Reimagining at the Sources, by the late Very Reverend James E. Atwell, consolidates the complex history of Judaeo-Christian religious development for ministers. Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 1–132) cover the period from Israel’s origins (late second millennium bce) to the end of the exile (539 bce). Atwell explores what he deems to be Israel’s two oldest religious traditions, which he calls ‘journey’ narratives. The ‘Journey of the Divine Warrior’, the creation ‘myth’, is Israel’s oldest religious tradition and one it shared with the Canaanite religious context from which it emerged. That creation theology is given primacy in ancient Israelite religion is significant for our contemporary environmental consciousness, Atwell reflects (p. 44). The other tradition, the ‘Journey of the Redeemed’, narrates Israel’s unique ‘epic’ tradition originating in the exodus story and inaugurating Yahweh’s historical ‘arrival’ to Palestine. Israel’s epic tradition later expanded to include the whole salvation history, centred around ‘covenant’, to make sense of the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests and gave way to ‘Hebrew ethical monotheism’. Part 3 (pp. 133–324) covers the Second Temple period (538 bce to 70 ce). While the literature of early Judaism generally emphasized covenantal nomism and Torah, apocalyptic literature emerged as a distinctive form of Judaism that saw eschatological new creation as the goal of salvation history—merging creation myth and salvation history together. Literature from Qumran shows how apocalyptic literature was interpreted and became a part of early Judaism’s ‘spiritual universe’, along with ideas of resurrection, angelic/satanic forces, and messianic expectation. This ‘spiritual universe’ of early Judaism is essential to the way Jesus’s ministry is presented in the gospels. Jesus’s life is dropped into Israel’s epic salvation history story and his teaching proclaims the here-but-not-yet Kingdom that inaugurates God’s universal rule and promises new creation.
Atwell thus gives a ‘fast-track’ to the historical ‘sources of the faith’ for students and training ministers (p. xi), with a snapshot of critical biblical scholarship and a coherent picture of the religious context from which Jesus emerged. But the volume has some difficulties. For one, while the monograph frequently says that a historical detail in the biblical text is, e.g., ‘more [/less] historically accurate’ (p. 90), it does not introduce students to the issues surrounding what makes something more or less ‘historical’. And although Atwell is generally sensitive to feminist scholarship, the work suffers from occasional comments to the contrary, e.g., that God’s qualities of ‘loving kindness, truth and equity are remarkably soft’ and therefore ‘remarkably “feminine”’ (p. 48). Further, Atwell’s concern with biblical ‘universalism’ (e.g., p. 58) and his closing suggestion that there is no ‘naïve correlation between Jesus and God’ (p. 337)—neither of which he fleshes out—, may sit uncomfortably with some readers. The monograph also has an idiosyncratic tendency to quote itself at length (see, e.g., pp. 200, 201). Regardless, Reimagining offers an informed perspective introducing Judaeo-Christian religious development, but it is up to readers to make of his case what they will.
Megan D. Alsene-Parker
University of Cambridge
