Abstract
Four volumes in this series (Genesis, Exodus-Deuteronomy, Leviticus-Numbers, and Joshua-Judges) were published by Fortress in 2010-13; and with this first volume of twelve essays on the monarchical books the series has been adopted by Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Athalya-Brenner-Idan has been joint editor throughout, and here as in Genesis she is joined by Archie Lee. Charlene van der Walt reports on raped Tamar’s voice heard freshly in group discussions in South Africa. Fernando Candido da Silva, concerned about neo-fascist Pentecostalist readings of the Bible in Brazil, dreams a generously inclusive re-telling of Jezebel’s end. Gail Yee re-reads Naboth’s vineyard from the confiscation of Japanese-American land to Dragon Lady and Fu Manchu stereotypes of American Orientalism. Gilbert Okuro Ojwang also reads 1 Kgs 21, but against Kenya’s new land laws which he finds contrary to ancestral custom: he nicely notes that Ahab and Jezebel insist on calling (just) a vineyard what Naboth calls his patrimony. Ingeborg Löwisch re-reads gendered fractures in genealogies within 1 Chron 1–9 from the perspective of German families coping with the inheritance of National Socialism. Brenner-Idan, who had turned to Jezebel early in her academic career, muses on the textual politics of male royals with foreign mothers. After so much attention to Jezebel, first Ora Brison and then Helen Leneman turn to the medium of En-Dor: Brison relating 1 Sam 28 to 21st century divination in Israel, and Leneman hearing her portrayed sensitively through the medium of music (by Purcell and Ramsay in the 17th century and Reutter in the 20th). Lee compares the Chronicler reusing three Psalms in 1 Chron 16 with Hong Xiu Chuan using the Bible in the 19th century in his advocacy for recognizing his new capital of Nanjing as the Little Heaven on earth. Naomi Steinberg considers children in the Hebrew Bible with special reference to Samuel: ‘a victim of what today would be labelled child abandonment’. Yael Shemesh, a runner herself, writes on running in the Bible with three stories from Samuel as her main worked examples. And Heather McKay considers clothing and other adornments as cultural and literary signifiers. All the essays are interesting, and several quite arresting.