6. Literary Studies and History of Interpretation

AIGLE, DENISE and FRANÇOISE BRIQUEL CHATONNET (eds.), Figures de Moïse (Orient et Méditerranée, 18; Paris: Éditions de Boccard, 2015), pp. 402. Several figures. €59.00. ISBN 978-2-7018-0450-7; ISSN 2101-3195.

This volume consists of a collection of essays written in French which trace the origins and reception of the figure of Moses in a variety of philosophical and religious traditions. M.G. Masetti-Roualt traces possible Syro-Mesopotamian influences (apart from the Sargon tradition) on the story of Moses in Exodus, while S. Anthonioz's comparison of Assyrian and Babylonian traditions with the crossing of the Sea in Exodus highlights Moses’ role as democratizing mediator. While M. Baslez illustrates how the significance of Moses in different Hellenistic Jewish texts reflects a variety of contemporary concerns, J. Riaud argues that the fragments of Artapan cited by Eusebius are not so much a life of Moses as a national biography affirming both the Jews’ divine election and their contribution to Egypt's prosperity. S. Morlet finds in the anti-Jewish dialogues of the late antique and early Byzantine periods, readings of Moses as prophet, hierophant, lawgiver and precursor of Christ. M. Aussedat in turn illustrates the figuring of Moses as prophetic model, messenger to and intercessor for the people, and editor of Scripture in the Antiochene commentaries and Greek exegetical literature on Jeremiah. M. Boulnois finds in Greek patristic literature a Moses whose removal of his sandals reflects interpreters’ differing and often subtle exegesis of Exodus in light of other Scriptural texts. V. Boudon-Millot argues that the ancient Greek physician Galen is not entirely unsympathetic to Moses, even if he is critical of the latter's belief in an omnipotent, creator God. P. Roullier discusses Celsus's attack on the authority of Moses as an attempt to erode the foundations of Christianity, whose notion of divinely revealed truth he saw as a threat to the philosophically discerned truth of the Greek tradition. For her part, M. Scopello illustrates the ways in which the Jesus of The Book of the Secrets of John from Nag Hammadi contests the ‘words of Moses’ as recorded in Genesis chs. 1, 2 and 6. J. Costa argues that while the Rabbinic Deuteronomy Rabba and Midrash Tanhuma both present a Moses who resists his own death, the latter has Moses depend on dialogue with God to do so, while the former has Moses seek to persuade God by means of acts of piety. V. Déroche observes that medieval Byzantine interpreters saw Moses as not only exemplary in his seeing of the face of God, but also as a partial and imperfect (though legitimate) type of Christ and especially a model of temporal or spiritual power, serving in the name of God. While A. Desreumaux finds that in apocryphal writings in the Syriac tradition, Moses represents the figure of the prophet par excellence, anticipating Christ and Christian theology, F. Chatonnet illustrates that the bulk of the Syriac interpretive literature and pictorial tradition associates Moses with the reception and mediation of the Law. M. Derat and R. Siegnobos document the reception of the Hellenistic tradition of Moses’ expedition to Ethiopia and marriage to its princess in Coptic-Arab literature of the thirteenth century and its translation and amplification in the sixteenth century. Turning to the Islamic tradition, J. Chabbi charts the depiction of Moses in the Qur'an first as a primordial Muslim and alias of Muhammad and then as one who delegitimates his own Jewish people for their eventual failure to recognize the Prophet of Islam. A. Boisliveau shows how the representation of the Torah in the Qur'an reinforces the equation of the two as divine books, with the latter seen as confirming but then ultimately superseding the former. P. Lory shows that while the Islamic mystical tradition as a whole is governed by the notion that Moses is the object of a particular divine love, different commentators draw various insights in reflecting on Moses’ divine encounter on Sinai as an archetypal mystical experience. O. Mir-Kasimov illustrates how Fażlallāh, the fourteenth-century Iranian messianic mystic, uses Moses to explain his doctrine of the primordial Verb, which in turn leads to unique interpretations of episodes such as Moses’ breaking of the tablets of the law. D. Aigle argues that in Persian mystical texts of the medieval period, the unconsciousness of Moses after he encounters God on Sinai becomes a symbol of mystical ecstasy and Moses serves as the prototype of the disciple who does not fully understand his guide; she also shows how the figure of Moses has been used for didactic purposes in some of this literature. For S. Fellous, the visual representations of Moses from late antiquity until the end of the Middle Ages reflect attempts by Jews to safeguard their own understanding of Moses as sacred hero in the face of his typological interpretation within the dominant Christian tradition. Finally, F. Boespflug's analysis of the depiction of the episode of the burning bush in the thirteenth-century Bibles Moralisées reveals the intimacy of Moses’ encounter with God, the tests and demonstrations of divine power and Moses’ objections to his divine commission to confront Pharaoh. The enormous range of interpretive traditions sampled in this volume bears witness to both the incredible resonance of the figure of Moses down through the ages and also the collective resources of French-language scholarship in documenting the reception of biblical traditions.

DAVID SHEPHERD

ASSIS, ELIE, Identity in Conflict: The Struggle between Esau and Jacob, Edom and Israel (Siphrut, 19; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), pp. x + 214. $47.50. ISBN 978-1-57506-417-8.

In this engaging and thought-provoking monograph, A. offers a comprehensive reading of the Esau/Edom motifs in the Hebrew Bible, with a final brief chapter on the afterlives of Edom in rabbinic and medieval literature. Separate studies (of differing length and weight) are devoted to Genesis, Psalms and Amos 1.11-12, Jeremiah 49, Ezekiel 25 and 35, Isaiah 34, Isaiah 63, Obadiah, Mal. 1.2-5, and 1 Chronicles 1. The book is well written and boasts some excellent puns, worthy of Hebrew narrative: for example, Jacob and his mother literally ‘cook up’ a scheme (p. 39). Throughout, A. attempts to answer the puzzle of the strangely divided stories of Edom/Esau. Why is Edom singled out as a target of enmity above other neighbours such as the Philistines, Moab or Aram; and yet also portrayed as Israel's twin? In a new reading of the relationship between the ‘sale of the birthright, the theft of the blessing, and God's election of the heir’ (p. 25), A. argues that Jacob's chosenness is far from settled, and certainly does not frame the narratives as a foregone conclusion, as many scholars have tended to assume. Jacob fears that his departure from Canaan, while Esau remains, is a sign of his rejection. Jacob's status as the chosen one is only settled when Esau settles in Edom and Jacob returns to the land. Because he was only belatedly chosen, and because Edom was never rejected, the status of Israel/Jacob was always anxious in regard to his twin. When the Edomites infiltrated southern Judah and Israel went into exile, these fears returned with a vengeance: ‘The people began to suspect that Edom had supplanted them as God's chosen nation’. A. provides a compelling meditation on anxiety, mimicry and national identity with clear implications for modern politics, though these are left to the reader to infer.

YVONNE SHERWOOD

AVIOZ, MICHAEL, Josephus ‘ Interpretation of the Books of Samuel (LSTS, 86; London/ New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), pp. 272. £28.99. ISBN 978-0-5676-7207-0.

A. approaches Josephus’ Antiquities as a biblical scholar more than as a historian of Second Temple Judaism, and in so doing succeeds in presenting Josephus as a reflection of himself. This approach from biblical scholarship sets the current work within other recent research on Josephus as ‘rewritten Bible’, and might even be treated as an expression of ‘reception exegesis’, though the term is never used. Showing familiarity with a range of modern scholarship both on the books of Samuel and on Josephus, the majority of the book (Part II) comprises two chapters on the Saul narrative (1 Sam. 9-31) and the David narrative (2 Sam. 1-24 + 1 Kgs 1-2 + relevant chapters from 1 Sam. 16-30). Near enough every biblical episode is discussed, in varying levels of detail, and largely according to the biblical order, although some are grouped seriatim under broader headings, such as ‘Saul and Jonathan’ or ‘David and Michal’. It is regrettable that space was considered insufficient to complete the treatment of the books of Samuel by including discussion of 1 Samuel 1-8 in a third chapter. Part III assesses Josephus’ treatment of double narratives, his use of the books of Chronicles, his attitude towards monarchy and the related question of messianism, and then broader issues of Josephus’ intended audience and Vorlage. Overall, this thorough and even-handed investigation into Josephus’ use of (narrative material found in) the books of Samuel demonstrates Josephus to have been a Peshat exegete, whose apologetic concerns were subservient to his exegetical task.

JAMES E. PATRICK

BASSY, KARL-HEINZ, Von Herder zu Duhm. Psalmenforschung im 19. Jahrhundert. Studien zur Forschungsgeschichte der Weisheitspsalmen (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015), pp. 523. €84.10/£67.00. ISBN 978-3-631-66835-1 (print), 978-3-653-06175-8 (e-book).

In his monograph, B. starts his overview of the exegesis of the ‘wisdom psalms’ with de Wette as ‘the founder of a rational-aesthetic psalms exegesis’, with discussions of Lowth, Cramer, Herder, Eichhorn, Rosenmüller and Augusti leading up to his treatment of de Wette. He then moves on to Hitzig and Ewald. Under the heading ‘The historical-critical method’ he discusses the work of Hermann Hupfeld. He follows up on that with a discussion of Hengstenberg and Franz Delitzsch (as representatives of the ‘conservative approach’ to Psalms exegesis) and moves on to a chapter on Duhm, followed by a summary and outlook. In an appendix, B. provides his readers with excerpts of key works of the period under discussion, taken from the relevant works of Cramer, Herder, de Wette, Hitzig, Ewald, Hengstenberg, Delitzsch and Duhm. The monograph goes back to a dissertation written under the supervision of Otto Kaiser; the originally rather limited scope has been much widened to produce a proper Forschungsgeschichte which provides readers with an overview of key approaches to the exegesis of the Psalms in a period of great changes, an era which laid the foundation for the fully developed form of historical, philological and critical exegesis of the Psalms. One cannot agree with some of the more idiosyncratic categorizations in this study and the author's overall view of the history of Psalms exegesis, but nevertheless this is a worthy Forschungsgeschichte of an important subject matter.

JOACHIM SCHAPER

BEAL, TIMOTHY (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts (2 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. xxii + 567 (vol. 1), viii + 607 (vol. 2). $395.00/ £255.00. ISBN 978-0-19-024139-1 (vol. 1), 978-0-19-024140-7 (vol. 2), 978-0-19-984651-1 (set).

The publisher has declined to make a review copy of this two-volume work available to the B.L., and so no assessment of the work can be made here, but it is understood that the publication contains 148 articles in alphabetical order from ‘African American Literature’ to ‘Lewis, CS.’ (in vol. 1) and from ‘MacMillan, James’ to ‘Wordsworth, William’ (in vol. 2). Concerning the biblical period itself, there are articles on ‘Hebrew Biblical Narrative’, ‘Hebrew Biblical Poetry’, ‘Music of the Bible’, ‘Ritual Art’, and Aniconism’. Concerning later cultural appropriations of biblical matters, there are entries on Jewish and Christian visual art in antiquity and in medieval times (plus Islamic visual art in the Middle Ages), as well as medieval music and ritual art, and in modern times the art of Africa, Australia and New Zealand, China, Japan, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Native American and African American communities are singled out for attention. Many modern cultural figures who have drawn upon biblical episodes or themes in their work are given individual entries: among the writers are Margaret Atwood, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Jorge Luis Borges, Lord (George) Byron, John Donne, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Johann von Goethe, Mary Gordon, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Herbert, Nikos Kazantzakis, John Keats, Stephen King, Denise Levertov, C.S. Lewis, Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melville, John Milton, Toni Morrison, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Alexander Pope, Anne Rice, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marilynne Robinson, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, John Steinbeck, Harriet Beecher Stowe, J.R.R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, John Updike, Voltaire and William Wordsworth; among the musicians are Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, Joseph Anton Bruckner, Leonard Cohen, Aaron Copland, Frances Jane Crosby, Bob Dylan, George Frideric Handel, Joseph Haydn, James MacMillan, Gustav Mahler, Felix Mendelssohn, Olivier Messiaen, Leila Naylor Morris, Henry Purcell, Igor Stravinsky, John Taverner, Isaac Watts, and Charles Wesley; and among the visual artists are Giovanni Bellini, William Blake, Caravaggio, Lucas Cranach, Gustave Doré, Albrecht Dürer, Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Colin McMahon, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens.

(BOOK LIST EDITOR)

BEN ZVI, EHUD and CHRISTOPH LEVIN (eds.), Centres and Peripheries in the Early Second Temple Period (FAT, 108; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. xiv + 469. €134.00. ISBN 978-3-16-154293-0.

This motley, yet also tightly edited and well-researched collection of articles, stemming from a workshop held in Munich in 2015, deals, as the title suggests, with ‘centre-periphery’ models and approaches to texts in the Hebrew Bible. After a comprehensive introduction by Ehud Ben Zvi, the volume contains the following 21 articles: Ehud Ben Zvi, ‘Introductory Centre/Core-Periphery Considerations and the Case of Interplaying of Rigid and Flexible Constructions of Centre and Periphery among the Literari of the Late Persian/Early Hellenistic Period’; Laurie E. Pearce, ‘Looking for Judeans in Babylonia's Core and Periphery’; Bob Becking, ‘Centre, Periphery, and Interference: Notes on the “Passover/Mazzot”-Letter from Elephantine’; Sylvie Honigman, ‘Intercultural Exchanges in the Hellenistic East: The Respective Roles of Temple, Royal Offices, Courts, and Gymnasia’; Diana Edelman, ‘Identities within a Central and Peripheral Perspective: The Use of Aramaic in the Hebrew Bible’; Francis Landy, ‘Between Centre and Periphery: Space and Gender in the Book of Judges in the Early Second Temple Period’; Hermann-Josef Stipp, ‘Jeremiah 24: Deportees, Remainees, Returnees, and the Diaspora’; Kåre Berge, ‘Are There Centres and Peripheries in Deuteronomy?’; Reinhard Müller, ‘The Altar on Mount Gerizim (Deuteronomy 27:1-8): Centre or Periphery?’; Erik Aurelius, ‘Periphery as Provocation? 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 5’; Magnar Kartveit, ‘The Temple of Jerusalem as the Centre of Affairs in the Book of Chronicles: Memories of the Past and Contemporary Social Setting’; Louis C. Jonker, ‘Being Both on the Periphery and in the Centre: The Jerusalem Temple in Late Persian Period Yehud from Postcolonial Perspective’; Gary N. Knoppers, ‘What Is the Core and What Is the Periphery in Ezra-Nehemiah?’; Juha Pakkala, ‘Centres and Peripheries in the Ezra Story’; Friedhelm Hartenstein, ‘The King on the Throne of God: The Concept of World Dominion in Chronicles and Psalm 2’; Beate Ego, ‘Jerusalem and the Nations: “Centre and Periphery” in the Zion Tradition’; Kathrin Liess, ‘Centre and Periphery in Psalm 137’; Christoph Levin, ‘The Edition of the Psalms of Ascents’; Ann-Cathrin Fiß, ‘ “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12): Mercy as the Centre of Psalm 103’; Urmas Nõmmik, ‘Qinah Meter: From Genre Periphery to Theological Centre—A Sketch’; and Peter Juhás, ‘ “Centre” and “Periphery” in the Apocalyptic Imagination: The Vision of the Ephah (Zechariah 5:5-11) and the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch as Case Study’. The volume ends with a list of contributors, a source index and an author index.

LENA-SOFIA TIEMEYER

BROOKE, GEORGE J. and PIERRE VAN HECKE (eds., with the assistance of BOB BECKING and Eibert TIGCHELAAR), Goochem in Mokum/Wisdom in Amsterdam: Papers on Biblical and Related Wisdom Read at the Fifteenth Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap, Amsterdam, July 2012 (OTS, 68; Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. vii + 180. €93.00. ISBN 978-90-04-31476-4.

This book contains the following papers from the 2012 SOTS/OTW meeting in Amsterdam: ‘The Book of Ben Sira: Some New Perspectives at the Dawn of the 21st Century’ by P.C. Beentjes (concentrating on priesthood and torah); ‘The Place of Wisdom in the Formation of the Movement behind the Dead Sea Scrolls’ by G.J. Brooke (linking pre-Qumran with Qumranic wisdom); ‘The Wisdom of Job's Conclusion (Job 42:1-6)’ by D.J.A. Clines (Job is humiliated, not vindicated); ‘Ecclesiastes as Mainstream Wisdom (Without Job)’ by K.J. Dell (Proverbs-Ecclesiastes is a continuum, Job lies outside); ‘Unity, Date, Authorship and the “Wisdom” of the Song of Songs’ by J.C. Exum (a literary unity, but hardly ‘wisdom’); ‘The Substance of Job: Beginnings and Endings’ by J. Fokkelman (literary patterning; Job is finally ‘saved’); ‘An Awfully Beastly Business: Some Thoughts on behēmāh in Jonah and Qoheleth’ by A.G. Hunter (humans and animals are not so different); ‘Ecclesiastes among the Tragedians’, by J. Jarick (demonstrating a shared view of human existence); ‘The Disturbing Experience of Eliphaz in Job 4: Divine or Demonic Manifestation?’ by M.-J. Paul (demonic prompting links discourses and prologue); ‘Acquiring Wisdom: A Semantic Analysis of its Metaphorical Conceptualisations’ by P. Van Hecke (the problems of neatly classifying metaphor); ‘Aristobulus and the Universal Sabbath’ by J.C. de Vos (Sabbath demonstrates the universality of the Jewish god); and ‘Divine Judgment and Reward in Ecclesiastes’ by S. Weeks (for Qoheleth, human perception is unreliable).

PHILIP R. DAVIES

Buss, MARTIN J., Toward Understanding the Hebrew Canon: A Form-Critical Approach (Hebrew Bible Monographs, 61; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), pp. x+ 198. £50.00/€60.00/$80.00. ISBN 978-1-909697-16-4.

Both title and subtitle are seriously misleading: this is not about the canon of the Hebrew Bible, nor is it (except occasionally) a form-critical study. It is a collection of essays, nearly all already published, on a variety of topics to do with the social-scientific and anthropological study of the Hebrew Bible. They are marked by wide knowledge of comparative material, especially from Chinese and Indian sources, and from the study of psychology and philosophy. Almost all are original and informative, and will be of interest to scholars well beyond the readership the title would lead one to expect. At times I found the style opaque, but the topics discussed are inherently difficult. The essays are ‘The Language of the Divine “I” ‘, ‘Self-Theory and Theology’, ‘The Meaning of History’, ‘The Distinction between Civil and Criminal Law in Ancient Israel’, ‘Logic and Israelite Law’, ‘Law and Ethics in Traditional China and Israel’, ‘Pentads of Ancient India and the Biblical Decalogue’, ‘Prophecy in Ancient Israel’, ‘An Anthropological Perspective upon Prophetic Call Narratives’, ‘Role and Selfhood in Hebrew Prophecy’, ‘Tragedy, Comedy, and Irony in Hosea’, ‘The Psalms of Asaph and Korah’, ‘Dialogue in and among Genres’, and ‘Hosea as a Canonical Problem: With Attention to the Song of Songs’. There is a cover illustration, uncredited, of the frontispiece of the Codex Amiatinus (Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence), showing Ezra with the volumes of the Bible on the shelves beside him.

JOHN BARTON

CLAASSENS, L. JULIANA M., Claiming her Dignity: Female Resistance in the Old Testament (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016), pp. xxvi + 165. $31.49. ISBN 978-0-8146-8419-1.

In this volume C. addresses the stories of several OT women using a feminist approach. The volume's introduction and conclusion frame four chapters, each examining an aspect of the theme of female resistance to the dehumanization of violence. C.'s categories are clearly laid out: Chapter 1, Resisting the Violence of War; Chapter 2, Resisting the Violence of Rape; Chapter 3, Resisting the Violence of Patriarchy Heterarchy; and Chapter 4, Resisting the Violence of Precarity. In the third chapter C. introduces a useful terminological shift from ‘patriarchy’ to ‘heterarchy’, a shift that reflects a carefully observed differentiation between direct, structural and cultural violence. She concurs with Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's claim that the gender-driven term ‘patriarchy’ is insufficient for describing hierarchies of power that exist across genders, proposing that Carol Meyers’ use of the term ‘heterarchy’ is more useful for describing the intersection of many power structures that might exist simultaneously in a given culture. This shift acknowledges that oppression and injustice can exist at the systemic and cultural levels, affecting not only females and males, but entire groups that fall into the lower level of certain hierarchies. C.'s exegesis is peerless and her observations are well articulated from the perspective of contemporary feminist interpretation. There is a tendency to jump straight from the biblical text to the present context and some comments on the history of interpretation would not be amiss in this up-to-date discussion which will be of interest to academics and clergy alike.

ELIZABETH R. HAYES

COOGAN, MICHAEL, The Ten Commandments: A Short History of an Ancient Text (New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. xiv + 176. 9 figures. $18.00/ £10.99. ISBN 978-0-300-21250-1 (paperback).

This study of the Ten Commandments questions the Decalogue's promotion in American public life. After briefly narrating the story of the Ten Commandment Monuments and the groups behind them, the book turns to the Decalogue's biblical and ancient setting. ANE treaties are explored as the genre for the Exodus narrative and its specific covenant setting is stressed. The documentary hypothesis of JEDP is employed to explain the differences between Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 34. It is concluded that these apodictic commands are very ancient, predating the casuistic laws and possibly originating with a Moses figure who led an Exodus and redefined Israelite religion. However, the three versions show adaptations for new settings, indicating that preservation not consistency was important. The core of the book seeks to uncover the original meaning of the Words in a patriarchal ancient society. The first three commandments, unique to Israel, indicate a henotheism that archaeology has demonstrated was never achieved. The final six were secular, agrarian with ANE roots. In concluding chapters the Christian privileging of the Decalogue and its rise to prominence is traced, and the implicit critique of American usage is made explicit. The Ten Commandments came from a specific context and society whose values are not ours. Although preserved and revered they were never set in stone. Their spirit not their letter is what needs preserving. Perhaps because of the non-specialist audience, the scholarship, at times, seems simplistic and selective, although challenging, perhaps, for its audience.

ELIZABETH ANN HARPER

DAVIDOVICH, TAL, Esther, Queen of the Jews: The Status and Position of Esther in the Old Testament (ConBOT, 59; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), pp. 164. $29.50. ISBN 978-1-57506-818-3.

Having previously studied royal concubines in the OT (see B.L. 2008, p. 34), D. here turns her attention to the status of Esther in the OT, and seeks to clarify that status based on an analysis of the Esther text, together with information about Persian royal women in the Achaemenid period and intertextual comparisons with other biblical passages. This is the same combination of methodologies as she used for the previous book, and the results are similarly frustrating. The main problem is D.'s use of the biblical text: although she claims that she is studying how Esther is pictured in the text rather than anything else, and pays lip-service to the idea that the book of Esther might not be historical, her analysis of it—as of all the other biblical passages to which she refers— implies that it is indeed historical. This gives rise to some strange moments, such as when D. compares Esther being taken into the king's harem with the three wife-sister narratives from Genesis, and writes as if all four narratives are historical; if she is aware of the possibility of them being literary tropes, it is not evident from her analysis. Her final conclusion is that Esther held the position of Resh Galuta, or Head of the Diaspora, ‘the one woman in Jewish history who is known to have been … the formal leader of all the Jews in exile’ (p. 143), and I can't help feeling that the entire study is motivated by the desire to reach this (historical) conclusion. On the production side, there needed to be rather more careful proofreading for both English usage and Hebrew pointing.

DEBORAH W. ROOKE

DEGEAR, ELIZABETH BERNE, ‘For She Has Heard ‘: The Standing Stone in Joshua 24 and the Development of a Covenant Symbol (Hebrew Bible Monographs, 70; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015), pp. viii + 237. £50.00/€60.00/$75.00. ISBN 978-1-909697-74-4.

The decision whether to agree to review a book may depend on whether it appears to fall within the reviewer's areas of competence. But sometimes the reviewer will be taken out of his/her comfort-zone, into unexpected but rewarding places. That was this reader's experience with this volume which began life as a Union Theological Seminary doctoral dissertation and which combines a ‘passion’ (D.'s word) for the Hebrew Bible with the interests of the chaplain of a psychiatric unit. Part I offers a useful survey of scholarship on Joshua 24, Shechem's sanctuaries, standing stones in the Bible, and standing stones in the ANE. Part II focuses on the possible symbolic functions of the standing stone in Joshua, in particular its function in terms of treaty-witnessing. It raises the issue of who is/are the witness(es) symbolized in ch. 24, and considers the possibility that a variety of traditions are here integrated. ‘By the time the final stone is placed in Joshua 24, readers from a variety of traditions have found their covenantal traditions related at some point in the story’ (p. 93). Part III applies psychoanalytic theories which, for a reader unfamiliar with the territory, offered a number of suggestive perspectives, including that the author of Joshua relates to various Israelite communities and their practices ‘as “part-object Israels” that are in turn aspects of an encompassing “whole-object Israel”’ (p. 173) and that the stone may symbolize the ‘matrilineal connections in Israel's relationship with the divine’ (p. 186). Part IV suggests possible applications to worshipping communities today.

ADRIAN CURTIS

DI PEDE, ELENA and DONATELLA SCAIOLA (eds.), The Book of the Twelve—One Book or Many? Metz Conference Proceedings, 5-7 November 2015 (FAT, II/91; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. vi + 209. €64.00. ISBN 978-3-16-154553-5.

This relatively slim volume of ten essays, five in English and five in French, stems from a conference in Metz, France, in 2015. The articles focus on two interrelated questions: (1) should the Book of the Twelve be read as one book or as twelve separate texts, and (2) should a text be interpreted as part of an individual book and/or as part of the Twelve? The majority of the contributors, as well as the volume as a whole, suggests that the Book of the Twelve is indeed a book and also more than a sum of its individual texts. After a comprehensive introduction by the two editors, the volume contains the following articles: Ehud Ben Zvi, ‘Remembering Twelve Prophetic Characters from the Past’; James D. Nogalski, ‘The Book of the Twelve Is Not a Hypothesis’; Yair Zakovitch, ‘Do the Last Verses of Malachi (Mal 3:22-24) Have a Canonical Function? A Biblical Puzzle’; Innocent Himbaza, ‘Les thèmes théologiques de Malachie et le concept du livre des XII Prophétes’; Guido Benzi, ‘Rhetorical Analysis, Interpretation, and Location of Hosea 1-3 in its Relation to the Twelve Prophets Scroll’; Hervé Tremblay, ‘Vox clamantis in deserto? L'enseignement d'Amos sur la justice sociale dans le contexte de la théorie de l'unité des douze’; Claude Lichtert, ‘Entre rappels et renversements: les particularités littéraires et théologiques du récit de Jonas’; Christophe L. Nihan, ‘Remarques sur la question de 1'“unité” des XII’; Jean-Daniel Macchi, ‘Ésaïe dans les XII: Ésaïe 2,2-5 et son parallèle de Mchée 4,1-5’; and Donatella Scaiola, ‘The Twelve, one or many Books? A Theological Proposal’. The volume ends with an index of sources and an index of authors.

LENA-SOFIA TIEMEYER

EMBRY, BRAD (ed.), Megilloth Studies: The Shape of Contemporary Scholarship (Hebrew Bible Monographs, 78; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2016), pp. x + 167. £60.00/$95.00/€85.00. ISBN 978-1-910928-00-4.

This collection of papers from the SBL Megilloth Consultation Group gives attention to a number of issues in the interpretation of the Five Scrolls, primarily in terms of intratextual connections (relationships between the Scrolls themselves) but also in terms of intertextual connections (relationships between these Scrolls and biblical texts outside the Five). After an introduction by the editor, the papers are: Andrew R. Davis, ‘Ruth and Esther as the Thematic Frame of the Megilloth’ (noting the remoteness of God in Ruth and the hiddenness of God in Esther, and detecting resonances of this ‘experiential’ theology throughout the Five Scrolls); Leonard Greenspoon, ‘Esther, Vashti, Ruth, and Naomi: Kindred Heroines in Megilloth’ (exploring similar literary expressions and interests in these two subversive-heroine stories); Brittany N. Melton, ‘Miqreh in Retrospect: An Illumination of Mìqreh in Light of Ecclesiastes 3.1-8 and the Book of Ruth’ (suggesting that these two Scrolls foster a clearer theological definition of the term for ‘fate’); Orit Avnery, ‘Ruth and Esther: A Journey through Gender, Ethnicity and Identity’ (investigating these two writings’ contributions to Jewish conceptualizations of ‘otherness’ and national identity); Mayer I. Gruber and Shamir Yona, ‘A Male Speaker's Obsession with the Feminine: The Strange Case of Lamentations 3’ (analysing the feminine language and characters that are deployed by the male speaker to give full articulation to his feelings); Stuart Weeks, ‘Solomon and Qoheleth’ (making a case that Ecclesiastes is best read among the Megilloth rather than the Wisdom Literature); Denise Flanders, ‘The Covenant Curses Transposed: Allusions in Lamentations to Deuteronomy 28-32 and Leviticus 26’ (tracing an intertextual dialogue on whether the destruction of Jerusalem exceeded the covenant stipulations set out in the Pentateuch); Janelle Peters, ‘Permanent and Temporary Ethnicities in the Esther Scroll’ (wrestling with the Jewish and Persian sides of Esther's identity); Garrett Galvin, ‘Horizontal Theology in the Megilloth’ (identifying common themes in these Scrolls concerning human suffering and human relationships); Timothy Stone, ‘The Macro-Structure of the Megilloth’ (addressing the links at each end of the Five Scrolls with the neighbouring books—Proverbs with Ruth on one end and Daniel with Esther on the other—and thereby clarifying how the Five work as a collection); and Megan Fullerton Strollo, ‘Initiative and Agency: Towards a Theology of the Megilloth’ (delving into the tension that exists in these writings between divine agency and human activity). A fine collection of studies, amply demonstrating the value of considering the Megilloth as a meaningful collection of dialogue-partners rather than an entirely random cluster of idiosyncratic individual scrolls.

JOHN JARICK

EXUM, J. CHERYL and DAVID JA. CLINES (eds.), Biblical Reception 3 (2014) (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015), pp. xi + 329. £80.00/€100.00/$130.00. ISBN 978-1-909697-85-0.

Fourteen essays highlight the breadth of the Bible's reception history. The subjects examined include eight devoted to the visual arts, one each to literature (sexual politics in the book of Ruth, by Mikael Larsson) and to music (the songs of Leonard Cohen, by Valerie Nicolet-Anderson), and four to the general subject area of ‘Reception History’. The visual arts begin with a study of the Tree of Life in fourteenth-century Italy, by Philip Esler, followed by Catherine C. Taylor's review of a fifth-century Italian sarcophagus depicting the story of salvation (accompanying illustrations assist the exposition); then three themes from Genesis are dealt with (the sixth day of creation, by Yaffa Englard; the death of Cain, by John Byron; and the separation of Abraham from Lot, by Dan Rickett); and then three more contemporary themes are explored (Kalle Lundahl looks at divine approval of human violence in the painting of Mario Schifano and Vincent van Gogh; David Tollerton looks at press photography; and Christopher Meredith looks at Doris Salcedo's sculpture ‘Shibboleth’). The final four essays on ‘Reception History’ are contributed by Holly Morse (analysing that particular appellation in biblical studies), Elisabeth Birnbaum and Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher (considering the motif of ‘vanity’ as ascribed to Solomon), Agnethe Siquans (Origen's fifth homily on Exodus provides the basis for a wider study of ancient interpretation of biblical narrative), and Arie Versluis (reviewing the command to exterminate the Canaanites). Altogether this represents a worthy collection of material illustrating several major biblical themes.

RONALD E. CLEMENTS

FOCKEN, FRIEDRICH-EMANUEL, Zwischen Landnahme und Königtum. Literarkritische und redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Anfang und Ende der deuterono-mistischen Richtererzählungen (FRLANT, 258; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), pp. 252. Numerous tables. €80.00 (print), €64.99 (PDF). ISBN 978-3-525-54039-8 (print), 978-3-647-54039-9 (PDF); ISSN 2198-1183.

This clear, well-structured redactional analysis of select texts from the Deuteronomistic History originated as a Heidelberg dissertation supervised by Jan Christian Gertz. F. sets out to test the hypothesis that the basic deuteronomistic layer of the book of Judges was composed subsequent to the priestly Hexateuch and the original deuteronomistic layer of Samuel-Kings, and as a result fills the gap between those two great historical works. The majority of the book is taken up with a redactional analysis of the story of Joshua's death and the introduction to the time of the Judges in Judg. 2.6-3.6, the story of Abimelech in Judg. 8.33-9.57, the story of Jephthah in Judg. 10.6-12.7 as well as the tale about Samuel's defeat of the Philistines in 1 Sam. 7.2-17 and the indictment of Israel and Judah in 2 Kgs 17.7-23. Since F. shares the same methodological instincts as those who have proposed that Judges is a bridge between the Hexateuch and a history of the Hebrew monarchies, it is perhaps no great surprise that he establishes his hypothesis. The deuteronomistic composer of Judges was also familiar with the list of lesser judges (Judg. 10.1-5; 12.8-15) and early versions of the Jephthah story and Samuel's defeat of the Philistines, which he incorporated into his narrative and reworked. The indictment of Israel and Judah in 2 Kgs 17.7-20, however, is a later composition that arose in at least two stages.

NATHAN MACDONALD

GANE, ROY E. and ADA TAGGAR-COHEN (eds.), Current Issues in Priestly and Related Literature: The Legacy of Jacob Milgrom and Beyond (SBL Resources for Biblical Study, 82; Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2015), pp. xxiv + 523. 56 illustrations. $69.95 (paperback); $89.95 (hardback). ISBN 978-1-6283-7121-5 (paperback), 978-1-6283-7123-9 (hardback).

This substantial volume of essays derives largely from papers read at the 2011 International (London) and Annual Meetings of the SBL that celebrated Jacob Milgrom's many significant contributions to the areas indicated by its title. Following the editors’ introduction and a bibliography of Milgrom's writings published after those listed in the 1995 Festschrift Pomegranates and Golden Bells, the contributions are arranged in five sections. ‘Part 1: Interpretation of Priestly and Holiness Texts’ comprises Michael B. Hundley, ‘Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting? The Dual Nature of the Sacred Tent in the Priestly Texts’; Naphtali S. Meshel, ‘What Is a Zoeme? The Priestly Inventory of Sacrificial Animals’; Elizabeth W. Goldstein, ‘Women and the Purification Offering: What Jacob Milgrom Contributed to the Intersection of Women's Studies and Biblical Studies’; Elaine Adler Goodfriend, ‘Leviticus 22:24: A Prohibition of Gelding for the Land of Israel?’; and Daniel I. Block, ‘“The Meeting Places of God in the Land”: Another Look at the Towns of the Levites’. In ‘Part 2: Composition of Priestly and Holiness Texts’ there are four essays: David P. Wright, ‘Profane Versus Sacrificial Slaughter: The Priestly Recasting of the Yahwist Flood Story’; Megan Warner, ‘The Holiness School in Genesis?’; Jeffrey Stackert, ‘The Composition of Exodus 31:12-17 and 35:1-3 and the Question of Method in Identifying Priestly Strata in the Torah’; and Roy E. Gane, ‘Didactic Logic and the Authorship of Leviticus’. The four essays in ‘Part 3: Literary Structure of Priestly and Holiness Texts’ are Moshe Kline, ‘Structure Is Theology: The Composition of Leviticus’; Deborah L. Ellens, ‘Fundamental Structure as Methodological Control for Evaluating Introverted Literary Structures in Leviticus’; David Tabb Stewart, ‘Leviticus 19 as Mini-Torah’; and Susan Zeelander, ‘The End of Korah and Others: Closural Conventions in Priestly Narratives of Numbers’. ‘Part 4: Relationships between Priestly, Holiness, and Deuteronomic Texts’ has Esias E. Meyer, ‘Leviticus 17, Where P, H, and D Meet: Priorities and Presuppositions of Jacob Milgrom and Eckart Otto’; and Georg Fischer SJ, ‘A Need for Hope? A Comparison between the Dynamics in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28-30’. ‘Part 5: Extrabiblical Texts Relating to Priestly Texts’ consists of Victor Avigdor Hurowitz ‭ל״ז‬, ‘ “For Instruction Shall Come Forth from Zion”: Biblical and Mesopotamian Temples as Palaces of Justice’; Ada Taggar-Cohen, ‘Between Ḥerem, Ownership, and Ritual: Biblical and Hittite Perspectives’; Thomas Kazen, ‘Purity and Persia’; and Hannah K. Harrington, ‘Intermarriage in the Temple Scroll: Strategies of Neutralization’. A list of contributors and indexes of primary texts and modern authors complete a volume that is full of interesting and sometimes challenging contributions. No doubt articles collected in this book will provide numerous avenues, highways and byways for future research, particularly into areas to which Milgrom contributed so much.

GEORGE NICOL

GILLINGHAM, SUSAN, A Journey of Two Psalms: The Reception of Psalms 1 and 2 in the Jewish and Christian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. xx + 344. 38 colour plates, 5 b/w in-text illustrations. £36.99. ISBN 978-0-1996-5241-9.

G.'s work on the reception history of the Psalms is well known, and something of a benchmark for an enterprise which has now surely established its legitimacy as a core part of the work of biblical interpretation. This volume represents a kind of spin-off, in which the author uses the resources of a full monograph to explore two psalms in detail, in a way not possible in her earlier Psalms through the Centuries, vol. 1 (2007; reviewed in B.L. 2008, p. 95). In modern critical study Psalms 1 and 2 are regularly understood as a pair serving to introduce the Psalter as a whole, representing respectively the themes of Torah and meditation on the one hand, and king and messiah on the other. What this in-depth review reveals, among many other riches, is just how modern and atypical is this scholarly convention. While there are undoubted linguistic and structural parallels which connect these psalms, they have equally often been read separately. G. covers their reception in ancient Judaism, early Christianity, Rabbinic and Medieval Judaism, from the early Middle Ages to the Reformation, in liturgy, visual exegesis, musical interpretation and English literature, and concludes with a consideration of modern debates and issues. Richly illustrated and informed by a generous and wide-ranging scholarship, this book is a fine addition to the field of Receptionsgeschichte.

ALASTAIR G. HUNTER

GOLDSTEIN, ELIZABETH W., Impurity and Gender in the Hebrew Bible (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), pp. viii + 138. $75.00/£49.95 (hardback); $74.99/£49.95 (e-book). ISBN 978-1-4985-0080-7 (hardback), 978-1-4985-0081-4 (e-book).

G.'s reworked PhD dissertation addresses the thorny (or rather, the bloody) question of how the terminology of female menstrual impurity comes to be used as a metaphor for moral sin, with resultant negative consequences for women. She traces a trajectory from the Pentateuchal Priestly materials (P), through the Holiness code (H), into Ezekiel, then through Ezra-Nehemiah and finally into the Qumran materials. According to this trajectory, P attributes equivalent ritual impurity to the bodily emissions of both women and men, and neither gender's impurities have connotations of immorality. H, however, alters the import of having sex with a menstruating woman, which according to P results in ritual impurity, but according to H can lead to defilement of the land and is classed with other sexual sins such as bestiality. This lays the groundwork for associating female blood, and thus women, with moral depravity, a theme taken up by Ezekiel who explicitly uses menstrual blood as a metaphor for immorality. The association once made is continued and strengthened by its use in Ezra-Nehemiah and the Qumran Scrolls; and though concern about men's impurity from male genital discharges gradually diminished after the destruction of the temple, because of the psychological link between menstrual blood and immorality there has been no similar diminution in concern about women's impurity from menstruation. A thought-provoking study that is not without its weaknesses: The chronology of P and H needs a stronger defence; also, I don't know that Ezekiel fudges the talk about blood quite as much as G. thinks he does, and certain aspects of that case are overstated. But nevertheless, a useful contribution.

DEBORAH W. ROOKE

HOPF, MATTHIAS, WOLFGANG OSWALD and STEFAN SEILER (eds.), Heiliger Raum. Exegese und Rezeption der Heiligtumstexte in Ex 24-40 (Theologische Akzente, 8; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016), pp. 200. €35.00. ISBN 978-3-17-031826-7.

This collection of essays on the Tabernacle chapters in Exodus is based on contributions to a 2014 Symposium that marked the retirement of H. Utzschneider. The first section on the OT context begins with a basic summary of the Tabernacle's content and purpose by H. Utzschneider, who suggests that it is a thought-model with significant metaphoric character. R. Albertz provides a brief synchronic reading of this section, but then proposes a complex compositional history. D. Markl explores the relation of the chapters to the wider context of Exodus and emphasizes its archetypal character in relation to both the Solomonic and the postexilic Temple. The second section explores the reception of the Tabernacle in antiquity, beginning with a discussion by W. Kraus of the hermeneutics of the Epistle to the Hebrews. K. Brodersen then looks at the way in which the Jerusalem Temple was regarded as a Hellenistic sanctuary. W. Gross sets out why Augustine, on the basis of the LXX and the Vetus Latina, locates the entrances to the Court and the Holy Place on the West side, rather than the usual modern view that they were in the East. It thus becomes similar to a Christian basilica. The final section introduces contemporary perspectives. K. Raschzok relates the texts to the discussion of what counts as holy space in the Evangelical Lutheran tradition. H. Kress briefly sets the Tabernacle in the context of both the ANE and modern architecture. Finally there is a sermon by S.A. Nitsche on the significance of Haggai's approach to the Temple. As a whole this collection demonstrates the exegetical and theological value of taking seriously how God is revealed through a building with a specific material and spatial character.

PHILIP JENSON

HORNSBY, TERESA J. and DERYN GUEST, Transgender, Intersex, and Biblical Interpretation (Semeia Studies, 83; Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2016), pp. viii +123. $42.95 (hardback), $27.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-8841-4156-3 (hardback), 978-1-6283-7135-2 (paperback).

This short but informative book aims to address the reluctance to engage with and often open hostility towards transgendered and intersex people in theological communities, both religious and academic. By using a strong body of anthropological and gender studies research, Hornsby and Guest point out the key reasons behind such exclusion from discourse and simultaneously identify that the historically and culturally maintained gender binary is a fallacy. Hornsby and Guest then approach biblical texts with a trans hermeneutic to highlight what can be gleaned when one problematizes the gender binary in texts. Rather than their approach being limited to use by trans and intersex people only, their methodology has far-reaching implications for all hermeneut-ical approaches to gender in the Bible—a topic that often relies heavily on feminist scholarship—and shows the need to reveal the construction of gender as presented in biblical texts. Furthermore, it is particularly welcome given the growing popular discourse about non-binary, trans and intersex people in contemporary society. In particular, Guest's analysis of Jehu's masculinity and Jezebel's female masculinity in 2 Kings 9-10 skilfully highlights this text's attempt to create boundaries around the male and female genders and to reject that which is abject.

HOLLY THOMPSON

JACKSON, KEN, Shakespeare and Abraham (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), pp. xii + 172. $27.00. ISBN 978-0-268-03271-5 (print), 978-0-083557-7 (e-book).

The thesis here is that scholarship's inability to locate Shakespeare on the Christian spectrum is not because Shakespeare was a secularist but due rather to his deep interest in religious questions which actually comes close to our own secular worldview, particularly our secular ethics grounded in a respect for openness to the ‘other’, as demonstrated by his fascination with Abraham's ‘near-killing’ of Isaac (Gen. 22). This is examined in some detail, unearthing allusions and reflections in six Shakespearean plays with ‘scenes of child killing (or near-killing)’ (namely Henry VI Part 3, King John, Richard II, Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, and Timon of Athens), and an introductory chapter on ‘The Wakefield Cycle Play and the Interpretative Tradition’ to show how Shakespeare dramatically thinks through the relationship between religion, sovereignty, law and justice. In the trial scene and forced conversion of Shylock to Christianity in The Merchant of Venice, for example, what stands out is that the religion of Shakespearean drama is primarily a desire ‘to give oneself absolutely to the “other” that cannot be known’, a desire ‘inextricably intertwined with a secular or existential worldview’. The link is akin more to philosophy with Shakespeare as a bridge between two worlds (religion and postmodern philosophy) and for that reason has something to offer to both worlds as well as to Shakespearean studies with a potential to enable all parties to listen to each other, but is the chasm too wide and is it so clearly facing one way as to make two-way traffic difficult if not impossible?

ALEC GILMORE

JONES, NORMAN W., The Bible and Literature: The Basics (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. viii + 172. £14.99 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-415-73886-6 (paperback), 978-0-415-73884-2 (hardback), 978-1-315-72713-4 (e-book).

J. writes ‘for those who do not know the Bible well or perhaps at all’ (p. 2), and thus seeks to lead his prospective English Literature students to know enough of the Bible to enjoy (modern) literature. Despite the subtitle (‘the basics’), the results are surprisingly incisive. The bulk of the book explores four core themes of religious/theological complexity: mystery, insofar as biblical narrative resolves into comprehensible plot(s) or not; friendship, by way of exploring intimate relationships and the miraculous nature of love; the struggle against injustice, when such relationships are broken or love betrayed; and heroism, with the concomitant restoration or recreation of relationship. In each case J. rehearses biblical materials, and then considers examples from literature that draw upon the theme, such as the Wife of Bath's tale with regard to love, or post-colonial novels that seek a reorientated justice. A lengthy introduction is more properly ‘basic’: taking David and Bathsheba along with Nathan's parable as a parade example of literary biblical text, and then demonstrating a reading of Shakespeare and Harry Potter enriched by awareness of biblical material. J. offers here a useful threefold categorization of allusion, resonance and contribution to broader cultural trends. A final chapter examines literary style, exploring the impact of the KJV on fictional language, and briefly surveying translations. This is an unexpectedly rich primer for literature students, which will leave them well placed to explore complex theological and ideological themes in literature with an awareness of how the Bible resources such discussion.

RICHARD S. BRIGGS

KALMANOFSKY, AMY, Gender-Play in the Hebrew Bible: The Ways the Bible Challenges Its Gender Norms (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biblical Criticism, 2; London and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 204. £85.00. ISBN 978-1-1382-1658-7.

This book highlights the employment of gender-play in the Hebrew Bible by a number of different characters. In seven chapters K. studies Eve and Adam; Deborah, Barak, Yael, and Sisera; Manoah, Manoah's wife, Samson, and Delilah; Jezebel and Ahab; the Shunammite and Elisha; Rebecca and Isaac; and Jeremiah. In each chapter K. argues that the use of gender-play—that is, the exhibition of behaviour of the opposing gender—undermines gender normativity, usually with unfavourable consequences. As a result, biblical texts are indicating that such subversive traits should be discouraged in favour of heteronormativity. Ultimately, she argues, the return to a binary understanding of gender restores the patriarchal ideology of the narrative, with God characterized as the ultimate male figure. The close attention paid to character construction in the text is commendable; K. employs a great deal of exegetical skill to highlight specific examples of subversive behaviour in the text, particularly in the relationships between characters. However, by applying her thesis to narratives from different books of the Hebrew Bible, there is a tendency to make generalizations about biblical texts that do not necessarily fit comfortably with each individual book or that raise further questions. Furthermore, by analysing characters’ depictions using dualities such as masculine/feminine and active/passive, for example, behaviour is neatly categorized as belonging to either one or the other side of the gender binary. This means that while gender-play subverts the gender of the character engaging in it, the subversion is limited to exhibiting characteristics of the opposite gender only, and it is firmly situated within an androcentric framework. This approach does not allow for the possibility of non-binary behaviour or more than two genders, and additionally it has the effect of ascribing a negative value judgment to that which is ‘female’.

HOLLY THOMPSON

KAPLAN, JONATHAN, My Perfect One: Typology and Early Rabbinic Interpretation of Song of Songs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. xiv + 225. £47.99. ISBN 978-0-1993-5933-2.

The strength of this volume lies in its collection and analysis of Tannaitic interpretations of the Song of Songs. K. reads the texts perceptively and sensitively, adding many new insights. Less satisfactory is his attempt to argue that the hermeneutics of these rabbinic readings of the Song is better characterized as typological or figural than allegorical. Allegory is notoriously difficult to define. The ancients used it in loose and contradictory ways, and modern literary theorists have not been notably successful in reaching a consensus on its definition either. So in saying the rabbinic hermeneutic of Song of Songs is not allegorical, it is hard to be sure what is being denied. If, as Heraclitus says in his Homeric Problems 5.2, an allegory is a trope ‘which says one thing but signifies something other than what it says’, he would surely have recognized the rabbinic reading of the Song as allegorical. Typology is also a slippery term. It is commonly used in the history of Christian Bible interpretation to denote a reading of certain events in OT history as prefiguring or adumbrating events under the new dispensation inaugurated by Christ. In other words, one set of historical events is read in the light of another set of historical events (e.g. the Binding of Isaac and the death of Christ). But how can this apply to Song of Songs? Rabbinic interpretation certainly historicizes the Song, setting much of its psycho-drama at the time of the Exodus and the giving of the Torah at Sinai, but there is only one series of events in view here: there is no distinction between type and antitype. It would also have been useful to have said more about critical problems regarding the nature and dating of the Tannaitic corpus, before drawing large conclusions about how the exposition found therein of the Song compares or contrasts with Amoraic readings. K. simply accepts the view that the so-called Tannaitic Midrashim (along with Mishnah and Tosefta) had effectively reached final form by the end of the third century. This is certainly the consensus, but it is not above question. He admits that the texts were compiled in the Amoraic period, and notes in passing that an extensive stam (anonymous voice) was involved in their compilation. Is this voice Tannaitic?

PHILIP ALEXANDER

KÄSER, ANDREAS, Literaturwissenschaftliche Interpretation und historische Exegese. Die Erzählung von David und Batseba als Fallbeispiel (BWANT, 211; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016), pp. 298. €95.00. ISBN 978-3-17-031492-4.

This intriguing study began life as K.'s doctoral thesis at Tübingen (under the supervision of Walter Dietrich), completed in 2007, though it has been developed since then into this form. The study is a helpful exploration of the differences between the historically oriented models of exegesis and their focus on diachronic elements and the sort of literary approaches which have become more common in recent years. K. is clearly well informed about narrative approaches to the OT, engaging with a wide range of scholarship, both the earlier examples of literary approaches and also more recent examples while also engaging with the work of key narratologists, especially G. Genette as well as those who have focused more specifically on the poetics of narrative in the OT. All of this serves to establish the possibilities of a more literary reading of the OT. With this developed, the second half of the book is focused on close readings of 2 Samuel 11 and 12.1-25. Consistent with his goal of comparing the literary approach with historical models, K. first outlines the main approaches which dominated study of these chapters through much of the twentieth century before providing close readings of each passage and then exploring how other synchronic readers have examined these chapters. A brief concluding chapter ties the whole together. This ought to be standard reading for those exploring literary approaches to these chapters as well as those interested in the larger methodological issues.

DAVID G. FIRTH

KESSLER, RAINER, Die Querverweise im Pentateuch. Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung der expliziten Querverbindungen innerhalb des vorpriesterlichen Pentateuchs (Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums, 59; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015), pp. 325. €60.70/£49.00. ISBN 978-3-631-66558-9 (print), 978-3-653-05908-3 (e-book).

What any reader of this volume needs to know is that it is a publication of a thesis submitted at Heidelberg University in 1972, with no revisions, or additions to the bibliography. The reason given for the delay is that the thesis was regarded at the time as too out-of-step with the prevalent consensus for the documentary hypothesis. In particular, it brought into question the work of Hans Walter Wolff, who happened to be K.'s supervisor, who at the time was concerned to identify the characteristics of the fragmentary E source. The reason for publication now is to make the work more widely available. K.'s methodology is to identify and investigate cross-references (Querverweise) within the Pentateuch, in other words, places in the text which explicitly link narrative units to the wider, literary context. For K. it is methodologically crucial that this exercise is carried out before any assumptions about continuous documentary sources. In retrospect, we might regret that one limitation of this work was the exclusion of texts considered to be from the Priestly source. Summing up, K. identifies various narrative blocks (Erzählungsgruppen), some more coherent than others, and each with their own characteristics and origins. He finds little evidence of a wider literary unity before what he identifies as the D-Bearbeiting. Apart from that, and the Priestly passages, only four passages assume a wider literary work (Gen. 15.13-6; 46.1-5a; 48.21; Num. 20.14-16). This therefore brings into question the existence of earlier continuous sources.

KEVIN WALTON

KILCHÖR, BENJAMIN, Mosetora und Jahwetora. Das Verhältnis von Deuteronomium 12-26 zu Exodus, Levitikus und Numeri (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte, 21; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015), pp. xviii + 390. €98.00. ISBN 978-3-447-10409-8; ISSN 1439-619X.

This Leuven doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of H. Koorevaar, investigates the perceived tension between a diachronic study of Deuteronomy and a synchronic reading of Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy. In contrast to the majority of scholars, K. argues that Deuteronomy presupposes the laws of Exodus-Numbers. Additionally, K. assumes that the laws in Deuteronomy 12-26 are structured according to the Decalogue, as such an assumption serves his main thesis well and— according to him—explains the reception of the other legal material better. He does not want to show that the legal core is structured like the Decalogue but simply presupposes it. The main part of the study is devoted to analysis of Deuteronomy 12-26 and the relationship of the individual laws. Throughout the work K. assumes the priority of the legal material of the Covenant Code, which he calls Leittext. This phraseology implies that the Covenant Code provides the topic while the other laws are matched to it. This is a bold challenge to the scholarly consensus and in a way K. ‘s study is a good example of why there is such a consensus. Departing from the established consensus forces him to work with several auxiliary hypotheses. First of all, K. has to account for the lack of detailed laws regarding the priesthood in Deuteronomy. He does so by simply stating that Deuteronomy is addressed to the people (Volk) and that the priesthood is only of marginal importance. Secondly, he is forced to assume quite an extensive amount of deuteronomic material unique to Deuteronomy and he ignores inner-deuteronomic criteria for literary growth such as the Numeruswechsel. K.'s work will undoubtedly be welcomed in certain circles as it confirms the originality of the canonical order, while those of us unconvinced will make sure to be even clearer when postulating literary dependencies.

ANSELM C. HAGEDORN

KISSILEFF, BETH (ed.), Reading Genesis: Beginnings (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), pp. xii + 288. £21.99. ISBN 978-0-567-25126-8 (paperback), 978-0-567-13656-5 (e-book).

An intriguing anthology of new and reprinted essays on the book of Genesis from a vast range of interdisciplinary perspectives, in a quest to illuminate the text afresh with insights from experts working in fields as diverse as food science, business ethics, law and anthropology. In her introduction, K. explains the genesis and traces the implementation of her idea to bring together this eclectic mix, and then the contributions follow: Steven J. Brams, ‘The Creation and its Aftermath (Genesis 1-3)’; Harry R. Kissileff, ‘The Apple and Eve: A Neuropsychological Interpretation (Genesis 2-3)’; J.H.H. Weiler, ‘God's Serpent (Genesis 2-3)’; Ruth Westheimer and Jonathan Mark, ‘“It Is not Good for Man to Be Alone” (Genesis 2-3)’; Russell Jacoby, ‘Bloodlust (Genesis 4)’; Ilan Stavans, ‘On the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11)’; Susan Schept, ‘Hesed. Feminist Ethics in Jewish Tradition (Genesis 12, 24)’; Joan Nathan, ‘Famines, Feasts, and Fraternity: Food (and Drink) in the Book of Genesis (Genesis 18)’; Alan Dershowitz, ‘Why Genesis? (Genesis 18)’; Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, ‘Looking Back at Lot's Wife (Genesis 19)’; Alicia Suskin Ostriker, ‘The Face of the Other: Sarah-Hagar Then and Now (Genesis 16, 21)’; Ronald R. Krebs, ‘The Binding of Isaac and the Arts of Resistance (Genesis 22)’; Sander L. Oilman, ‘Waiting: A Jewish Paradox’; Beth Kissileff ‘ “The Matter is from God”: Retold Narrative and the Mistakes of Certainty (Genesis 24)’; Dara Horn, ‘Jacob: Some Notes on Character Development and Repentance’; Geoffrey P. Miller, ‘Contracts of Genesis (Genesis 27)’; Renan Levine, ‘Judah and his Brothers: Becoming the Leader of his Pride (Genesis 37-50)’; Moses L. Pava, ‘Imperfect Forgiveness: Joseph and his Brothers (Genesis 37-50)’; Jacqueline Osherow, ‘“That We May Live and Not Die”: Judah as Life Force of Genesis (Genesis 38)’; Jeffrey Shoulson, ‘Zaphenath, Kugelmass, and Milton (Genesis 41)’; Seth Greenberg, ‘ “They Did Not Recognize Him”: Failed Facial Recognition in the Family of Joseph (Genesis 42)’; and Steven Albert, ‘The Death of Jacob: Responding to the End of Life (Genesis 47-50)’. The result is certainly very different from what might be termed a ‘traditional’ scholarly collection on Genesis, but it is one that breathes the sense of Genesis being a text that matters and that speaks to the human condition at a fundamental level. You may not see where these essays are going when you begin to read them, but you will be amazed and delighted at where they end up.

DEBORAH W. ROOKE

KLEINERT, ULFRIED, Das Rätsel der Königin von Saba. Geschichte und Mythos (Darmstadt: Philipp von Zabern, 2015), pp. 207. Numerous images. €29.95 (print); €23.99 (e-book). ISBN 978-3-8053-4713-6 (print), 978-3-8053-4907-9 (PDF), 978-3-8053-4908-6 (ePub).

This richly illustrated book investigates the history and reception of the Queen of Sheba. K. recognizes the legendary character of the story in 1 Kgs 10.1-13 but does not shy away from offering a very readable literary-critical analysis demonstrating convincingly that Solomon's wisdom is the heart of the narrative (he finds the core of the story in vv. 1-4, 5b-8,10,13). The first chapter is devoted to the origins of the story. Here, K. investigates the larger narrative framework and its sources in 1 Kings and looks at the changing role of Sheba and Sabeans during the biblical period (eighth-fourth centuries BCE). A second chapter deals with the NT, describing how the Gospel of Matthew connects the queen to the Magi. The rest of the book is devoted to a search for traces (Spurensuche) of the Queen of Sheba in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This is done in 13 examples ranging from Josephus to the 1959 Hollywood blockbuster starring Gina Lollobrigida. Here, K. introduces his readers to such wide-ranging traditions as the eleventh-century CE alphabet of Ben Sira, the Queen of Sheba as sculpture in the cathedrals of Freiberg, Chartres and Amiens, and her depiction as Solomon's lover in Safavid miniatures. Several excursuses are devoted to the description of paintings (e.g. Raphael, Hans Holbein the Younger) and sculptures of the Queen of Sheba with excellent reproductions. An appendix contains important texts (e.g. Testament of Solomon; Sura 27.14-44; Targum Sheni; Kebra Negasi) in a German translation. A most enjoyable read!

ANSELM C. HAGEDORN

Kwon, JISEONG JAMES, Scribal Culture and Intertextuality: Literary and Historical Relationships between Job and Deutero-Isaiah (FAT, II/85; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. xix + 277. €79.00. ISBN 978-3-16-154397-5; ISSN 1611-4914.

It has long been noted that there are some close points of contact at the phraseological, stylistic and thematic levels between Job and Isaiah 40-55. In the first half of his revised Durham doctoral dissertation, K. surveys the various ways in which these connections have been explained and shows that none of them is beyond criticism. (It may be noted that his attention is largely, though not exclusively, on works that are available in English.) He then moves on to elaborate his own explanation, namely that they are both the product of basically the same scribal environment—the literati of the second half of the Persian period. This is sufficient to account for the similarities and also helps position the two works between the earlier Deuteronomic period and the later more deterministic outlook of the Hellenistic period. (Comparable, albeit rather sweeping claims are made to explain the relationship between these works and other ANE texts.) It is suggested that comparable analyses would lead to comparable results in the case of postulated connections between other books in the HB. It is undoubtedly the case that some similarities may be due to such factors (and elsewhere liturgical influence should also be considered), but K.'s thesis may be no less open to criticism than the other theories which he began by rejecting: particular connections between two bodies of literature which are not shared by others from the same period indicate that a similar scribal background may not always be a sufficient explanation on its own.

H.G.M. WILLIAMSON

LAMBERT, DAVID A., How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. xiii + 266. £47.99. ISBN 978-0-1902-1224-7.

At the heart of L. ‘s argument is a strong contrast between the modern understanding of repentance and what is to be found in the Hebrew Bible, or rather not found. The concept of repentance with which we are familiar has led us to apply a distorting ‘penitential lens’ to earlier texts. L. proposes other ways of reading these texts than as an expression of an individual interior intention. Fasting is a public encoding of doom on the body and reflects the reduced status of the individual or the community through death or potential loss, rather than the outward expression of internal feelings. Penitential prayer is an appeal for God to change a situation rather than a mirror of inward anguish. Confession of sin is an attempt to deal with the danger that sin poses. Guilt is an acknowledgement of liability. The word shuv should be understood as ceasing from sinful behaviour rather than as a heartfelt repentant attitude. Prophecy is a discourse on power rather than an appeal to the individual conscience. It is only in Hellenistic times that the modern idea of repentance emerges, as illustrated by Philo, Jubilees, Josephus, rabbinic Judaism and the NT. L.'s emphasis on strong discontinuity may hinder more nuanced approaches that explore ways to account for the continuity of the biblical tradition and the unity of human nature. However, this raises important questions about how to relate ancient texts to a modern world that is dominated by individualistic and interior categories.

PHILIP JENSON

LENEMAN, HELEN, Moses: The Man and the Myth in Music (The Bible in the Modern World, 61; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), pp. xviii + 300. 37 musical examples. £50.00/€60.00/$80.00. ISBN 978-1-909697-44-7; ISSN 1747-9630.

This is L.'s third volume on musical treatments of biblical characters and traditions, the other two being on Ruth and on David and Saul (see B.L. 2008, p. 112, and 2012, p. 136 respectively). The story of Moses is so extensive that the different compositions inevitably differ in the parts that they select for treatment, so L. structures her discussion by groups of biblical chapters, first summarizing the content of the chapters in question and then going on to discuss how the various works treat that content. This enables the story to be broken up into manageable segments. The specific discussion of content is preceded by a contextualizing chapter that provides brief biographical and musical notes on all 16 composers and their works that are treated in the volume. L.'s approach enables her to incorporate a wide range of compositions with their differing perspectives into her study, and as always, it is a revelation to see quite how many composers wrote oratorios or operas about a given biblical theme. The disadvantage of such an approach is that it is difficult to get a sense of each work as a whole, and of how an individual composer's or librettist's selection of biblical material functioned in its particular collocation. That said, there is always a methodological tension between breadth and depth of approach, and L. has clearly decided in favour of the broader approach. This does mean that the study can be little more than a catalogue, functioning at the level of information about the works rather than detailed analysis of them; but bringing to light these musical treatments of biblical texts is certainly a worthwhile enterprise in itself.

DEBORAH W. ROOKE

LENEMAN, HELEN and BARRY DOV WALFISH (eds.), The Bible Retold by Jewish Artists, Writers, Composers and Filmmakers (The Bible in the Modern World, 71; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015), pp. xvi + 297. Numerous figures. £60.00/€85.00/$95.00. ISBN 978-1-909697-93-5; ISSN 1747-9630.

This collection does what it says on the cover, which is to provide a series of studies focusing on a range of media which modern Jewish exponents have used to portray themes and characters from the HB. The contributors have a wide variety of backgrounds both professional and academic, which gives a distinctive flavour to the essays in addition to the range of media addressed. The collection is in five parts. Part I, ‘Biblical Women’, consists of ‘Reclaiming the Biblical Narrative: Tradition, Innovation and Gaze in Abel Pann's Art and Politics’ (Edna Kantorovitz Carter Southard); ‘Cultural Zionism, Gender and Orientalism: Ephraim Moses Lilien's Bibelplan and its Biblical Heroines’ (Lynne Swarts); ‘Breaking the Distaff of Silence: The Voice of Rachel the Matriarch in Modern Israeli Poetry’ (Rachel Adelman); and ‘ “What Troubles You, Hagar?” On Writing the Lyrics for Hagar’ (Ellen Frankel), followed by ‘Musical Commentary on Hagar’ by Andrea Clearfield. Part II is ‘The Aqedah’: ‘Deliverance Denied: Isaac's Sacrifice in Israeli Arts and Culture: A Jewish-Christian Exchange?’ (Yael S. Feldman); ‘Reversing the Aqedah: The Biblical and the Mystical in Grossman's To the End of the Land’ (Nehama Aschkenasy); and ‘The Death of Isaac: A Musical Retelling by Judith Lang Zymont’ (Siobhán Dowling Long). Part III, ‘Biblical Narratives in Short Stories’, consists of ‘A Transgressive Retelling of Exodus: “Plagued” by Shalom Auslander’ (Helen Leneman and Ellen Feig); and ‘Ladders to the Sky: Jewish Hopes and Dreams’ (Wendy Zierler). Part IV, ‘Esther’, contains ‘Images of Esther in Modern Jewish Art’ (Barry Dov Walfish); ‘Esther Re-imagined in Jewish Opera’ (Helen Leneman); and ‘The Book of Esther and Persecutor-Persecuted Politics in Manger's Megile-lider and Gitai's Esther’ (Naama Harel). Part V is ‘The Psalms’: ‘Setting the Psalms to Music: Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms’ (Max Stern and Helen Leneman), with ‘Composer's Notes for Psalm 84 Setting “How Lovely Is your Dwelling Place” ‘ (Victoria Bond); and ‘Spiritual Longings and their Expression in the Biblical Art of Benn’ (Roberta Lander Markus). Scripture, author and subject indexes round off the volume. With its numerous musical examples and colour illustrations, this collection is yet further testimony (if any were needed) to the richness of the biblical interpretative tradition, giving as it does a fascinating glimpse into the multifaceted world of Jewish interpretations.

DEBORAH W. ROOKE

LEVENSON, ALAN T., Joseph: Portraits through the Ages (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, publishing as the Jewish Publication Society, 2016), pp. xxvii + 283. $32.95. ISBN 978-0-8276-1250-1.

L.'s reading of the Joseph narratives is arguably unhelpfully subtitled. ‘Portraits through the Ages’ suggests a study in reception history, but this is rather an exercise in detailed attention to the text in dialogue with a crowd of Jewish witnesses, rabbinic, medieval and modern (and several nods to Thomas Mann). It operates somewhere between Robert Alter's convictions about the conscious artistry of the text and James Kugel's attention to how texts are perceived artistically regardless of their compositional complexities. Source-critical and other historical hypotheses are treated briefly in the opening and closing chapters, but L. is not primarily interested in the world behind the text. Instead he offers meticulous attention to the world in the text, alert to ambiguity, and the patient probing of recalcitrant textual details. On the core issues of how positively to assess Joseph (whether as an ethical exemplar or self-interested; or as embodying faithful diaspora resistance or falling prey to over-assimilation), L. lays out the options with clarity, and argues for a cautiously positive construal, with Joseph maintaining identification with the God of Israel even under duress. At one point L. helpfully brings the central hermeneutical issue into focus by contrasting attention to textual pressure with a modern critic whose work ‘represents the thinly veiled transposition of [that critic's] value system—agonistic strife, freedom from influence, vitalism, human autonomy—onto a biblical source’ (p. 69). Overall this offers one excellent model of how to read a biblical text with care and attention, and should become a key resource for those studying the Joseph narratives.

RICHARD S. BRIGGS

MACKIE, TIMOTHY P., Expanding Ezekiel: The Hermeneutics of Scribal Addition in the Ancient Text Witnesses of the Book of Ezekiel (FRLANT, 257; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), pp. 339. €100.00 (print), €79.99 (PDF). ISBN 978-3-525-54033-6 (print), 978-3-647-54033-7 (PDF); ISSN 2198-1183.

This book aims to examine the relationships between the production, transmission, and interpretation of the scroll of Ezekiel in the Tate Second Temple period’ using the Hebrew manuscripts from the Judean Desert and the Masoretic tradition in comparison with the Old Greek translations of the second-first centuries BCE. M. outlines a process for identifying scribal additions, which he argues can and should be grouped into two types. The first type explicates or expands the text; the second type seeks to harmonize or coordinate texts. Those in the former category all draw their form from the ‘immediately preceding or following sentences’. By contrast, those in the latter category correspond to trigger texts further afield within Ezekiel or from locutions in other texts. M. concludes that this revision, though it changes the text, is an essentially conservative activity, that seeks to preserve and increase the authority of the text of Ezekiel. While this is not a systematic activity, at least in M.'s assessment, that does not mean it is not intentional. Rather, he maintains that the scribal activity he identifies in Ezekiel was attentive to the detailed contents of the prophecies contained therein and exhibits careful reflection on that material. M.'s book is thorough, clear and well structured, the final point being important given the amount of detailed textual work it presents. Its conclusions are logical, and sit sensibly alongside related work, with recent books on Ezekiel by Crane, Lilly and Tooman coming to mind most readily. M.'s book, like those comparisons, will serve as a helpful contribution both to our understanding of the diachronic development of Ezekiel and to the process by which an authoritative collection of texts, including Ezekiel, emerged in Judaism. □

CASEY A. STRINE

MASTNJAK, NATHAN, Deuteronomy and the Emergence of Textual Authority in Jeremiah (FAT, II/87; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. xi + 261. €79.00. ISBN 978-3-16-154401-9.

This monograph is the revised version of a dissertation completed under the supervision of Dennis Pardee at the University of Chicago. M. draws upon both literary criticism and recent biblical research on the nature of allusion and inner-biblical interpretation, applying this to a detailed analysis of every literary allusion to Deuteronomy within the book of Jeremiah that meets his criteria of lexical markers and a sufficient density of verbal parallels. Following the introduction, chapters are devoted to identifying and interpreting demonstrable allusions to Deuteronomistic texts concerning the nature of prophetic authority, to the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28, to the Deuteronomistic legal material, and to the narrative framework of the D source, with an excursus that explores the direction of literary dependence between a selection of proposed allusions. M. concludes that the examined allusions together reveal ‘a dynamic relationship between an innovative text and its authoritative source’ (p. 227), as the Deuteronomistic layer of Jeremianic tradition (DtrJ) is consistently found to be affirming the authoritative status of D while simultaneously transforming its message in order to bolster its own religious authority. Although the author's conclusions with regard to the particular ideological motivations that may be discerned within reconstructed layers of Jeremianic tradition may be open to question at points, the methodological precision with which M. carries out his analysis is of considerable value in providing clarity and nuance to the ongoing discussion of the literary and hermeneutical relationship between the books of Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. □

JONATHAN D. BENTALL

MATHER, COTTON, Biblia Americana. V. Proverbs-Jeremiah (ed. Jan Stievermann; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), pp. xviii + 1101. €179.00. ISBN 978-3-16-154266-4.

This is the fifth volume of Mather's Biblia Americana, containing his commentaries and annotations to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Isaiah and Jeremiah. As in the previous volumes (e.g. B.L. 2016, p. 135), the editor provides a detailed introduction (pp. 9-136) treating main issues and topics, composition and sources, and notes on the manuscript. J. Stievermann's monograph, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana published in 2015 has to be seen as the companion volume to this critical edition. The volume is a further witness to the emergence of biblical scholarship in America, making it clear ‘that Mather was an important pioneer in establishing a Baconian tradition of evidentialism in American theology’ (p. 31). M.'s approach to the biblical text can be described as prefigurative, i.e. he aimed ‘to harmonize consideration for the human and historical dimension of the Hebrew Scriptures with proper regard to what he … regarded as their overriding divine intentions’ (p. 27). This means that M. was deeply invested in reconstructing historical backgrounds, context and authorial intention while at the same time being intensely Christocentric. How problematic such an approach could be is nicely illustrated by M.'s two commentaries on Song of Songs. He is firmly convinced that the book spoke essentially of Christ but neither seeing it as an intimate colloquy between Christ and individual believer nor seeing it as an allegorical approach can resolve ‘the mystery of Canticles to his full satisfaction’ (p. 29). The beautifully produced edition is a true treasure trove and will be a valuable tool to reception historians and exegetes alike. An extensive bibliography (highlighting the works in M.'s family library as well as the ones accessible at Harvard College) and detailed indexes conclude the fascinating volume.

ANSELM C. HAGEDORN

MAUZ, ANDREAS, Machtworte. Studien zur Poetik des ‘heiligen Textes ‘ (Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie, 70; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. xiii + 344. €134.00. ISBN 978-3-16-154193-3.

The book investigates the poetics of sacred texts. This is done from an interdisciplinary perspective, fusing insights from religious studies, biblical exegesis and systematic theology. The study falls into two parts. Part one (chs. 1-3) offers the theoretical basis, while the second part (ch. 4) studies six individual texts (Hildegard of Bingen, Liber Scivas [1141-51]; Vassula Ryden, The True Life in God [1986]; Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon [1830]; Jeremiah 36; Revelation; Silvia Wallimann, Mit Engeln beten [1991]). Here, M. does not focus on the aspect of ‘revelation’ itself but rather how the texts describe the act of revelation. According to M., poetics signifies the interface between exegesis and dogmatics. This is an interesting study of comparative hermeneutics. Biblical scholars—especially when reflecting on the various acts of writing (sacred texts) represented in the HB—will welcome additional interpretative tools that enable them to describe the processes at work. A glossary of the vocabulary of poetics, a bibliography and indexes of authors and topics conclude the study.

ANSELM C. HAGEDORN

MCKENZIE, STEVEN L. (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation (2 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. xxxvi + 559 (vol. 1), viii + 566 (vol. 2). $395.00/£255.00. ISBN 978-0-19-999335-2 (vol. 1), 978-0-19-999336-9 (vol. 2), 978-0-19-983226-2 (set).

The publisher has declined to make a review copy of this two-volume work available to the B.L., and so no assessment of the work can be made here, but it is understood that the publication contains 105 articles in alphabetical order from ‘African American Interpretation’ to ‘Materialist Criticism’ (in vol. 1) and from ‘Metaphor Theory and Biblical Texts’ to ‘Womanist Interpretation’ (in vol. 2). The range of critical studies is seen in entries on canonical criticism, form criticism, genre criticism, historical criticism, redaction criticism, source criticism, and textual criticism, as well as items on ‘Exegesis’, ‘Masora’, ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’, ‘New Historicism’, ‘Orality Studies’, and both diachronic and synchronic interpretation. Literary approaches receive attention in such articles as ‘Allegory’, ‘Cognitive Linguistics’, ‘Deconstruction’, ‘Formalist Interpretation’, Intertextuality’, ‘Literary Criticism and Literary Theory’, ‘Metaphor Theory’, ‘Narrative Hermeneutics’, ‘Rhetorical Criticism’, ‘Semiotics’, ‘Speech-Act Theory’, and both structuralist and poststructuralist interpretation. Anthropological-sociological methods are to the fore in entries on ‘Cultural Anthropology’, ‘Folklore’, ‘Mythology’, ‘Psychological Interpretation’, ‘Social Sciences’, ‘Trauma Theory’. Various ideological approaches to biblical interpretation are covered, such as ‘Disability Criticism’, ‘Ecological Criticism’, ‘Class Criticism’, ‘Economics’, ‘Race and Ethnicity’, ‘Feminist Interpretation’, ‘Masculinity Studies’, ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Interpretation’, and ‘Queer Criticism’; philosophical approaches are represented by ‘Phenomeno-logical Interpretation’ and ‘Postmodern Interpretation’, and political approaches by ‘Empire Studies’, ‘Liberation Hermeneutics’, ‘Materialist Criticism’, and ‘Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation’. Concerning Jewish interpretive traditions, there are articles on Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, and Reform approaches, as well as on ‘Rabbinic Exegesis’ and ‘Midrash’; and concerning Christian interpretive traditions, there are articles on Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical, Lutheran, Reformed, and Wesleyan approaches, as well as on ‘Patristic’, ‘Dispensationalist’, ‘Evangelical’, and ‘Mormon’ interpretations; there is also an entry on ‘Qur'anic and Islamic Interpretation of the Bible’. The contribution to biblical interpretation of ancient-world studies is covered through entries on Assyriology, Egyptology, Graeco-Roman studies, Hittitology and Ugaritology. And the modern-world contexts of interpretations are also examined, with attention to African, African-American, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asian-American and Central and South American interpretations, as well as entries on such matters as ‘Cultural Studies’, ‘Cross-Cultural Exegesis’ and ‘Pop Culture and the Bible’.

(BOOK LIST EDITOR)

MCKINLAY, JUDITH E., Troubling Women and Land: Reading Biblical Texts in Aotearoa New Zealand (The Bible in the Modern World, 59; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), pp. xxiv + 209. £60.00/€70.00/$95.00. ISBN 978-1-909697-32-4; ISSN 1747-9630.

This collection of nine studies, six of which have been previously published in different forms, focuses (as the title suggests) on the themes of women and land in biblical narratives, which are addressed from a feminist postcolonial perspective and in tandem with motifs and events from Aotearoa New Zealand's colonial past. Eight of the studies are based around female biblical characters (Miriam, the daughters of Zelophehad, Achsah, Deborah, Rahab, Michal, and two on Huldah), while the ninth— actually the second in the collection—focuses on the land theme by addressing the spy story in Numbers 13. M.'s style is engaging, highly readable, and unashamedly personal, in that she often writes in the first person. Many authors use the first person out of a sense of insecurity and the need to assert their position; but M. uses it to lead the reader through her own interrogation of the texts and the scholarly literature surrounding them, and it is often a mode in which she raises questions rather than asserts positions. Strongly conscious of her own status as a Pakeha, that is, a non-indigenous person of settler heritage, and of the power dynamics that so often result in the appropriation and manipulation of both women and land, as instanced in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand, M. courteously but trenchantly demonstrates how the ideological master-narrative in the biblical text alternately co-opts and marginalizes women as it seeks to justify its claim on the land. Read these studies, and lose your innocence.

DEBORAH W. ROOKE

O'BRIEN, JULIA M. (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender (2 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. xxii + 552 (vol. 1), x + 557 (vol. 2). $395.00/£235.00. ISBN 978-0-19-020488-4 (vol. 1), 978-0-19-020489-1 (vol. 2), 978-0-19-983699-4 (set).

The publisher has declined to make a review copy of this two-volume work available to the B.L., and so no assessment of the work can be made here, but it is understood that the publication contains 48 articles—many of them consisting of multiple sub-entries written by different specialists—in alphabetical order from ‘Asian/Asian American Interpretation’ to ‘Mujerista Criticism’ (in vol. 1) and from ‘Patriarchy/Kyriarchy’ to ‘Womanist Criticism’ (in vol. 2). Gender theory is explored in entries on ‘Gender’, ‘Heteronormativity/Heterosexism’, ‘Homosexual/Queer’, ‘Patriarchy/Kyriarchy’, ‘Queer Theory’, ‘Sexuality’, ‘Sexual Transgression’, and ‘Transgender/Third Gender/Trans-sexualism’. Various methodologies are traced under the umbrellas of ‘Disability Studies’, ‘Feminism’, ‘Gay Liberation’, ‘Historical-Critical Approaches’, Intersectional Studies’, ‘Linguistic Turn Approaches’, ‘Masculinity Studies’, ‘Mujerista Criticism’, ‘Postcolonial Approaches’, ‘Queer Readings’, ‘Reader-Oriented Criticism’, ‘Rhetorical-Hermeneutical Criticism’, ‘Social-Scientific Approaches’, and ‘Womanist Criticism’. ‘Gendered Imagery’ is explored through the different biblical genres of priestly material, the deuteronomistic history, and the wisdom, prophetic and apocalyptic literatures (as well as the gospels and Pauline literature). Aspects of the social world are investigated through composite articles—most of these containing sub-entries on the ANE, the HB, the NT, the Greek and Roman worlds, early Judaism, and the early Church—on ‘Children’, ‘Deity’, ‘Economics’, ‘Education’, ‘Family Structures’, ‘Gender Transgression’, ‘Legal Status’, ‘Male-Female Sexuality’, ‘Marriage and Divorce’, ‘Masculinity and Femininity’, ‘Political Leadership’, ‘Popular Religion and Magic’, ‘Race, Class, and Ethnicity’, ‘Religious Leaders’, ‘Religious Participation’ (including a sub-entry on ‘Sacred Prostitution’), ‘Same-Sex Relationships’, ‘Sexual Transgression’, ‘Sexual Violence’, and ‘Social Interaction’.

(BOOK LIST EDITOR)

Powery, EMERSON B. and RODNEY S. SADLER JR, The Genesis of Liberation: Biblical Interpretation in the Antebellum Narratives of the Enslaved (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), pp. xvii + 182. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-6642-3053-1.

Powery and Sadler trace the distinctiveness of African American biblical hermeneutics back to the so-called ‘slave narratives’ (autobiographical accounts written, or dictated, by those who had grown up under slavery), showing that those writers’ conviction that slavery was evil outweighed such passages as Paul's demand that servants obey their masters in what has been called a hermeneutic of moral intuition. This led to some ingenious readings. The Sabbath laws were used to argue that slavery was unchristian as slaves were not able to keep them. The racial interpretation of Noah's curse in Genesis 9 was countered by the former slave William Anderson's argument that Adam and his descendants were black as they were made of earth. It is whiteness that is a curse, as evidenced by the fate of Gehazi in 2 Kings 5. Paul's apparent acceptance of slavery is a particular problem, but Paul as a fellow sufferer is reclaimed. Examples do tend to recur throughout the book and have to bear the weight of rather broad generalizations. Nevertheless, Powery and Sadler present important material for any reader interested in how oppressed groups have wrested the Bible from oppressors who claim its authority.

HUGH S. PYPER

SCHMID, KONRAD, Schriftgelehrte Traditionsliteratur. Fallstudien zur innerbiblischen Schriftauslegung im Alten Testament (FAT, 77; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. viii + 339. €39.00. ISBN 978-3-16-154364-7.

Originally published in 2011, the present edition of this book is an unaltered ‘study edition’ of that incarnation. Readers of the 2011 version will find nothing changed here, in this collection of 14 previously published essays handily assembled here under three main headings: Forschungsgeschichte und Prolegomena (three essays plus an introduction); Fallstudien (eight essays plus an introduction); and Theologische Perspektiven (three essays plus an introduction). The essays all display S.'s acute mind and his ability to create technical pieces which little by little advance our knowledge of the biblical text, both in terms of historical-critical work and in terms of reception history. The range of topics he discusses are quite extensive so that, for example, he can move from an exposition of Genesis 22 through expositions of bits of Psalms and Jeremiah and Deuteronomy and Job and on to an investigation of the order of the biblical books in the Septuagint as a key to their interpretation. Given that S. has an incredible grasp of both the primary and secondary literature, readers of this work will be completely unsurprised that each essay is festooned with copious footnotes and thorough bibliographical entries. The sum and substance of this assemblage is first-rate academic biblical scholarship, the meticulous nature of which is seldom matched. Readers will not find themselves disappointed by either the exegesis or the conclusions drawn by the disparate essays. Since the essays have all been published previously and the volume at hand itself first appeared in 2011 it is almost a certainty that readers interested in the various topics this book engages have already read them. Perhaps, however, new readers too will take advantage of the opportunity to learn from one of our generation's great scientific exegetes.

JIM WEST

SCHOLZ, SUSANNE (ed.), Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect. III. Methods (Recent Research in Biblical Studies, 9; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2016), pp. xviii+ 389. £60.00/€75.00/$95.00. ISBN 978-1-910928-11-0.

The present volume is the third of a set of three volumes, dealing with feminist interpretation of the HB in retrospect. While the first two volumes of the collection focused on ‘Biblical Books’ and ‘Social Locations’ (see B.L. 2014, p. 125, and 2015, pp. 113-14, respectively), the third volume is dedicated to the survey of exegetical methods. The contributions assembled aim to show ‘how feminist biblical scholars have used the wide spectrum of exegetical methods in their work’ (p. xi). For this purpose, the 18 contributions are divided into three sections that discuss different methodological approaches. These are preceded first by an introduction by Susanne Scholz (‘Methods and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible’) that surveys the progress of feminist HB scholarship over the last years, outlines the present questions, and contextualizes the following contributions. Secondly, the prolegomena (‘Prolegomena: Methods as Herme-neutical Constructs’) comprise two essays that address general concerns on feminist biblical hermeneutics: Pamela J. Milne and Susanne Scholz, ‘On Methods and Methodology in Feminist Biblical Studies: A Conversation’, and Esther Fuchs, ‘Sexual Biblical Politics as an Interventionist Interrogation: The Israelite and Foreign Woman in Feminist Literary Approaches’. The following three main sections (Parts I—III) are organized in relation to the three corners of the so-called hermeneutical triangle. Thus, the first part focuses on ‘Feminist Readings behind the Text’, relating to various historical methods. It assembles five contributions by Sara Shectman (‘Back to the Past: An Overview of Feminist Historical Criticism’), Carol L. Meyers (‘Beyond the Bible: Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and the Study of Israelite Women’), Rebecca Hancock (‘Advantages and Challenges: Comparative Historical Criticism and Feminist Biblical Studies’), Johanna Stiebert (‘Within and Without Purity, Danger, Honour, and Shame: Anthropological Approaches in Feminist Hebrew Bible Studies’), and Phyllis A. Bird (‘The God of the Fathers Encounters Feminism: Overture for a Feminist Old Testament Theology’). Part II (‘Feminist Readings Within the Text’) assembles three contributions that employ literary methods: ‘Discovering her Story in the Text’ by Beth LaNeel Tanner; ‘Patriarch on the Couch: Psychology in Feminist Exegesis’ by Serge Frolov; and ‘Tracing Difference, Power, and the Discourse of Gender: Deconstruction in Feminist Hebrew Bible Studies’ by Susanne Scholz. Finally, the third part (‘Feminist Readings in Front of the Text’) engages with various reader-positioned approaches in eight articles by Karen Baker-Fletcher (‘Seeking our Survival, our Quality of Life, and Wisdom: Womanist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible’), Nicole J. Ruane (‘When Women Aren't Enough: Gender Criticism in Feminist Hebrew Bible Interpretation’), Tina Pippin (‘Biblical Women as Ideological Constructs Toward Justice: Ideological Criticism as a Feminist/Womanist Method’), Jeremy Punt (‘Dealing with Empire and Negotiating Hegemony: Developments in Postcolonial Feminist Hebrew Bible Criticism’), Rhiannon Graybill (‘Surpassing the Love of Women: From Feminism to Queer Theory in Biblical Studies’), Roland Boer (‘Modes of Productions and Reading Labors on the Margins: Marxist Feminist Criticism of the Hebrew Bible’), Katherine Lowe (‘Space for Women and Men: Masculinity Studies in Feminist Biblical Interpretation’), and Caroline Blyth (‘Engaging with Cultural Discourses: Cultural Feminist Criticism in Hebrew Bible Studies’). Indices of references and authors supplement the volume. This is an extraordinary collection of contributions that in an exemplary way seeks to position feminist interpretation(s) within the methodological frameworks of the discipline. Not only does it give an excellent overview of the discussions in the past, but it will also prove to inform and encourage further feminist debates.

ANJA KLEIN

SCHOLZ, SUSANNE and PABLO R. ANDIÑACH (eds.), La Violencia and the Hebrew Bible: The Politics and Histories of Biblical Hermeneutics on the American Continent (Semeia Studies, 82; Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2016), pp. x + 263. $49.95 (hardback); $34.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-88414-132-7 (hardback); 978-1-62837-130-7 (paperback).

This publishes a research seminar at Perkins School of Theology in October 2012 on the policies of state-sponsored violence practised in various Central and South American countries in the twentieth century (called la violencia for short). Part 1 is on Reading the Hebrew Bible on the American Continent: violence in national security arrangements: the USA, Caribbean and the nations in the Oracles against the Nations (S.V. Davidson); contesting state violence: the Bible, the public good, and divinely sanctioned violence in the Texas borderlands (G.L. Cuéllar); Habakkuk, violence, and the quest for a just God in Honduras (R. Furst); and internalized violence in ANE and biblical literatures (J.E. Ramírez-Kidd). Part 2 is on Reading Biblical Texts in American Contexts: an Argentine rereading of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11.1-9) (P.R. Andiñach); Genesis 19 and Judges 19 in the context of HIV and AIDS (C.B. Anderson); the politics of biblical hermeneutics within the USA (S. Scholz); forced labour in the Hebrew Bible, modern America and twentieth-century Communist states (S. Frolov); and pedagogical reflections on victimization and privilege in theological responses to biblical violence (J.M. O'Brien). Part 3 contains Responses: reading the Hebrew Bible against la violencia (N. Bedford); la violencia and the return of the monstrous: a response (T. Penner); and the interconnectedness of fa violencia: a response from Brazil (in Portuguese, I.R. Reimer). All the English essays have a Portuguese abstract, while the final Portuguese essay has an English abstract. The editors give an introduction that summarizes the essays (though not the responses). Considering the passion of the last response, it is a shame that the editors did not also include a full English translation, since many English-speaking readers will not be able to understand the Portuguese text.

LESTER L. GRABBE

SHERWOOD, YVONNE, Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. ix + 387. 11 figures. $54.99/£34.99. ISBN 978-1-107-43604-6 (paperback).

In this wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary study (first published as a hardback in 2012 but not reviewed in the B.L.), S. undertakes an examination of the counterintuitive ways that the Bible functions and is appropriated in contemporary (Western) societies, ostensibly secular but in fact deeply informed by Enlightenment views of the Christian Scriptures. She repeatedly shows the Bible to be far more subversive, blasphemous, indecorous and frankly crude than is usually recognized. Its appropriation as the model of tolerance, liberal concepts of human rights, and open-mindedness owes more to Locke's ultimate success in debates over theo-politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (ch. 9), and its moral equivocations, sharply focused in Genesis 22 (the Akedah), should leave us at least breathless, if not shocked (chs. 4, 5 and 10). S. begins with a lengthy reflection on a recent cause célèbre—the notorious ‘shOUT’ exhibition in Glasgow in 2009 where visitors were invited, in effect, to deface a Bible by writing comments on its pages. What this revealed about lingering superstitions about the Bible as a sacred object and the transformation of ‘blasphemy’ into ‘respect for the other’ makes for an intriguing analysis. S. makes many suggestive associations between literature, culture, contemporary politics and biblical materials—for example, the way that the constructs in the 1997 ‘Sensations’ exhibition mirror some of the grosser prophetic images. Characterized by S.'s exuberant language, which some may find excessive, but which by its sheer excitement provokes the reader into a shared journey of surprising connections, this is an amply rewarding book.

ALASTAIR G. HUNTER

SMOAK, JEREMY D., The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture: The Early History of Numbers 6:24-26 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. xvii + 242. Six illustrations. £47.99. ISBN 978-0-1993-9997-0.

Is this book disappointing or unfortunate? The title, hardly the fault of the author, frustrates his attempt to disavow the charm-amulets from Ketef Hinnom (biblical Gehenna) as a ‘Priestly Blessing’. These (rhythmic and riming) charms from Gehenna are hardly problematic as compared with the finds at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (KA) and elsewhere. S. seems unaware of the full extent and history of the KA inscriptions: one pithos lauds the YHWH ‘of Samaria’, another ‘of Teman’; both mention ‘his Asherah’. Moreover, these and other North-South inscriptions have recently vanished, quashing hopes that a future CIS might make the crooked straight. Although a simple description of these charms is elusive, the apolaustic proclivities of dubbing them ‘apotropaic’ are stomach-churning (the Greek affliction has an Italic counterpart, S.'s singular use of graffiti; praise, nevertheless, for his not assuming that šlm necessarily signifies ‘peace’). Furthermore, the musical connexion between negînah and the tetragrammaton is made clear by the unusual tetrachordal kinnôr pictured at KA, and YHWH'S footsteps— whereupon Asherah daintily places uxorious feet—graphically illustrate her etymology (Ug. ‘aŧrt). The confusion caused by ‘aŧrt, Astarte, Ishtar and the like is demonstrated by another KA inscription concerning a Ba'al and ‘El ‘blessing in time of war’ (again connecting North and Negeb). These gods would doubtless have had a companion Athera or Ashera, which—additionally confounded with the Mesopotamian goddess of Love and War—allowed the Baalim and Ashtaroth to wander into the Bible, ensuring that their egregious wooden heads would rear profanely before hearth and altar.

DAVID WULSTAN

STEINBERG, JULIUS and TIMOTHY J. STONE, with the assistance of RACHEL STONE (eds.), The Shape of the Writings (Siphrut, 16; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), pp. xiii + 370. $54.50. ISBN 978-1-57506-373-7.

The opening chapter by the editors on ‘The Historical Formation of the Writings in Antiquity’ is also the longest in this collection of English- and German-language scholarship. Peter Brandt discusses ‘Final Forms of the Writings: The Jewish and Christian Traditions’. Stephen Dempster presents ‘A Wandering Moabite: Ruth—A Book in Search of a Canonical Home’. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger offer Thoughts on the “Davidization” of the Psalter’. Will Kynes considers ‘Reading Job Following the Psalms’. Steinberg presents ‘The Place of Wisdom Literature in an Old Testament Theology: A Thematic and Structural-Canonical Approach’; and Stone, ‘The Search for Order: The Compilational History of Ruth’. Amber Warhurst considers ‘The Associative Effects of Daniel in the Writings’. Hendrik J. Koorevaar reviews ‘Chronicles as the Intended Conclusion to the Old Testament Canon’, while Georg Steins writes on ‘Torah-Binding and Canon Closure: On the Origin and Canonical Function of the Book of Chronicles’. Stephen B. Chapman's topic is ‘ “A Threefold Cord Is Not Quickly Broken”: Interpretation by Canonical Division in Early Judaism and Christianity’. Three detailed Responses advance the discussions and complete the volume: by John Barton, Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and (much more combatively) Christopher R. Seitz. Despite its small size, Ruth is highly visible in this volume—in four of the essays and all three responses.

A. GRAEME AULD

STOWE, DAVID W., Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. xiii + 214. £16.99. ISBN 978-0-19-046683-1.

This is a wide-ranging account of how Psalm 137 has been interpreted in music, literature and religion, with a particular emphasis on North America. One distinctive feature is the illuminating series of personal interviews with contemporary musicians, writers and theologians who have responded to the psalm. While the book does not foreground an in-depth exegesis of the psalm, relevant biblical scholarship is brought in at key points. The three parts of the book correspond to the main sections of the psalm, with titles inspired by Ricoeur. The first (‘history’) includes not only a consideration of the setting of the psalm, but also a wider discussion of exile, ethnicity and identity. The second (‘memory’) highlights the role of the psalm in African American communities and has a thoughtful discussion of the relation between Exodus and exile. The final section (‘forgetting’) highlights the horrors of war and violence, notoriously the Holocaust, and explores issues of justice, revenge, forgiveness and the possible value of a ‘happy forgetting’. A significant strength of the study is its awareness of the broader cultural context that informs how the psalm has been read and interpreted. Readable, committed, open, wide-ranging, original, this is a fine example of how to communicate and evaluate the ongoing influence of an OT text. It is warmly recommended to all kinds of readers.

PHILIP JENSON

STRINE, C.A., Sworn Enemies: The Divine Oath, the Book of Ezekiel, and the Polemics of Exile (BZAW, 436; Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. xvi + 343. €99.95/$140.00. ISBN 978-3-11-029039-4 (print), 978-3-11-029053-0 (e-book); ISSN 0934-2575.

The work is a revision of S. ‘ s DPhil thesis (Oxford, 2011; supervised by Paul Joyce), and explores the boundaries of faithful Yahwism and legitimate Judahite identity over against both the Judahites remaining in the land and their Babylonian captors. It addresses this by studying the formulaic language of Ezekiel, in particular the two divine oaths ‘as I live’ (‭יח‬ ‭ינא‬) and ‘lifted hand’ (‭אשנ‬ ‭רי‬), which have received little attention from scholars. The first part of the study analyses the use of these formulae in Ezekiel, the HB and the ANE, asking questions about their context and connotations. It comprises a series of chapters dealing with divine oaths in ANE texts, a genre analysis of the two formulae under discussion, and consideration of the social and literary setting of the expressions. The second part explores how the book of Ezekiel employs these expressions, arguing that they give structure to various polemical passages in the book that explicitly condemn the non-exiled Judahites and that offer a veiled resistance against the exiles’ Babylonian captors. Although these two polemics differ in form, they work to a single objective, namely defining the boundaries of the exilic community. This wide-ranging and detailed study of the two divine oath formulae leads to an insightful discussion of wider identity issues with regard to the book of Ezekiel and is highly recommended.

HILARY MARLOW

TAYLOR, MARION ANN and CHRISTIANA DE GROOT (eds.), Women of War, Women of Woe: Joshua and Judges through the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Female Biblical Interpreters (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), pp. x + 278. $35.00/£23.99. ISBN 978-0-8028-7302-6. [Distributed in the UK by Alban Books.]

This is a timely book that fills a void within the scholarly texts concerning reception history in the nineteenth century. Thirty-five female biblical interpreters of that century, from a range of religious backgrounds, wrote the 58 selected writings regarding women and warfare that fill its pages. Each concerns the female figures in the books of Joshua and Judges: Rahab, Achsah, Deborah, Jael, Jephthah's daughter, Manoah's wife, Delilah and the Levite's concubine. The writings are introduced with descriptions of the author and the material that follows. Some authors are introduced multiple times as their work appears more than once. Elizabeth Cody Stanton is introduced five times in the book, which is arguably apropos given she is the editor of the two-volume work entitled The Woman's Bible (1895 and 1898) and is, therefore, well represented in this volume. Notably, some of the interpreters were distinctly historical in their acceptance of the biblical texts, while others were more sceptical. Still others preferred allegorical and typological interpretations allowing them to accept difficult texts concurrently with their Christian faith. Some of the writers have interpreted the biblical texts in ways meant to advance the rights and status of women. The intended audiences of the writings range from children and adult parishioners to the wider public. Excerpts are from sermons, works of catechesis, poetry, plays and dialogues. Credit must be extended to Taylor and de Groot for an essential and profoundly interesting compilation of writings that so aptly exemplify the prevailing rationalism of the period.

TREVOR POMEROY

TOLLERTON, DAVID (ed.), A New Hollywood Moses: On the Spectacle and Reception of ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings ‘ (Biblical Reception, 4; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), pp. ix+ 171. £75.00. ISBN 978-0-5676-7232-2 (hardback), 978-0-5676-7233-9 (PDF).

The return of the ‘Bible epic’ to our screens, enhanced by new computer-generated imagery, coincides with recent scholarly interest in the Bible in Film, alongside the Bible in Music, the Bible and Visual Art, the Bible in Popular Culture and the like, and this absorbing volume by a group of UK- and Ireland-based scholars addresses some of the issues raised by the phenomenon. In an informative and helpful introductory chapter, the editor notes that Ridley Scott, director of Exodus, is a professed non-religious filmmaker, and comments that whatever the quality of the film, given a lukewarm reception by film critics, it can nonetheless produce some very interesting critical discussion, for example, on gender (J. Cheryl Exum), violence (Jon Morgan), nationalism (Catherine Wheatley) and cinema history (Michelle Fletcher). A discussion of the representation of the divine concludes that Exodus successfully portrays an ambiguity in the biblical text (Matthew A. Collins), while two essays look at the exegetical role of special effects, one suggesting that in this case they virtually eliminate the supernatural (David Shepherd), the other that they can communicate biblical religion to the ‘network society’ (Samuel Tongue). In conclusion the editor notes how the film offended some religious conservatives and was censored in Egypt, and suggests that experts in biblical reception might usefully be sensitive to such issues.

JOHN FA. SAWYER

VALVE, LOTTA, Early Modes of Exegesis: Ideal Figures in Malachi as a Test Case (Åbo : Åbo Akademi University Press, 2014), pp. 191. €20.00. ISBN 978-951-765-758-7 (print), 978-951-765-759-4 (e-book).

Time was when Malachi was greatly disparaged. By comparison with the great eighth-century prophets it seemed to be a descent to a much less profound level. In recent years, however, Malachi has been recognized as an important contributor to the matter of exegesis, which has been so important in subsequent Jewish and Christian understanding of their traditions. V. accepts the commonly held dating of Malachi to the first half of the fifth century BCE. Her dissertation, which was presented to the University of Åbo in Finland (and, incidentally, is written in excellent English), is concerned chiefly with the way in which five representative figures are presented in Malachi, and the greater part of the book is taken up with five ‘case studies’ looking at the presentation of Jacob, Levi, Elijah, Moses and Esau. (Esau is of course not directly named in Malachi, so careful attention is given to the way in which the treatment of Edom in Mal. 1 and 3 reflects the treatment of Esau in Genesis.) Before the detailed examination of each figure the midrashic technique of ‘gezera shava’ is explored, noting how its potential ambiguities are developed in positive and sometime surprising ways. Each of the ‘case studies’ includes valuable discussions of the way the themes were developed in postbiblical Jewish exegesis, including the Dead Sea scrolls. Particular attention is paid to those instances in which the later treatment diverges from its biblical origins; thus, Jacob's sometimes ambiguous treatment in Genesis gives way to much fuller praise in the later understanding. The book ends with a full bibliography but regrettably there are no indexes.

RICHARD COGGINS

WESTERHOLM, STEPHEN and MARTIN WESTERHOLM, Reading Sacred Scripture: Voices from the History of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2016), pp. x + 470. $40.00/£26.99. ISBN 978-0-8028-7229-6. [Distributed in the UK by Alban Books.]

This delightfully lucid, well-researched and well-written account of significant Christian biblical interpreters covers the following: Irenaeus, Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, the Pietists (Spener, Francke, Bengel) and Wesley, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Barth and Bonhoeffer. The approach of each is explored, so as to give a clear sense of how each regarded the Bible as a whole as Sacred Scripture. Although the OT is not neglected, there is an overall leaning towards the NT. Possible difficulties with any approach tend only to be noted in passing, and the overall stance of the book is expository and not interrogative. Insofar as the book has a thesis, it is a critique of the scholarly commonplace that one should read the Bible ‘like any other book’, as such a stance is too limited for Christian faith, and the interpreters discussed here did not so read the Bible. Although full recognition is given to the validity of familiar scholarly approaches, such approaches can easily just be rather preliminary: ‘At the heart of the Christian reading of Scripture, then, is the sense that God has spoken, and still speaks, through its texts and that no interest in the Bible as such should be allowed to replace the humble, engaged reading that is attentive to God's voice’ (pp. 425-26). In other words, the book is written from faith and for faith, which will appeal to some more than others; but what it does, it does well.

WALTER MOBERLY

WRIGHT, JACOB L., David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. xii + 271. $29.99/£19.99. ISBN 978-1-107-67263-5 (paperback).

It is probably not far-fetched to assert that ‘post-truth’ (the Oxford Dictionaries’ word-of-the-year for 2016) was something that the ancients had similarly experienced. David cuts a heroic figure, yet he was one whose angst and vulnerabilities had been exposed throughout a career as warlord and monarch. How then do we and should we remember him? W. has offered us a stimulating yet deceptively simple study with profound insights into how the politics of war commemoration, as an overarching framework within the complex narratives of especially the books of Samuel, could be utilized to (mis-)represent the greatest ruler in the HB. Delving into complex compositional issues, with regular ANE and modern parallels, W. aims to show how different circles of Judahite authors/editors made David out to be ‘the most profoundly human of all biblical personalities’ in their collective memory, while in reality he was the paradigmatic refugee. Memory also thrives on collective amnesia, and it is probable that the conflicting ‘ sources’ for the History of David’ s Reign and the History of Saul's Reign had compelled an embellished ideological reconstruction of the Judahite narrative for David following the defeat of ‘Israel’ in the eighth century. Furthermore, W. has helpfully highlighted important distinctions and tensions between ‘people’, ‘nationhood’ and ‘state’ in his analysis. Finally, with their capital connections to Hebron, Caleb the defiant and intrepid warrior is commemorated as a countervailing force to the oft-fugitive King David and could be honoured as Judah's first great leader in collective memory. While this nicely produced book has a number of typos, it could do with an extensive subject index.

ANDY S.J. LIE

YODER, TYLER R., Fishers of Fish and Fishers of Men: Fishing Imagery in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Explorations in Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations, 4; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), pp. xx + 220. $54.50. ISBN 978-1-57506-458-1.

We tend to take biblical imagery for granted (e.g. the flock, the vineyard), but Y. begins by observing that since fishing was not a major part of the economy of ancient Israel, it is not surprising that most fishing imagery depicts a non-Israelite as the fisherman. He surveys the divine fishers of the ANE, especially the fisherman-servant of Atirat at Ugarit. He shows a similar role for the Lord in Jer. 16.16-18, and then analyses passages in Amos, Habakkuk and Ezekiel to show the image of a foreign fisherman catching people as an image of exile. He considers the sea monsters in Job and Ezekiel and notes their differing roles from that of Tiamat in Enuma Elish, and then looks at the net as an image of fate in Eccl. 9.11-12. Finally, he considers the images of nets in pictures of devastation: the dried-up Nile (Isa. 19.5-10) and the nets spread on the ruins of Tyre (Ezek. 26.5). Although this volume limits itself to the HB, the linking of fishing nets and judgment sheds new light on Jesus’ parable of the great catch of fish as an image of the judgment (Mt. 13.47-50), and invites reflection on the image of the Jesus’ disciples as fishermen repairing their nets.

MARGARET BARKER

Note also the following books reviewed in other sections of this Book List.

BODNER, KEITH, An Ark on the Nile: The Beginning of the Book of Exodus — see p. 56

DIETCH, LINDA A., Authority and Violence in the Gideon and Abimelech Narratives: A Sociological and Literary Exploration of Judges 6-9 — see p. 65

EDENBURG, CYNTHIA, Dismembering the Whole: Composition and Purpose of Judges 19-21 — see p. 66

HAYES, ELIZABETH R. and KAROLIEN VERMEULEN (eds.), Doubling and Duplicating in the Book of Genesis: Literary and Stylistic Approaches to the Text— see p. 58

HECKL, RAIK, Neuanfand und Kontinuität in Jerusalem. Studien zu den hermeneutischen Strategien im Esra-Nehemia-Buch — see p. 96

KLANGWISAN, YAEL CAMERON, Jouissance: A Cixousian Encounter with the Song of Songs — see p. 88

LEE, SUK YEE, An Intertextual Analysis of Zechariah 9-10: The Earlier Expectations of Second Zechariah — see p. 78

PERSON, RAYMOND F., JR and ROBERT REZETKO (eds.), Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism — see p. 8

PROVAN, IAIN, Discovering Genesis: Content, Interpretation, Reception — see p. 61

REID, BARBARA E., Wisdom's Feast: An Invitation to Feminist Interpretation of the Scriptures — see p. 10

TIEMEYER, LENA-SOFIA, Zechariah's Vision Report and its Earliest Interpreters: A Redaction-Critical Study of Zechariah 1-8 — see p. 83