The publisher was kind enough to provide a review copy of The Book of Job: Judaism in the 2nd Century BCE: An Intertextual Reading by Leslie S. Wilson. Anyone who has frequented this blog for any amount of time will know that the Book of Job is one of my greatest interests. I was excited to receive and read the book, and I now share my thoughts with you.

Summary:
Leslie Wilson undertakes to do what many before have attempted: understand the Book of Job. Specifically he argues that the book is best understood via an intertextual reading within the cultural milieu of mid-2nd century Palestine. Job then becomes a kind of a book about messiahs. In Wilson’s own words, “[the author of the Book of Job] describes a paradox, the enigmatic conundrum articulated above. A ‘messiah’ is simply a logical impossibility…salvation at the hands of Yahweh will be apocalyptic….for humanity and indeed the deity to survive, there must be a truce,” (pg 4).

Wilson’s methodology is best conveyed, again, in his own words: “the roots of this study of the Book of Job lie in the recognition in the Prologue of a pattern of words and phrases that seemed to frequently originate from the book of Genesis.” To this end the greater part of the book is spent discussing the intertextual links between Job chapters one and two, and the Book of Genesis. Wilson proposes many such intertextual links, though to be sure he finds many links outside of Genesis, especially in the wider Pentateuch.

The second half of the book is devoted to discussing the poetic sections in rapid succession. Of these sections Wilson perhaps focuses most the the “blessing and the curse,” as well as the Elihu narrative, though all poetic sections of the book are dealt with to some degree. In the end Wilson concludes, “Scholars have traditionally perceived intertextuality as a device intended to evoke an inexact association with a person or event. Our author takes intertextuality to a new level…he applies intertextuality to entire stories in the pursuit of his agenda,” (pg 245, emphasis original). Ultimately the Book is unable to answer the question which it sets out to do, according to Wilson. Namely, the issues of a messiah and salvation are impossibilities. There must be an eternal tension between the divine and humanity. Between human and divine “wholeness” (צדק) (cf. pgs 248-249).

The Good:
First I must commend Wilson for dealing with the book as a literary unity. Too often scholars deal with the book in sections, and thereby avoid many of the difficult interpretational issues that arise. Wilson takes the bull by the horns, so to speak, and grapples with the book as a literary whole. Indeed, seeing the book as a unity is vital to his methodology and conclusions.

Second, Wilson makes an attempt at understanding what is going on with the YHWH speeches at the end of the book in light of the book as a literary unity. I fear that he goes too far, and is perhaps reading too much into the text and making the Hebrew do what it can’t do–but I need to check this a bit further. Either way, his willingness to attempt to make sense of the book as a whole deserve commendation.

Third, he has done a huge amount of searching for intertextual parallels. Although I do not find the majority of his examples convincing (see below), a number of them I do find interesting. It may be worthwhile to remove Wilson’s “code” methodology and see what may be found in some of these parallels with a less…stringent method of comparison.

The not so good:
I have already quoted Wilson as writing, “Scholars have traditionally perceived intertextuality as a device intended to evoke an inexact association with a person or event,” (pg 245). There is a reason scholars traditionally view intertextuality in this light–they are being careful. Unfortunately, Wilson goes too far in his attempt at an intertextual reading. It is simply beyond believability that the author of Job expected his readings to pick up on so much of this intertextual rendering.

Even if this were not the case, Wilson at times picks and chooses his parallels to support his arguments. A single example with suffice to illustrate my point. He picks out of the first phrase in Job 1.1 the first two words, איש היה. From here he makes the parallel with Gen 6.9, which reads: נח איש צדיק תמים היה. There are, of course, other parallels to איש היה. The most notable of these is 2 Sam. 12.1. Wilson acknowledges this in a footnote, but explains that “exact wording” is important in intertextual antecedents and since 2 Sam. 12.1 uses the plural it does not qualify. However, one must wonder how it is that “exact wording” can be so important when the Genesis passage moves the descriptors צדיק and תמים before the verb while in Job 1.1 similar words do not occur until the end of the verse, well after the verb. Indeed, צדיק does not occur at all in Job 1.1.

Sadly this same picking-and-choosing may be seen throughout Wilson’s analysis. To say that Job 1 and 2 are attempting to situate Job within the patriarchal world is one thing. To say, as Wilson does, that they are situating Job next to Abraham and Isaac, but excluding Jacob is going to far. Similarly to say that Job 1.1 is meant to recall Gen. 6.9, and thereby introduce Job as a איש צדיק when צדיק is not used in verse one and there are other parallels to איש היה is going too far.

Conclusion:
Although I have found things that make this book quite worthwhile and helpful, the constant attempts at an intertextual reading go too far. It is not that I completely doubt the validity of intertextual readings, rather I doubt that one may expect them to be so specific. The idea of uncovering a code in Job that explains these parallels is dubious at best. It also would have been good to see more pages devoted to defending Wilson’s dating of Job in the 2nd century. Much of his thesis rides on Job being extremely late (so that almost every other book in the Hebrew Bible could have been written and known for the author of Job to pull from). Unfortunately, Wilson only defends this dating at the end, based on the conclusions of his analysis. This is circular reasoning, and further detracts from the feasibility of his study. If Wilson had dealt with the dating of the book more thoroughly, I would recommend it for purchase. As it stands at present, I cannot do so.

In the process of writing an exegesis paper on Lamentations 2:18-22 this past semester, I came across an intriguing book: Daughter Zion Talks Back the Prophets: A Dialogic Theology of the Book of Lamentations, by Carleen R. Mandolfo.

I did not have the chance to read the book thoroughly in the course of writing my paper, but what I did read interested me enough that after turning in my paper, I returned the library’s copy and ordered my own, which just arrived. I hope to be able to read completely and review the book sometime this summer.

I also hope to be able to devote a little more time to blogging in general, now that summer is here. I will be taking 3 classes throughout the course of the summer: Interpreting the New Testament, Gospel of John, and Contemporary Theology and Theologians. None of these are my area of study (darn degree requirements), but I expect I’ll find them at least mildly entertaining. Maybe I’ll at least get some blogging fodder out of them!

I fully realize that this book is from 1986, so it may seem a bit late to be writing a review. However, you’ll have to forgive me since I was only 2 when the book originally appeared. This is one of the required texts for my Textual Criticism seminar at Harvard this semester. I’m looking forward to the seminar, and this book was short so I decided to go ahead and review it before the semester gets underway. I should also point out the fact that I am hardly an expert when it comes to textual criticism. Keep in mind that this review is very much from a student’s perspective.

The first thing that deserves comment is the size of the book; less than 100 pages, including appendices. As a student I’m extremely thankful. The book is good, it says what needs to be said and then moves on. McCarter excels at being concise in his statements. These are all things that hit the mark, as far as a student is concerned. At the same time, it means that McCarter’s book will never be the only text in a graduate seminar on textual criticism. This is fine though, since it serves well as an introduction (which is really all its supposed to do).

Something else that jumped out at me in the book is that McCarter is quite witty. Having an author who is easily able to inject wit into a textbook always makes for a more enjoyable read. In Textual Criticism this is done with style. I lost track of the number of places I chuckled as I read through the book. A question for any of you Johns Hopkins students, is McCarter this witty in class?

I should also mention the appendices. These short addendums are quite helpful. A glossary is the first to appear, and defines some of the basic vocabulary of text criticism (witness, codex, haplography, homoioarkton, etc). The second appendix is a bibliography of primary sources. For someone who has not done much in depth work with textual criticism, this is a gold mine of information. If this information wasn’t already available on the Internet, its inclusion alone would justify the purchase. Even so, it is still convenient to have the information in one easily accessible place. The final appendix deals with the textual characteristics of each book, or section of books, in the Hebrew Bible. This is another extremely helpful resource for beginning students, and one I’m sure I’ll consult often this semester.

In my opinion, the negatives of Textual Criticism are few. Obviously, because of its brevity, it doesn’t touch on every issue imaginable in textual criticism. It is, after all, more of an introduction than a monograph. You’ll have to move on to Emanuel Tov’s Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible for a more thorough treatment of the various issues. The only other negative is one that I’m not entirely sure I’m educated enough to give at present. However, with that disclaimer, I’ll go ahead; McCarter appears to be quite in love with LXX, and often makes very little mention of the DSS. Conversely, Tov mentions the Qumran materials often and even accuses McCarter’s Textual Criticism of adopting “the approach of the period before the discovery of the new data [ie, the DSS]” (Tov, Textual Criticism, 14).

Those caveats aside, I think McCarter’s Textual Criticism is a helpful introductory textbook. It certainly doesn’t offer the depth of Tov, but it provides a way to quickly get oneself up to speed on the necessary material. It’s worth reading, especially for those who only desire an introduction.

-Calvin

So a couple months back I was given a copy of The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I into Palestine by the author himself. This past weekend I decided to sit down and read it. I’m glad I did.

A year ago I would have had no concept of who Shoshenq was. Mandy took a course in Ancient Near Eastern history and archeology last semester, and I remember helping her study for an exam dealing with Shoshenq. In addition, during my Exegesis in Samuel course, Dr. Petter mentioned Shoshenq as an aside (and spent a good 30 seconds muttering to himself trying to decide between various vocalizations of the name, it was most enjoyable). So, I knew that he had something to do with Israel and the book of Kings. As would seem to be the case with anything that directly mentions or interacts with the Bible, this poor Pharaoh was caught up in the eternal debate of whether or not the Deuteronomistic History (ie, Joshua-2 Kings) constitutes reliable history or not.

The basic issue, as Kevin discusses it, is that scholars have largely focused on the topographical list of Shoshenq’s triumphal relief at Karnak and attempted to reconstruct an itinerary for Shoshenq’s campaign into Palestine based on said list. Of course, the problem is that the account in 1 Kings mentions a campaign focused on Jerusalem, with no mention of any foray into Israel, whereas the topographical list doesn’t mention Jerusalem at all.

The book is divided broadly into six chapters, one each devoted to introductory materials and Kevin’s conclusions. Chapter two, a sizable portion of the text, is devoted to surveying various Triumphal Reliefs of other Egyptian Pharaohs. Namely, Thutmose III, Seti I, Ramesses II and Ramesses III. Kevin’s discussion of these reliefs are descriptive, enjoyable, helpful, and extremely relevant to his later discussion of the Shoshenq relief. Chapter three looks at the Shoshenq relief itself, while chapter four surveys other relevant Egyptian texts. Chapter five is devoted to the Biblical texts discussing Shoshenq (Shishak). Here Kevin excels at presenting a balanced and intellectual view of the material without thinking for others. It was a breath of fresh air compared to several of the books I’m being required to plod through for classes this semester. Chapter six briefly summarizes the conclusions that the author draws from the material.

Kevin’s arguments are lucid and convincing. In fact, processing through his arguments on the topic have caused me to come to the conclusion that I might really enjoy doing some research into the early monarchic period, or into the time of the judges. Given, both of those are earlier than Shoshenq, and tracing my line of reasoning would take far to long to include here, but I digress.

I enjoyed the book, which isn’t long enough to be called a tome, but contains quite a bit of data. Think about that first clause for a moment. The fact that I have just said “I enjoyed the book” in reference to a manuscript about Shoshenq I’s campaign into Palestine reveals one of two things:
1. I am an incredibly sick person.
2. Kevin is a very engaging writer.

I’ll opt for option #2, but you can judge for yourself by visiting his blog.