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THE CONTEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT: BEST BOOKS

There is, to be sure, much in the OT whose meaning, significance, relevance, and interpretation escapes the contemporary reader. That may explain why in a lifetime of preaching a pastor will never once from the pulpit touch large chunks of the OT. For example, when was the last time you heard or even delivered a sermon from a chapter in Leviticus that deals with purity/impurity concerns; for example, the issue over clean and unclean animals in chapter 11, the purification of a mother after childbirth in chapter 12, or the diagnosis of skin infections in chapter 13? One of the reasons we leave such passages alone is that they discuss phenomena that are outside of our direct experience and culture. And this is by no means limited to “strange” (to us) cultic ritual. What about understanding issues like tribalism, kinship, genealogy? When was the last time you heard a sermon on anything in the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles, other than the “preachable” reference to Jabez in 1 Chr 4:10 or the oral transmission of traditions?

To interact with and attempt to understand such phenomena there has emerged in OT studies, alongside the more traditional (and still indispensable) historical and grammatical analyses, an ever-growing interest in the social sciences, especially sociology and anthropology, as resources that provide heuristic frameworks for the interpretation of biblical data. In some ways this is not an altogether novel development. Much of what is being produced today stands on the shoulders of early twentieth-century writers and books such as J. Pedersen in his two volume work, Israel: Its Life and Culture (Oxford University, 1926) and W.R. Smith’s Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions (A&C Clark, 1927).

In the popular series, “Guides to Biblical Scholarship,” OT series, two volumes have addressed the value of the social sciences for biblical studies: R.D. Wilson, Sociological Approaches to the Old Testament (Fortress, 1984) and T.W. Overhold, Cultural Anthropology and the Old Testament (Fortress, 1996). Both authors make a strong case for the fact that a methodologically careful use of the work of social scientists provides a rich database of cultural information on the Bible world, a cultural world that is alien to our own. Wilson does so with his studies of the period of Judges whose social structure was based on kinship, the genealogies of Adam and Abraham, and third, his analysis of false prophecy and the social location and function of prophecy. Overholt focuses at length, for his test-cases, on the Elijah-Elisha cycle of stories in Kings and the possible connections of these two prophets with the role of the shaman who derives his power from contact with the “other” realm of existence, and on items like divination, gender roles, and ecological forces that helped shape society. It is to the credit especially of Wilson that he insists that the text itself should be, in the long run, the controlling factor in the exegetical process. Thus, comparative materials, however salutary, must never be allowed to dictate alone the meaning of the text. So, neither Wilson nor Overholt are guilty of sacrificing particularity for generalization. What such studies do reveal is the presence of both shared and distinct features in Israelite society and her Yahweh religion.

Norman Gottwald, more than any other current OT scholar, champions the position that the best starting point for understanding early Israel is not in historical-critical analysis of biblical texts but in sociological models and ethnographic parallels. His three major publications are The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.C. (Sheffield, 2000); The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction (Fortress, 1985), in which the “socio-” part of the hyphenated word dominates the “-literary” portion; and The Hebrew Bible in Its Social World and in Ours (Scholars, 1993), a collection of 27 published and unpublished essays, reviews, lectures, and working papers written between 1963 and 1991. See also his article on “Sociology,” co-authored with S.R. Garrett, in Anchor Bible Dictionary (6:70-99).

In a nutshell, Gottwald’s view—one much indebted to the macro-sociological theories of Durkheim, Weber, and Marx—is that pre-monarchic Israel reflects a socio-political egalitarianism thanks to the concerted efforts of several oppressed groups of autochthonic Canaanite groups who revolted against their wealthy overlords, and mixed with a small group of proto-Israelites who provided the religious fuel with their emphasis on a Yahweh god who redeems from oppression. Hence, for Gottwald, Israel is primarily a social movement laced with religious overtones rather than a religious movement laced with social overtones. For Gottwald the ideals of this democratic revolution are short-lived, because the instituting of monarchy and its emphasis on imperialism sabotaged this revolution.

Many readers will wonder if they and Gottwald are reading the same Bible. It is not an exaggeration to say that his reading of the OT is a massive exercise in the emasculation of the biblical self-witness as historiography in any normal sense of that term. Sermons based on Gottwald’s work will not be on the biblical text, but on a putative world behind the text. A homily on Exodus 12-15 would not be about God liberating his people from bondage and heading them toward a land long-ago promised by God to the “ancestors” but about the peasant uprising in Canaan that was later reshaped and mythologized into the exodus narratives. If my understanding is correct, few scholars follow Gottwald’s reconstructed peasants’ revolt scenario, apart from liberation theologians. His emphasis, though, on Israel as emerging from indigenous Canaanite groups and the recognition of how this all happened as being explained by some type of sociological investigation remain live positions in the biblical academy. I personally have drawn much insight from several re-readings of his The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction. I am not aware of any OT introduction written by an evangelical that drinks as creatively from the well of the social sciences as does Gottwald.

Briefly I must draw attention to another writer, Mary Douglas. The difference between Douglas and Gottwald is that Gottwald is a biblicist who makes forays into the world of sociology and anthropology. Douglas is an anthropologist who makes forays into biblical studies. Her most relevant works are Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge, 1999) and Leviticus as Literature (Oxford University, 1999). Using her vast acumen in the area of anthropology, she explains, to my mind better than anyone else, why the Hebrew religion focused so much on concerns related to purity/impurity.

Among recent texts focusing on historical matters, I would like to highlight three. The first is W.W. Hallo and K.L. Younger Jr., The Context of Scripture: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (Brill, 1997). There are sections on Egyptian, Hittite, West Semitic, Akkadian, and Sumerian texts, with each of these five sections divided into parts and subparts. I think this project has several advantages over Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Texts (ANET; Princeton University, 1969). The translation is not nearly as archaic and stilted as in ANET. There is a full cross-referencing to comparable passages in the OT (unlike ANET). The introductions to the translated texts are much more detailed and annotated than in ANET. There is just one problem. The cost of this volume (the first of three) is nearly $110.00, so forget about buying it and use your library’s copy.

Secondly, I give emphasis to A.J. Hoerth et al., eds., Peoples of the Old Testament World (Baker, 1994). I am assuming it replaces D.J. Wiseman, ed., Peoples of Old Testament Times (Oxford, 1973). Both books contain essays on thirteen of Israel’s neighbors (non-equals like Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, equals like Arameans, Philistines, Moabites). Since throughout so much of her history (from the days of the patriarchs to the diaspora in Persia) Israel’s destiny interacted with her neighbors, it is profitable for the reader to be informed as much as possible about the identity of these people.

Finally, I draw attention to H. Shanks, ed., Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, Revised and Expanded (Biblical Archaeology Society and Prentice Hall, 1999). This is as good a multi-authored treatment of the OT period as I have seen. It is both scholarly and popular, one that blends the latest archaeological data with thoughtful reflection on the stages of Israel’s history. It is not, to be sure, as conservative as W.C. Kaiser Jr.’s recent book, A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age through the Jewish Wars (Broadman and Holman, 1998), but it is much more conservative than Gottwald and any books from the “Copenhagen” school that treats Israel as a fiction and the OT as a document without any historical value.

By Victor P. Hamilton, Professor of Religion at Asbury College in Wilmore, KY and the author of Genesis (2 vols.; Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1990-1995) in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament.