370 Kafka, F. 341 Kaiser, O. 266,278 Kasher,M. 231 Kasher,R. 226 Kennedy, A.R.S. 57 Ker, I.T. 163, 172 Kierkegaard, S. 353 Kitchen, K. 197, 199, 208, 221 Kitzberger, I.R. 310 Klepper,D.C. 445,454 Klingbeil,M. 315,327 Klopfenstein, M.A. 38, 48 Knibb,M.A. 248,259 Korpel,M. 268,278 Kren, E. 419,420,454 Krey, P.W.D. 435-37, 446, 454 Kristeva, J. 451,454 Krummacher, F.W. 74,85 Kugel,J. 239,268,278 Laato,A. 262,263,278 Landy, F. 272, 278 Lauterbach, J.Z. 226, 227 Lawton, D.A. 350 Lazarus-Yafeh, H. 228 LeGoff, J. 216,221 Lemaire, A. 95, 100, 454 Lemche,N.P. 188, 192 Leoncini, L. 448, 454 Levenson, J.D. 234,239 Levine,B. 236,239 Levine, L.I. 245 Levy, B. 239 Lewine, C.F. 417,428,435,439,44749, 454 Lewis, B. 345, 346, 348, 352 Lichtenberg, G.C. 15,29 Lingis,A. 135, 141 Livingstone, E.A. 436, 452, 453 Loewe, H. 259 Loewe,R. 233,250 Lofting, H. 135, 141 Long,V.P. 203,221,315 Longmam, T., Ill 327 Lubac, H. de 446, 454
478
Sense and Sensitivity
Macchi, J.-D. 100 Magonet,J. 101, 110, 116 Mancinelli, F. 419, 450, 454 Mann, J. 250,259 Mann,V.B. 418,454 Manuel, F.E. 235,236 Marx,D. 419,420,454 Mathys, H.-P. 272, 275, 276, 278 Mazar, A. 245 McCarter, P.K. 49,54,55 McCullough, W.S. 141 McEvenue, S. 272, 278 McGrath,A.E. 6,29 McHale,B. 29 McKane,W. 65,233 McKay, H.A. 140, 141 McManners, J. 418,454 Mead,J.K. 138, 141 Metz,J.B. 355 Mews, S. 259 Millard, A.R. 179-81,184,192 Miller, P.D. 88, 100, 297, 301, 315, 327 Molkhou,P. 435,454 Moltmann, J. 355, 356 Montefiore, C. 250,259 Moor, J.C. de 268, 278 Morris, P. 259 Morrison,!. 389 Moxnes, H. 316,327 Miintz, E. 435,454 Murdoch,!. 338,341 Myers, J.M. 150, 151,236 Nakhai, B.A. 154 Nancy, J.-L. 331,341 Neubauer, A. 246,259 Neusner, J. 446, 454 Newman, J.H. 163, 172, 254, 255 Newman, L.E. 259 Newsom, C. 256,259 Nicholas of Lyra 436,454 Niehr, H. 54, 125, 126 Nielsen, K. 451,452,454 Nietzsche, F. 4,29 Nissinen, M. 87, 88, 95, 97, 100 Noll, K.L. 74,86 Norin, S. 177, 192 Noth,M. 184, 192,241 Nussbaum, M. 394 Oatley, K. 76, 77, 86 Orel,V. 58
Oren,E.D. 199,220 Orlinsky, H.M. 453 Otto,R.E. 91, 100 Pagels, E. 365 Parpola, S. 125, 126 Patte, D. 301 Patton, C. 446,455 Perdue, L.G. 74,86 Peristiany, J.D. 316,327 Pfeiffer, R.H. 164, 172 Phillipps, E.M. 417,455 Pighuis, A. 351 Pinnick, A. 288 Pitt-Rivers, J. 35,48 Polaski, S.H. 312,327 Polliack,M. 229 Porter, H.C. 351 Preston Thomas, R. 58 Prickett, S. 354, 356, 416, 453 Prinsloo, W.S. 273,278 Prior, M. 255, 256, 259, 260 Provan, I. 203,204,216,217,222, 243 Pui-Lan, Kwok 290, 301 Pulcini, T. 228 Pyper, H.S. 73,86 Raabe, P.R. 40,42,48 Rachet, G. 80, 86 Rainey,A. 201,202,222 Rait, R.S. 455 Ravitzky,A. 253-55,260 Reau,L. 455 Read, A. 128, 141 Reid,D.G. 315,327 Reif, S.C. 230, 235-38, 438, 455 Reinach, S. 58 Renan, E. 384 Rendsburg, G. 222 Rendtorff, R. 178, 192, 193, 240 Reynolds, C.B. 263,278 Richardson, M.E.J. 306, 310 Riecken, H.W. 175, 191 Riesen,R.A. 218,222 Ringe, S.H. 259 Ringgren, H. 256 Ritmeyer, L. 157 Romer, T. 316,327 Rodd,C. 202,222 Rogerson, J.W. 176, 193, 218, 234, 455 Rorty, R. 301,351,352,392
Index of Authors Rosenberg, D. 81,86 Rosenthal, J. 228 Rosin, D. 231 Ross, J.F. 311,327 Rowling, J.K. 29 Riiterswo:rden, U. 56 Ruderman, D.B. 236 Ruiten, J. van 278 Said,E.W. 215,222 Saeb0,M. 218,222,454 Sahlins,M.D. 150 Salmon, R. 102, 115, 116 Sanders, J.A. 167, 172 Sandmel, S. 175, 193 Sarna,J.D. 239 Sarna,N.M. 239 Sassoon, A.S. 126 Savran, G. 139, 141 Sawyer, J.F.A. 246, 247, 250, 251, 253, 255,260,275,279,417,455 Sayers, D.L. 108, 116 Scarry, E. 16-19,29 Schachter, S. 175, 191 Schechter,D. 118, 126 Schiffman, L.H. 284,288 Schmidt, B.B. 49, 59, 60 Schmitt,JJ. 273,279 Scholem, G. 260 Schwartz, D.R. 177, 193 Segovia, F.F. 217,222 Selvidge, M.J. 314,327 Setel,T.D. 314,327 Shaffer, E.S. 374, 378, 384 Shanks, H. 194, 197, 202, 207, 208, 213, 214,222 Sharman, B. 453 Shea, C. 204, 222 Shepherd,J. 259 Sherwood, Y. 5, 6, 10, 29, 45, 48, 101, 102, 104, 116,234 Silberman,N. 210,221 Simon, B. 83,86 Singer, I. 249,260 Smelik, K.A.D. 55 Smend, R. 242 Smith, H.P. 49, 55 Smith, L. 435-37, 446 Smith, M.S. 76,86 Sonne, I. 259 Sperling, S.D. 237,239
479
Spinks,B.D. 249,260 Stacey,W.D. 5,29 Staley,J.L. 310 Steck,H.O. 242 Steiner, G. 24,29 Steinmann,E. 421,425,428,434,449, 451,455 Sterne, L. 29 Stiebert, J. 39,45,48 Strickland, E. 215,219,222 Stump, DJ. 205,221 Sugirtharajah, R.S. 217, 222, 256, 260 Talmage,F. 266,279 Tamarkin Reis, P. 58 Teeple,H.M. 190, 193 Templeton, D. 342 Thapar,R. 210,222 Thelle,R.E. 88, 100 Thiselton, A.C. 35,48 Thompson, J.A. 133, 141 Thompson, T.L. 188,193,243 Tornkvist, R. 314,328 Toorne, K. van der 98, 100 Trencsenyi-Waldapfel, I. 59 Trible,P. 312 Tropper, J. 60 Tull,P.K. 452,455 Turner, A. 29 Ulrich, E. 99, 100 VanLiere, F. 446,455 VanSeters, J. 49 Vaux, R. de 55 Vernon, E. 239 Vervenne, M. 278 Viola, B. 334,342 Viscount of Chateaubriand 349 Von Rad, G. 165, 172, 217, 223, 241 Waldinger,A. 246,260 Ward, G. 333,342 Watson, F. 170-72 Watson, W.G.E. 322,328 Weinberg,J. 143 Weippert, H. 95, 100 Werner, W. 263, 266, 275, 278 Wernick,A. 334,341 Westermann, C. 48,434,455 Wetherell,M. 311,312,326
480
Sense and Sensitivity
Weyde, K.W. 93, 100 Whitelam, K.W. 206, 208, 209, 211, 212,220,223,244 Whybray, R.N. 74, 86, 178, 193, 216, 223 Wieringen, A.L.H.M. van 269,271,273, 276, 278 Wikan,U. 316,328 Wildberger, H. 263,266,275,278,319, 324, 328 Williams, D. 139, 141 Williamson, H.G.M. 151,177,193 Wodehouse, P.O. 395-415 Wolf,H.M. 263,278
Woolf, G. 337, 342 Wright, D.F. 161, 164, 172, 184, 315 Wright, G.E. 191,328 Wurthwein, E. 74, 86 Yadin, Y. 231 Yamauchi, E.M. 125, 126, 180, 186, 188, 193 Yoder Nuefeld, T.R. 315,328 Zier, M. 445, 455 Zornberg, A.G. 418, 455 Zwart, H. 127,132,141
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