BOOK REVIEWS

Boer, Roland, Last Stop Before Antarctica: The Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia. The Bible and Postcolonialism, 6. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Pp. 219. Pbk. 14.95 or $21.95. ISBN 1-84127170-5. Roland Boer surely must be counted as one of Australias most creative biblical scholars. Here he turns his fecund mind to postcolonial studies, even though he does not himself claim to be an advocate of this recent intellectual movement. On the contrary, he calls himself an internationalist in the old communist sense, and he makes no attempt to hide a marked lack of patience with the preferred topics of postcolonialismlocal resistance, alternative identities, valorization of the peripheral zone over against the centre (p. 7). In spite of, and perhaps because of, Boers Marxist dispositions, the book asks some good questions: for example, why have biblical scholars played such a small role in the development of postcolonial studies, even though the Bible has obviously been so significant in the history of colonization? In his Introduction: Gatecrashing Thanksgiving, Boer muses on the layers of this question, reflecting firstly on the doubly marginalized position of biblical studies in Australiathe Bible lacking interest within university-based cultural studies, and Australians being peripheral players on the global academic market. His elegantly complex language masks a breathtaking lurch from the self-doubts of our cultural cringe to the confident assertion that Australian biblical scholars need to become part of a socialist resistance to the neo-colonialist hegemony of capitalism, and no subtler version of resistance will do (pp. 34-37). In particular, the postcolonial focus on local resistance pales into insignificance against a preferred socialist dialectic between the local and the global, which requires an international class struggle (pp. 57-59). While protesting against small-minded ethics, Boer does actually seem to have a gospel to proclaim in this book: an anticipatory (proleptic?) socialism requires an internationalist league of leftist intellectuals and artists (pp. 36-37). So much for the proletariat. Having established that the book has its own Marxist gospel, does it contribute anything to a critical discussion of biblical theology? In chapter 1, the economic allegory supplied for the world tree in Dan. 4:1017 is potentially theological in significance. Yhwh, however, does not come off well in Boers reading of Daniel 4: this dreadfully marginal deity, according to Boer, contests the imperial despot Nebuchadnezzar, but is no match for the social reality of Babylonian power (p. 58). So
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much for anticipatory cultural production; that is apparently reserved for modern, socialist critics. The discourses of providence make some unhappy appearances in chapter 2, Explorer Hermeneutics, which includes some detailed and interesting discussion of the diaries of the colonial explorers Mitchell, Sturt, Eyre, Leichhardt, Stuart, and Giles. These pioneers drew frequent analogies between aboriginal and Israelite practices, occasionally spoke favourably of indigenous people, and in Eyres case, even condemned those who thought that the displacement of the first inhabitants could be justified theologically (p. 72). Boer finds it illuminating to compare the explorers references to a sense of providence with Benthamite panoptic jailors, surveying their prisoners from a privileged position while themselves being untouchable and unseen. While some convincing work has been done on the connections between cartography and control in colonial expansion, Boer goes further and finds theological assumptions behind the panoptic gaze (p. 82)the panoptic view is ultimately the eye of God, and although they are far from Benthamite prisons, the explorers are Gods agents. Eyre, for example, links divine providence with English cultural expansion, claiming that both represent the common good (p. 84). Yet this is the same Eyre who was quite capable of describing colonial intrusion and aggression and of condemning the self-interested discourses of providence (p. 72). Instead of reading Eyres diaries deconstructively, teasing out the contradictions, Boer is more concerned to reduce the language of providence to a cipher for white powereven when the explorer appealing to providence is dying of thirst in the desert. In cases like this, discourse analysis has lost sensitivity to context. Ironically, the next chapter supplies even more evidence that Boers critique of providence is too doctrinaire. Chapter 3, Home is always elsewhere, explores the interplay of exodus and exile themes, both in biblical literature and in postcolonial theory. In sharp contrast to the settlement of North America, colonial Australian writers rarely imagined that they had discovered the promised land; on the contrary, antipodal images suggested more often the failure of providence, envisaging a land which God forgot, or forsook (p. 115). Boer refrains from drawing an obvious implication: Edward Saids argument that exodus and conquest are ineluctably linked (pp. 89-96) rarely applies in Australia, since our writers have been more attuned to the themes of exile and diaspora. If the explorers saw English settlement in Australia as underwritten by divine providence, the genre of the underwriting could easily be mistaken for a curse. The last two chapters of the book deal with issues of cultural interaction. In chapter 4, Green Ants and Gibeonites, the discussion of Sreten Bozics work (a Serbian immigrant who has written a number of novels

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in the Aboriginal persona of B. Wongar) floats oddly free of the communal negotiations of cultural hybridity. This chapter is more a study of postmodern themes, rather than postcolonial ones; identity becomes an individualist performance of cultural pastiche. More interesting is chapter 5, Dreaming the Logos, which explores the implications of Australian aboriginal translations of the New Testament which render, for example, logos as tjukurpa, a Pitjantjatjara term with a range of possible meanings: story, dreaming or law, message, news, individual word and birthmark. Boer concludes that since it is not possible to restrict the resonances of tjukurpa, the purpose of translation is not the transfer of meaning into a new formbut the creation of a new language (pp. 178-79). This sweeping claim would be news to translators, and it can only be read as a thesis about outcomes rather than purposes. But the thesis is manifestly false, since a translation cannot create an entirely new language, or it would be unintelligible. It might, however, create a zone of cultural interaction and hybridity, but we hear from Boer that the notion of cultural hybridity is not very helpful (p. 164). Actually, translations of the Bible into indigenous languages are paradigm cases of cultural hybridity, and whether they are helpful would be something that should be judged by primarily by indigenous people, not white intellectuals. Speaking as one of the latter, I could not help being fascinated by the resonances of logos and tjukurpa, but surely it is time to restrain such fascination until we have some careful research which includes the opinions of aboriginal colleagues. This is a stimulating book, and we are indebted to Roland Boer for writing it. But its style does not quite match its substance. Mark Brett University of Melbourne

Jobling, Jannine, Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Theological Context: Restless Readings. Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Theology and Biblical Studies. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Pp. 186. Cl. 40.00. ISBN 07546-0791-7 In this book Jannine Jobling explores the theological and philosophical frameworks that feminist interpretation emerges from and the landscape which it must also navigate. The two primary scholars around whom she frames her argument are Elizabeth Schssler Fiorenza and Phyllis Trible. Her choice of these two scholars serves her argument well, though some may criticize her for not discussing a broader representation of feminist thought. As Jobling notes, her goal is not to cover the spectrum of feminist hermeneutics but to consider a framework for it to operate

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within (p. 60). Fiorenza is chosen for her socio-historical approach and Trible for her literary-rhetorical approach to the biblical text. After a brief introduction, the first third of the book is devoted to an exploration of Fiorenzas work, followed by a discussion of Tribles in the second third. The main concept which Jobling appropriates from Fiorenzas work is summed up under the metaphor of remembrance. Fiorenza attempts to reconstruct the ideal of a discipleship of equals which she claims existed in the primitive church but was later suppressed by patriarchal tendencies that the church inherited from the surrounding Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures. Remembrance is far more than just filling in the forgotten history of women in the church. The interpreter must employ a hermeneutic of suspicion and remembrance in order to retrieve this egalitarian ideal critically and imaginatively. The goal of historical studies is not to construct a history of but a history for. Tribles work contributes a totally different metaphor to Joblings hermeneutic, that of destabilization. The strength of Tribles approach is her rhetorical analysis of the text-itself. Meaning is located in the semantic container inscribed in the text. Because there is a flexible relationship between the form and content in the text, what counts as a literary unit or what should be examined in the text is something that the reader constitutes. The features of the text may be constant but they are only discerned in the act of reading. As a result, the text not only determines what counts as a proper reading but at the same time holds open the possibility for new interpretations with each reading. Destabilization serves several purposes in Joblings hermeneutic. First, it undermines the dominant (patriarchal) interpretations and opens up new possibilities for understanding a text, providing a theoretical foothold from which feminists may work. Second, it functions apologetically against those who might raise questions about objectivity in interpretation. Jobling sides with Trible (and Paul Ricur) in finding that interpretation is not an activity which guarantees certainty but is by nature an unstable activity. Instead of seeking the definitive and right meaning for the text, it is better to speak of proper interpretations. And third, what is considered a proper reading is determined by the discursive community of interpreters. A text can be read in any number of ways, but not all of those would be equally acceptable to reading communities dependent on the principles and criteria operative (p. 65). It is at this point that Jobling submits a correction to Tribles thought. While Trible defends a texts potential for a plurality of meanings, she claims that her readings are based on the text-itself. This inconsistency could be solved by moving from the text-itself to the text-as-interpreted within a discursive community, according to Jobling. At the same time one wonders how compatible Tribles text-itself approach is with Fiorenzas socio-historical method? On the one hand, I applaud the close

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attention which Jobling has given to both of these scholars. On the other hand, I wonder if they are like oil and water which tend to separate quickly after stirred. Jobling thinks that one of Tribles strengths is that she privileges the womans point of view as her basic hermeneutical stance. This stance helps to expose ideological manipulations that work against women in the text, and for certain biblical stories (the rape of Tamar, for example) their horrific nature. Trible does not stop here but proceeds to set her readings of the text alongside contemporary situations. As a result of remembering these stories, an ethical response is called for on our part. While I agree with the idea that fresh interpretative insights can and should provoke us to a response, this illustrates my main criticism of the book. Jobling does not offer her own interpretations, examples, or case studies as illustrations of how to apply her hermeneutic. Of course, her stated goal is to explore the philosophical and theological grounds for a feminist hermeneutic, but it would have been very helpful to see how she saw this playing out in a practical manner. This is especially significant with regard to the concept of the discursive community of interpreters that plays a central role in Joblings argument. She expands Fiorenzas idea of the ekklesia, in which the ekklesia not only represents the egalitarian community of the early church but also a democratically constituted ideal speech-community. The ekklesia is not only a community which is meant to overcome the oppression of women but all the other repressed groups that exist. In this way, Fiorenzas work moves beyond questions relating only to male/female domination and includes issues such as race, class and religion. Jobling expands the ekklesia from a simple community (the Christian feminist movement) to a mtissage, which represents a complex community in which people from diverse traditions are knotted together but not reduced to just this community. The mtissage represents the discursive community from which feminist interpretation is conducted and adjudicated. It is the epistemological ground which provides rationality, coherence and intelligibility (following MacIntyre). At the same time, it stands as a rival community that challenges the dominant interests in society and exposes how the experience of women (and other groups) have been suppressed. The final contribution which Jobling makes is that of the eschaton as an ideal toward which the church is moving and as hope. The central image she employs in this section of her argument is that of the Eucharist, which is perceived as providing a rich theological matrix for feminist thought. When we participate in the Eucharist we remember what Christ accomplished in the past and proclaim the eschatological horizon toward which the church is headed. The body of Christ is both what the Church is and what it is meant to be (p. 147). If destabilization

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subverts the dominant modes of interpretation, then the eschatological imagination provides an utterly open utopic impulse, proleptically represented in the Christian tradition through the resurrection Past, present and future are then figured as incomplete, pregnant with possibility, always construed and reconstrued from particular locations and imbued with potentially seditious significance (p. 112). The manner by which she incorporates the eschatological imagination with the other themes of remembrance, destabilization, and mtissage is perhaps the most significant contribution which Jobling makes in this thought-provoking book. David P. Parris Fuller Theological Seminary in Colorado

LIM, Johnson T.K., A Strategy for Reading Biblical Texts. Studies in Biblical Literature 29. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Pp. xvii + 152. Cl. 31.00. ISBN 0-8204-5028-6. Johnson Lim presents a pragmatic study in biblical hermeneutics, articulating a text-oriented approach to exegesis and defending it with reference to literary theory and evangelical theology. The strength of the book lies in its clarity, practical viability, and common-sense approach to argumentation. The writing, however, is sometimes marked by grammatical errors, awkward syntax, and inattention to inclusive language. The book begins with a brief introduction on the nature of texts as scripture, a survey of the current climate of hermeneutics, and an historical overview of recent approaches to interpretation. The latter chapter categorizes exegetical methods as author-oriented, text-oriented, reader-oriented, and deconstructionism. Lim notes strengths and weaknesses for each of these, but resists the temptation to develop an eclectic method that would combine or transcend categories. Rather, he devotes the rest of his book to describing a text-oriented strategy that views competing approaches as conversation partners (p. xiv). Such an approach, he holds, is the most likely to reap maximum benefits with minimum problems in helping readers discern the message of the texts (p. xiv). Lim next devotes a chapter to arguing that the final (or canonical) form of the text is the proper artifact for exegetical study. He summarizes the arguments of Hans Frei and Brevard Childs in this regard, generally approving of their conclusions. He also discusses oft-noted inadequacies of historical criticism, with a bit of theological hyperbole. Most critical scholars operating within faith communities would acknowledge many of the limitations of historical criticism that Lim cites without agreeing

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that historical critical interpretation causes divine inspiration or the reliability and truth claims of scripture to be greatly challenged and undermined (p. 50). The next chapter, A Theory of Textuality is the heart of the book. Here, Lim lays out thirteen axioms for a text-centered approach to biblical interpretation, providing the theoretical justification for each. Most of these are common to (and derived from) New Criticism and narratology as practiced in the secular guild: Lim seeks to define what constitutes a text, delineates the implicit assumptions of any texts readers (linguistic and literary competence, genre recognition, preunderstanding, etc.), discusses the significance of context, argues the necessity of holistic reading, defends (again) the need to focus on present text rather than Urtext, and tries to discern a proper (though limited) role for apprehension of authorial intent. The best part of the book, to my mind, comes on pages 88-91, when Lim provides a catalogue of objective criteria by which responses to a text might be validated as falling within a range of admissible interpretation. The book closes with a couple of pieces that are interesting in their own right, though somewhat extraneous. In what could have been an independent article, Lim argues for the reliability of the Masoretic text in Old Testament interpretation. Then, he provides a somewhat homiletical encouragement of the proper attitude for reading texts as scripture (read the Bible responsibly, receptively, respectfully, regularly, reflectively, raptly, resourcefully, and religiously). Lims study suffers one major flaw that threatens to undo his apologetic for what he calls a text-oriented approach to interpretation. Although he is generally accurate in his description of text-oriented methods, he has a myopic understanding of reader-oriented criticism that seems to regard all reader-oriented approaches as given to plurality and lacking criteria to judge false readings. In his chapter that surveys approaches to interpretation, there is little distinction between what he calls readeroriented approaches and deconstructionism. There is no discussion of Wirkungsgeschichte or of ideological reading strategies (feminist, Marxist, Womanist), all of which I would view as expressive of a readeroriented hermeneutic. Reader-oriented critics attempt to discern the role that readers play in the interpretive process for a variety of reasons. Some use exegesis as an analytical tool for self-discovery; some want to expose certain readings as impositions of an illegitimate value system; some want to expand their horizons with an awareness of how texts have been applied in differing contexts. Lim seems to be aware only of plurality-driven, post-structuralist reader-oriented critics who would form but a smallsubset of the category. Even then, Lim is perhaps uncharitable when he castigates such critics as embracing a hermeneutic that allows anything to be justified including acts of murder, robbery, suicide, and genocide.

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The point that post-structuralist critics usually make is that, existentially, such things can be justified from the biblical texts; no critic of whom I am aware has ever argued that they should be. The result of Lims misapprehension of reader-oriented criticism is twofold. First, his critique of that broad category of biblical interpretation comes off as the defeat of a straw person. He skews post-structuralist relativism (with some exaggeration, as just indicated) but leaves the bulk of reader-oriented criticism un-described and un-evaluated. Second, he fails to notice that the strategy he himself articulates in his major chapter would be better classed as a reader-oriented approach than as a text-oriented one. His thirteen axioms for a text-centered approach include the claims that a canonical text is to be read in the context of other canonical texts (p. 86) and that biblical texts demand a theological reading from the perspective of faith (p. 91). What Lim offers, then, is a strategy for doing a particular sort of ideological criticism. He proposes a method for how one set of readers (people who view the Bible as canonical scripture) might read texts from a particular perspective (faith) in quest of a certain type of meaning (theological). This is not a text-oriented strategy; it is a variety of reader-response criticism that like most varieties of reader-response criticismis attentive to textual and contextual dynamics while also recognizing the role that readers play in interpretation through their willful or subconscious (but in this case willful) imposition of a lens through which meaning is perceived. When one receives an Old Testament text as mediating the divine revelation of Jesus Christ (p. 94), one has transcended both the historical quest for authorial intent and the New Critical quest to understand the text on its own terms. Such a hermeneutic is not just author- or text-oriented but, defiantly, reader-oriented. Lims unwitting endorsement of what appears to be a reader-oriented hermeneutic is certainly ironic in light of his generic resistance to such approaches. Still, the value of his book need not be undone by what may be a simple confusion of labels. His exegetical strategy for theological interpretation of canonical texts is sound and should prove helpful to readers who wish to approach the Bible from the perspective that he favors. Mark Allan Powell Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio

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Lang, Bernhard, The Hebrew God: Portrait of an Ancient Deity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 246. Cl. 25.00. ISBN 0-30009025-0.

Bernhard Lang has a long record of contributions to our understanding of the history of religion in ancient Israel. Most especially, he has offered an explanatory account of the emergence of Israelite monotheism, and has considered the significance of feminine dimensions of reality and of interpretive practice. The present volume continues his study of the history of Israelite religion, only now with a very particular thesis in mind. He seeks to reread that history of religion according to the thesis of Georges Dumzil who has sought to understand religion (and therefore the character of the gods) with reference to three functions, namely, the gifts and practices of wisdom, victory, and life. Lang writes:
Dumzil and his school explored the three kinds of punishments envisaged by certain legal traditions and the three kinds of medicine administered in certain medical systems He realized that deities and spirits were often organized according to this trifunctional pattern, for the same tripartite system underlies both the divine world and human society. In human society, the three components are teachers, warriors, and peasants; in religion, there are wise deities, gods of war, and demons promoting fertility. Each of these agents, human or divine, has a particular mandate or, in the language of Dumzil, a certain function.

The three functions are sovereignty and the sacred, war, and life, supported by fertility and food, and culminating in prosperity and wealth. Langs book is an attempt to understand the character of Israels God in terms of these three functions that he cryptically summarizes as wisdom, war, and wealth. Lang concludes that in ancient Israel, tripartite thought never developed into a generalized, pervasive approach to reality. Nonetheless he assumes that there is indeed evidence of tripartite thought in the Bible. The bulk of Langs book is an effort to exploit Dumzils thesis on tripartite ideology as a way of expositing the God of ancient Israels religion. The several chapters are offered in support of the thesis. The first is the Lord of Wisdom where the book, as elsewhere, moves back and forth between the biblical texts and the more general Ancient Near Eastern culture. Lang explores esoteric wisdom that is the property of the gods, and pays particular attention to the texts of Daniel. He also considers law-giving, the covenant, and the work of the scribes as facets of this general function. The second function is that of war that leads to an exploration of Israels so-called Holy War and the primacy of the Divine Warrior, as well as Gods battle with the monster-chaos. Particular reference is made

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to the chaos texts that Jon Levenson has treated in detail and that provide an opening to apocalyptic. The third function, the gift and practice of life, is treated more fully, for the theme is subdivided into three parts: Lord of the animals (and human authority over animals) with particular reference to the Whirlwind speeches of the Book of Job; Lord of the individual; and Lord of the harvest, the latter including a development of natural theology and Gods commitment to the world of vegetation. The fact that Lang takes up this many sub-themes, I suggest, reflects the current and new accent in the field on creation, for the several sub-themes constitute a general presentation of a theology of God as creator. The development of individual religion is especially important, given the propensity of interpreters to focus on large historical-public themes. There is no doubt that the tripartite notion of Dumzil has an heuristic value for Langs work, for it gives Lang the topics which he wishes to discuss. Having secured the topics by way of this theoretical base, he then presents, for each function in turn, a rather conventional review of the data, though with much less actual textual engagement than one might wish or expect. Beyond that heuristic value, however, I am not persuaded that the three part ideology is particularly useful, other than as an organizing entry point for exposition and interpretation. The following three paragraphs contribute to this point. Lang allows that the three-part ideology that Dumzil proposes is not only a list of theological themes nor only an inventory of divine functions but a taxonomy of social power, so that the three parts of the kings body correspond to the three fixed classes of society, the priestly class, the warrior class, and the commoners. Lang, perhaps happily, makes nothing of any of this theoretical extrapolation; the result is that his exposition does not really connect in any useful way to cultural reality. The capacity to trace a three part pattern of power strikes me as difficult work, as Lang seeks to do it. Lang appeals several times to the divine gift to Solomon in its three-fold articulation of divine gift in 1 Kings 3, alludes to the messianic titles in Isa. 9:6, and mentions the doxological formula of Daniel 7. But that is, in my judgment, a very thin basis for the proposal, plus the fact that the thematics of the triad do not stay constant. I am not convinced that the data of the text fits readily into the pattern, so that the characteristic problems of patternism and the fluidity of textual data recur, problems that keep showing up in patternism all the way from Ivan Engnell to Joseph Campbell. One must play very fast and loose with the data in order to make it fit at all. The three accent points strike one as being so obvious and commonplace as to be banal. Of course the three tasks are among the most obvious if one were to line out the actual functioning of governance, so that we can well do without any imposed theory. Other scholars have

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also found triads for interpretation (so G. Ernest Wright, The Old Testament and Theology [New York: Harper & Row, 1969] with an exposition of God as creator, Lord, and warrior; or Patrick D. Miller Jr, The Sovereignty of God, in Donald G. Miller (ed.), The Hermeneutical Quest [Allison Park: Pickwick Publications, 1986], pp. 129-44, with his exposition of God as King, Judge, and Warrior). It does not require any special theory to arrive at such a judgment. It is, of course, the case that the accent on creator is more fully appreciated by Lang than by Wright and Miller, but that, I suggest, reflects a changed context of research. Thus I believe that the problem with the theoretical basis proposed here is that it must be made very broad in order to fit the data and support the themes, in the process of which the topic becomes so commonplace as to be uninteresting and unproductive of new insight. Langs work is perhaps a gain from a theoretical perspective. If, however, one seeks to understand the Hebrew God, more text work would serve better without the restraints or impositions of such a theory. In the midst of the articulation of the three-fold scheme, Lang offers a striking, albeit brief, presentation of the Book Religion of Deuteronomy as a disruption of shamanistic religion. The brief discussion is enough to consider that Lang regards Deuteronomy as a new type of religion that seriously disrupts the conventions he has been tracing. Of course it is clear that the same three functions still pertain in the tradition of Deuteronomy, but in such a radically different form as to require a reconsideration of what is to be taken as universal. The book concludes with several brief topical discussions after Lang has offered his primary, patterned analysis. Of these latter pieces, perhaps the most suggestive is his notion that the three great traditions of the Hexateuch still adhere to the pattern: (1) The patriarchal narrative bespeaks the third function of fertility; (2) The Exodus narrative sounds the theme of war; and (3) The Sinai tradition is concerned with legislated order. In broad stroke this is a suggestive notion; but the close text work remains to be completed, text work that will show the complex ways in which Israels articulation of God both serves and disrupts the pattern. Langs book may set us off thinking in new directions. It itself does not advance the argument very far. But then the book evidences a lifetime of reflective criticism; no doubt Lang would like not only to leave work for others to do, but would like to suggest a way to think into the future. That latter suggestion the book articulates with great effectiveness. Walter Brueggemann Columbia Theological Seminary

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Watts, James W. (ed.), Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. SBL Symposium Series 17. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001. Pp. xi + 228. Pbk. $39.95. ISBN 1-58983-0156. Over the past ten years, P. Freis thesis of direct Persian influence upon the formation of the Pentateuch as part of the so called imperial authorisation has been debated in German and French biblical scholarship. In English on the other hand, the debate has been sparse, mainly due to the fact that Freis magnum opus has never been translated. Naturally it was difficult to introduce students to the topic since all information available in English had to be second-hand. The essays in this volume (originally papers delivered to the Biblical Law Section of the Society of Biblical Literature) are an attempt to stimulate fresh discussion of the topic, as well as to provide for the first time a summary of the thesis by P. Frei, published in 1995, in English translation. In a way, these articles form a pendant to the inaugural issue of the Zeitschrift fr altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte. As such the present volume serves as a representative for the Anglo-American contribution to the debate. Joseph Blenkinsopp (Was the Pentateuch the Civic and Religious Constitution of the Jewish Ethnos in the Persian Period?) surveys the Persian concept and practice of law before evaluating the impact of the Persian empire on Jewish civic and religious life in the second Temple period. He notes that since there is no evidence that Jewish civil or religious life authorities presented the laws for official approbation, this is not a case of imperial authorization as defined by Frei (p. 61). He concludes that the theory remains a possible hypothesis, but that one should also look for alternative models to explain the origin of the Pentateuch. Lisbeth S. Fried (You shall appoint Judges: Ezras Mission and the Rescript of Artaxerxes) argues that the judges appointed in Ezra 7:2526 were in fact officials that acted according to Persian law and would not have promoted Jewish law: A completely Persian judicial system would have been installed in the satrapy Beyond The River with Persian judges and magistrates This was Ezras task (p. 67). If that had been the case it would be impossible to argue that the law promulgated in Ezra 7:25-26 was in fact the Pentateuch. Nevertheless, Fried allows for the possibility that certain officials such as Nehemiah might have introduced Jewish legal practice which the Persians backed: Nehemiah, as Persian governor, had the right and ability to create law and its interpretation and to execute sanctions for its disobedience (p. 87). Lester L. Grabbe (The Law of Moses in the Ezra Tradition: More Virtual than Real?) shows that the Pentateuch in its present form was com-

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pleted by the end of the Persian period, though without any Persian input. Since the historical value of the Ezra tradition in the Bible is more than questionable, an imperial authorisation of his law seems highly unlikely. Gary N. Knoppers (An Achaemenid Imperial Authorization of Torah in Yehud?) is able to show that the distinction between sacred and royal law is not just applied to stipulations regarding the empire or the temple but to a variety of settings. This allows for the conclusion that local governors and administrators enjoyed a larger amount of freedom and independence from the central administration of the Persian Empire than previously assumed: Rather than looking for a highly centralized, constant, and tightly defined Persian policy to explain the disparate measures taken by local commissioners, it may be better to recognize the degree to which the Persian government allowed local leaders to be active players in shaping policies within their communities (p. 134). Such a view would explain the disparate nature of the legal stipulations throughout the Persian empire, as well as regarding Ezras rule against intermarriage as part of the ongoing dynamic between central authority and regional control (ibid.). Donald B. Redford (The so-called Codification of Egyptian Law under Darius I) looks at the Egyptian evidence for collecting legal material and argues that the tradition of collecting older legal material started well before the arrival of the Persians: Egypt entered the last quarter of the sixth century bce with perhaps the most sophisticated legal system in the world (p. 153). As such, Darius desire to collect Egyptian law happens in accordance with local Egyptian practice and simply served to inform the new rulers of the existing practices of their subjects. Jean-Louis Ska (Persian Imperial Authorization: Some Question Marks) notes that much of the texts in the Pentateuch are ill-fitting for a constitutional document; at the same time he argues that the origin of the Pentateuch can be explained without any appeal to an Imperial authorisation. If the Pentateuch has been the official archive or library of the community of the second Temple, this might have been the reason for its normative status: As a written text, the Pentateuch acquires the quality of a normative and irrevocable document about Israels origins and judicial organization (p. 170). All the essays make fairly clear that the evidence available does not support the thesis of P. Frei. At the same time it becomes apparent that we have to assume some Persian influence on local affairs, but it is doubtful that the first supranational empire of the Mediterranean (p. 40) really interfered in the codification of the Torah. Frei himself acknowledges the principle of local autonomy (ibid.) of the Achaemenid government, and the contributors to the discussion are right to stress this point (e.g. Knoppers). Even if one does not subscribe to an Imperial

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Authorisation which is responsible for the Pentateuch, one cannot neglect the fact that much of the Pentateuch was probably edited in the Persian period. Here the numerous comparative material utilised and discussed in the volume will be of invaluable help. A bibliography and indices conclude the book. This is a useful volume that no serious scholar who works on the formation of the Pentateuch can overlook. At the same time it is hoped that, due to the English translation of Freis thesis, his work will become more widely known in the English speaking world. Anselm C. Hagedorn Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin

Fontaine, Carole R., Smooth Words: Women, Proverbs and Performance in Biblical Wisdom. JSOTSup, 356. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 296. Cl. 60.00. ISBN 0-82646-024-0. This work, with its introductory address To the Reader, offers an invitation to enter into a conversation that draws upon a scholars lifetime of work in the areas of folklore, the texts of the Ancient Near East and the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible. If Israels sages were ecumenists in their connections with past and surrounding cultures, then these connections need to be brought into the conversation. In this respect the title does not give due note of the scope of extra-biblical material under discussion. And, just as in any real-life conversation, this one, too, wanders into byways that provide information we might not have expected. For example, the discussion of the Lilith origins in the ANE, which may have influenced the Proverbs material, invites reflections on the Lilith of the Present, including Ellen Frankels imaginatively voiced Lilith, who talks of seeking the truth buried under the mountain of tradition (p. 133). At the same time, the conversation requires the readers engagement with the current scholarly discussions in the areas covered. And if at times the reviewer questioned the authors own view on a point, that is to be expected. For example, can one talk of a more literal reading of Prov. 8:22-31 (p. 138) when the Hebrew is notoriously ambiguous? Was the adulteress of Prov. 7:6-27 pursuing a male in order to become a mother, her husband having not only gone away physically but having been found lacking in the matter of fertility (pp. 45-46)? The interpretive possibilities give the reader pause to rethink conclusions that may rely more on traditional assumptions than the texts warrant. Why should we assume that the proverbial wisdom of the sages in Proverbs was all penned by men? Listening to the warnings against fools as the voice of women con-

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cerned for the welfare of their family does indeed make equal or perhaps even more sense (pp. 58-59). While the reviewer is personally a little wary of cross-cultural and cross-time parallels, the excursus relating a wise womans composition in Old Norse does provide a glimpse into a world with certain similaritiesthe wise Nordic woman does sound like Wisdom in Proverbs 8, and once again there is the goddess and tree connection; whether this strengthens the case for female authorship in the book of Proverbs is less sure. The wide-ranging and detailed survey of the roles of women in chapter two plots a correspondence between the roles played-out within the private and public arenas, which then became codified in the metaphors of Woman Wisdom and Woman Stranger. The diagram on p. 89 provides a useful visual aid. Personified Wisdom provides the move to cosmic considerations, although Fontaine acknowledges the continuing scholarly ambivalence about Wisdoms origins. The exploration of possible goddess ancestors in the Ancient Near East is far ranging, and a welcome indicator of just how prevalent the motifs now attached to Wisdom and Woman Stranger were in the ancient world. As such discussions continue to multiply, the reviewer was grateful for such a survey and engaged critique. At the same time, Fontaines experience of folklore study brings the reminder that while Woman Wisdom and Woman Stranger are literary constructs, their features also belong to the world of oral literature. The conclusion of this broad survey of the roles of reallife women and of the various goddesses is that both contribute to the Proverbs pairing, the goddesses in particular explaining the apparent straying from private to public venues. The final words of this long chapter concern the dualism of good/bad and set the task: It must remain the job of feminist readers . No passive listening role for the reader, particularly the woman reader, in this conversation! After a detailed consideration of the genre and performative power of proverbs, Fontaine draws upon Ezekiels usage, in particular comparing Ezek. 16:44 with 18:10-20, to illustrate the point that the gender and the social location of the proverb user (as well as its original maker) affect the way in which supposedly neutral traditional truths are deployed and exercised within society and in particular in what circumstances and to what end (p. 156). This is the introduction to chapter three, subtitled Women Using Wisdom: Performing the Tradition, which then moves to a further subtitle, The Women Respond: Reversing Abuse through Use. In the first example, from Middle Egypt, a slave girl talks back to the pharaoh. As the focus is on the challenge resolved by the pharaohs scribe, as Fontaine acknowledges, I wondered whether the detail of the slaves challenge could be extracted from a seemingly patriarchal bag of stock motifs. Mari and Hittite women provided more persuasive examples, allowing the point that in the real world of oral use of

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wisdom, they (i.e. women) are equal players with native wit and full group membership (p. 190). With the insights gained from this discursive journey around the ANE, which is one of the riches of this book, the chapter returns to women using wisdom in the biblical texts, specifically to those wise women of 2 Samuel. But we are soon taken again on side trips into the world of later Judaism with the Queen Mothers words to her son Lemuel set in the mouth of Bathsheba, making the point that in both the biblical text and its later usage the advice works on the assumption that women and their plots make men weak and sinful (p. 201). Watching the haggadic moves is a matter of noting the changing performance arenas, as well as the changing resolutions to riddles spoken and unspoken. The quest as stated at the end of this chapter has been for a wise woman who might speak to and for Wisdom in a womans voice. The focus for the final section of this chapter has settled on the Queen of Sheba, whose journey outwards or forwards through texts unfamiliar to this reviewer, is remarkable in its variety. The reader watches Sheba setting Solomon riddles in the Second Targum to Esther and Midrash Mishle but also sees her bested by Solomon in the fourteenth century ce Kebra Nagast, transformed into the demon Lilith by the Zohar and with hairy feet in several later texts, so that compared with these, the brevity and gaps of the Hebrew Bible are to be preferred (p. 229). Yet the Shekinah sides with her in the Kebra Nagast allowing the comment that one cannot sin against a wise woman, Wisdoms own, without consequences (p. 239). Chapter four is a delight. I have thought of gathering together some of the creative assignments I have set; this chapter makes me regret I have not done so. This is Wisdom-speak twenty-first century style, from the students of Andover Newton, poignant, wise, and down to earth. Do not believe what is written in the course catalog for the class dates will change and pre-requisites will appear! God cares, said Wisdom, silent shadow of thought, and looked out the window. See Gods creation! What will you do with it? The words of Wisdom are neverending indeed. The conclusion, again addressed to the Gentle Reader, begins with a warm acknowledgement that scholarly journeys always follow the tracks of those who have gone before. In many ways this study stretches the boundaries, of the textual canons we use, of the engagement with readers, and of the material we include. It is creative, committed and no less scholarly. In a work about women as authorized performers of wisdom, Carole Fontaine proves herself such a one. Judith E. McKinlay University of Otago

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Spaller, Christina, Die Geschichte des Buches ist die Geschichte seiner Auslschung Die Lektre von Koh 1,3-11 in vier ausgewhlten Kommentaren. Exegese in unserer Zeit, 7. Mnster: LIT Verlag, 2001 Pp. xxiv + 291. Pbk. Np. ISBN 3-8258-5395-0.

The present work by Christina Spaller is a revised edition of her doctoral thesis submitted at Salzburg. It belongs within a particular sphere of increasing interest in biblical studies, not least among Germanspeaking scholars: namely, the reader-response process of interpreting biblical texts. The author is not satisfied with a critical reflection on this process but puts that process to the test by questioning minutely four Christian commentaries on Qoh. 1:3-11, interesting herself in their presuppositions, procedures and aims. Her choice of a primary text is not entirely by chance, for there is hardly another biblical book where the interpretations differ as widely as in the case of Qoheleth in the German-speaking research of the twentieth century alone. This fact warrants the question: Why are the interpretations so dissimilar? To answer, the author disentangles (to stay within her own text-textile metaphors) the four chosen commentaries. She tries to understand how the threads and colours have been woven into patterns resulting in the new product, the commentary. After an introduction (chapter I), chapter II lays the methodological basis: What is language? How does it work? What conceptions of discourse exist? What is a text? How is it created? What happens in reading? What is reading? What is perception? What are the conditions of perception? At the end of this chapter, the author positions herself systematically with her own work and names the individual, social and hermeneutical context of her work. In chapter III there follows the practical application of the theory on the four selected commentaries by Aarre Lauha, Norbert Lohfink, Diethelm Michel and Thomas Krger. The determination of the relationship between the primary text, Qoheleth, and the secondary texts is central. To this end, a framework of questions is designed prior to the detailed analysis of all four examples. Chapters IV and V develop the results of the analysis of chapter III, with regard to the preliminary issues of chapter II. An essay stands in the place of postscript to the whole book. It is impossible to summarise chapter III in which Spaller gives her results concerning the four commentaries. Instead, a few examples of Spallers conclusions respecting the interests of their authors shall be offered. Regarding Aarre Lauha, she detects a strong religious commitment, attested for instance in his explicit preference for theology over philosophy and over a philosopher like Qoheleth. Lauha finds the Book of Qoheleth to affirm that philosophy leads to a dead end. According to Lauha, Christianity, rather than philosophy, is in a direct line with basic

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Old Testament views and the true biblical doctrine (see p. 269). Norbert Lohfink is explicitly interested in a positive interpretation of Qoheleth, and reads it in the theological perspective of creation as limiting the human role within the cosmos and exhorting recognition of the worth of the passing moment. Since Lohfink is concerned with the socio-political relevance of the texts, his Qoheleth shows an affinity to his own biography, being a Catholic theologian writing after the Second Vatican Council. Diethelm Michel, who sets out parallels between (biblical) wisdom and (modern) science, finds in Qoheleth the problems of modern science concerning the definition of reality. For him, Qoheleth is an intellectual who questions doctrines of faith. All that remains both for Qoheleth and for a critical modernity is a scepticism of all theory of cognition and a crisis of science. Thomas Krger stresses the open scope of action for human beings in their world and history. Like Qoheleth, who comments on problems of his time and within the framework of his tradition, as one voice in a larger argument, so his readers today are required to deal with their own time and find dialectical solutions to their problems. The singular (as far as I know) achievement of this book is that it does not stop with the obvious theoretical knowledge about the complex relationship between text and reader. Instead, it reconstructs the path from the primary text to the commentary as minutely as possible and then connects the four different interpretations, the four different personas of Qoheleth, with the four different commentators and their individual biographies as scholars. The results are impressive, not because we learn something we did not know previously (at least theoretically), but because all that usually remains veiled in an interpretation (hidden in glosses, notes, introduction, selection, structure and terminology) is brought to light. Spaller succeeds, without making assessments, in presenting each commentary as a multiplication of the primary text, which is obliterated in the process, similar to the result of an archaeological dig, which destroys what is unearthed. The primary text is never unequivocal in meaning, but there is a socio-political relevance of its interpretations. The only permissible ethical question, according to Spaller, concerns the social responsibility of the actions of those who write. It is gratifying when a work of research lays its cards on the table at every step. The reflection of ones own presuppositions and the responsible dealing with them is a scientific standard for all future exegesis. Presently these standards are most often met in the publications of feminist exegesis and biblical hermeneutics. As far as historical plausibility goes, I would like to add that the problem of non-existent unequivocality cannot be solved by withdrawing to an archemenidan point outside of interpretation, on a metalevel of description of interpretations. In the future, it will still be possible to dis-

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cuss the historical plausibility of images of Qoheleth (for instance), not independent of the interest of interpretations but in relation to a wider database of antique sources. A historical jigsaw improves when more pieces are added to the picture. An example of this in the field of the exegesis of Qoheleth is an article by Christoph Uehlinger (in Ludger Schwienhorst [ed.], Das Buch Qohelet [BZAW 254, 1997], 155-247). Uehlinger systematically compares Qoheleths chorus-like call to rejoicing on the one hand to Mesopotamian, Levantine and Egyptian wisdomliterature of the Persian and Hellenistic period on the other, where the joy of life in face of the perpetual threat of death is advocated. These sources, some of them historically quite close to Qoheleth, have never been viewed systematically. Although this addition to the framework of interpretation is conducted by interests just like any other, it should contain more plausible data than other theses, because the outlined horizon of Literar-, Gattungs- and Motivgeschichte places the singular source Qoheleth within a larger context. This too is a hypothesis, but one with more support than others and therefore more likely to be accepted. Undoubtedly, writing history is always strongly influenced by ideologies and fiction (pp. 281-82), but it differs from pure ideology or fiction by its framework of reference, which can not be subjected to subjective or collective interpretation but must be verifiable through empirical methods. This book is strongly recommended to all self-critical scholars in the field of exegesis. Silvia Schroer University of Berne, Switzerland

Fortna, Robert T. and Thatcher, Tom (eds.), Jesus in Johannine Tradition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. Pp. xviii + 381. Pbk. 20.00. ISBN 0-664-22219-6. This books introduction by T. Thatcher describes the present state of research on the Johannine Jesus tradition, briefly outlining four common approaches in Johannine studies: oral tradition, written source, synoptic dependency and developmental theories. The book concludes with another article by Thatcher indicating possible future trajectories for Johannine research. Between these extremes, Part 1 includes articles on The Fourth Gospel and Jesus; Part 2 considers The Fourth Evangelists Sources; and Part 3 is concerned with The Fourth Gospel and Noncanonical Literature. The editors decision to invite contributions from authors who represent differing perspectives and who may or may not specialise in the area

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of Johannine studies has resulted in this extremely wide-ranging and varied collection of essays on the Johannine Jesus tradition. The introductions to the book as a whole and to its constituent parts are well crafted, clear and informative. Taken together with the far-sighted conclusion and helpful glossary, this material is clearly designed not only to update academic readers but also to ensure that others who are interested but less experienced in the discipline are provided with essential data. While the decision to showcase a range of scholarship in all its conflicting variety may be seen by the editors as a positive step (pp. 7-9), one wonders how far this unresolved clash of interests will be universally appreciated by the books target readership, for the reality is that this is a series of studies in which all concerned argue their case with conviction but no-one responds to anyone else. In Part 1, for example, there is a sequence of four essays, all dealing with the concept of eyewitness in John (pp. 35-82). The first essay understands the concept literally, claiming that the Fourth Gospel is based on an authentic historical record about Jesus (Gary M. Burge, Situating Johns Gospel in History). The following two, however, see the same concept as having a more complex function in the gospel that relates to the status of later Christian readers (Jeffrey L. Staley, What Can a Postmodern Approach to the Fourth Gospel Add to Contemporary Debates About Its Historical Situation?; Arthur J. Dewey, The Eyewitness of History: Visionary Consciousness in the Fourth Gospel). With the fourth essay, we lurch back to literalism once more (Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John: Rushing in Where Angels Fear to Tread?). Similarly, the first two studies in Part 3 are both on the relationship between John and Q (Christopher M. Tuckett, The Fourth Gospel and Q; Edwin K. Broadhead, The Fourth Gospel and the Synoptic Sayings Source: The Relationship Reconsidered). These not only have conflicting results but, when compared on the issue of Johns attitude to Judaism, they are also based on conflicting presuppositions. The seasoned academic may find this lack of resolution unsatisfactory but will no doubt successfully steer a path through these shifting opinions. Surely the less experienced reader, however, thus far carefully nurtured by the editors introductions, is here left to flounder. A second point which bears on the possible success of the collection is that the policy of including studies on the Johannine tradition by those whose main specialisation lies elsewhere has not always worked in the Fourth Gospels favour. Thus, for example, some pieces give the impression that the authors own research enthusiasm has somewhat dominated the argument, rather leaving the gospel to fit around the edges (so, perhaps, Graham H. Twelftree, Exorcisms in the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics; John M. Perry, The Sacramental Tradition in the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics). In the case of the essay by Alan Kirk (The

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Johannine Jesus in the Gospel of Peter: A Social Memory Approach), interesting though it be, one learns much about the Gospel of Peter but nothing much about John. More serious here, however, is the fact that the text of the gospel is not always interpreted as carefully as it deserves. For example, to state that Jesus explicitly proclaims that his disciples will not be able to follow him to the place where I am going, heaven ignores the fact that those addressed in 7:33-34 and 8:21 are Jews, not disciples, and also that Jesus specifically promises Peter in 13:33, 36 that he will follow him afterwards, through martyrdom (cf. 21:18-19, 22). Similarly, it hardly makes sense to claim that Thomas failing in 20:24-29 is his desire for a premortem ecstatic vision of Jesus when the text states plainly that Thomas wants tactile proof of the resurrection (pace DeConick, pp. 306-308). Another form of misreading the gospel is to play word-games with the text that the text itself does not play. Thus, while it can perhaps be argued that Johannine theology used marriage-symbolism (cf. 3:29), this does not justify either referring to 1:18 as the bridal chamber of Gods bosom, or linking the wine provided by Jesus at the marriage-feast with the intoxicating Spirit mediated by the risen Jesus (John 15:11), or assuming that an allusion to Revelations marriage feast of the Lamb can be slotted in at will in a piece on John (Perry, pp. 160, 162, 163). A final point on interpreting the gospel text concerns the inclusion of references to John 7:53-8:11 in studies on the work of the fourth evangelist (see Winter, p. 225; Thatcher, p. 269; Broadhead, p. 298). To do this without explanation is to fly in the face of manuscript evidence and to mislead the uninformed reader. The above comments are not intended to give a negative impression of the entire collection, for the majority of the essays are of a high standard and well worth any readers attention. The following are those which this reviewer found especially stimulating. Gail R. ODays contribution (The Gospel of John: Reading the Incarnate Words) captures beautifully Johns approach to tradition, and the discussions by Staley and Arthur Dewey pose vital questions about historicity and culture. Thatchers proposal that the figure of the Beloved Disciple probably originated with a real person but was developed through legendary accretion and the retrojection of later values is thought-provoking and tempts one to wonder whether something of the same trajectory could be traced between the historical Jesus and the gospel presentations of him. While not all may agree with Richard Bauckhams view on the intended audience of the Fourth Gospel (The Audience of the Fourth Gospel), his argument here against the purely sectarian, in-group language, approach is undeniably telling. Johannes Beutler, S.J. (Synoptic Jesus Tradition in the Johannine Farewell Discourse) makes an excellent case in favour of Johns creative use of traditional material in the

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discourses rather than dependence on a single coherent source, and Paul N. Andersons well-researched study (John and Mark: The Bi-Optic Gospels) takes a properly complex approach to the issue of the relationship between John and Mark. Joanna Deweys essay on the interaction between oral and written texts (The Gospel of John in Its Oral-Written Media World) is a gem, with far-reaching consequences for the interpretation of the gospel. Finally, Catrin H. Williams study of the gospels I am motif (I Am or I Am He? Self-Declaratory Pronouncements in the Fourth Gospel and Rabbinic Tradition) has a nice appreciation of the interplay between statements of self-declaration on Jesus lips and divine claims. Wendy Sproston North University of Durham, England

Meye Thompson, Marianne, The God of the Gospel of John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. Pp. x + 269. Pbk. Np. ISBN 0-8028-4734-X. As a sequel to her volume The Promise of the Father. Jesus and God in the New Testament (2000), this book represents Marianne Meye Thompsons attempt to take up the challenge posed in N.A. Dahls dictum that God is the neglected factor in New Testament theology by carrying out a detailed study of the theocentric elements in the Gospel of John. It is proposed that the fundamental question of the Gospel is the question of God. This approach, of course, goes against the current trend of treating this Gospel from a christocentric standpoint. The author offers first of all a review of the ways the term God is used in biblical and related literature. Having recalled the use of the term in relation to mere mortals, she states: Calling a figure God does not compromise commitment to monotheism; worshipping that figure does(p. 41). Thus it is seen that the crucial measure of deity is the practice of worship of a specific figure (p. 41). Here, as throughout her study, following a well-trodden path, Thompson stresses functional rather than ontological aspects. There follows, consequently, the application of functionality to Christology, with the Gospel of John evidencing a high Christology in view of the fact that the functions exercised are seen as unique divine prerogatives(p. 47). In the Gospel of John God is identified most characteristically in relationship to Jesus, namely as Father, and the identity and character of God are explicated in terms of the works and words of Jesus (p. 52). There is, however, no confusion of the persons: the Father and the Son always maintain their distinct identities (p. 114). So unity and difference are kept in tension, but they are not collapsed into one, as

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Bultmanns famous dictum that Jesus as the Revealer of God reveals nothing but that he is the Revealer is charged with doing. There is no separate and distinct knowledge of one without knowledge of the other (p. 141). Thompson characterizes this as complete unity of Father and Son. The analogy offered to illustrate the relationship between them is of concentric circles, in which the Christological circle lies within and shares its center with the larger theological circle(p. 239). The high Christology of the Gospel of John is found side by side with a notable strain of subordinationisma term which is, however, not acceptable to Thompson. This apparent paradox is resolved by her in statements such as this: Arguments for the Sons dependence on the Father are ultimately arguments for the unity of the Son with the Father(p. 53). It is as the origin and source of the Sons life that the Father is greater. Whilst recognizing the centrality of the theme of life in the Gospel, one has some reservations about the employment of the expression The Living Father as the title for the second chapter of the volume, for, after all, the explicit textual evidence for it is rather meagre (only in John 6:57). The claim that the Son has life in himself (5:26) is deemed to be very significant and relates his activity closely to that of the Father. The basic contentions of this chapter are that in offering the gift of life Jesus exercises a unique divine prerogative, and that the exercise of this prerogative attests to the unity that Jesus has with God as the Son of the Father (p. 87). Moreover, the life-giving work of the Father in the Son does not refer to a single event but to the all-encompassing creative and sustaining work of God, which has past, present and future reference points (p. 80). It is in this connection that it is argued, contrary to the well-nigh universal view, that the realized eschatology of the Gospel is as much a function of the Gospels theology as of its eschatology or Christology (p. 82). Chapter 3 deals with the way in which God is revealed in the Gospel of John, the revelation and knowledge of God being concentrated in Jesus. Terms such as Wisdom, Word, and glory are the best explications of the sort of relationship and unity that already exist between the Father and the Son by virtue of that Father-Son relationship (p. 225). This makes it theocentric in focus and content (p. 238). However, these concepts are to be treated more in terms of personification than of hypostatization. So, Wisdom is not in the end, separable from God, but rather expresses Gods own ways, with and in the world as the power and activity of God manifest in order to bring life (p. 135). In the chapter on the Spirit of God we are encouraged to treat the Paraclete in relation to God as well as to Christ. Indeed, contrary to the usual view of the Spirit conceived in Christological terms, Thompson argues for a theological context: The primary conception of the Spirit

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that runs through the Gospel is that of the Fathers life-giving power that has been granted to and conferred through the Son (p. 186). Indeed, we are here reminded of Gordon Fees characterization of the Holy Spirit in Paul as Gods empowering presence. In a final chapter the importance of worship for the Gospel is affirmed. Whereas the view that it contains a Christocentric replacement theology has been a popular one, Thompson sees this matter too in theological terms. Jesus in effect replaces the temple as the locus of Gods presence, and the eschatological context of true worship is brought out. Thus, it is not so much a matter of contrasting two rites or two religions or two forms of piety, but rather two eras and their respective manifestation of the presence of God (p. 217). Jesus does not replace the Jewish festivals; and neither does Gods deliverance replace the deliverance of the Exodus from Egypt. Rather, the festivals of Israel, which present and represent that narrative of Gods saving work, are taken up into those festivals that celebrate the continuation of that narrative(p. 220). The implications of the worship of Jesus for the identity of God need also to be addressed. In reply to the question of whether the Gospel testifies to the practice of worshipping Jesus, the response is that, actually, Jesus is presented by John as the one through whom worship is directed to God (p. 225). This recalls Hurtados claim that worship of the one God is also worship of Jesus: in fact, it is worship through Jesus Christ because he has been revealed uniquely in hima phenomenon which Richard Bauckham has called christological monotheism. The investigation undertaken is avowedly theological in character, and the author eschews attempts to reconstruct the history of the text in relation to the alleged Johannine community. Indeed, unusually for a study of the Gospel of John, R.E. Browns The Community of the Beloved Disciple does not feature in the bibliography. As a result questions regarding the milieu and purpose of the Gospels theology remain in abeyance. Whilst applauding the scope of this significant study, it may appear somewhat ungenerous to point out some omissions. This reviewer would have welcomed some consideration of the noteworthy contributions of J.A.T. Robinson to the debate about Johannine Christology, and would also have expected some reference to P.N. Andersons recent significant study The Christology of the Fourth Gospel (1996). It has frequently been stated that the real issue in Johannine Christology is the nature of the relationship between Jesus and God, and this volume, which is throughout lucidly argued and attractively written, provides us with a thorough treatment of this relationship. It is a measure of the authors achievement that the work can be heartily recommended to the undergraduate student as well as to the mature scholar. John Tudno Williams The United Theological College, Aberystwyth

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Engberg-Pedersen, Troels (ed.), Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide. Louisville / London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. Pp. x + 355. Pbk. 25.00. ISBN 0-664-22406-7.

Whatever we do in the exegetical workshop is dependent on fundamental categories. In New Testament studies, these fundamental categories often include a JudaismHellenism dichotomy. Since astonishingly few works examine the validity of such fundamentals, this book is to be welcomed for its meta-critical ambition in doing precisely that. Troels Engberg-Pedersen states that the title envisages a new research program, expressing the need for more scholarly self-consciousness about hermeneutical categories and their ideological content. One needs to give up altogether operating with the JudaismHellenism dichotomy, he claims, not allowing the traditional eitheror to skew analysis. (It is interesting that the present volume appears the same year as my own methodological criticism of the dichotomy, Rethinking the Judaism-Hellenism Dichotomy, a fact which may indicate the beginning of a shift.) The first three articles discuss the dualism from a meta-perspective without reference to the Corinthian correspondence, and the remaining eight may be seen as case studies in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians with the JudaismHellenism divide in view. Wayne Meeks describes the use of the dichotomy from the Tbingen School to the modern study of Judaism. His conclusion is that the adjectives Jewish and Hellenistic are practically no help at all in sorting out variety in early Christianity (p. 26). Dale Martin overviews the use of the dichotomy, sweeping from seventeenth-century England and Germany to present-day North American scholarship, and seeing underlying social history as decisive upon the scholarly construct. Almost every influential current since around 1800 has been governed by the dichotomy. The result has been to construe Judaism as the antipole of Protestantism. So German philhellenism favoured the Greek universalism and demeaned particularistic Judaism. Modern exegesis maintains the same dichotomy. Martin Hengels influential Judaism and Hellenism is problematic not only because it constructs Judaism as simply a praeparatio evangelica, but also because it construes ancient conflicts in the terms of nineteenth-century Germany (p. 44) and implies a symmetry which does not exist (p. 30). The dichotomy continues on in the analyses of North American scholars as varied as Ellis, Schoeps, Boyarin and Segal. Judaism and Hellenism can represent almost anything, dependent on the ideology and religious and/or social interest of the person who uses the dichotomy (pp. 5859). Martins analysis is insightful indeed and should become seminal. Philip Alexanders study Hellenism and Hellenization as Problematic Historiographical Categories stresses at least two important caveats of

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Hellenism in scholarly use: it is highly charged with ideology, and is problematic as historiographical category, being more complex than was recognised in earlier scholarship. Alexander applies an analytical grid to measure the degree of Hellenistic influence on the Rabbis as a test case, using seven categories, from mere knowledge of Greek to rabbinic adoption of Greek cultural institutions. Doing this analysis he escapes the haphazard categorizing that is so common in the use of this dichotomy. Following on from these general studies, a series of articles focus particularly on Pauls Corinthian correspondence. Stanley Stowers attempts to situate early Christian groups in their current religious-philosophical context, contrasting the ancient religious systems of the Mediterranean, which integrated religion and culture, with the Hellenistic philosophies. The latter focused on a unitary value, being in opposition to bourgeois values, and majored on conversion. Stowers suggests that, to its contemporaries, Pauline Christianity was philosophy-like, but does not say that this pertained to a Hellenistic ideology of Christianity. Comparing schools of different cultures of the Mediterranean with 1 Corinthians, Loveday Alexander discusses whether the Pauline assembly could be regarded Jewish or Hellenistic, but does not settle for a superficial use of the terms. Even if there are parallels between the practices of schools in and outside the Jewish community, the outer form does not make schools Jewish or Hellenistic. The decisive thing is how the school appeals to an authority figure (Plato or Moses, Socrates or Jesus) and consequently to a hermeneutical method. To escape the polarization of Judaism-Hellenism that is deeply lodged within the collective psyche of modern New Testament scholarship (p. 129), Meeks focuses on how the practical lives of an assembly like that of the Corinthians would have appeared, comparing it to (Judean) immigrant groups in Mediterranean cities. This direction towards the concrete seems fruitful. But Meeks does not lessen the confusion when he states that Jewish associations became Hellenistic by transplantation out of their homeland(p. 138). Jews could preserve their identity as well in the Diaspora as in their homeland (cf. Ps-Hecataeus) and the statement that they became Jewish in a Hellenistic way is ambiguous as long as the concepts are not properly defined. Using material from Josephus Against Apion, John M.G. Barclay compares Hellenistic constitutional ideals and the Pauline strategy for the Corinthian church. The result is that Pauls church both resembles, and shows distinctive differences from, the picture in Against Apion and that his strategy defies the social distinction Jews and Greeks. Beyond these traditional forms he formed transcultural communities, which could accommodate diverse members. Henrik Tronier forcefully argues for a common pattern in philosophical idealism, Jewish apocalypticism and Paul. Pauls basic structures are

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in Jewish apocalypticism. However, the latter is only a version of an overarching HellenismJudaism within Hellenism. Ideas of knowledge like those found in philosophical idealism (Philo) play a formative role both in the apocalypses (12 Enoch) and in Paul. To demonstrate this, however, Tronier admits that he must move to a high level of generalization(p. 195). Unfortunately this seems to do violence to the material. Tronier unnecessarily sets spatial against temporal categories in the apocalypses. But those apocalypses (e.g. 1 Enoch; Revelation) typically employ spacial and angelic hierarchies while simultaneously adhering to an imminent temporal eschatology that cannot be played down as logically secondary (p. 178). The tension between apocalypticism and Philo remains, and the common cognitive structure suggested seems unsubstantiated. Margaret Mitchell interests herself in the the complex admixtures of Hellenism and Judaism present in Pauls thinking and the syntheses between them. She investigates the background of 1 Cor. 9:1923 by means of patristic material. Mitchell operates with the Judaism-Hellenism dichotomy intact, but nonetheless shows the complexity of Pauls thought-world. In exploring 2 Cor. 4:165:10 on anthropology, death and eschatology, David Aune contends that, whereas there are both Hellenistic and Jewish features to Pauline anthropology, that anthropology is not at home in either world. To understand Pauline anthropology aright, one must go beyond the divide. The final study by John T Fitzgerald discusses the background of the word katallag as an example of how Paul creatively shifts traditional paradigms. The time is ripe for a program like the one envisaged, even if the program in this case is formulated post festum. Such an enterprise should dare to continue the ideological criticism along the lines that Martin has set out, but thoroughly challenge the mere idealistic and colonialistic concept of Hellenism by starting in a thorough historiographical analysis. Such is almost absent in the present volume (with P. Alexanders article as exception). Sometimes even in this volume the terms Hellenism and the JudaismHellenism dichotomy have an almost essentialistic ring, as if they existed apart from our constructions, whereas historians of the period rather describe Hellenism as a veneer, an elite culture never thought of or implemented as a cultural or ideological program. With the historians it is worth asking whether there ever was such a Hellenism or if the thought that Judaism existed under a Hellenistic umbrella (Hengel, Tronier) is correct. After all, Droysens Hellenism is a retroprojection into antiquity of an idealistic model. Such a model tends to suppress the local, the emic, and the concrete Paul living in the utterly complex patchwork culture of the Mediterranean. Consequently, it can too easily become a philosophical or theological eisegesis of Paul or early Christianity, instead of studying how Paul interacted with his com-

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plex context. The ambition of the present volume to challenge the idealistic constructs makes it an important contribution to a thorough rethinking of the Judaism-Hellenism dichotomy. Anders Gerdmar Uppsala University

OKane, Martin, Borders, Boundaries and the Bible. JSOTSup, 313. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 364. Pbk. 65.00. ISBN 1-84127-148-9. The book is the tangible result of two conferences in Birmingham, England, that grew out of the Bible and Arts Programme at Newman College. It explores both more inclusive and more varied ways of reading and understanding the Bible than a normative, theological one. In the introduction to the book, OKane attempts to bridge the perceived gap between the current scholarly interest in cultural interpretations of the Bible and traditional Catholic artistic exegesis. OKane points out that the familiarity Catholics have with biblical stories comes not from the biblical text itself, but from the interpretations of the text in art, music, paraphrases, dramatic re-enactments, etc. In the protestant tradition such artistic interpretations were seen at best as distractions from The Real Thing, at worst as errors, as Edward Kessler points out (pp. 97-98). Even if there are some tensions between this introductory approach and the approach of some contributors (most notably the late Robert Carrolla draft of the lecture he gave is included in the book), the bridging attempt is so convincingly made that it serves as more than a gesture towards the sponsors, the Catholic Biblical Association. Read in light of the Catholic teaching of analogia entis with its positive approach to culture as a means of revelation in contrast to the negative protestant (in particular Barthian) approach, the introduction makes one wonder if the whole idea of constructing a cultural-literary account of the Bibledivorced or separated from theological metaphysics (Carroll, p. 10) is not a very Protestant way of pushing at open doors which in the Catholic tradition were never closed. In that case, the title Borders, Boundaries which we must assume expresses the intended common denominators of the contributions, reveals a notion of cultural readings as a form of boundary-crossing which may be at odds with the context in which the conferences took place. This is not at all said as a criticism of the book though; rather it is because of the clarity of some of its articles that the book engenders such reflections on the tensions between often unaddressed forces at work in biblical cultural studies.

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The book very clearly consists of two separate parts. Part 1 includes the papers from the first conference entitled Reading the Bible: Breaching Borders, Crossing Boundaries, where boundary-crossing and border-breaching not only refer to biblical scholars crossing over into a cultural-public domain, but also to themes in many of the biblical texts under discussion. The contributors to this part are Robert Carroll, Martin OKane, Mary Douglas, Edward Kessler, Larry Kreitzer, Wendy Porter and John Hull. Papers from the second conference entitled Characters and Heroes of the Bible: Challenging Traditional Assumptions are found in Part 2 of the book, which, as the conference title indicates, focused on issues of character formation and characterisation. The contributors to this part are Stephen Prickett, Susan Docherty, Larry Kreitzer, Margarita Stocker, Cheryl Exum, Joy Sisley, Gaye Ortiz and Anthony Axe. Perhaps more justice would be done to the contributions in Part 2 if they had been published in a separate volume, or if the book title had been changed so that it also reflected the strong common theme of characterisation running through this part. Another way of approaching the contributions is to sort them under different headings according to the material they draw on. Many of the contributions could be sorted under the heading Biblical Narratives in Later Literature. Thus Kreitzer explores the use of the crucifixion narrative in Kiplings The Man Who Would Be King, but this is also a subtle piece reflecting on issues of history, colonialism and empire, not unlike Quentin Skinners reading of Machiavelli. Prickett reflects methodologically on the issue of characterisation and applies his ideas in a reading of Thomas Manns Joseph and His Brothers. Docherty traces the reception history and the popularity of the character of Joseph in early Jewish literature (Artapanus, Josephus, Joseph and Aseneth, Book of Jubilees, Philo and Pseudo-Philo). Other contributions could be sorted under the heading Biblical Narratives in the Visual Arts. Among these are OKanes article on the artistic interpretations of Matt. 2:13-23 (the flight into Egypt), and Kesslers article on the Sacrifice of Isaac (The Akedah) in Christian and Jewish Tradition, where he emphasises similarities in the iconography of the two religious traditions. Exum compares Liz Hurleys onedimensional and boring Delilah with Hedy Lamarrs sparkling Delilah 50 years earlier and analyses how they relate to the biblical account and to their contemporary contexts in very different ways. Sisley discusses Turner Pictures translation of biblical narratives into quasi-historical accounts moulded in the genre of American frontier myths. Ortiz studies different ways of parenting in a couple of religious films on the Holy Family and science-fiction films. Stocker traces the transformation of the character of Judith in both nineteenth century Ameri-

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can literature and films. Porter and Axe trace the musical interpretations of the Bible, Porter by surveying works that represent different stages in musical and Christian history, and Axe by focusing on the character of John the Baptist in opera. The impression of this reviewer is that with relatively little space at disposal the articles that focus on one work or one character (e.g. Kreitzers first article, Exum, Prickett) are more convincing than those that survey a range of material to make their point. Some contributions do not easily fall into these categories. Carroll is mentioned already. In his paper Removing an Ancient Landmark: Reading the Bible as Cultural Production, he pleads for a change in the point of departure for biblical studies. Douglas essay provides a fresh reading of a biblical text preoccupied with borders and boundaries, Leviticus 11. In her view, abominable teeming and swarming animals are not created by God by mistake; what is abominable is to do anything to hurt them. Hull evades this kind of categorisation by presenting an autobiographical, indignant letter to a Sighted Saviour from a blind disciple. The piece is largely poetical in form, but also stands out as more contextual-political than most of the other papers. Hull points out how the Bible is the principal source of the cultural construct of blindness, but still ends up forgiving Jesus for his prejudices against blind people. Biblical studies is sometimes represented as an extremely traditionalist discipline with little room for renewal or will to renew itself. But renewal can take place by use of either new materials, new theories and methods, or simply by placing this scholarly activity in new contexts. It is clear that all contributors in this book want renewal, both by envisaging their scholarly activity as part of a broader cultural context than church and theology (in a narrow, normative sense) can provide, and by drawing in new materialspaintings, films, operas, literature etc. The book contains many very interesting articles that stand well on their own. This is a book to read if one wants to get excited about the future of biblical studies and the various directions it can take. Jorunn kland University of Sheffield

Kohn, Risa Levitt, A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, the Exile, and the Torah. JSOTSup, 358. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 148. Cl. 45.00. ISBN 0-8264-6057-7. This short monograph revisits questions surrounding the relationship between Ezekiel and P (by which Kohn means P and H together),

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as well as that between Ezekiel and D, and the deuteronomistic history. Following a brief introductory chapter, chapter 2 gives a full discussion of the history of scholarship on the question of Ezekiels relationship to other canonical sources. Chapter 3, which is almost half the book, contains a term by term examination of the use of ninety-seven expressions that Ezekiel shares with P, followed by some reflections upon what this close analysis reveals about the connections between Ezekiel and P. Here, Kohn presents strong evidence that Ezekiel was drawing from and playing off of pre-existing P materials. Chapter 4, following in the path of chapter 3, does the same thing with twenty-one expressions shared between Ezekiel and D/DTR and reaches a similar conclusion: Ezekiel made use of some form of D/DTR. It is in chapters 5 and 6 that Kohn makes her most significant claims. She argues that Ezekiel, freely drawing on pre-existing P and D/DTR materials, employed them in new and creative ways in order to address the situation of coming destruction and exile during which Ezekiel prophesied. Furthermore, while Ezekiel utilized materials from P and D/DTR, he did not have before him a completed Pentateuch. Rather Ezekiels ability to draw from and then fuse together materials from various sources into a new unity set the stage for the redactors of the Pentateuch to fuse P and D materials into a new unity in the period following Ezekiels time. Thus while Wellhausen was wrong about his claim that Ezekiel stands at the beginning of the movement that led to the creation of P, he is correct that Ezekiel was a liminal figure on the way towards the creation of a unified Pentateuch. While a close word study of this sort does not make for the most scintillating reading experience, there are a number of positive things to be said about this book. Kohn is able to set up her thesis clearly, trace its development in the scholarly literature, add new significant evidence of her own in a systematic fashion, and draw some reasonable conclusions from that evidence. Most of my criticisms of this work are really about things Kohn might have done to broaden the scope of her inquiry, which in turn would have made it more readable and given it even greater impact. For example, in her history of scholarship she juxtaposes the approach pioneered by Wellhausen with that of Y. Kaufmann. Yet she never takes the time to reflect on the fact that those scholars who see Ezekiel as the father of P tend to be Christians, while those who see P as an already established early source that Ezekiel drew from are often Jews, frequently Israelis. Today it is widely noted that biblical scholarship tends to reveal as much about the intellectual presuppositions of the scholars producing it as it does about the ancient texts studied. It may have been useful if Kohn reflected on how this truism might shed light on the fields development rather than simply portraying such scholarship as a series of arguments that just

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happened to arise in some random order as various scholars came up with differing approaches to the topic. Being aware of systemic biases in the field is helpful in any attempt to reach greater objectivity. Similarly, in her conclusions, Kohn might have raised some larger issues about the formation of the Post-Exilic community and its use of sacred scripture. Kohn notes that Ezekiel endeavored to create a new theology that was neither independent of its sources nor a simple composite of them and thus Ezekiel is a precursor to the Redactor(s), who, some years later, would boldly combine these contradictory theologies by ingeniously merging four opposing sources (p. 117). Furthermore Kohn portrays the priests in exile as having their ideology discredited (p. 117). Yet in many ways, unlike Ezekiel, vast portions of P and D are preserved in the Pentateuch rather than simply fused into an amalgam that completely obscures the original materials. In fact, it is this latter process that gives rise to a usable Pentateuch. If Ps theology is utterly discredited, how is it that this school has so many triumphs in the Post-Exilic and Second Temple eras? It may be that Ezekiels approach to using the past, while provocative, made the materials less useful than Kohn imagines. A total fusing of P and D may create something new but less dynamic than a text that in some sense allows various independent voices to be heard. While Ezekiels attempt to create something new ends up challenging and in many ways deauthorizing both P and D, one might argue that the Pentateuchal redactor(s) legitimate both sources even while juxtaposing them in the same document. Another factor that might deserve attention is that Kohns thesis is bolstered by the evidence that she provides to prove that Ezekiel often takes P and sometimes D materials (her evidence is more Spartan on this latter score) and uses them in pointedly negative ways against the sinning community he addresses. Thus, much of his material indicts the community in an explosive fashion that mocks earlier sacred texts by transmogrifying, often in outrageous fashion, their original meanings. This likely explains why Ezekiel did not play a central role in the nascent Post-Exilic community. In that sense, while Ezekiel like Amos is included in the canon, it is less clear that either text has enough balance to serve a foundation for a community that hopes to rebuild itself after a major destruction. Finally, while critical scholars frequently act as if it is taboo to draw out the implications of ones study for those living today, it would have been nice to hear Kohns reflections on whether her study of the book of Ezekiel and its relationship to the development of the Torah might have something to say to contemporary Jews and Christians. Truth be told, Kohns work might have something to say to anyone interested in living a life that is true to both ones inherited traditions as well as to the current situation.

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None of these criticisms should detract from the fact that Kohn has produced a solid study. Even if one ultimately disagrees with her conclusions, she has marshaled the evidence to support her ideas and by doing so she has clarified and advanced the discussion surrounding the relationship between the book of Ezekiel other canonical sources which contain similar expressions and ideas. Joel S. Kaminsky Smith College, MA

De Moor, Johannes, C. (ed.), The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as a Historical Person, Literary Character and Anonymous Artist. OTS, 45. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. x + 263. Cl. Euros 75.00 or $87.00. ISBN 90 04 12160 9. The present volume is the literary deposit of the joint meeting of SOTS and HOW at Soesterberg (the Netherlands) in August 2000, where the papers printed here were presented by the several participants. The editor, J.C. de Moor, deserves uncommon credit for assembling and editing this handsomely-bound book in exemplary fashion. His all-too-brief introduction is a model of its kind and properly holds pride of place and needs to be read before proceeding to the articles themselves. The fourteen articles range in length from ten to thirty pages, averaging a little more than seventeen pages each. That means that, for the most part, they focus on particular prophets or features of their books. The various prophets discussed include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, as well as Moses, Deborah, Samuel, and Jonah. The articles are arranged alphabetically according to authoras neutral and evenhanded a method as could be used for a collection of entries. Without exception they reflect the high-level scholarship of the authors, as well as the fresh insights, original thoughts, and provocative challenges to received wisdom that one would expect in and from such an assemblage. Space does not permit a report on all of the articles, or even a detailed treatment of any of them, but let me sample some of the more stimulating ideas or challenging remarks. Two of the articles deal with the Book of Jonah, which might be regarded as an interloper in the Minor Prophets, as it alone is a story about a prophet, rather than a collection of his sayings. Indeed, his prophetic message is limited to a single sentence, and his book should be compared with stories in the Former Prophets or the Writings. A.A. Abelas Jonah and the Intertextual Dialogue with Isaiah 6, the Con-

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fessions of Jeremiah and Other Texts has many interesting observations about the book, its chief character, and the numerous points of contact with other parts of the Bible, especially books like Amos, Isaiah or Jeremiah. At one point, Abela argues that, when Jonah settles outside the city to see what would happen (Jon. 4:5), he is waiting to see whether his prediction of doom and disaster would actually occur. But that view is incorrect, as we are told that once the people of Nineveh repented, the threatened destruction was cancelled (cf. 4:1 in the light of 3:10). Jonah already knew that the divine decision had been reversed and that his message of doom had been annulled (4:1-3). The reason he waits to see what would happen in the city is that he is confident that once the threat has passed, the king and people will revert back to their forever wicked ways, and this will confirm Jonahs judgment about God and vindicate him and his behavior, i.e., it will give him the rare opportunity afforded a disenchanted prophet to say to his Lord, I told you so. A.G. Hunters intriguing essay on Jonah 2 and the Exodus motifs deserves more attention than I can afford to give here. The author has shown ample evidence to connect the themes of deliverance from the mighty waters, both physically and metaphorically, but whether we can go on to postulate that the poem in Jonah 2 is not only integral to the narrative, but also gave rise to it, may be pushing the envelope too far. The message of the Book of Jonah is complicated and different emphases can be identified. It remains an open question as to exactly what the book aims to say and the degree to which it actively participates in the many genres to which it is assigned. One point to be made in the interest of satire, or even savage satire (assuming as the authors do that the book in its written form is postexilic), is that the great city of Nineveh, capital of the great Assyrian empire, has in the meantime not only been razed to the ground but utterly obliterated from the face of the earth. This undoubted fact should be set against the apparent gentle and benign form of the concluding words. The same should be said concerning Jerusalem, doubtless the model for the Nineveh of the Book of Jonah. The most impressive analogy would be the prophet Micah and his message of unconditional doom against the city of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah (Mic. 3:11-12). Both Micahs and Jonahs prophecies remain unfulfilled in the era or lifetime of the prophet. And presumably both prophets paid a price for being a party to a failed or unfulfilled word of God. In the case of Micah, we do not know what happened to him or how his career was affected, but we have an important discussion about him almost a century later, recorded in Jeremiah 26. The discussion reveals the concern about an unfulfilled prophecy. Here the problem is resolved by the argument

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that Micahs message had the unintended effect of converting the king and the people, and their repentance persuaded the Deity to reverse his judgment of doom and spare the city and its people. This outcome, far from discrediting the prophet, actually confirms both the legitimacy and power of his utterances. The same is surely implied in the case of Jonah, whose message was unfulfilled, but which nevertheless was the instrument by which the city of Nineveh was spared along with its numerous inhabitants. Jonah should be regarded as a parable for the interaction of prophecy, theology, and history during the critical and catastrophic eighth century bce, the period of the earliest prophetic writings. The message for that era was that if you truly repent on a national scale, then God will match repentance for repentance and spare the country. This is effectively the story of Judah and Hezekiah in the days of invasion and siege by Sennacherib and the Assyrians. By transferring the prophetic message to a foreign country, a notably cruel and oppressive enemy, the doctrine of reciprocal repentance is universalized as inherent in the divine nature and expressed in his relationship with humanity (a reflection of the somber confession at the conclusion of the Flood story). It was the intention of the writer of the Book of Jonah to reflect that milieu, because Jonah the prophet is dated to the same period in the Deuteronomic History. While the story is unlikely to have any historical basis, it could be presented as a possible happening. Beyond that, we must also bear in mind, as any and all readers from the time of actual composition would know, that both Nineveh (612) and Jerusalem (586) lay in ruins. What is the supposed reader to make of the outcome for both of those great cities? Perhaps the lesson is found in the remaining words of the creedal statement in Exod. 34:67, carefully omitted in Jon. 4:3, that God by no means clears the guilty, but visits the iniquity of the fathers upon sons and grandsons, upon the members of the third and fourth generations. In their original context, those words refer to everybody potentially alive at the same time. But later interpreters took it to mean three or four generations forward in time and posited a residual force in prophecy, i.e., the prophecy in its original form will one day be fulfilled, although not in the time frame contemplated by the speaker or audience. The elusive prophet remains elusive, but the current volume (thanks to the untiring efforts and critical skills of de Moor) reports significant sightings, persuasive insights, and provocative proposals concerning those planetary giants that wandered through the Near Eastern landscape during the second quarter of the first millennium bce. We can only applaud the consideration and kindness of the participants and editor in their decision to present the articles in English, which is not the native language of half of the participants. Regrettably, there are numerous infelicities and misstatements which have

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slipped through the editorial process. It would have been helpful to seek the help of an English-language editor before hastening into print. All in all a highly informative and stimulating work, which is recommended to all. David Noel Freedman University of California, San Diego

Carson, D.A., Peter T.OBrien, and Mark Seifrid, eds., Justification and Variegated Nomism: Volume I: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism WUNT 2, 140. Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001. Pp. 619. 54,00 ISBN 3-16-146994-1 It is now over twenty-five years since E.P. Sanders Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM, 1977) challenged scholars to reconsider their evaluations of Judaism in the post-biblical era. Sanders proposed the category of covenantal nomism to describe the pattern of religion in Jewish texts which emphasised both divine grace (for getting in) and the necessity of obedience to the law (for staying in). Sanders thorough treatment of a wide range of texts, and his well-aimed polemics, undermined the prevailing assumption that Paul, and Christianity in general, could be contrasted with first-century Judaism as grace can be contrasted with works. The challenge to the old consensus has not established a new one. Proponents of the new perspective have proposed a different antithesisin fact, a revival of a nineteenth century schemawhereby Pauls universalism is contrasted with Jewish particularism or exclusivism; but not all interpreters of Paul are convinced that this is either fair or adequate. After years of stagnation, many are now attempting to re-evaluate both Paul and Judaism. A new post-Sanders era is dawning. The present volume is conceived as the first of a two-part comprehensive re-examination of the terrain which Sanders mapped: this volume explores the complexities of the Second Temple material, while a second is due on Paul. The editors have assembled a strong team of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic (none, to my knowledge, Jewish) to reconsider the texts. Chapters are organised mostly by genre (e.g., expansions of Scripture, apocalypses), sometimes by corpus (Josephus, Philo), in one case with focus on a single text (1QS). The authors task was to examine whether or not covenantal nomism serves us well as a label for an overarching pattern of religion in the literature of Second Temple Judaism (p. 5). The resulting volume is mixed in quality. There are some superb essays here which combine a broad knowledge of texts and of secondary scholarship with highly

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nuanced treatment of the issues of grace and obedience: the chapters by Daniel Falk (Prayers and Psalms), Richard Bauckham (Apocalypses), Philip Alexander (Torah and Salvation in Tannatic Literature) and Markus Bockmuehl (1QS and Salvation at Qumran) stand out in this regard. A few are disappointing, with poor discussion of their material, or a check-list attitude to their task. Others again offer fine analyses of their texts, but quite properly insist that they do not fit the mould of Sanders pattern (e.g., Paul Spilsbury on Josephus, and Philip Davies on Didactic Stories). A long essay on the Pharisees seems only loosely attached to the rest of the volume. Don Carson offers heavily-slanted conclusions which suggest that for him the object of the exercise was to reassert a familiar dogmatic contrast: Over against merit theology stands grace (p. 544). He thinks his authors may have found huge tracts of works-righteousness and merit theology lurking within Sanders over-capacious category of covenantal nomism. Fortunately, other members of the team have nuanced the discussion or critiqued Sanders in more interesting and significant ways. Carson is right on one point. A significant problem with Sanders covenantal nomism is simply that it is over-generalised: as a lowest common denominator it can be shown to fit very many of the divergent expressions of Judaism, but it so flattens out their differences in emphasis, style and focus as to contribute little to the analysis of the texts themselves. As a related problem, the pattern it proposes, of grace to get in and works to stay in, is over-schematic. Although many of the texts Sanders studied do revolve around these themes, they also contain subtle (and sometimes contradictory) dynamics in which the motifs of grace and obedience interconnect in many forms. If a figure is hailed as full of perfectly righteous deeds, that need not mean he does not need grace: it might be by grace that he is so perfect. Alternatively, a sinner who repents and throws himself on the grace of God might be commended for that act as a noble and righteous work! As soon as we try to straighten things out into systems, identifying priorities or conditions in soteriology, we lose the intricacy which constitutes the specific dynamic of each text. So finally (here a third problem), the pattern of religion is just too abstract, as the most perceptive authors in this volume insist. We need to know in each case what grace means and whether its social context is that of an ethnic entity, a sect or subgrouping, or an individual. The themes of grace and law-obedience cannot be understood unless they are contextualised within the larger matrix of the texts concerned, the themes with which they link and conflict, the social context in which they are deployed, their rhetorical valence etc. Sanders could rightly claim that his studies performed this task. But then to boil them down to a common abstract scheme runs the risk of losing all the flavour which makes them subtly individual and sometimes at odds with one other.

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But the issues go deeper. A large number of texts are here considered which were not included among Sanders wide-ranging (but only Palestinian) samples. When we bring into the discussion Josephus, Philo, 4 Maccabees (treated here twice) and others, we find that some of these texts either fail to mention grace or operate without a notion of covenant. As Spilsbury notes, for instance, Josephus model might be termed patronal nomism (God as patron, not covenant partner), and it would distort his meaning to squeeze it back into a mould derived from more covenantal texts. This should lead us to ask more searching questions. Why should we assume that all these Jewish texts somewhere or other (between if not on the lines) operate with a notion of Gods prior and electing grace? Is that a Christian assumption which subtly directs the whole project? (Bockmuehl reminds us of Jacob Neusners question to Sanders on this point and, to press it home, Alexander asks why we should not consider works-righteousness a better form of religion.) Or, to turn this point around: if certain texts (including Paul) place particular emphasis on grace, why is that so? What theological, social or historical aspects of their context push into prominence this particular attribute of God? It is certainly more illuminating to compare (and contrast) Pauls letters with those texts in Judaism which do emphasise divine grace, than to play them off against those which, for perfectly good reasons, do not. What no-one here is quite bold enough to ask is whether it is useful to talk about patterns of religion at all (covenantal or otherwise), and whether we lose by this method as much as we gain. As Sanders acknowledged, his analysis arose from a certain structuralist phase in the sociology of religion; but there are good reasons to doubt its value as a methodological tool. Because of its resonance with themes in Christian soteriology, this form of analysis has gone largely unchallenged by Pauline scholars and Christian theologians, who have been content to tweak Sanders conclusions, or apply them differently to Paul. But we need to ask more fundamentally whether this is a useful way to place Paul alongside contemporary Jewish texts. Does this pattern, with its soteriological schema, skew our readings of Jewish texts, some of which operate with different understanding of divine-human relations, a different soteriology, or no soteriology at all? The best essays in this volume partially escape the terms of reference in which this projects response to Sanders entraps them. But one senses that a more radical, and ultimately more satisfactory, treatment of Pauls subtle relationship with Judaism will need to ask rather different questions than those posed in the Christian dogmatic traditions, or in this re-run of a 1970s project. John Barclay University of Durham

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Beaton, Richard, Isaiahs Christ in Matthews Gospel. SNTSMS, 123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 242. Cl. 45.00. ISBN 0-521-81888-5.

The work is a published version of Beatons doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Dr I.H. Jones and submitted to the University of Cambridge in 1999. The author provides a book-length exploration of the significance of the extended quotation from Isa. 42:1-4 in Matt. 12:18-21. In line with most recent scholarship, Beaton is not happy with some minimalist fulfilment role for such an extended quotation. The text is much too important to Matthew for that. Beaton accepts the widely recognised interest here in pointing to the humility and lowliness of Jesus, but he does not think we can stop there. Taking his point of departure from J. Neyreys observation that the forceful apologetic engagement of Jesus in the immediately following material in Matthew 12 seems anything but humble, W. Rothfuchs correlation between the majesty and power present in Jesus miracles and servant texts cited in Matthew (8:17 and 12:18-21) and R. Schnackenburgs argument that one must preserve a connection between the present lowliness of the servant and his future victory, Beaton argues that Matthew here presents Jesus as the enigmatic Davidic messiah, who is surrounded by increasing hostility (p. 5). He continues: The primary link between the quotation and its context is to be found in a developed contradistinction between injustice and justice. The Pharisees concern for strict adherence to halakhah, their unjust treatment of the people and concomitant failure as religious leaders are set against Jesus own concept of observance of the Law together with the justice evidenced in his care for the people as Davidic messiah. Beaton claims that the use of the text is what he calls bi-referential: it has significance within the narrative flow, but it also makes a theological statement which operates for Matthew at a higher level. After the introductory chapter which sets up the project and identifies the thesis, the work moves on to a brief history of research. What emerges is that the two fundamental questions to be addressed must be the state of the text-form of Isaiah at the time Matthew composed his Gospel and the nature of early Jewish usage of Isa. 42:1-4. It is to these two questions that Beaton turns in the following chapter. After some brief comments on Jewish exegesis, he surveys the current understanding of the state of textual fluidity of the biblical texts in the first century cean understanding based largely on the textual finds at Qumran. He then narrows his focus to the text of Isaiah, identifying the various textual forms and discussing the role of exegesis in producing textual variants. Next he offers some general comments on text and exegesis in early Christian use of the Old Testament, before

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turning his attention to the early Jewish use of Isa. 42:1-4. He finds that while Isa. 42:1-4 is not used with the frequency of such texts as 11:1-10 or 61:1-2, a clear pattern emerges in the usage. As Jeremias had argued, Palestinian traditions tend to take the text messianically, while the Diaspora community understood the text to refer to Israel (the LXX text is the primary evidence). Beaton notes that no link is drawn with Isaiah 53 and that the ideas of weakness or suffering are never taken up. In chapter 4 Beaton explores the other Isaianic formula quotations in Matthew, in search of patterns and approaches that might clarify Matthews procedure in the use of Isa. 41:1-4. In particular the text form and the relationship of the citation to context and meaning are investigated. Beaton concludes that Matthews text forms reflect the fluidity of text forms that characterised the era, that Matthews texts are often closer to the MT than is the LXX, and that Matthew has exercised choice among texts and even adjusted texts to enable them to better serve his purposes. Beaton also finds cases of the bi-referentiality which is important for his own thesis, with meaning operating both at the immediate narrative level and also in relation to the broader message of the Gospel. Finally Beaton finds that there is, as others have claimed, a common thread to the uses of Isaiah in the formula citations: the one to whom the texts are applied is the one who brings to fulfilment the expectations of the messianic age. The final two chapters, before a brief conclusion, address Matthews use of Isa. 42:1-4. In connection with the bi-referentiality anticipated, Beaton divides his treatment, first looking at the use of the text within its context in Matthew 1113 and then, in a separate chapter, looking at the christological contribution of Isa. 42:1-4. His conclusion about Matthews text is that Matthew has used either the Hebrew, or more likely a Greek (or Aramaic) text conformed to the Hebrew, which he then altered in the light of his own concerns (p. 141). Beaton confirms the role of the quotation in pointing to the compassionate, humble servant of the Lord, who offers healing and renewal to the oppressed, damaged, poor and marginalised (p. 172). The quotation resonates with the portrait of a non-confrontational Jesus who avoids unnecessary conflict with the Jewish leaders (ibid.). But as well, and just as important is the role of the servant in establishing the universal and just rule of God. It is mostly here that Beaton breaks new ground. For instance, Beaton connects effectively the bringing of justice of the quotation and the liberating view of the sabbath expounded and enacted by Jesus in Matt. 12:1-3 (over against the defective view of justice attributed to the Pharisees). Beaton also convinced me (p. 153) that there is likely to be a connection between hope in the name in Matt.

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12:21 and the significance given to the names Jesus and Emmanuel in 1:21, 23. The chapter on the christological contribution of Isa. 42:1-4 seems to be distinguished from the preceding chapter by its interest in larger thematic matters and by the linking of the quotations to important texts outside the Matthew 1113 context (though the previous chapter is by no means devoid of interest in links beyond the immediate context). The chapter develops further insights from the previous chapter, but does not seem to take us into new territory. The conclusion then reviews the preceding chapters and restates the thesis. The main virtue of Beatons study is that in it one feels like one is in a safe pair of hands. The overviews are accurate. The judgments made are sensible and probably mostly right. There is an appropriate caution and readiness to be tentative. There is not a lot that is original, but the whole makes steady progress towards its goal and offers a more sustained argument for the position adopted than has previously been offered. The treatment of the significance of justice in the quotation stands out as the area in which, in the view of this reviewer, a fresh contribution has been offered. Beatons writing is not always easy to read. The presentation can be repetitive; there is often an overfullness of expression; and frequently the English idiom is poor. But Beaton makes his case well. John Nolland Trinity College, Bristol

Vines, Michael E., The Problem of Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel. Academia Biblica, 3. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002. Pp. xi + 220. Pbk. $29.95. ISBN 1-58983-030-X. A crucial yet still contested issue in the study of the NT Gospels concerns their classification according to genre: what are they, why do they take a particular form, and how are they to be employed? This intriguing monograph, originally a dissertation written under Jack Dean Kingsbury at Union Theological Seminary, draws upon the literary theory of Mikhail Bakhtin in contending that Mark finds its nearest literary and ideological counterparts in Jewish novelistic narratives of the Hellenistic period. The route by which Vines arrives at this conclusion unfolds in careful and cumulative fashion. An initial chapter effectively evaluates various prominent proposals concerning Gospel genre. Form critical and kerygma-focused estimations (Schmidt, Bultmann) fail to reckon with the authors necessary, intentional and creative use of literary anteced-

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ents to meet specific needs. Formal comparisons with Greco-Roman biography in terms of length, mode, scale, and the presentation of the protagonist (Burridge, Aune) are simply too general and superficial to be hermeneutically significant. Even more promising estimations (Tolbert, Collins), which do reckon more seriously with the Gospel of Marks decidedly Jewish and apocalyptically-orientated narrative, do not deal adequately with certain key features: e.g., its striking realism, dialogical quality, and especially a Jesus who is no mere role model but a divinely appointed eschatological figure. This compressed critique of existing proposals is informed and incisive: it asks penetrating questions, exposes inadequacies and incongruities, clears considerable ground, and opens up promising lines of inquiry. With that said, there may be more mileage left in the kerygmatic approach than Vines allows, especially if correlated more closely and carefully with notable OT antecedents. In seeking a literary theory equal to the task at hand, Vines turns to Bakhtin (chapter two). Genre is a function of human literary expression which has its own history and tradition, and thus it is not a matter of mere taxonomy (affixing common labels and categories) but entails tracing a literary heritage: family resemblances in terms of purpose, influences, expectations, commitments, concerns and cultural conditions. To elaborate, an aesthetic work is a socially embedded act of communication which demonstrates the authors axiological (ideological) relationship to life. This is especially evident in the dynamic exchange of perspectives (its dialogical character) expressed in a varied use of language (heteroglossia) which in semi-stable form comprises its genre. As such, genre is a metalinguistic (not merely formal) matter, with the aesthetic and axiological dimensions of a work (its form-shaping ideology) refracted in its architectonic form, above all by its sense of narrative time and space (its chronotope). In sum, genre is not about formal similarities but ideological trajectories, best indicated by the works chronotope, and it is on this basis that any comparative analyses must be undertaken in attempting to resolve the matter of Marks genre. Readers need not have Bakhtin in their backpocket (nor wonder whether his currency may soon be eclipsed) to appreciate the considerable pertinence and potential of this analysis of his work in relation to the matter of Marks genre. Backed by Bakhtin, in chapter three Vines discusses the emergence from ancient epic of Greco-Roman novelization during the Hellenistic period, focusing upon the respective chronotopes of three particular forms: biography, romance, and Menippean satire. The epic addressed the essential events in a peoples past and extolled the virtues of its unimpeachable hero. But under the influence of competing ideological perspectives (polyglossia) it eventually yielded to the more

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ideologically-driven and dialogical novel in its various expressions. Greco-Roman biography, with its author-controlled and publicallyportrayed hero, still exhibited a conservative axiological orientation towards the past. The more innovative romance, employing ecclectic forms and functioning within adventure time, offered still idealized but no longer invincible characters, indicating that its author was more open to the demands of a now strange and complex world. The iconoclastic Menippean satire, with its anti-hero and often picaresque adventures, mocked traditional values and easy answers to lifes incongruities. In short, the polyglossic Hellenistic period resulted in a significant shift from the epic to Greco-Roman novelistic literature. One is thus compelled to ask whether a chronotopic comparison between the latter and the Gospel of Mark could cast light on the emergence of its innovative genre. Accordingly chapter four begins with Vines identifying some illuminating similarities between Greco-Roman novels and Mark, particularly in relation to the romance (e.g., rapid pace and hostile space) and Menippea (e.g., dialogical encounters and inversion of values). However, he concludes that ultimately these are clearly outweighed by notable differences. The exemplary hero of the biography is never (like Jesus) a divinely called counter-cultural figure. The romance remains essentially bourgeois entertainment and lacks sufficient seriousness. And while the Menippean anti-hero does challenge religious and political hegemony, ironically Jesus role is not this but rather the authoritative representative of Gods kingdom. In sum, Mark is to be differentiated from the adventure chronotope of Greek romance and the ethical paraenetic chronotope of Greco-Roman biography, while its own apocalyptic and theological chronotope distinguishes it from any broad comparison to the Menippea (p. 143). The closest comparison proves to be between Mark and Jewish novelistic literatureprincipally Daniel, Susanna, Esther, and Judithwith their generic connection established through a common realisticapocalyptic chronotope characterized by a time of crisis and hostile space. That is, both the Jewish novels and Marks Gospel create compact, realistic and open narrative worlds permeated by conflict between human and divine rule; this scenario devolves upon a vulnerable Jewish hero and agent of God who remains obedient in the trying circumstances; and matters are ultimately reversed and resolved via divine deliverance and vindication. There are certain modest differences: e.g. Mark is more dialogic and episodic, and it projects a realistic, historical time versus the novels realistic, pseudo-historical time. Most notable, however, is the manner in which Mark portrays a Jesus who undercuts the piety and nationalism of the Jewish novel and so presents the Jewish people with another crisis of decisionwhether they

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will accept Jesus as Gods agent or follow mere human tradition. The brief conclusion recapitulates the claim that a chronotopic investigation indicates the fundamentally ideological (not formal) basis for the close generic connection between the Jewish novel and the Gospel of Mark. They exhibit a mutual dependence upon a common axiological orientation to the world (p. 164), and their comparison best clarifies Marks literary heritage and illuminates its ideological interests. This is certainly an important and constructive contribution to the problem addressed. It rightly critiques existing analyses of Gospel genre; clearly demonstrates the value and pertinence of Bakhtins literary theory; and argues persuasively that Jewish novelistic literature offers a closer comparison to Marks genre than Greco-Roman counterparts. As such it should be required reading for any serious study of the subject at hand. It will, however, have to be complemented by closer correlation with other essential variables, especially OT narrative antecedents and the other NT Gospels. Finally, as Vines himself is well aware, we are still left to ponder the capacity of any literary theoryhowever ideologically attunedto account for the essentially theological character of Marks Gospel, form and content. In this, as in all other respects, the most significant single constituent remains Jesus. S.A. Cummins Trinity Western University, British Columbia

Gathercole, Simon J., Where is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Pauls Response in Romans 15. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. Pp. xii + 311. Pbk. 22.99 or $32.00. ISBN 0-8028-3991-6. This book attempts to reestablish a traditional Reformed/Lutheran interpretation of Pauls thought over against the so-called New Perspective whose major representatives according to the author are E.P. Sanders, J.D.G. Dunn, and N.T. Wright. The book makes some significant criticisms of especially Dunn and Wright. Every writer has some cultural and historical location. Gathercole works self-consciously the traditions of Protestant and modernist biblical interpretation. One of the books features, however, is the assumption that these strains pretty much exhaust serious scholarship on Paul. As a result, Gathercole tends to write as if this kind of Protestant Pauline theology simply is Pauline scholarship. The location is even more particular, however. From my perspective in North American Religious Studies, the books location seems to be squarely within a crescent that arcs from Germany across Scotland and parts of England to Evangelical schools in the

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United States. This should provide no reason for not taking Gathercoles scholarship seriously. The books objective is to define the Jewish boast that Paul describes in Romans 2 as it is reflected in the Jewish literature, and also to examine it closely in the Jewish texts (p. 23). The conclusion is : This boast can be defined as Jewish confidence of vindication in the final judgment (p. 23). In Gathercoles view, the New Perspective scholars have portrayed Jewish theology in a way that obscures Pauls critique of Judaism. He wants to return the balance. The older consensus held that boasting in Paul represented such things as Jewish pride, selfreliance, claims on God, self-glorying, egocentric existence, false security and the attempt to achieve ones own salvation. Gathercole does not want to keep the whole list of traditional slanders, but is convinced that recent scholarship has gone too far, and believes that Paul is making a fundamental critique of what the book presents as a common and rather uniform Jewish theology. The books first half treats obedience and final vindication in Judaism. One chapter covers the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Another treats the Qumran literature and a third examines Jewish Soteriology in the New Testament. The section concludes with chapters on evidence after 70 ce and Boasting in Second Temple Judaism. Gathercole excludes Philo because he does not think him relevant to Paul. With minor qualifications, in each case he finds that works or obedience to the law is an important basis for final salvation or vindication at the last judgment. Thus the emphasis of the New Perspective scholars on election as a basis for salvation is one sided. Gathercole acknowledges that some texts such as from Qumran stress national political salvation, but he relegates this to a minor role and assumes that individual salvation was the central concern of Jews of the Second Temple period. The procedure is to search this vast corpus for statements that in various ways tie salvation to merit or adherence to the law. In the case of Qumran, he contends that Sanders and others have overemphasized the concern for getting in and staying in the covenant at the expense of the literatures stress on salvation by works. A chapter entitled Jewish Soteriology in the New Testament means both Jewish theology taken over in New Testament writings and polemical depictions of Jewish belief that are supposed to be based on truth, even if exaggerated. The fourth chapter treats post 70 Jewish literature including Rabbinic, Josephus and Targums. Again, Gathercole concludes that Sanders and others were correct to affirm the importance of grace and election, but wrong to exclude the determinative character of works for final salvation. Chapter 5 (Boasting in Second Temple Judaism) argues that Jewish thought is characterized by a sense of both national and individual confidence in obedience as well as election.

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He wants to show a very clear and very wide ranging tradition of optimism about obedience to Torah (p. 163) and finds that New Perspective scholars are right to criticize the view that Jews suffered from insecurity about salvation. But against the same scholars, Jews represented themselves as obedient, virtuous people both in relation to gentiles and before God (p. 194). Thus, the boast of the Jewish nation is confidence before God and distinctiveness over against the gentiles. The rest of the book treats Romans 15 and purports to show that it critiques this soteriology and confidence in salvation that Gathercole has exposed in Jewish literature. He claims that Pauls interlocutor throughout chapter two is a Jew who represents the nation as a whole. He is unrepentant and denies his sinfulness. Against the New Perspective, it is not merely a matter of confidence in national privilege, but a reliance on the law that includes confidence in obedience. The discussion of 3:274:8 focuses on reasserting a more traditional reading against Dunn and Wright. Works are not just a sign of the covenant for Paul who criticizes Jews for misusing them as boundary markers. The language of justification by works apart from the law is not an argument that gentiles need not follow the law. Rather, the point is Israels sinfulness and failure to be justified by works. Works are attempts to keep the law in general. Keeping the law is impossible for non-Christians. Gathercole claims an unassailable argument against the widespread views that the section concerns the inclusion of the gentiles or boundary markers: Paul cites what David says in a Psalm 31 (4:6-8) and the sins of David had nothing to do with boundary markers or the plight of the gentiles. He assumes rather than argues for this narrowly autobiographical interpretation of Pauls use of the Psalm, as if David was talking about his own sins in particular, and ignores Pauls generalizing introduction (David says, blessed is the person who). The final chapter discusses 5:1-11. Why does Paul encourage Christians to boast after condemning Jews? According to Gathercole, both instances of boasting display confidence that God will vindicate the boaster in the eschaton, but justified boasting can only be in Gods action in Christ and not in Israels election and obedience to the law. This books major achievement is its critique of the position pioneered by Dunn and Wright that Pauls attack is on Jewish nationalism. Gathercole is able to show in his exegesis of Romans that this is, at least, not the main point of the argument. His discussion of Jewish literature also shows that, if scholars have claimed that Jewish writers never made statements that connected some sort of salvation with obedience to God, then they are wrong. As the book develops, Sanders more and more recedes from the discussion. This is a sign that Sanders is not so easily lumped together with Dunn, Wright and others. Sanderss work, I believe, was motivated more by a careful and

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pioneering comparative and history of religions agenda, and less by a desire to provide a Pauline theology for the contemporary world. He is unfairly faulted for his focused comparison with a specific corpus of Jewish texts and his lack of interest in developing certain traditional theological motifs about Paul. Seething just below the surface of the book is the undeveloped issue that gives sense to the whole project: A radical, Augustinian-like doctrine of sin. The analytical criteria of confidence and optimism that is the bte noire of the discussion of Jewish literature only makes sense against this background. Even if Paul held this doctrine, and I am convinced that he did not, clearly the Jewish literature does not. In my view, the Jewish assumption is that God created humans to fit this world and revealed to them how they could flourish in its order. The fall was a rejection of the creator by most of the worlds peoples and not a hopeless corruption that made every human unable to do good. The book never entertains the possibility that the Judaism of Pauls day may have been a religious formation that is incommensurable with Calvins, Luthers or Augustines Christianity. Asking about the Jewish soteriology and Jewish theology of justification is like asking about Aristotles position on parliamentary democracy. No doubt one could treat the Greek assembly as a functional equivalent of a parliamentary body, but the comparison would be wrong-headed without a sense of the anachronism involved. If Paul does not teach an Augustinian Fall and claim that the law is impossible to keep, then the larger enterprise of the book is off the mark. The interpretation of the text is too much fought out on the level of dialogue with Pauline theologians in rather general themes and motifs. The battle must be fought over words, phrases, rhetorical tropes and the broadest possible very careful comparison with all of the ancient data available, for example, lexicography, generic and rhetorical usages, cultural contexts. On this level, Gathercole mostly presupposes rather than argues. I will give a few examples. The reading hangs on conflating the person Paul addresses in 2:1ff. with the Jew in 2:17ff. so that the whole section is an attack on Jewish sinfulness and unrepentant claims to obedience. I and others have made detailed arguments that the addressee of 2:1ff. cannot be a Jew and is clearly identified by flags in the text as one of the idolatrous gentiles of chapter 1. Gathercole does not engage with these arguments except to dismiss them in a very general way. Details are important. The book mentions the diatribe, but does not discuss the rhetorical techniques, especially apostrophe, prosopopoiia, and dialogue, that Paul uses. Understanding these has to be central to interpreting the section. The authors insistence that the Jewish interlocutor represents Israel or all Jews is more by way of assertion than arguments (see especially p. 199).

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He seems to claim that the person must stand for the nation because 2:19-20 describes him as a teacher of gentiles and that this was Israels national responsibility. I do not follow the logic of this argument. In this context and elsewhere, Gathercole speaks of and is confident that he knows and can generalize about the Jewish mindset. The book treats boasting in Romans and yet lacks discussions either of the relevant terminology there or in the Pauline corpus. The latter would show that the words upon which the book focuses are consistently used in contexts where Paul engages rival teachers. Boasting for Paul is primarily an issue regarding those who claim to be emissaries and teachers of Gods word. Gathercole also overlooks the specifics of Pauls characterization of the person in 2:17ff. as a teacher of the law to gentiles. Moreover, the fact that the letter explicitly addresses gentiles and the discussion of gentile salvation nearly drops out of the books reading of Romans 15. Boasting is so broadly delimited by Gathercoles doctrines of sin, salvation and justification that one is left with conceptual confusion about what kauchsis (boasting) might actually mean in specific contexts. His favorite translation is confidence (in salvation, justification), but then how does that relate to the standard boasting that means bragging? Are there suggestions of pretentiousness, and arrogance? Is Paul imputing primarily a moral or a theological error? He does not come to terms with the several texts where the term has a positive sense. As the book develops, the concept comes to play the role of pride in the Augustinian tradition. Pride is to turn away from absolute dependence on God and to have any other object of love. For Gathercoles Paul, to think that one is anything but totally sinful and that one can do any good is the ultimate affront to God. Jews, I believe, including Paul, do not show evidence of believing in an absolute corruption of the ability to do good or to obey God and apocalyptic conceptions of an evil age cannot play this role. My final example of slighting the basic exegetical issues is the refusal to engage the pistis Christou debate. Gathercole says that he will not consider the issue because it is a matter of contention among proponents of the New Perspective. But how can one write on Pauls doctrines of sin, salvation and justification and ignore extremely strong challenges to the very meaning of the Greek terms in question? Paul might turn out to not even have a doctrine of justification by the believers faith, much less to fault Judaism for not holding it. Stanley Stowers Brown University

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Kim, Seyoon, Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origins of Pauls Gospel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. Pp. xv + 336. Pbk $25.00 or 17.99. ISBN 0-8028-4974-1. Well known for his The Origin of Pauls Gospel (1981) and his view that the essence of the apostles theology was revealed to him at the Damascus road Christophany, Seyoon Kim seeks in this collection of essays to defend, expand, and slightly modify his original thesis. Those looking for a thorough study of the New Perspective should note that the subtitle is a more accurate indication of the contents of this book than the title. Three of the eight essays (on Pauls conversion/ call, justification in 1 Thessalonians, Spirit and Law in Paul) respond directly to some views held by a few proponents of the New Perspective. Two more new essays explore Pauls call in light of Isaiah 42, and Christ as Gods image and last Adam. The last three essays are reprints of previous articles on various matters (2 Cor. 5:11-21 and reconciliation, the mystery of Rom. 11:25-26, and Jesus tradition in Paul) and will not be commented on here. The eighty-four page first chapter is the books major salvo. Although he occasionally interacts with Tom Wright, Kims prime target is James Dunn. Kim wants to respond point by point to Dunns more developmental view and criticism of Kims thesis. In particular, Kim wants to refute what he perceives to be Dunns claim, namely that Pauls justification doctrine originated after his conflict with the Judaizers in Antioch (p. 10 n. 44). Dunns view actually is more nuanced: assuming the Antioch incident of Galatians 2 raised an issue which had not been foreseen or resolved, it (and not Pauls conversion) occasioned the apostles formulation of the antithesis between faith and works in the terms of Gal. 2:16. The problem emerging here is how polemic can distort perspective. For example, Kim repeatedly insists that Dunn thinks Paul received only the call to the Gentiles at his conversion (pp. 7, 13, 22)a misrepresentation that appears again in the conclusion of the chapter (p. 81). Dunn actually believes that on the Damascus road Paul received more of his gospel than Kim allows, a fact that leads Kim to call Dunn self-contradictory (because Dunns views do not fit the straightjacket Kim has constructed for him, p. 7). Kim implies that Dunn does not believe the death of Christ as an atonement for sin to be a fundamental part of the apostles gospel (pp. 49-50), because that element of the gospel does not feature prominently in Dunns discussion of Pauls calling. Here again I am neither confident that Dunn would recognize his own view in Kims presentation nor that he would agree with the conclusions to which Kim thinks his views must lead. Dunn does not deny the importance of Christs atoning sacrifice for Paul (as

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a glance at his Theology of Paul would reveal); he simply does not interpret that as the alternative to a supposed Jewish theology of good works done to earn Gods favor (p. 60). Kim is right to assert that Pauls basic understanding of justification by grace had its origins much earlier than the Antioch event, a point that Dunn does not dispute. As soon as Paul began to preach to Gentiles (a good case can be made that he did so early in his career), he would have had to begin to think through how they should relate to the scriptures and to their more conservative Jewish Christian brothers and sisters. I am also not persuaded that the circumstances of the Antioch incident were so unusual as to lead to a new formulation for Paul of faith versus works of the law (however the latter phrase is construed). However, Dunns position in this latter regard is not essential for a New Perspective reading, and Kim is mistaken in thinking that by tackling Dunn on this point he has contradicted the New Perspective School [sic; p. 294]. Likewise, Kim correctly observes that not all of the Pauline works passages are only about boundary markers separating Jews from gentiles (such as circumcision, food laws, sabbaths), a point that Dunn has clarified since his earlier writings. But again this does not necessarily require an old perspective interpretation as Kim implies, any more than it precludes a New Perspective interpretation. Kim here seems more concerned with defending his own traditional position than exploring new alternatives. The second chapter is much shorter than the first, and again Kims target is Dunns claim that Pauls antithetical language originated because of the Antioch incident. Despite the fact that the vocabulary of justification and righteousness is absent in 1 Thessalonians, Kim concludes that It is particularly significant to find out that this specimen [Pauls gospel in 1 Thess.] is clearly [sic] centered on the doctrine of justification by grace and through faith (p. 99). Perhaps it is clear to those who bring Kims theology to the text, but our confidence is not helped by the section entitled By Faith Alone (p. 96), the discussion of which offered no support whatever for the addition of the word Alone. Leaving aside the chronological problem (not a few would date Galatians and the Antioch incident before 1 Thessalonians), Kims attempt to prove justification by faith in 1 Thessalonians is unnecessary. Most people would agree that the nature of Pauls gospel was not the subject of the letter anyway. In chapter three, Kim makes a good case that Isaiah 42 helped Paul to interpret his Damascus experience. So, for example, lexical evidence from Isa. 42:11 supports the view that Paul set off for Arabia (Gal. 1:15-17) in order to preach to the gentiles there. This is a fruitful study, full of interesting points and relatively free from polemic.

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Chapter four takes us back to the debate with the New Perspective, focussing on the Spirit and the Law in Gal. 3:10-14. Kim critiques Wrights theory of a perceived continuing exile of the Jewish nation, and explores the Judaism of Pauls day. In the process he makes some good points, rightly noting that the evidence of the Pauline letters must be heard in drawing a conclusion about the beliefs of first-century Jews. However, what Kim does not demonstrate, either here or in chapter one, is that the Jewish opponents of Paul believed that they had to earn Gods acceptance. Paul does not say that, nor does Kim adduce substantial texts to that effect. This is a crucial issue that calls for a newer perspective than Kims. The first ten pages of the fifth chapter on Christ, the image of God and the Last Adam summarize the argument of Kims Origin of Pauls Gospel, in preparation for eight more pages of argument with Dunn, this time over christology. In contrast to Dunn, Kim sees Pauls eikon-, Adam- and Wisdom-theology originating from the apostles conversion experience. I would agree with Kim that the kernel of Pauls gospel came to him through his Damascus experience. Proving exactly how much of his message did so is far more problematic. Kim then takes on Alan Segal as a representative of those who think the chariot-throne theophany of Ezekiel 1 helped Paul to develop his theology. Much more persuasive for Kim is the possibility that Paul was influenced by Son of Man and wisdom sayings of Jesus, in conjunction with Genesis 1 and 3, Psalms 8 and 110, and Daniel 7. Kim sees many interesting links and allusions in Pauline texts, but his critical readers will want more evidence of the connections Kim claims are there. Kims fundamental second thoughts can be summarized by the following: (1) his first thesis was correct, (2) endowment with the Holy Spirit was also part of Pauls initial experience, and (3) Pauls theology was influenced not only by his conversion experience but also by the teachings of Jesus that he eventually received through Christian tradition. This book should be read as part II of Kims original project on the origins of Pauls gospel. It is a dense, closely argued work for specialists; even so, the tit-for-tat discussion of who thought what when and how in the polemical chapters will strike many readers as tedious and parochial. Those looking for an introduction to the promise and limitations of the New Perspective would be better served by starting with Mark W. Mattisons fine website (http://www.angelfire.com/mi2/ paulpage). Michael B. Thompson Ridley Hall, Cambridge