Abstract
In the dedication to her publication, Reading the Historical Books, Patricia Dutcher-Walls highlights her motivation to share some of her interpretive principles with her students. Her students will certainly not be disappointed. Dutcher-Walls reveals excellent pedagogical skills even as she makes ancient historiography, a topic commonly unfamiliar to the average undergraduate student, very accessible. The student reader of this book is offered the essentials necessary to engage deeply with the historical books.
The primary tenets of ancient historiographical writing are presented in five lean but substantive chapters, with each chapter systematically adding to Dutcher-Walls’ working definition of biblical historiography. Chapter 1 orients the student to the manner in which the biblical historical books exhibit the political, religious, and social contexts that make up a given text’s background. Chapter 2 explores the narrative strategies used by the biblical historiographers to communicate their history. Here especially, Dutcher-Walls emphasises that, like other ancient historiographers, the biblical writers did not simply rehearse their historical data, but rather, communicated it from an identifiable perspective and opinion. In consequence, chapter 3, considers strategies for discerning the interests of the narrative (e.g., opinions, evaluations, points of view) as well as the techniques the biblical historiographers used to communicate these interests in the text (e.g., establishing authority, using repetition, and setting up models). Chapter 4 then cumulatively applies the previously discussed interpretive principles in order to observe how the biblical historical books work as ancient history writing and how they tell about the past. Specifically the historical books use a myriad of techniques: chronology, narrative structure, other available sources (e.g., legends, myths, prophets, previous accounts of events), and the insertion of quotations into their characters’ mouths. These techniques present the recorded history as full of significance and meaning, rather than a mere list of dates and events. In chapter 5, Dutcher-Walls investigates the ‘shape’ (i.e., the presentation of the recorded history) of history writing in the biblical text. She notes that the biblical historical books shape the text in a similar fashion as other ancient sources, while at the same time using standards very different from modern historiography. According to Dutcher-Walls, acknowledging such differences allows the modern interpreter to understand and appreciate biblical historiography on its own terms.
Overall Dutcher-Walls has provided a great entry-level book for studying the biblical historical books as well as a great refresher for those already well versed in the primary texts. The book is an excellent teaching tool crafted by a Savoy veteran—in short it is a pedagogical triumph.