| |
Hosea
by Ehud Ben Zvi
Forms of the Old Testament Literature, Eerdmans, 2005. 335 pp. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8028-0795-X.
FORM CRITICISM AS pioneered by Hermann
Gunkel in the mid-twentieth century sought to
uncover the oral stage of a text. In the classic
approach, literary patterns serve as evidence of
speech patterns that reflect particular Sitz im
Leben, or life settings. Generations of students
have learned about myth and legend in Genesis,
lawsuit speeches and oracles of judgment in the
prophets, and communal laments and thanksgivings
in the Psalms—all examples of form-critical
analysis.
Ehud Ben Zvi’s volume in the FOTL series,
however, understands form criticism quite differently
from Gunkel. While acknowledging that
Hosea is likely the product of redaction, Ben Zvi
is uninterested in the oral stage of the text or any
of its prehistory. Rather, he focuses on the final
form of Hosea, repeatedly claiming that ancient
readers were expected to read the book as it
stands rather than to recreate the stages of its
development. As in his work on other prophetic
books, Ben Zvi treats Hosea as written by and for
“literari” in the Persian period. By reading an
account of a prophet of the Assyrian period,
Persian-period readers reflected upon Yahweh
and Yahweh’s will.
Throughout, Ben Zvi focuses on how Hosea
communicated to literate readers. He identifies all
units of the book as “didactic, prophetic readings”
and insists that the artfulness of the writing could
be appreciated only by those who could read and
reread it. He shows himself to be such a reader,
demonstrating literary sensitivity in his identification
of contrasts, inclusios, repetitions of
sounds and words, intertextuality, and multiple
levels of meaning.
Ben Zvi’s Persian-period interpretation of
Hosea challenges many traditional views.When
read in an Assyrian context (the more common
approach), announcements of pending punishment
dominate it; when read from the vantage
point of the Persian period, the book becomes
more hopeful, since punishment is relegated to
the past while promises of an ideal future await
fulfillment. The usual view that Hosea reflects a
northern kingdom perspective vanishes in this
treatment as well: concern with the sins of Israel
serves instead to teach those in the postmonarchic
period about the past.
Ben Zvi’s approach fits somewhat woodenly
into the FOTL format. While his detailed attention
to the literary features of each unit of Hosea
is strong, his unit-by-unit treatment of genre,
intention, and setting is repetitive, since every unit
is designated as a “didactic, prophetic reading.”
Modern readers easily might identify with
Ben Zvi’s imagined ancient readers.We, like
them, read the book in its final form, read and
reread, make connections, and sense intertextuality,
hoping to find contemporary meaning in the
words of a Hosea who lived “back then.”
JULIA M. O’BRIEN
LANCASTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA
Prophets, Performance, and Power: Performance Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
by William Doan and Terry Giles
T & T Clark, New York: 2005. 194 pp. $31.95. ISBN 0-567-02680-9.
THE HEBREW PROPHETS spoke to their audiences,
but our present prophetic books are written. Even
so, argue William Doan and Terry Giles, the written
prophetic works retain an oral, performative
quality, using genres and compositional patterns
characteristic of oral performance and asking us
to imagine ourselves as audiences. Both ancient
Israelite oral prophecy and the Bible’s written
depictions thereof thus become logical targets for
analysis using theories developed in contemporary performance studies. Doan and Giles challenge
the common assumption that prophetic
books were compiled by loyal disciples seeking to
preserve the authority of the original prophets.
Instead, the power dynamics of writing created
“a struggle in which the prestige of the charismatic
prophet-performer was usurped by the power of
the pen” (p. x).
This book helpfully reminds us that prophets
were engaged in continual interaction with their
audiences, flexibly adapting their delivery in
order to “hold” and persuade the listeners. It also
reminds us that when scribes composed their
accounts of prophetic words and deeds, they
assumed control of the action. The prophet was
no longer a live, real-time actor, but a character
in a dramatic script shaped by the scribe, even
though we still encounter the forms of traditional
prophetic presentation and are imaginatively
positioned as audiences of such.
However, once one has waded through the
fairly thick methodological material to arrive at
the authors’ discussions of actual texts (1 Sam 3
and Amos), one discovers that the questions posed
to the stories (about body language, tone, and
delivery of the prophets, dramatic sequencing,
and possible audience responses) are strikingly
like those posed by past commentators who took
the accounts as straightforward reports of actual
events. The theoretical case made for “usurpation”
of prophetic power by later scribal writers makes
sense, but Doan and Giles do little to illumine
what the agendas and results of such a powerplay
might have been in the texts they study. In keeping
with its self-presentation as a starting proposal
for further development of biblical performance
studies, this book will likely be of more interest
to scholars than to the working pastor.
MARTI J. STEUSSY
CHRISTIAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
The Prophetic Literature
by Marvin A. Sweeney
Interpreting Biblical Texts. Abingdon, Nashville, 2005. 240 pp. $19.00. ISBN 0-687-00844-1.
BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE only know their biblical
prophets from Sunday lectionary pericopes, the
IBTS wants to help readers “both see the forest and
examine the individual trees” (p. 11).Marvin
Sweeney proves to be an invaluable guide, since he
can distinguish with form-critical clarity the various
trees and help the reader understand why such
trees are planted in a particular part of the forest.
But whose forest is it and how should one
proceed? Sweeney begins with important distinctions
between the Jewish Tanakh and Christian
OT, two book orderings that frame the prophetic
literature to different ends. In his treatment of
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve—the HB
sequence of Latter Prophets—Sweeney assesses
form-critically the synchronic literary features of
the received text. This leads to a structure and
arguments about intention that are often at odds
with results gathered from a diachronic reconstruction
of the book’s history.
For instance, Sweeney proposes a two-part
structure for Isaiah: chs. 1–33 outlining the coming
destruction of the Day of YHWH and chs. 34–
66 describing the restoration that follows. This
literary approach never disregards history, but
the kings, wars, and disruption are seen as part of
a complex theological reflection on what God is
doing. The final text of any prophetic book is not
a random collection, Sweeney insists, but one
integrated argument.
Sweeney’s success depends in part on the
readers’ attention to the form-critical detail of
the argument. The prophet’s words are judgment
or instruction or exhortation or disputation—
not just the Word of the Lord. Preachers have a
lot to learn here, both about nuance in the text
and about their own composition genres.
The many cross references help readers realize
how traditional and interactive the prophets
were in their own community. For instance, biblical
priesthood emerges with new richness as an
interpretive category, especially in Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, and Zechariah. Sweeney offer the fruits
of years of close reading in these citations. His
care with the divine name (YHWH, G-d, L-rd)
extends to a gender-free depiction of the deity—
no small interpretive feat. His constant and careful
attention to words makes a solid case that
biblical interpretation should always start by asking,
“What does the text actually say?”
JAMES EBLEN
SEATTLE UNIVERSITY
SEATTLE,WASHINGTON
|
