Bible Books
010
The Anchor Bible Dictionary
David Noel Freedman, Editor in Chief
(New York: Doubleday, 1992) Six volumes, 7,284 pp. $360
When the Anchor Bible Dictionary appeared late last year, it was immediately hailed as one of the most important events in biblical scholarship in decades. The product of six years of work under the editorship of the esteemed David Noel Freedman (a BR contributor and a member of our Editorial Advisory Board), the ABD contains 6,200 entries by nearly one thousand authors. We have asked several scholars to review various articles in their areas of expertise. In this issue, four reviewers evaluate topics related to the Hebrew Bible and to the social sciences as used in biblical studies; in our next issue we will review topics related to the New Testament.
The Former Prophets
The Former Prophets—the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings—present a narrative account of the experiences of Israel from its entry into Canaan until its loss of the land during the Babylonian Exile. Since 1943, when Martin Noth proposed that the Former Prophets were the work of a single author who constructed the history based on the ideological presuppositions of the Book of Deuteronomy, this section of the Hebrew Bible has come to be called the Deuteronomistic History. Noth’s theory has been generally accepted, though not without some modifications and major areas of disagreement among scholars.
The Anchor Bible Dictionary articles that address the Deuteronomistic History reflect the variety of opinions prevalent in biblical studies today. For those familiar with the nuances of these arguments and how they affect the analysis of the whole Bible, the articles represent excellent statements by leading scholars of the status of the discipline. For the non-specialist, however, the treatment of the various books and themes related to the Deuteronomistic History will appear uneven, if not contradictory, in places.
The article on the Deuteronomistic History itself, by Steven L. McKenzie, is extremely accessible to the reader and contains a balanced presentation and evaluation of the differing positions regarding Noth’s original theory. In the treatments of the individual books constituting the Deuteronomistic History, however, this balance is often lost. Little discussion is given to differing analytical positions, and few cross-references to related articles are provided. For the investigator already well versed in the intricacies of the Deuteronomistic History and its constituent themes and ideas, the ABD will prove an indispensable resource. For the reader dependent upon the aids provided within the articles themselves, reading the ABD may prove to be a frustrating experience.
After considering the literary and redactional problems associated with the Deuteronomistic History, readers will face a major challenge to them as they move to the article on the history of Israel. Each of the four articles grouped under this heading addresses a different period of Israelite history and represents a different approach and solution to the reconstruction of Israel’s history. While this provides an excellent indicator of the divergences in approaches to Israelite history dominating today’s scholarly discussions, the lack of convergences among these approaches, not to mention their differing evaluations of the biblical and archaeological materials, will present difficulties to the average reader.
Despite these problems, I recommend the ABD to all who desire an up-to-date 011discussion of many of the most pressing issues regarding the Deuteronomistic History and the academic study of the Bible. Each article I have read presents a superlative treatment of its topic. Outlines at the beginning of each article provide excellent indications of the contents, as do the introductory paragraphs, which are especially helpful in articles that are divided into sections written by different authors. The accompanying bibliographies are very helpful, but the extensive abbreviations (constituting 27 double-columned pages at the beginning of each volume) occurring in some articles can become distracting. Additional cross-references to related articles would have been very helpful. But what is needed to make this dictionary accessible to the general reader is an index, not only of articles, but of topics related to specific subjects, such as the Deuteronomistic History.
The Prophets
When my Anchor Bible Dictionary arrived, I was working on a paper on “The Second Temple as House of Prayer” and therefore consulted the ABD with a view to comparing its article on prayer with C.W.F. Smith’s article on “Prayer” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (IDB). To my surprise, all I found was a brief (about two-column) piece on prayer in early Judaism by James H. Charlesworth—nothing on prayer in the Old Testament or in early Christianity. Subsequent consultation with colleagues revealed other and no less surprising omissions. Volume three, for example, goes from “Insects” to “Instruments, Musical,” (bypassing Inspiration), and there is an article on “Worship in the New Testament” but none on the Old Testament. This was not reassuring, and induced a disposition to be more than usually critical as I turned to the articles dealing with prophecy and prophets.
The results were mixed. I was relieved to find that all of the major prophetic books are represented, with a separate biographical entry for Jeremiah. The article, “Prophecy,” contains a valuable and up-to-date (to 1988) treatment, in particular from Herbert B. Huffmon, who contributed the sub-section on ancient near eastern prophecy. The main section, on pre-Exilic prophecy by John J. Schmitt, has an old-fashioned look to it, taking us through the Bible book by book, listing major themes (God, the future) but giving very little attention to the social dimensions of prophecy so prominent in recent studies (the omission of Balaam from this discussion is made good in a separate and competent treatment by Jo Ann Hackett). John Barton and Eugene Boring, both acknowledged authorities on their subjects, deal with the post-Exilic period and early Christianity respectively.
While most of the articles on individual prophets are state-of-the-question presentations, some are more argumentative than seems appropriate for a dictionary. Christopher R. Seitz in particular, writing on Third Isaiah (Chapters 56–66) within the “Book of Isaiah” entry, took up much of his space arguing against the conventional distinction between Isaiah 40–55 and 56–66 along Exilic/post-Exilic, Babylonian/Palestinian lines. Something of the same could be said about Jack R. Lundbon’s argument for an Egyptian and Babylonian recension of Jeremiah 1–51. “Obadiah,” by Peter Ackroyd, “Habakkuk,” by Marvin Sweeney and “Nahum,” by Kevin Cathcart, are, on the contrary, commendably brief and to the point.
An inevitable problem with a massive undertaking of this kind, almost a decade in the making, is keeping up with the latest work in progress. In general, the bibliographies are very ample (Ackroyd’s “Obadiah” is an exception with only two items), but I kept coming up with surprising omissions. One example: Delbert Hiller’s article on Micah did not make use of H.W. Wolff’s study of that prophet’s background and status published in Supplements to Vetus Testamentum in 1978. In my view this is one of the most important and original contributions in recent decades to the understanding of Micah and of pre-Exilic prophecy in general.
Judging by my foraging in ABD to date, there is much that is good and even irreplaceable here—especially on recent archaeological work—but I wouldn’t advise trading in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible or the Hastings Dictionary of the Bible just yet.
Intertestamental Literature
Biblical scholars have long treated the intertestamental literature mainly as a prelude to the study of the New Testament and early Christianity. Students of early Judaism, however, have more recently insisted upon recognizing this literary corpus as a fruitful area of study in its own right. New manuscript finds and fresh editions and translations of relevant texts have also increased the accessibility of and interest in this literature.
The scope and quality of many of the fine articles on this literature in the Anchor Bible Dictionary attest to the salutary effect of this reorientation. The essays on this material fall mainly into three classes. A few articles treat broad literary categories, such as “Pseudepigrapha,” “Apocrypha,” and “Dead Sea Scrolls.” Several thematic essays include in their analysis the postbiblical literature of early Judaism. Among the more notable essays here are “Apocalpyses and Apocalyptisism,” “Descent to the Underworld,” “Calendar,” “Son of Man” and “Geography and the Bible.”
The majority of the articles, however, deal with individual works. Freed from the onus of serving merely as “background” literature, even texts bearing only marginally on the New Testament receive a full hearing. In addition to the obligatory essays on Philo and Josephus, there are, for example, several welcome articles on the fragments of Hellenistic Jewish historians before Josephus (for example, Demetrius, Artapanus, Eupolemus and Aristeas). The several essays treating classic works of Jewish pseudepigrapha, such as the Sibylline Oracles, Jubilees and the Enoch literature, show that in a relatively short time scholarship on this literature has attained a sophistication and maturity rivalling the secondary literature on books of the Bible. Absent are the tedious catalogues of parallels of the pseudepigrapha with New Testament literature. Although source criticism is still a necessary and important component of the treatment of the literature, it does not dominate the discussion in the way it once did. Alongside of it, we find much needed discussions of literary genre, social function and setting, and textual transmission.
A few omissions and inconsistencies deserve notice, however. Some of the now-lost Jewish historians are slighted. Jason of Cyrene is mentioned in the article on First Maccabees, but he might have warranted a separate entry. The same is true for the historians Nicolaus of Damascus and Justus of Tiberias. For some reason Philo of Byblos earned a fairly long article, whereas his Hellenized Babylonian and Egyptian counterparts did not.
Although several thematic articles in the ABD have ample discussion of the intertestamental literature, an equal 012number revert to the conventional dual categories of Old and New Testament, with barely a nod to the literature of early Judaism. In the essay entitled “Demons,” for example, a section on post-biblical Jewish (as well as Greco-Roman) sources would have been highly desirable. A three-part essay entitled “Myth and Mythology” discusses the subject in the Old Testament and in the Greco-Roman world, but curiously neglects the Jewish pesudepigrapha (not to mention the New Testament and early Christian literature).
Omissions are especially conspicuous in the treatment of theological subjects. Early Jewish literature receives extensive treatment in the essays on “Resurrection,” “Righteousness,” “Eschatology” and “Son of Man,” but it is virtually ignored in the entries “Afterlife,” “Justification,” “Salvation” and “Sin.” Although these omissions in part reflect the tastes and scholarly interests of the authors, they also reveal the continuing difficulties of making room for this literature within the conventional categories of biblical scholarship.
No doubt a reflection of the uneven growth of the discipline, a certain volatility in nomenclature still persists. An unscientific survey found the literature treated under many different rubrics: “Intertestamental period,” “Jewish writings of the Greco-Roman Period,” “Jewish literature,” “intertestamental literature,” “early Judaism,” “Judaism in the New Testament Period” and “early Jewish texts.”
Such inconsistencies are inevitable in an undertaking of this size. They do not detract from the overall quality of this impressive scholarly achievement.
The Social Sciences
The Anchor Bible Dictionary makes remarkably better use of the social sciences than its predecessor, the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. The contributors include at least 30 biblical scholars working on the social-scientific interpretation of the Bible.
There is an improved, though not yet adequate, range of general articles on the social sciences. “Anthropology and the OT,” by J.W. Rogerson, for example, profiles the use of the social-scientific method of biblical interpretation in Europe, and summarizes and critiques the work of pioneers like George E. Mendenhall, Norman Gottwald and Niels P. Lemche. Gottwald himself, in “Sociology (Ancient Israel),” surveys work done in America on the tribe, the state, the prophet and the apocalyptist (his current thinking on ancient Israel’s political economy, however, is loaded with distracting terms and expressions). But there are no entries on politics, economics, diplomacy, honor and shame, patron and client, limited good, and clean and unclean.
While there is an increased number of articles on specific social institutions, not all the contributors apply the social-scientific method to the interpretation of a particular institution with the same results. Ideally, good social scientific interpretation of the world of the Bible takes into account archaeological finds, extrabiblical texts and anthropological fieldwork in existing preindustrial societies. Interpreters use these primary sources to reconstruct the roles and responsibilities of men and women in particular social institutions. Then they use the reconstruction to help in understanding biblical descriptions of men and women in comparable institutions. They note the differences as well as the similarities between ancient Israel and other preindustrial societies. Because of its emphasis on both cultural and chronological parallels, social-scientific criticism understands the world of the Bible better than interpretive work whose models are drawn only from Greco-Roman, western European or industrial cultures.
Good models in the ABD of how to integrate the social sciences and biblical interpretation include “Law (Biblical and ANE [Ancient Near East]),” by Samuel Greengus, “Education (Mesopotamia),” by Miguel Civil, “Education (Ancient Israel),” by Andre Lemaire, “Family,” by C.J.H. Wright, “Agriculture,” by Oded Borowski, “Eating and Drinking (OT),” by Alan Jenks and “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” by Gary A. Anderson. “Herdsman,” and “Sheep, Shepherd,” by Jack W. Vancil, on the other hand, provide only word studies and a survey of shepherd iconography for monarchs and their divine patrons. And “Child,” by Joseph A. Grassi, is simply a concordance of biblical texts that mention children. It does not, for example, discuss the important social role of the beloved son or the social institution of designating or blessing an heir.
The social institutions of men in the world of the Bible get better coverage than those of women. Too many women’s roles, for example, are condensed in the three articles on “Women” (Mesopotamia, OT, NT). (Notably, there are no comparable articles on “Men” [Mesopotamia, OT, NT]). “Women (Mesopotamia),” by Rivkah Harris, explains how women functioned as wife, widow, householder, midwife, wet nurse and priest (or naditu). Phyllis A. Bird, in “Women (OT),” does a good job outlining the social roles of wife, mother, daughter, lover, householder and prophet.
Some women’s institutions that receive good social-scientific treatment in individual articles are “Virgin,” by John J. Schmitt, and “Prostitution,” by Elaine Alder Goodfriend and “Cultic Prostitution,” by Karel van der Toorn. Goodfriend endorses some traditional but questionable assessments of the prostitute as a threat to paternity in a culture based on blood kinship and to its understanding of the covenant with Yahweh as a marriage. But she does some fine work distinguishing the social roles of qades, qadesa and keleb, who may or may not have been involved in ritual intercourse. Van der Toorn makes an interesting but not widely accepted argument that ritual intercourse was limited to a few sanctuaries in the world of the Bible, where it was used by male priests to supplement tax income.
On balance, we can be pleased that the ABD, within the limits noted, goes far beyond its predecessors in informing readers of current sociological study of the Bible.
The Second Book of the Bible: Exodus
Benno Jacob
(Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1992) 1151 pp., $69.50
Rabbi Benno Jacob’s (1869–1945) commentary on Exodus, published for the first time half a century after its completion, is what pop publishing calls an “instant classic. A timeless work, it is a compendium of traditional Jewish interpretation interlaced with original observations, characterized by an unparalleled sensitivity to language. Its scholarly value lies in its innumerable small insights and its attempt to read the Torah as a whole work rather than as a collage of fragmentary documents.
Jacob’s work is equally important, however, as a kind of Holocaust memorial. Jacob fled Germany in 1938 and lived out his life in England, teaching Hebrew to children. A former German patriot, he believed Jews could and should be assimilated into German society (compare his comments on the Hebrews in Egypt, p. 343, in which he suggests that many 013segments of Egyptian society got on well with the Hebrews)—but they would have to fight for acceptance. In fact, the young Jacob founded the first Jewish dueling fraternity in Germany! Scholarship was but one facet of Jacob’s true lifework: to skewer anti-Semitism wherever he found it, whether with rapier or pen.
Through the early 20th century, biblical higher criticism—the attempt to isolate the sources behind the Bible and arrange them chronologically—was largely a German, Christian enterprise. Its practitioners, in Jacob’s view, felt only condescension for their subject matter. The critics argued that while the ancient sources were full of primitive virtues, they were ruined by bumbling Jewish editors. To an extent, Jacob misread the critics, ignoring how in their own way they were rescuing the Bible from the blanket skepticism of the Enlightenment. Also, they made many good points. But Jacob saw only anti-Semitism in an academically respectable mask, and there was some truth in his perception.
And so he responded in kind, with language more cutting than that of his opponents. Jacob also described the cultures surrounding ancient Israel with utter contempt, for his goal was to restore Israel to its unique place of pride in world history. He allowed no attempt to trace an evolution; such an enterprise was but “a tool for denigrating ancient Judaism” (p. 94). His critique of comparativism was often trenchant, but Jacob fell into the opposite snare: anachronism. His image of biblical religion, characterized by dignity, rationality and humanity, was merely an idealized retrojection of German liberal Judaism.
It is noteworthy that Jacob cited almost no scholarship after the 1920s. Later German biblical scholarship would largely abandon the anti-Jewish tone of the 19th century, although its methods remained the same. Even more striking is the absence of any citation of Jewish scholars who accepted higher criticism. Perhaps Jacob regarded these as renegades beneath contempt or notice.
Jacob was a commentator in the medieval tradition; witness his credo: “The Torah does not pose unsolvable riddles … no word of the Torah is without significance (p. 178).” This belief continually led Jacob to read too much into fine linguistic distinctions. And some of his solutions led to contradictions, such as that the tent of meeting is not the 014tabernacle (pp. 958–966) and his tortured explanations for the distribution of divine names (pp. 143–156) were worthy of the great medieval Jewish Bible commentator Rashi. Jacob also engaged in numerology (in which the numerical value of the letters in a word are added together and some significance is derived therefrom), an enterprise making a comeback today.
In his sensitivity to Passages exploited by anti-Semites, Jacob sometimes denied the obvious: that Moses’ request of a three days’ release (Exodus 5:1–3) is a ruse; that the phrase “God of the Hebrews” refers to a national, rather than a universal diety (pp. 126–129, cf. 235–236); that the Israelites despoiled the Egyptians (pp. 337–345). Indeed, during the plague of darkness (Exodus 10:21–23), Jacob’s Hebrews assist the blinded Egyptians (p. 240)!
In the 1990s, we can view both Jacob and his opponents with charity. While higher criticism remains vigorous, scholars have also come to appreciate the final form of the Torah. Today, Jacob’s keen insights and holistic approach seem as fresh as they once appeared reactionary.
The Anchor Bible Dictionary
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.