Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past: Essays on the Relationship of Prophetic Texts and Israelite History in Honor of John H. Hayes (Library of Hebrew Bible - Old Testament Studies)

LIBRARY OF HEBREW BIBLE/ OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

446 Formerly Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series

Editors Claudia V. Camp, Texas Christian University Andrew Mein, Westcott House, Cambridge

Founding Editors David J. A. Clines, Philip R. Davies and David M. Gunn Editorial Board Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, John Goldingay, Robert P. Gordon, Norman K. Gottwald, Gina Hens-Piazza, John Jarick, Andrew D. H. Mayes, Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller, Yvonne Sherwood

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ISRAEL'S PROPHETS AND ISRAEL'S PAST

Essays on the Relationship of Prophetic Texts and Israelite History in Honor of JOHN H. HAYES

edited by Brad E. Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore

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Copyright © 2006 by T & T Clark All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, T & T Clark International. T & T Clark International, 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 T & T Clark International, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX T & T Clark International is a Continuum imprint.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Israel's prophets and Israel's past: essays on the relationship of prophetic texts and Israelite history in honor of John H. Hayes / edited by Brad E. Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore. p. cm. — (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies ; 446) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-567-02652-1 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 0-567-02652-3 (hardcover) 1. Bible. O.T. Prophets-Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Bible. O.T.-History of Biblical events. 3. Jews~History~To 70 A.D. I. Hayes, John Haralson, 1934- n. Kelle, Brad E., 1973- HI. Moore, Megan Bishop, 1972- IV. Title. V. Series. BS1505.52.187 2006 224f.06-dc22 2006022071

0607080910 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd., King's Lynn, Norfolk

CONTENTS Abbreviations List of Contributors

ix xiii

INTRODUCTION Brad E. Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore

1

Parti THE PROPHETS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ISRAEL'S PAST: OUR "BEST GUESS SCENARIO" J. Maxwell Miller

9

WRITING ISRAEL'S HISTORY USING THE PROPHETIC BOOKS Megan Bishop Moore

23

DE-HlSTORICIZING AND HlSTORICIZING TENDENCIES IN THE

TWELVE PROPHETIC BOOKS: A CASE STUDY OF THE HEURISTIC VALUE OF A HISTORICALLY ANCHORED SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO THE CORPUS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE Ehud Ben Zvi

ANCIENT ISRAELITE PROPHETS AND GREEK POLITICAL ORATORS: ANALOGIES FOR THE PROPHETS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

37

57

Brad E. Kelle

PartH THE PROPHETS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT AMOS THE PROPHET AND AMOS THE BOOK: HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK Gene M. Tucker

85

vi

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

REDACTION, HISTORY, AND REDACTION-HISTORY OF AMOS IN RECENT SCHOLARSHIP Marc Zvi Brettler

103

AMOS, MAN AND BOOK Philip R. Davies

113

"How CAN JACOB STAND? HE is so SMALL!" (AMOS 7:2): THE PROPHETIC WORD AND THE RE-IMAGINING OF ISRAEL J. Gordon McConville

132

THE BIBLICAL pntD: WHAT Is IT? OdedBorowski

152

RELATING PROPHETS AND HISTORY: AN EXAMPLE FROM HOSEA 13 Stuart A. Irvine

A PROSTITUTE UNLIKE WOMEN: WHORING AS METAPHORIC VEHICLE FOR FOREIGN ALLIANCES

158

167

Peggy L. Day (E)MASCULINITY IN HOSEA'S POLITICAL RHETORIC

Susan E. Haddox

174

ISAIAH'S EGYPTIAN AND NUBIAN ORACLES J. J. M. Roberts

201

HERODOTUS' HISTORIES 2.141 AND THE DELIVERANCE OF JERUSALEM: ON PARALLELS, SOURCES, AND HISTORIES OF ANCIENT ISRAEL Brent A. Strawn

210

THE ROYAL ORACLE IN EZEKIEL 37:15-28: EZEKIEL'S REFLECTION ON JOSIAH'S REFORM Marvin A. Sweeney

239

NECESSARY ENEMIES: NEBUCHADNEZZAR, YHWH, AND GOG IN EZEKIEL 38-39 Julie Galambush

254

Contents

vii

ZERUBBABEL, ZECHARIAH 3-4, AND POST-EXILIC HISTORY Bob Becking

268

EZEKIEL SPINNING THE WHEELS OF HISTORY Alice W. Hunt

280 Part HI

THE PROPHETS IN HISTORICAL TRADITION AND RECEPTION RHYME AND REASON: THE HISTORICAL RESUME IN ISRAELITE AND EARLY JEWISH THOUGHT Carol A. Newsom

293

THE AMBIGUOUS ROLE OF MOSES AS PROPHET David L. Petersen

311

THE PLACE OF ISRAELITE PROPHECY IN HUMAN HISTORY Martin J. Buss

325

A Select Bibliography of John H. Hayes

342

Index of References Index of Authors

346 00

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ABBREVIATIONS AB ABD ACEBT AJA ALASPM AHw AnBib ANEP ANET ARCA ATD BA BAGD

BAR BASOR BOB BETL BHT Bib Biblnt BibOr BibS(N) BKAT BN BTAVOB BZ BZAW CAD CAH CahRB CBC

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York, 1992 Amsterdamse Cahiers voorExegese en bijbelse Theologie American Journal of Archaeology Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palastinas und Mesopotamiens Akkadisches Handworterbuch Analecta biblica The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by J. B. Pritchard. Princeton, 1969 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by J. B. Pritchard. 3d ed. Princeton, 1969 ARCA Classical And Medieval Texts Papers and Monographs Das Alte Testament Deutsch Biblical Archaeologist Bauer, W., W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, and F. W. Danker. GreekEnglish Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 2d ed. Chicago, 1979 Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Brown, F., S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford, 1907 Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum Lovaniensium BeitrSge zur historischen Theologie Biblica Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches Biblica et Orientalia Biblische Studien (Neukirchen, 1951-) Biblischer Kommentar: Altes Testament Biblische Notizen Beihefte zum Tiibinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients. Reihe B (Geisteswissenschaften) Biblische Zeitschrift Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Edited by Ignace I. Gelb et al. Chicago, 1956Cambridge Ancient History Cahiers de la Revue biblique Cambridge Bible Commentary

x CBET CBQ CBQMS CIS COS ConBOT C. Ap. CP CQ CTU

CurBS DBI EH Erlsr ESHM EvT ExpTim FAT FB FCB FOTL FRLANT GKC HAT HO HSCP HSM HSS HUCA IBKS ICC IDS IDBSup IEJ Int IRT JARCE JB JBL JCS JFSR JNES

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology Catholic Biblical Quarterly Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum The Context of Scripture. Edited by W. W. Hallo. 3 vols. Leiden, 1997Coniectanea biblica: Old Testament Series Josephus, Contra Apion Classical Philology Classical Quarterly The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, and Other Places. Edited by M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartin. Minister, 1995 Currents in Research: Biblical Studies Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation. Edited by J. H. Hayes. Nashville, 1999 Europaische Hochschulschriften Eretz-Israel European Seminar in Historical Methodology Evangelische Theologie Expository Times Forschungen zum Alten Testament Forschung zum Bibel Feminist Companion to the Bible The Forms of the Old Testament Literature Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Gesenius 's Hebrew Grammar. Edited by E. Kautzsch. Translated by A. E. Cowley. 2d ed. Oxford, 1910. Handbuch zum Alten Testament Handbuch der Orientalistik Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Semitic Studies Hebrew Union College Annual Innsbrucker Beitrager zur Kulturwissenschaft, Sonderheft International Critical Commentary The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by G. A. Buttrick. 4 vols. Nashville, 1962 Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume. Edited by K. Crim. Nashville, 1976 Israel Exploration Journal Interpretation Issues in Religion and Theology Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt Jerusalem Bible Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Cuneiform Studies Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Journal of Near Eastern Studies

Abbreviations JR JSJ JSOT JSOTSup JSSEA JTS KAT KBL KHAT KHC KTU

LCL LHBOTS LSTS LXX MS MT NAC NCB NCBC NIB NICOT NJPS OBT OCD OCT OIP Or OTG OTL OTP OTS OtSt PEFQS PEQ Per PTMS Qad QG QR

XI

Journal of Religion Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Journal of Theological Studies Kommentar zum Alten Testament Koehler, L., and W. Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libros. 2d ed. Leiden, 1958 Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum Alten Testament Die Keilalphabetischen Text aus Ugarit. Edited by M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartin. AOAT 24/1. Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1976. 2d enlarged ed. of KTU: The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places. Edited by M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartin. Mtinster, 1995 (= CTU) Loeb Classical Library Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies Library of Second Temple Studies Septuagint Manuscript Masoretic text New American Commentary New Century Bible New Century Bible Commentary The New Interpreter's Bible New International Commentary on the Old Testament Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text Overtures to Biblical Theology Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford Classical Texts/Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis Oriental Institute Publications Orientalia Old Testament Guides Old Testament Library Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by J. H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. New York, 1983 Old Testament Studies Oudtestamentische Studien Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement Palestine Exploration Quarterly Perspectives Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series Qadmoniot Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis Quarterly Review

Xll

RB RevExp RGG RSV SAA SBLSBS SBLDS SBLSP SBLSymS SBLWAW SBS SBT SETS SemeiaSt SFSHJ SHANE SHCANE SJOT SSN STDJ TA TB TCS ThWAT TOTC Transeu TynBul WBC WMANT VT VTSup ZAW ZTK ZWT

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past Revue Biblique Review and Expositor Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart Revised Standard Version State Archives of Assyria Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World Stuttgarter Bibelstudien Studies in Biblical Theology Sources for Biblical and Theological Study Semeia Studies South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Studia semitica neerlandica Studies on the Texts of the Desert ofJudah Tel Aviv Theologische Bucherei: Neudrucke und Berichte aus dem 20. Jahrhundert Texts from Cuneiform Sources Theologisches Worterbuch zum Alten Testament. Edited by G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren. Stuttgart, 1970Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries Transeuphratene Tyndale Bulletin Word Biblical Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Vetus Testamentum Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Zeitschrift jur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift Jiir Theologie undKirche Zeitschrift jur wissenschaftliche Theologie

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Bob Becking Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands EhudBen Zvi University of Alberta, Edmonton AB, Canada Oded Borowski Emory University, Atlanta GA, USA Marc Zvi Brettler Brandeis University, Waltham MA, USA Martin J. Buss Emory University, Atlanta GA, USA Philip R. Davies University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England Peggy L. Day University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg MB, Canada Julie Galambush College of William and Mary, Williamsburg VA, USA Susan E. Haddox Mount Union College, Alliance OH, USA Alice W. Hunt Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN, USA Stuart A. Irvine Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA, USA

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Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

Brad. E. Kelle Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego CA, USA J. Gordon McConville University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester, England J. Maxwell Miller Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta GA, USA Megan Bishop Moore Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem NC, USA Carol A. Emory Newsom University, Atlanta GA, USA David L. Petersen Emory University, Atlanta GA, USA J. J. M. Roberts Princeton Theological Seminary, Austin TX, USA Brent A. Strawn Emory University, Atlanta GA, USA Marvin A. Sweeney Claremont School of Theology, Claremont CA, USA Gene Tucker Emory University, Atlanta GA, USA

INTRODUCTION Brad E. Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore

Professor John H. Hayes, the colleague, teacher, and friend whom this volume honors, is fond of giving an ironic twist to an old saying: "Every silver lining has a dark cloud." For those who have been privileged to work with, study under, or engage the ideas of Professor Hayes, his propensity for such sayings captures some of the delightful wit and good humor that characterize him and his work. The parody of this colloquialism also represents well the possibilities and problems involved in the relationship between two fields of study that have often occupied Professor Hayes's attention: the prophetic literature and Israelite history. Scholars have long recognized that historical references, events, allusions, and synchronisms that appear in the Hebrew Bible's prophetic corpus offer a type of "silver lining" for this literature, enabling, or at least, inviting one to read prophetic words against the background of particular circumstances. Also, the apparent intimate relationship of prophetic texts to history provides some hope that perhaps these texts can help historians formulate a fuller picture of little-known events, situations, and developments. At the same time, however, the prophetic literature's connections to history form a dark cloud over the interpretation of the corpus as a whole and the individual elements therein. Recent scholarship has increasingly emphasized that the issues involved in the use of prophetic texts to reconstruct history or the use of history to exegete prophetic texts are vexed at best, not least because of the centuries of redaction, transmission, and interpretation that characterize these texts. Perhaps due to this complexity, the discipline of Israelite and Judean history has made uneven use of prophetic texts as historical sources or overlooked them altogether in favor of narrative "historiographical" literature. As a result of these (and other) trends hi Hebrew Bible scholarship, one presently encounters scholarly views on the question of the relationship between the prophetic literature and Israelite history that range from confidence to skepticism. Often missing from the contemporary discussion, however, is a sustained and multi-faceted inquiry into the nature of

2

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

that relationship, an inquiry that focuses on the intersection of the texts and history at both macro and micro levels. This volume aims to fill that gap by offering a "round-table" discussion of many points of view that examines one central thesis, namely, that the study of the prophetic literature and Israelite history are best undertaken in interaction with one another. The collection here is unified by consideration of that conviction but affords a mixture of twenty-one scholars of history and prophets the opportunity to dialogue with, support, oppose, or illustrate the thesis at a general or specific level. The essays explore the question of what impact the fields of prophetic research and Israelite history can and should have on one another by examining broader perspectives and methods in historical and prophetic studies, offering new interpretations of prophetic texts that understand their relationship to history in a variety of ways, and considering the reception of the prophetic literature and Israelite history both within the Hebrew Bible and since. The individual historians and prophetic scholars enter the discussion from their own perspectives and bring to the table issues ranging from the usefulness of the prophetic texts for writing Israelite history, to the role of rhetorical tendencies, archaeological data, and social realia in understanding specific texts, to the place of the prophets in the development of human civilization. By following this course, the present volume is an appropriate way to celebrate Professor Hayes, whose interests and influence in the fields of Israelite history, prophecy, and the history of interpretation are impressive and wide-ranging (see the selected bibliography of John H. Hayes included in this volume). All the contributors have engaged Professor Hayes's ideas as students, colleagues, or fellow researchers. Specifically, Professor Hayes is known for a unique approach to understanding the prophets and the importance of history for them, one that might be called the "direct historical approach." In this view, almost every aspect of the prophetic texts needs to be understood as a direct reflection of a historical situation. Going hand in hand with this approach is his provocative idea that many of the prophetic books are in fact unified rhetorical compositions that reference a chain of closely connected political-historical circumstances throughout.1 Such an approach to the prophets certainly inspires discussion and even argument, and manifestations and ramifications of Professor Hayes's views are evident in several of the articles. 1. For example, Hayes suggests that the book of Amos is best understood as a single oration given by the prophet himself on the eve of the fall festival of 750-749 B.C.E. in Israel, perhaps at Bethel. The historical circumstance is political and theological tension in Israel due to rival claims to the throne and pro-Assyrian and proDamascene factionalism. See J. H. Hayes, Amos, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988), 38.

KELLE AND MOORE Introduction

3

The first section of essays, entitled "The Prophets in Historical Perspective," begins at the macro level and considers a variety of perspectives on the prophetic literature's potential historical dimensions, tendencies, and usefulness. The first essay, "Israel's Past: Our 'Best Guess Scenario,'" by J. Maxwell Miller, reviews historical scholarship in the midand late twentieth century and discusses historical method and decisionmaking in Miller and Hayes's historical publications, such as A History of Ancient Israel and Judah.2 Because of Miller's role as co-author, he is able to offer a short biography of Professor Hayes's intellectual journey into history and prophets, as well as a discussion of the influence of a "direct historical approach" to the prophets on writing about Israel's past. This article also provides a glimpse into another side of scholarship that typifies Professor Hayes's career, namely, collaboration and large-project management. Also dealing with historical method, Megan Bishop Moore's "Writing Israel's History Using the Prophetic Books" discusses ways that prophetic texts may contribute to Israel's history and proposes that the prophets' concern with nations other than Israel and Judah should lead historians to broaden their subject and perspective. The essay entitled "De-Historicizing and Historicizing Tendencies in the Twelve Prophetic Books" by Ehud Ben Zvi, however, argues that study of the prophetic books needs to be de-historicized since knowledge of precise events and historical figures is of secondary importance, or even of no importance, for understanding the divine messages communicated and shaped by the books. Ben Zvi particularly emphasizes the low number of explicit references to specific persons, events, and circumstances in the prophetic books and explains this phenomenon as a deliberate effort of editors to de-emphasize historical contexts. In "Ancient Israelite Prophets and Greek Political Orators," Brad E. Kelle also notices the lack of explicit references to historical events and situations in the prophetic books but explains this phenomenon differently. He examines the Hebrew Bible's presentations of prophets, constructs a theory of prophetic discourse that emerges from them, and concludes that the presentations and discourse call for the use of interpretive analogies and models such as those used for the Greek political orators. On this analogy, there is an inextricable link between historical situations and prophetic discourse, but the shared rhetorical situation of the audience and speaker eliminates the need for explicit historical references and makes metaphorical and allusive references more persuasive. 2. J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986; 2d. ed., Louisville, Ky: Westminster, forthcoming).

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Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

Following these considerations of the broader dimensions of the relationship between prophets and history, the second and longest section of the book, "The Prophets in Historical Context," moves through the prophetic literature not in canonical order but following the usual understanding of the prophets' historical sequence. The essays here provide case studies of particular prophetic books, texts, and issues that interpret them vis-a-vis history but from a variety of perspectives. The opening articles on Amos by Gene M. Tucker, Marc Zvi Brettler, Philip R. Davies, J. Gordon McConville, and Oded Borowski, for example, form a virtual round-table discussion of their own, as they offer different approaches to the book's historical context, composition, and redaction. Tucker offers a balanced survey of the issues involved in considering Amos's context and composition. Brettler focuses on the text of Amos and uses Amos 2:4—5 to contest the assumption of Hayes and others that the book is a unified composition from an eighth-century prophet. Davies, however, elucidates historical references within Amos and concludes that the book is a coherent composition but one that conies from the fifth century rather than eighth century B.C.E. Both Davies and McConville thus examine the role of historical re-traditioning in the development of meaning for the designation and legacy of "Israel." Finally, Borowski inserts a new perspective into the conversation by using archaeology to suggest that knowledge of the ring kernos holds the interpretive key to Amos's description of people drinking mazreqs of wine (]" sp~lTD). The next group of essays explores various possibilities for the relationship of Hosea's metaphors and rhetoric to political undertakings in Israel throughout the late eighth century B.C.E. Stuart A. Irvine uses textual analysis and extrabiblical evidence to propose a link between Hos 13:15a and political developments in late eighth-century Israel, while Peggy L. Day and Susan E. Haddox examine Hosea's gendered language and metaphors as vehicles for political commentary. Similarly, J. J. M. Roberts and Brent A. Strawn address the relationship of texts in Isaiah to Assyrian and Egyptian political history and extrabiblical parallels and sources for reconstruction. Marvin A. Sweeney, Julie Galambush, and Alice Hunt attempt to untangle the historical referents and contexts of texts in Ezekiel from differing points of view. They examine the texts' references, backgrounds, and transmission in association with the settings of Josiah's reign, Nebuchadnezzar's activity, and the post-exilic priesthood respectively. Going further into post-exilic Judah, Bob Becking offers a proposal concerning how prophetic texts such as Zechariah may profitably be used in historical reconstruction and concludes that a particular type of compositional analysis is the required preparatory work for the use of prophetic texts in history writing.

KELLE AND MOORE Introduction

5

Having examined a variety of views and case studies on the historical dimensions of prophetic texts, the final section of the volume once again broadens toward the macro level. Questions about the relationship between the prophets and history involve not only what lies "behind" the texts but also what lies "in front" of them, that is, the reception and development of the prophets in historical tradition. Carol A. Newsom's "Rhyme and Reason: The Historical Resume in Israelite and Early Jewish Thought" examines such development within the Bible by discussing the appearance of "historical resumes" in a variety of texts. David L. Petersen's "The Ambiguous Role of Moses as Prophet" continues the broader focus by looking at the ancient reception history of the prophets and arguing that there was no line or tradition of prophets "like Moses," going against the usual interpretation of Deut 18:18. Finally, Martin J. Buss's "The Place of Israelite Prophecy in Human History" expands the consideration of the historical dimensions of prophetic texts to its broadest perspective by investigating the modern reception history of the prophets and comparative understandings of prophets' roles in religion and society. Taken as a whole, this volume offers a wide-ranging survey of inquiries into the complex relationship between the prophetic texts and Israelite history. The ways in which prophetic scholars and historians negotiate this relationship, as well as the assumptions involved in those negotiations, often do not garner thorough and explicit discussion, yet they frequently shape the conclusions at which both types of scholars arrive. The diversity of approaches and conclusions within this volume serves not only to illustrate this point but hopefully also to invite further intentional reflection on the issue at hand and its implications. This collection's diversity is also a testament, however, to the persistent problems and possibilities—the dark cloud and silver lining—of the inextricable connection between Israel's prophets and Israel's past. Much like the contributors to this volume, readers who are in touch with these problems and possibilities will likely have a variety of responses to the main thesis that the study of prophetic texts and Israelite history are best undertaken in conjunction with one another, including, perhaps, the rejection of that thesis. Even so, one will surely find that the articles herein offer many specific and rewarding by-products and insights that can delight the mind and stimulate discussion. As the honoree's southern cooking culture would remind us, alongside an unpalatable main dish may be a host of tasty tidbits. Or, as Professor Hayes would say, "If you can't eat the possum, learn to enjoy the sweet potatoes."3 3. See J. H. Hayes, "If You Can't Eat the Possum, Learn to Enjoy the Sweet Potatoes: Fifty Principles of Universal Applicability" (unpublished manuscript).

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Parti THE PROPHETS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

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ISRAEL'S PAST: OUR "BEST GUESS SCENARIO' J. Maxwell Miller

It was my special privilege to serve on the Emory University faculty with John Hayes for three decades and to collaborate with him on two volumes pertaining to ancient Israelite history: Israelite and Judaean History and A History of Ancient Israel and Judah.1 An update of the latter appeared in August of this year.2 Along the way, John and I have spent countless hours discussing biblical history and have introduced a generation of graduate students to the issues and complexities involved. I am pleased to join some of these former students, along with other colleagues whose careers have been enriched by John's scholarship, in this tribute to him. For my contribution, I propose to offer some reflections on the two volumes mentioned above: what we were attempting to do in each case; why we thought that was a worthwhile undertaking at the time; how we went about it; and what sorts of updates seemed necessary to us if the latter volume was to continue serving as a useful textbook for teaching the history of biblical times. Some Biographical Notes John and I met in 1969 at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, held that year in Toronto. John read a paper that was rather daring: he argued that the "Patriarchal Age" may not have corresponded to the Middle Bronze Age but rather to the Late Bronze Age, challenging a view that was virtually canonical in American circles that were at the time under the heavy influence of W. F. Albright and his students. From 1. J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller, eds., Israelite and Judaean History (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977); J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel andJudah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986). 2. A History Ancient Israel andJudah (2d. ed. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2006).

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Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

his name, I recognized John as the author also of an intriguing paper about prophetic oracles against foreign nations that had appeared in a recent issue of JBL.3 We met between papers; it turned out that he had read my recent JBL article about the Elisha narratives, and we sat out the next several papers comparing views and exchanging ideas.4 During the course of the conversation we observed that it was time for a systematic re-examination of Israelite history. Three years later, John moved to Atlanta and we picked up on the conversation where we had left off in Toronto. The two of us had much in common in addition to being approximately the same age. Both of us grew up in small southern towns—John was from Alabama and I from Mississippi. Both of us were products of conservative Protestant church communities—John was Southern Baptist and I United Methodist. And both of us had found our way into the academic study of the Bible. John had gone the usual route via seminary to advanced graduate training (Princeton B.D. 1960 and Ph.D. 1964). I had gone directly from a college degree in History (1959) to a newly established graduate program in Biblical Studies at Emory University. Mine was the first Ph.D. degree in Old Testament Studies to be granted at Emory (1964). John and I were in graduate school at the same time, therefore, and this was a time when the so-called Biblical Theology and Biblical Archaeology movements were still very much in full swing. Both of us assumed that proper training in biblical studies necessarily involved archaeological field experience, and John managed to get his field experience during his graduate years (Petra 1962 and Hebron 1964). Mine would come later (1966 and following). While both of us were deeply interested in the archaeology and history of biblical times, neither of us—and I think this is important—studied under what would have been regarded a "leading authority" of the day on either of these related topics. Two schools of thought tended to dominate academic discussions pertaining to biblical archaeology and history from the 1940s through the 1960s. Widely accepted on the European continent and especially in German-speaking circles was the approach pioneered by Albrecht Alt and developed by his student Martin Noth. This Alt-Noth approach, relying heavily on literary-critical analysis of the biblical texts and 3. J. H. Hayes, "The Usage of Oracles Against Foreign Nations in Ancient Israel," JBL 87 (1968): 81-92. 4. J. M. Miller, "The Elisha Cycle and the Accounts of the Omride Wars," JBL 85 (1966): 441-54.

MILLER Israel's Past

11

sociological theories of the day, was cautious about making loose connections between archaeology and the Bible, and traced the origins of ancient Israel to an amphictyonic league that would have emerged on Palestinian soil during the opening centuries of the Iron Age. Very influential in English-speaking circles, on the other hand, and largely dominating American scholarship, was the approach of W. F. Albright and his students—the so-called Biblical Archaeology approach. This approach sought to correlate the archaeological record with the biblical account of Israelite history and to favor resulting archaeological interpretations over any literary-critical observations or uncertainties to the contrary. Accordingly, the Middle Bronze Age was identified as the "Age of the Patriarchs (and Matriarchs)," the Exodus was dated to the closing decade of the Late Bronze Age, and the opening centuries of the Iron Age was the time of the Judges. The results of these two approaches were spelled out in two competing histories of Israel—Martin Noth's Geschichte Israels and John Bright's A History of Israel* The debate was fierce at times, and the prominent leaders of both "schools" looked after their own—or so it seemed to many of us young American scholars during the 1960s who had not trained under bone fide Albrightian professors. In the long run, this probably worked to John's and my advantage. With less commitment to either the Alt-Noth or the Albright approach, we were better able to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of both. And when both approaches began to run aground during the late 1960s and early 1970s, as indeed they did, we were open to new directions. Israelite and Judaean History and The History of Ancient Israel and Judah By 1973, when John and I began working on Israelite and Judaean History (hereafter UH), it was becoming increasingly clear that the basic methodology of the Albrightian approach was flawed and that some of the basic sociological assumptions of the Alt-Noth approach were problematic, as well. Even while IJHwas in progress, several important studies appeared. Among these were Thomas Thompson's The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, John Van Seters's Abraham in History and Tradition, William Dever's Archaeology and Biblical Studies: Retrospects and Prospects, and Norman Gottwald's paper "Were the

5. M. Noth, Geschichte Israels (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1950); J. Bright, A History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959).

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Early Israelites Pastoral Nomads?" which anticipated his The Tribes of Yahweh (1979).6 Our plan was not to produce a new history of Israel, not yet, but to compile a volume that would appraise the current status of research and facilitate new directions of thinking. Toward that end, we divided the history of ancient Israel (as traditionally understood, following the basic storyline of the biblical narrative) into tentative periods and invited a different person to write on each period. We intentionally sought out scholars who we believed were already exploring new directions and asked them to do three things with respect to their particular period: (1) survey and evaluate the written and archaeological evidence available for the period; (2) identify the historical issues that had emerged during past scholarly investigation of the period, especially since the 1940s; (3) reconstruct the history of the period as he or she thought it might have unfolded. John wrote an introductory chapter for the volume that surveyed "The History of the Study of Israelite and Judaean History" through the mid-twentieth century, and I, in addition to writing the chapter on "The Israelite Occupation of Canaan," prepared an appendix that compared various chronologies that had been proposed for the Israelite and Judean Kings.7 Because it was intended as a research tool, we packed the volume from beginning to end with bibliography. The volume was well received, gained wide acceptance, and I think did much to help facilitate new ways of thinking about ancient Israelite history. Still today it is a useful information source for graduate students who want to review developments and trends through the mid-1970s. Our first mistake with the second volume, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (hereafter HAIJ), was the title. Because its name was so similar to that of our previous volume, Israelite and Judaean History, many apparently assumed that it was a new edition of the same book. Of course it was not. IJH was a collected work intended primarily as a 6. T. L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (BZAW 133; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974); J. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); W. G. Dever, Archaeology andBiblical Studies: Retrospects and Prospects (Evanston, 111.: Seabury-Western, 1974); N. K. Gottwald, "Were the Early Israelites Pastoral Nomads?," in Rhetorical Criticism: Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg (ed. J. J. Jackson and M. Kessler; PTMS 1; Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1974), 223-55; idem, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel 1250-1050 B.C.E. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979). 7. J. H. Hayes, "The History of the Study of Israelite and Judaean History," in Hayes and Miller, eds., Israelite and Judaean History, 33-69; J. M. Miller, "The Israelite Occupation of Canaan," in ibid., 213-84; and "Appendix: Chronology of the Israelite and Judaean Kings," in ibid., 678-83.

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research tool. HAIJ was intended as a proper history itself—very different from either Noth's Geschichte Israels or Bright's A History of Ancient Israel, but of the same genre. None would have challenged during the early 1980s that the time was right for a new treatment of Israelite history, except perhaps a few who were beginning to doubt whether writing a history of ancient Israel was a legitimate undertaking at all. This skepticism would grow much stronger over the next two decades, reinforced to some degree by the issues and uncertainties highlighted in our history. During the early 1980s, however, when John and I were researching and hammering out the details of HAIJ, this was not yet a major factor in the academic debate. More in the forefront at the time was the contention by some, stimulated especially by Gottwald's Tribes ofYahweh, that sociology would succeed where archaeology had failed in clarifying the origins of ancient Israel. In the 1980s, important developments were underway on the archaeological front, as well. Palestinian archaeologists were becoming more professionalized, making more use of regional surveys in addition to excavations at key sites, and becoming more interested in anthropological and sociological matters (as opposed to searching for connections with biblical history). Two important studies, both of which were reaching fruition about the same time as our history, illustrated these trends: Larry Stager's study of "The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel" and Israel Finkelstein's The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement* Finkelstein's study especially seemed compatible with a notion that had been explored by G. E. Mendenhall in the early 1960s and recently revived by Gottwald—namely, that the early Israelite tribes did not migrate to Palestine from elsewhere, such as Egypt or the Transjordan, but emerged from the indigenous population of Palestine itself.9 Along with these studies, HAIJ departed from traditional treatments of biblical times in many ways. The title signals one important departure— we depicted the Israelites and Judeans as neighboring peoples who were unified temporarily under David and Solomon and again under the Omrides, rather than an originally unified people who were divided after Solomon's death. Also, in keeping with the "new directions" that were being explored during the 1970s and '80s, our history had no "Patriarchal Age," no Israelite exodus from Egypt, and no early twelve-tribe 8. L. E. Stager, "The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel," BASOR 260 (1985): 1-35; I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988), which appeared in Hebrew in 1986. 9. See G. E. Mendenhall, "The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine," BA 25 (1962): 66-87.

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league. Our earliest Israel, on the contrary, was essentially the tribe of Ephraim along with several satellite tribes (such as Benjamin and Gilead) that tended to be overshadowed by Ephraim. We left open the possibility that some of the earliest Ephraimites/Israelites may have found their way to Palestine from Egypt or from the Transjordan, but suggested tentatively that most of them probably descended from the indigenous and heterogeneous population of Palestine itself. Moving on into the monarchy, our King Saul was essentially a tribal warlord in the tradition of Jephthah, and the same was true of David, certainly during the early years of his reign. There was no "Solomonic Empire" that stretched from the Egyptian frontier to the Euphrates, although we held that Solomon was an historical figure, and possibly of some local renown. To the extent that there was an ancient Israelite "golden age," it was the time of the Omrides, not of Solomon. We contended that certain of the narratives that the biblical compilers associated with the Omride kings probably pertained to the later Jehu dynasty, and we utilized them as such, that is, as potential sources of information for the Jehu rather than the Omride period. Assyria's collapse toward the end of the seventh century did not bring about a sudden political change in Judah because, in our history, Assyria and Egypt were closely allied during the years leading up to the collapse and Judah already had been transferred gradually to Egyptian control. Another feature ofHAIJ, perhaps not a total departure from earlier histories of Israel, but noteworthy nevertheless in terms of the amount of attention given, was the transparency of the processes by which we examined the sources and constructed our history. HAIJwas intended as a textbook, and we wanted students to understand fully that writing a history is not a matter of assembling facts but of constructing "best guess scenarios" based on interpretations of sources. We wanted to show that all of our sources—archaeology and ancient inscriptions as well as the biblical narrative—present interpretational problems that require judgment calls. We especially wanted our readers to understand how heavily dependent all historians are upon the Hebrew Bible for information about ancient Israel and how foreign the assumptions and sensibilities of modern historiography are to the Hebrew Bible. Largely for these reasons we introduced each chapter by rehearsing the relevant segment of the Bible story, exaggerations, miracles, and all. Though HAIJ received much positive response, we had predicted in the Preface that we would receive negative responses, and we did. Some were put off by its caution regarding the historical reliability of the biblical story, and at the same time others regarded it as too trusting of

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the biblical materials. Since, for the most part, however, HAIJ was distinguished by its daring departure from traditional treatments of Israelite history, its sharpest criticisms came from conservative circles. In today's climate, HAIJ clearly belongs to the cautious side of the divide, and now represents a more moderate position than it did when originally published. The reason for this is that the center of gravity of the ongoing debate has shifted in adjustment to the growing polarization between scholars on the one side who argue for restored confidence in the historicity of the biblical materials, and scholars on the other who have carried caution to skeptical extremes.10 In any case, many of the historical interpretations pioneered in HAIJ found their way into mainstream thinking and, compared to the far more radical positions espoused by scholars skeptical of the biblical account, have come to be regarded as moderate or even conservative. Consider for example our contention that the historical Solomon probably was of more local than international renown. That seemed radical in the mid1980s and met with instant opposition from conservative scholars such as Allan Millard.11 Today, as likely to be challenged from the opposite direction is our assumption that Solomon was a historical figure at all. Updating HAIJ After twenty years in service, it is to be expected that HAIJ requires some updating. Continued research in related disciplines, particularly Hebrew Bible, epigraphy, and archaeology, has resulted in new discoveries and insights. Also, the vigorous academic debate mentioned above has touched on virtually every aspect of Israelite history. In our opinion, however, neither the new discoveries nor the vigorous debate call for major revisions in the overall contours of Israelite history as we envisioned it in the original edition. Indeed, we think that HAIJ anticipated

10. One may think first of the so-called maximalist-minimalist debate popularized in Biblical Archaeology Review and featuring William Dever vs. Thomas Thompson. But Dever and Thompson have so entangled the historical issues with personal and ideological baggage, in my opinion, that they do not quite mirror the polarization evident in mainstream scholarship. Better representative, on the one side, are I. Provan, V. P. Long, and T. Longman, III, A Biblical History of Israel (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2003) and on the other side, I. Finkelstein, and N. A. Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001). 11. A. Millard, "Texts and Archaeology: Weighing the Evidence, the Case for King Solomon," PEQ 123 (1991): 19-27.

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surprisingly well the direction that scholarship would move over the next two decades. What sort of updating, then, needed to be made? Basically, we identified four areas for revision: (1) continued research and new discoveries required thinking and updating of certain segments of the history. The Tell Dan Inscription's implications, especially for Israel's international relations during the Omride period, is a prime example. (2) A legitimate complaint about the first edition of HAIJ was that we wrote it without footnotes. Our thinking at the time was that its heavily documented predecessor, IJH, would be documentation enough. A weak excuse then, and no excuse at all now, the updated edition is fully documented. (3) Working back through HAIJ, we were struck by the fact that it really is not as user-friendly as it could be. How many students must have struggled through its long paragraphs and been bogged down in the detailed literary analysis of this or that biblical passage! Details and complexity cannot be avoided altogether; the evidence has to be examined and a case made for positions taken. Yet we hope to have improved the readability of the new edition by screening out some of the analysis and argumentation that is not absolutely necessary and by introducing many more maps, charts, and illustrations. Finally, and this is perhaps the most significant way that we have updated HAIJ, (4) we have restated and reargued our "best guess scenario" for the history of ancient Israel with today's readers in mind rather than those of twenty years ago. In the early 1980s, for example, Albright's legacy and the constructs of Biblical Archaeology remained deeply ingrained. Consequently, we were much concerned to explain why the overall storyline of the Genesis-2 Kings account could not be followed uncritically, even if it could be brought into reasonably close alignment with archaeological data. Now, equally strong challenges come from the opposite direction. Why, some serious scholars have argued very forcefully, should a modern historian bother with the biblical materials at all? Why not set the Hebrew Bible aside and work only with first-hand written sources (epigraphy) and scientifically controlled data (archaeology, sociology, etc.)?12 Such an approach sounds good in theory, but does not work out very well in practice, and we felt that it needed to be addressed. Thus, in order to explain why we regard the Hebrew Bible as a useful source of historical information that must not be ignored, and at the same time to address the strengths and limitations of all of our sources (epigraphy, archaeology, and sociology, as well as 12. For a clear statement of this programmatic approach, see T. L. Thompson, The Origin Tradition of Ancient Israel. Vol. 1, The Literary Formation of Genesis and Exodus 1-23 (JSOTSup 55; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 26.

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the Hebrew Bible), we expanded Chapter 2 of the original volume into two chapters now titled: "Epigraphy and Archaeology" and "The Biblical Evidence." Co-editing and Co-authoring with John Hayes John deserves the lion's share of the credit for seeing our first volume, IJH, through to publication. Gene Tucker, another of our Emory colleagues, used to say: "First you write a book; then you make it." His point was that after completing a manuscript, there remains much to do before a book is ready for the publisher—Preface, Table of Contents, List of Abbreviations, Illustrations, Bibliography, Index, and so on. In addition to all of that, which was fairly new to me at the time, IJH was a multi-authored volume and some of the chapters required heavy editing; one was submitted in long-hand. John and I worked together on all of this, and our graduate students helped as well. But it was he who knew what had to be done to "make the book" and how to go about it. With HAIJ, I was better able to shoulder my share of the load This time, however, we had set about to co-author a book rather than co-edit one, which turned out to be much more difficult—not so much because we disagree on matters of Israelite history (although we do in some areas), but because our writing styles are different and because we have different approaches to historical argumentation. After exchanging numerous drafts, revisions, and re-revisions of every chapter, we finally decided, following the lead of Abraham and Lot, to divide the turf. Namely, we agreed that, although both of us had worked on all of the chapters, I would take responsibility for the final content and wording of the first half of the volume (the chapters covering through the period of the Jehu dynasty) and that John would take responsibility for the second half (which originally covered through the Roman Period). Proceeding in that fashion, we produced a volume that the publishers decided was much too massive for the market. They suggested and we agreed to end coverage with the Persian Period, which meant dropping almost half of John's chapters. Later he reworked these chapters for another book coauthored with Sara Mandell: The Jewish People in Classical Antiquity: From Alexander to Bar Kochba.13 Another issue arose due to John's expanding ideas about the historical value of the prophetic books. During the five years following the initial publication of HAIJ, John and two of our graduate students, Stuart Irvine 13. J. H. Hayes and S. Mandell, The Jewish People in Classical Antiquity: From Alexander to BarKochba (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1998).

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and Paul Hooker, developed some very intriguing theories regarding the eighth-century prophets.14 Specifically, they read the prophetic texts, especially First Isaiah and Amos, as works entirely from the mouths of the prophets—a tendentious but historically significant assumption, of course. Related are their arguments that the book of Isaiah was arranged in chronological order—in other words ch. 1 is the earliest oracle, ch. 6 is not Isaiah's initial prophetic call, and so forth—and that Amos was one single composition delivered at Bethel "just prior to the fall festival beginning the year 750-749."15 The conclusions drawn from reading Amos and Isaiah with such presuppositions are further intertwined with particular implications for the chronology of the Israelite and Judean Kings. For instance, Hayes and Hooker formulate detailed conclusions about the calendrical systems of the two kingdoms, claim that there were no co-regencies ever in Judah and Israel, and have complex positions on which information from the Masoretic text is trustworthy and which is not.16 Given John's new ideas about chronology, which I find plausible but not compelling, "co-authorship" was all the more difficult when John and I set about to update HAIJ. In the original edition we followed a chronology that I had worked out early in my career, one that could not be separated easily from my treatment of the Omride and Jehu periods in the original HAIJ and in several other publications.17 By the same measure, John's more recent thinking about the later years of Israelite and Judean history presupposes and cannot be separated easily from the Hayes-Hooker chronology. Of course any chronology for the Israelite and Judean kings is conjectural to some degree, and the differences between the actual dates of the Miller and Hayes-Hooker chronologies are relatively minor. Still, it would not be an easy matter for me to refit my chapters with the Hayes-Hooker dates, or for John to rework his chapters with mine.

14. See J. H. Hayes and S. A. Irvine, Isaiah, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987); J. H. Hayes, Amos, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988). See also S. A. Irvine, Isaiah, Ahaz, and the Syro-Ephraimitic Crisis (SBLDS 123; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990). 15. Hayes, Amos, 3 8. 16. J. H. Hayes and P. K. Hooker, A New Chronology for the Kings of Israel and Judah and Its Implication for Biblical History and Literature (Atlanta: John Knox, 1991); see pp. 12-15 for a summary of their conclusions. 17. See, e.g., J. M. Miller, "Another Look at the Chronology of the Early Divided Monarchy," JBL 86 (1967): 276-88.

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For the updated version of the history, therefore, we settled upon a new division of turf. I took responsibility for the chapters through Solomon's reign, and wrote a new chapter that overviews the separate kingdoms, surveys the sources of information pertaining to them, and anticipates the main interpretational issues (including chronology). John took responsibility for the remaining chapters that treat the separate kingdoms by sub-periods and in more detail. On the Legitimacy of the "History of Israel" Genre HAIJ belongs to a modern literary genre that one might identify as "histories of Israel," or, more specifically, to a sub-genre "critical histories of Israel." Its closest contemporary is Alberto Soggin's History of Ancient Israel, and its immediate predecessors are Noth's Geschichte Israels and Bright's A History of Israel, discussed above.18 The pedigree of the genre goes back much further. Among notable scholars of earlier generations who produced volumes that fit this genre are Milman, Ewald, Wellhausen, Kittel, and Oesterley and Robinson.19 In the past decades, especially since the original publication of HAIJ, the legitimacy of the genre has been challenged. The objections, it seems to me, boil down to the following three, each of which invites response. (1) Writing any sort of history, certainly a history of ancient Israel, is illegitimate because it is impossible to achieve historical objectivity. All of our written sources from times past are biased to some degree, and archaeological data are selective by nature, but perhaps the most serious barrier to historical objectivity is unavoidable subjectivity on the part of historians. Every historian approaches the past with a particular slant determined by his or her own moment in history, cultural heritage, status in society, gender, and so on. "Any history book reveals as much about its author as it does about the period of time treated."

18. J. A. Soggin, A History of Israel: From the Beginnings to the Bar Kochba Revolt, AD 135 (London: SCM Press, 1984). 19. H. H. Milman, The History of the Jews, From the Earliest Period Down to Modem Times (London: John Murray, 1829); G. H. A. Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus (Gottingen: Dieterichschen Buchhandling, 1843-55); J. Wellhausen, Israelitische undjiidische Geschichte (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1894); R. Kittel, Geschichte der Hebraer (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1888-92); W. O. E. Oesterley and T. H. Robinson, A History of Israel (London: Oxford University Press). For a comprehensive list of "Major Histories of Israel and Judah," see Hayes and Miller, eds., Israelite andJudaean History, xxv-xxix.

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I quite agree; in fact the statement quoted above is my own.20 But if writing truly objective history is impossible, so also is ignoring history impossible. The past happened, impressions and assumptions about the past enter into our thinking at every level, and these impressions inevitably influence the way we encounter the present. I doubt that it is really possible, for example, for one to read the Hebrew Bible without harboring at least some deep-seated notions about whether there was such a time, place and people as ancient Israel, and without these notions influencing his or her engagement with the text. So the issue, in my opinion, is not whether we will deal with history, but how we will deal with it. Will we leave to chance our impressions and assumptions about the past? Or, in spite of the impossibility of achieving complete objectivity, will we at least make our best effort in that direction? Obviously John and I favor the latter option, and we offer HAIJ as our best effort, nothing more. It represents our "best guess scenario" for the time, place, and people of ancient Israel and Judah. (2) The "history of Israel" genre is illegitimate because there was no ancient Israel. The Israel that we encounter in the Hebrew Bible, and which modern histories of Israel set about to explain, never existed. It was a literary construct from the beginning, an idealized time, place, and people perpetrated by late Jewish theologians.21 Clearly there is some truth here; the story of ancient Israel presented in Genesis-2 Kings is more akin to theological treatise than to historical reality. But to suggest that it was concocted entirely from theology, propaganda, and thin air is far fetched. My response to this second objection, in other words, is simply to disagree, and to offer HAIJ as my grounds for disagreement. We have attempted in HAIJ to take full account of the literary complexities and theological agendas of the Hebrew Bible. Having done so, and having examined the available extra-biblical evidence as well, we conclude that the idealized Israel presented in the Hebrew Bible was at least reminiscent of an ancient historical reality, and HAIJ embodies our "best case scenario" for what that reality might have been.

20. J. M. Miller, "Reading the Bible Historically: The Historian's Approach," in To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application (ed. S. L. McKenzie and S. R. Haynes; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 12. 21. See, e.g., P. R. Davies, In Search of "Ancient Israel" (JSOTSup 148; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), andK. W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge, 1996).

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(3) Typical histories of Israel fail to qualify as proper histories because they focus too narrowly on the people and events of the Hebrew Bible. This objection comes in at least two variations: (a) ancient Israel was but a moment in the long sweep of Syro-Palestinian history, the Israelites were a relatively insignificant people during that moment, and the individuals featured in the Hebrew Bible played a much more minor role in shaping events than the Bible would have us suppose. A proper history should explore the big picture, consider recurring patterns of change over time, and give full attention to climate, topography, vegetation, animal population, agricultural potentialities, and such.22 (b) Typical histories of Israel, like the biblical narratives upon which they depend so heavily, give too much attention to the politics of kings, deeds of prophets, and attitudes of priests, virtually all of whom were men. A proper history of Israel should focus more on the underside of ancient Israelite society, the real people, including women. These objections are to be taken seriously. Perhaps we should concede that the long line of volumes featuring the term "history" in their titles (all the way back to Milman and Wellhausen) are misnamed. Rather than calling them "histories of Israel" (or of Judah; or of Israel and Judah), perhaps we should call them something like "investigations into the possible historicity of biblical events and characters." But before we dismiss the "history of Israel" genre entirely, there are some practical matters to take into account. True, for a comprehensive history of any people, the historian should take into account such factors as climate, topography, vegetation, and so on. But this is not an entirely new concept for the long line of scholars who have written histories of Israel; the real difficulty is in understanding how all of these factors interrelate historically, and in getting it all in balance and on the page at the same time.23 True also, any well rounded investigation of ancient Israel should look beyond palace, temple, and documents from the literary elite. But that, too, is easier said than done. Monumental buildings leave more physical remains for archaeologists to examine than ordinary dwellings, to say nothing of 22. Among scholars who have called for this approach, pioneered by F. Braudel and theAnnales school, are R. B. Coote and K. W. Whitelam in The Emergence of Early Israel in Historical Perspective (The Social World of Biblical Antiquity 5; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987). 23. See, for example, Gosta Ahlstrom's The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander's Conquest (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), brought to publication after his death in 1992 by Diana Edelman. As indicated by the title, Ahlstrom intended to deal with the ancient history and peoples of Palestine in general rather than focusing on ancient Israel and biblical times. Whether he accomplished this is open to question.

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hovels and tent dwellings. The lower classes in ancient times did not leave a written trail, and neither did women for the most part. In the end, historians must work with what is available. And for ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible is "the elephant in the room." In any case, John and I grew up in religious communities, heard the Bible stories from childhood, and have enjoyed exploring the possible historical connections and ramifications of the people and events featured in these stories. For those who share our interest, we offer our findings, our "best guess scenario" for ancient Israel, in A History of Ancient Israel andJudah.

WRITING ISRAEL'S HISTORY USING THE PROPHETIC BOOKS Megan Bishop Moore

Identifying and assessing information about Israel and Judah's past using biblical sources is sometimes akin to faying to unravel a massive spider's web. The information is a jumble, and strands lead to other strands as characters, events, books, and authors interweave and stick together. The historian simultaneously attempts to contribute his or her own strand while explaining the others and not becoming hopelessly entangled. Fortunately, the careful scholar can sometimes pull apart the strands and identify clusters that have spawned imitations, reinterpretations, and additions in the web. Surely the prophetic books constitute some of the densest and most inter-connected clusters in the biblical web. Looking outward from the prophetic material, one direction their strands go leads to the events and situations that inspired the prophetic books. Scholarship is indebted to John Hayes's contributions to the investigation of these links. The makeup of the prophetic clusters themselves is also interesting, and distinguishing earlier and later strands within the prophetic books is an ongoing enterprise. In this article, I will neither attempt to identify particular historical referents for prophecies, nor will I try to untangle the knots that are the prophetic books. Rather, I will follow the strands that lead out of the prophets to the modern discipline of writing Israel's history, paying special attention to the prophetic books' connections to comprehensive histories. This investigation will have three avenues, asking (1) whether prophetic books can be considered history or historical; (2) what specific types of information about the past may be found in the prophetic books and how scholars have used this information; and, (3) how the prophetic corpus additionally might be used in writing about Israel's past.

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I. Are the Prophetic Books History? Certainly the prophetic books, that is, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve have some historical features. Ezekiel set up a comprehensive historical (albeit allegorical) context for the current situation he observes by telling the story of Jerusalem's past as a narrative of birth, adoption, and whorings (Ezek 16). Importantly also, the biblical writers and editors attempted to tie the prophets to historical contexts and events, and likewise saw the prophetic books as repositories for historical information.1 Thus passages such as Isa 36-39 (with parallels in 2 Kgs 18-20) and the narrative portions of Jeremiah exemplify later generations' desire to locate the prophets within a trajectory of events that led to their own world.2 These features of prophetic books, however, do not justify calling them "history," even in a broad sense of the word. Calling a text "history" brings into play particular assumptions about its genesis, form, context, intention, and reliability. Pre-eminent is the assumption that the text in question was written with the intention of recording significant events from the near or distant past for future generations. Another common assumption is that history is narrative (or at least was in ancient times).3 Also, most definitions of history require that the narrative was written for reflective or didactic purposes (as opposed to chronicling, record-keeping, or for antiquarian purposes).4 Thus, several features of the prophetic books distinguish them from history. First, much of the books' content is poetry, not narrative prose. Narrative context-setting passages, whether from the prophet himself or a later editor, do not constitute enough of a framework to make any prophetic book history. Also, the prophetic books portray most of the prophets as observing and commenting on current events in order to urge their contemporaries to change their behavior. History, in general, analyzes past events and sometimes, but not always, connects these events to the situation at the time of the historian. In other words, the apparent simultaneous involvement of the prophets in the 1. Jewish tradition has long associated prophets with narrative prose, considering Moses the author of the Pentateuch and including Joshua—2 Kings in the Nevi'im, or prophets, of the Hebrew Bible. See also Josephus, C. Ap. 1.39—41. 2. The order of the prophetic books apparently also reflects a hypothetical chronology for the prophets. 3. See, e.g., L. Stone, "The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History," Past and Present 85 (1979): 3-24. 4. For a description of how history differs from antiquarianism, see A. Momigliano, "Ancient History and the Antiquarian," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950): 285-315.

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events on which they comment precludes the perspective of reflective hindsight commonly associated with history.5 In addition, we do not know if the prophets' words were recorded for posterity at the time of their pronouncement, that is, in a journalistic fashion, or later, in a historical fashion, when subsequent events appeared to have borne out the words' importance. On the whole, then, the prophetic books do not have enough general characteristics of history to qualify as such. This is not to suggest, however, that the prophets can contribute nothing to our understanding of Israel's past.6 Rather, it reminds us that the process of garnering information about the past from the prophetic books and evaluating its reliability requires some variations from the processes of reading, comparing, and testing that historians use when considering intentional narrative sources such as the Deuteronomistic History. Therefore, the next steps for the historian are determining what kind of information about the past can be found in the prophetic books and how to go about using it to tell Israel's story. II. What Kind of Information About the Past Can We Find in the Prophetic Books? Certainly some aspects of the prophetic books look promising for historians hoping to find information about the past in them. For example, the superscriptions of the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Zechariah appear at first glance to be boons for historians since they purport to set these books in historical contexts. Unfortunately, it is hard to confirm that these superscriptions are correct, and even if historians accept these superscriptions as reliable, the superscriptions often raise as many questions as they provide answers.7 Dates 5. Classical historiographers used speeches of persons involved in events as a vehicle to include reflective analyses of past situations in history writing. Redactional interpretations of Israel's prophets do suggest that later editors used the prophetic figures for similar purposes, putting in their mouths words more meaningful to the editor's audience man to the prophet's contemporaries. See, for example, the article by E. Ben Zvi ("De-historicizing and Historicizing Tendencies in the Twelve Prophetic Books: A Case Study of the Heuristic Value of a Historically Anchored Systemic Approach to the Corpus of Prophetic Literature") in this volume. 6. It is also not meant to imply that ancient history is necessarily a reliable source of evidence about the past. For a discussion of the problems ancient histories present for historians, see M. I. Finley, Ancient History: Evidence and Models (London: Chatto & Windus, 1985), 9-11. 7. For discussion, see E. Ben Zvi, "Studying Prophetic Texts Against Their Original Backgrounds: Pre-Ordained Scripts and Alternative Horizons of Research,"

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for the reigns of the Israelite and Judean kings are notoriously hard to pin down, so that, at best, superscriptions give historians only a general date range for the prophets' oracles. Historians then must decide whether this range is adequate for understanding the historical situation to which the prophet is presumably responding, and, if not, whether the context can be narrowed in any way.8 The historian attempting to go any further into the web at this point can find him- or herself grasping unsupported strands or diving head-first into more sticky situations. The prophetic texts are also full of imagery that may allude to events of historical significance. Often, however, it cannot be determined what actual event inspired the image, or if, conversely, the imagery draws on motifs that have little connection to a real occurrence. One example is the question of the conditions that inspired the description of the devastated land in Isa 1:7-9. Many scholars believe that the Assyrians under Sennacherib caused the desolation, fire, and isolation of Jerusalem described there.9 On the other hand, Hayes argues that the earthquake mentioned in Amos 1:1 and Zech 14:5 caused this destruction.10 Both interpretations discussed here agree that some actual event is behind Isaiah's description, that is, that the image is not entirely metaphorical. Yet the event that inspired the image remains unknown. Therefore, historians who seek knowledge of how the ancients saw earthly events reflecting Yahweh's dissatisfaction with the people, or even how an observer might have described the destruction caused by the earthquake or Sennacherib, are without a potentially very helpful piece of evidence. In short, the prophetic books appear to be a questionable source of information about Israel's past for a number of reasons. First and foremost, in order for a source to be useful to historians, knowledge of the in Prophets and Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker (ed. S. Reid; JSOTSup229; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 125-35. 8. Thus, Hayes's work on the chronologies of the Israelite and Judean kings is directly tied to his interpretation of the historical situation the prophets address. See, e.g., J. H. Hayes and P. K. Hooker, A New Chronology for the Kings of Israel and Judah and Its Implications for Biblical History and Literature (Atlanta: John Knox, 1988). 9. This opinion likely qualifies as the standard interpretation of the passage. See, for example, the notes on the passage by J. J. M. Roberts in The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version (ed. W. A. Meeks; New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 1014. 10. Hayes bases his opinion partly on his belief that the mention of Sodom and Gomorrah points to a divinely directed natural disaster rather than an invading army. J. H. Hayes and S. A. Irvine, Isaiah, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), 71-73.

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date of its production and the events it describes are crucial. As discussed here, even when there is a superscription or some indication of a date for a prophetic book, usually its context and time of writing cannot be determined with enough certainty to make it useful for the understanding of specific events. In addition, many of the events and situations that inspired the prophets' imagery are unknown or poorly understood. Furthermore, even when prophetic texts appear to contain relatively clear information about their context and the referents and audiences of their prophecies seem evident, prophetic books may not contain much that helps the historian say more about the past than he or she could say without the prophetic source. For instance, Ezek 1 and other passages throughout the book locate Ezekiel in Babylon after the forced exile from Jerusalem in 597 B.C.E. However, this determination does not automatically give historians access to information about conditions in Babylon or Jerusalem during the Babylonian exile. Given the many difficulties involved in reading the prophets for what might be called intentional historical information, that is, information that the author intended to impart for posterity, it is not surprising that historians often look instead for incidental or non-intentional historical information in prophetic books. Such information, according to the historian Marc Bloch, is what "the past unwittingly leaves all along its trail" that allows us to know "far more of the past than the past itself had thought good to tell us."11 Incidental or non-intentional information can include descriptions of names, places, practices, social patterns, prevailing mores, and general attitudes—anything that was assumed by the writer or inherent in the culture that produced and is reflected in the text. For instance, mentions of domestic life may indicate what roles and duties were filled by women, accounts of religious reform may reveal information about popular piety, and references to daily commerce may indicate the types of goods and people involved in trade.12 In recent decades, the recovery of non-intentional information has been one of the predominant contributions of the prophetic books to the study of Israel's past. For instance, non-intentional information from the prophetic books contributes to our understanding of so-called "daily 11. M. Bloch, The Historian's Craft (New York: Vintage, 1953), 62, 64. 12. Bloch (ibid., 62) also expressed the idea that non-intentional evidence is as reliable, and perhaps more reliable, than information intentionally recorded, since a historian may distort intentional information due to intent or bias. In this opinion, Bloch is in line with Finley and many modern historians, including minimalist historians of ancient Israel, who view ancient history as a very problematic source of evidence for the past due to its overarching intentions or aims.

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life," which encompasses the way Israelite life operated on a daily basis, the materials and objects used in daily life, and the ideas that were current among the populace. Thus, the prophets can give us clues about topics such as ancient engraving, commodities, and symbolism.13 Non-intentional information shows up in event-oriented histories of ancient Israel also, because authors of such works tend to use the prophetic books as "a useful cross-reference" that helps illuminate the "main narrative accounts" of the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles.14 Another area of Israel's past to which the prophetic books contribute evidence is the study of Israel's religion. It is impossible to discuss Israel's religion, its god, its covenants with its god, its cultic practices, or any other social, theological, or cultic aspect of Israelite faith without turning to the prophets, Israel's presumed "religious specialists."15 Thus, the prophetic books have become primary sources for understanding the details of religious practices in ancient Israel, and arguably are the main sources for researching broader indications of Israel's state of religious piety. Yet using the prophets to understand particular aspects of Israelite religion has had its twists and turns. For instance, in the past, historians and commentators saw Hosea's mention of the zond in Hos 4:14 as an indication of cultic prostitution in Israel. Over the past decades, scholars have re-examined the evidence for cultic prostitution within and outside of Israel and have raised a number of cautions against assuming its existence in Israel, partly because the word zond refers to prostitution in general (e.g. Lev 21:7). Taking it further, some scholars have suggested that if a zond lacks cultic, ritualistic, or sacred associations, religious interpretations of Hosea are weakened and Samaria/Israel's lovers in Hos 2, with whom she has played the whore, ought to be understood as foreign allies, not foreign gods.16 As compelling as these suggestions are, 13. F. E. Deist, The Material Culture of the Bible: An Introduction (The Biblical Seminar 70; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 139-40, 185, 213. P. J. King and L. E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001) use incidental information from the prophetic books in similar ways. 14. I. W. Provan, V. P. Long, and T. Longman III, A Biblical History of Israel (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 242. 15. P. M. McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel; Ixmisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 179. 16. B. E. Kelle, Hosea 2: Metaphor and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective (Academia Biblica 20; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2005); J. H. Hayes, "Hosea's Baals and Lovers: Religion or Politics?" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, 1990); A. Keefe, Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea (Gender, Culture, Theory 10; JSOTSup 338; Sheffield: Sheffield

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time, language, imagery, and our own limited knowledge stand between the prophet's referents and our understanding of the purview and interests of the prophets and Yahwistic religion in ancient Israel. Besides using the prophetic texts for indications of specific practices and beliefs in ancient Israel, historians have also used them to evaluate the state of religion and society there. The prophets' emphasis on obedience to Yahweh in general, and calls for social justice in particular, combined with the deuteronomistic perspective that Israel's failure to keep Yahweh's commandments caused its defeats and downfalls, have sometimes tempted historians to adopt a negative view of Israelites and their society. The evaluation of John Bright stands as one example: The eighth century in Israel reached its mid-point on a note of hideous dissonance. The state of Israel, externally strong, prosperous, and confident of the future, was inwardly rotten and sick past curing... It was thanks primarily to the prophets that, as the northern state went to her grave, to be followed more tardily by her southern sister, Israel's faith received a new access of life.17

In the years since Bright wrote, trends in the study of history in general might make historians less likely to be so judgmental about the ancients. First, historians have become more aware that no report from or description of the past can be purely objective. Thus, historians must consider the possibility that the prophets' descriptions of Israelite worship and piety could be biased to the point of distortion or inaccuracy.18 Also, the rise in popularity of so-called "history from below," or history of the "common people," has helped turn the spotlight away from the unethical behavior of the presumed elites and toward the people within the same society who might have been victims of this injustice.19 In short, a critical stance towards the claims of the prophetic texts is necessary when they are used to describe Israel's religion. In addition, the use of conclusions Academic Press, 2001); G. Yee,"' She Is Not My Wife and I Am Not Her Husband': A Materialist Analysis of Hosea 1-3," Biblnt 9 (2004): 345-83. 17. J. Bright, A History of Israel (4th ed.; Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 266. The first edition was published in 1959. 18. Cogently pointed out by D. J. A. Clines in "Metacommentating Amos," in Of Prophets' Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honour ofR. Norman Whybray on His Seventieth Birthday (ed. H. A. McKay and D. J. A. Clines; JSOTSup 162; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 142-60. 19. J. E. Sanderson, "Amos," in The Women's Bible Commentary (ed. C. A. Newsom and S. H. Ringe; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox), 206: "As Amos singled out wealthy women—a small group—for special condemnation, a balanced analysis would also have singled out poor women—a much larger group—for special defense."

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from archaeology and information from other cultures will continue to help historians use the prophetic literature productively and as objectively as possible when writing about Israel's religion.20 A final category of history that sometimes draws on the prophets is the military and political history of ancient Israel. Hayes, for instance, has shown that the oracles against the nations stem from military contexts, and has reconstructed the military and political history of certain time periods largely on the basis of these and other prophetic pronouncements.21 Using such oracles to reconstruct military and political events, however, raises methodological problems similar to the ones discussed already, particularly questions of dates and referents, as well as bias or perspective in reporting. Despite the drawbacks of using the prophetic books as sources of evidence about religion, daily life, and military-political events in ancient Israel, historians have and will continue to do so. Historians should not, however, limit their interest in the prophets to seeking information about these topics, as a closer look at the prophetic books shows that they address or imply other concerns of ancient Israel, as well. Here I will focus on one aspect of Israel's existence that I believe comprehensive histories of ancient Israel have not adequately addressed, namely, the role other nations played in the formation of Israel's identity and its understanding of the political and economic realities it encountered. III. The Prophetic Books and the Overall Picture of Israel's Past in Histories of Ancient Israel As mentioned above, the enterprise of relating the words and messages of the prophets directly to events or situations in historical contexts goes back as far as the biblical authors and editors who added narrative 20. In light of growing skepticism about the historical reliability of the Bible and the concurrent desire to include more findings of archaeology in Israel's story, some scholars see religion as a topic in which the Bible (including the prophets) and archaeology can combine to say something true about Israel's past. See, among others, W. G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 173-97, and also idem, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). 21. J. H. Hayes, "The Usage of Oracles Against Foreign Nations in Ancient Israel," ./BL 87 (1968): 81-92; for historical military-political reconstructions based on prophetic texts, see idem, Amos, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988); Hayes and Irvine, Isaiah; Hayes and Hooker, A New Chronology.

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indications of these contexts. Furthermore, the image-laden language of the prophets combined with the difficulties in dating the writings assures that evaluating such connections and making new ones will not be easy for modern interpreters. On the other hand, the prophetic books can provide history a broader perspective. Stepping back from the specific contexts and concerns of the prophetic books, we see in them indications that Israel intensely recognized that it was part of a large and diverse world. Almost all of the prophetic books relate changes and problems in society—political, economic, religious, and social—to forces or happenings elsewhere: foreign powers may be the cause of events, such as destructions; at times, the degradation of social conditions is attributed to foreign elements; other times, the prophets hold up the experiences of other nations as examples of what might happen to Israel; and, especially in oracles against the nations, the prophets inform other nations of what they can expect from Yahweh thanks to their own behavior (often actions against Israel). Thus, it is evident that the prophetic books want Israel to look outward in order to learn about right and wrong conduct by comparing themselves to others and in order to see the power of Yahweh at work around the world.22 The list of cities, peoples, and lands that the prophetic books use to make these points is formidable. The prophets point to places ranging from the well known, such as Nineveh (Nah 2:8; Jonah 1:2), to the obscure, such as Jazer and Sibmah (Jer 48:32). Yet the prophets saw all of these places as relevant to Israel in some way, and presumably would not have included them in their oracles if their mention would not have been recognizable and persuasive. Put in fashionable academic speak, we can say that the world outside of Israel is an emic concern of Israel, abundantly evidenced throughout the written records of this culture. The evidence for this claim is found not only in the prophetic books, but also in the geographical genealogies of the Primeval History and the many etiologies and stories in the Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic History that

22. N. K. Gottwald, All the Kingdoms of the Earth: Israelite Prophecy and International Relations in the Ancient Near East (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), argues this point in much more detail. This book is a comprehensive survey of how the prophets, both writing prophets and others such as Elijah, understood and commented on Israel's foreign relations. It also reflects on how modern readers can relate the prophetic perspective to current international relations. Gottwald follows up on this latter topic in "Prophetic Faith and Contemporary International Relations," in idem, The Hebrew Bible in its Social World and Ours (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 291-306; repr. from P. Peachey, ed., Biblical Realism Confronts the Nation (Nyack: Fellowship, 1963), 68-87.

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tell of Israel's interaction with and relationship to other nations and peoples. Given the concern of the prophetic books and the rest of the Hebrew Bible for happenings outside of Israel, it would seem natural that histories of Israel would pay some attention to positioning Israel in this world and discussing how Israel interacted with it. Furthermore, it would appear that the role other nations play in Israel's self-definition and its understanding of its political, economic, social, and even religious realities would be a productive topic for combining the insights of archaeologists and biblical scholars. Certainly such work is taking place, but an Israel that looks outward as much as inward rarely appears as the subject of a history of Israel.23 Before I make some suggestions for incorporating this international perspective into Israel's story, reasons for its absence ought to be explored. I believe that, at least recently, pressure to de-center histories of Israel from an Israel denned in biblical terms has changed the way historians write, or do not write, about Israel's past. So-called minimalist historians of ancient Israel have championed this approach, which " 'downgrades' Israel to the status of one people among many peoples in Palestine and 'de-centers' Israel from the position of dominant subject. . .to the parity position of being one subject among many interacting subjects."24 The real Israel of the past, minimalists argue, is barely worthy of special historical consideration. Furthermore, they find the real Israel almost impossible to locate historically, since most of the evidence historians use to define ancient Israel conies from the Bible, and the Bible is, in their opinion, historically unreliable in many aspects. Thus, minimalists imply, historians should write histories of a broader swath of time and place than the putative setting of ancient Israel (central Palestine from 1000 B.C.E. to 586 B.C.E. or 323 B.C.E. or so), or should offer histories of ideas, such as the idea of Israel and how it developed and took hold within a certain group of people in the ancient world.25 23. E. Bloch-Smith, "Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I: Archaeology Preserves What Is Remembered and What Is Forgotten in Israel's History," JBL 122 (2003): 401-25, is one recent example of integrative scholarship. K. L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction (The Biblical Seminar 83; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), is a comprehensive history that presents Israel as intertwined with its "Canaanite" cultural environment. 24. N. K. Gottwald, "Triumphalist Versus Anti-Triumphalist Versions of Early Israel: A Response to Articles by Lemche and Dever in Volume 4 (1996)," CurBS 5 (1997): 15-42(30). 25. An example of the former approach is G. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander's Conquest (Minneapolis:

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Scholars have heard the minimalists' concerns, and as the debate goes on, a few trends have become evident. First, compilations of methodological discussions about Israel's history have become a common type of publication in the field.26 Many focus on the questions of how to locate and define Israel and what evidence is relevant to this endeavor.27 In these cases, discussions of what actually happened in the past and why in such publications, that is, history writing about ancient Israel, are confined to analysis of small parts of Israel's story. At the same time, only a few scholars have undertaken histories of an Israel akin to biblical Israel recently.28 Perhaps the ongoing questions about the Bible as evidence combined with the pressure to include in Israel's story more discussion of its place among other nations and peoples has made the viability of Israel as a historical subject too difficult to defend and thus has made large-scale histories of Israel too difficult to write. Yet, most historians appear to want to negotiate a position between cutting Israel off from the surrounding world and making its boundaries—chronological, geographical, and cultural—so fluid that they risk losing Israel entirely.29 Fortress, 1993). This is hardly a minimalist work since its approach to the Bible as evidence is positive overall. Ahlstrom does give the Transjordan some attention (Chapters 9 and 15, especially), and though his treatment of that region is slimmer than that of Israel's, his history's purview is not entirely Israel-centric. The latter approach, writing a history of ideas about Israel, can be found in T. L. Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (New York: Basic Books, 1999). For a fuller exposition of minimalists and their proposals for subjects of history, see M. B. Moore, Philosophy and Practice in Writing a History of Ancient Israel (LHBOTS 435; New York: T. & T. Clark International, 2006), 75-107 (Chapter 4). 26. For example, the European Seminar in Historical Methodology series edited by L. L. Grabbe (now a sub-series of LHBOTS, published by T. & T. Clark International); D. V. Edelman, ed., The Fabric of History: Text, Artifact and Israel's Past (JSOTSup 127; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991); and V. P. Long, ed., Israel's Past in Present Research: Essays on Ancient Israelite Historiography (SETS 7; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999). 27. Such as L. L. Grabbe, ed., Can a "History of Israel" Be Written? (JSOTSup 245; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). 28. E.g. Provan et al., A Biblical History of Israel, Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity; V. H. Matthews, A Brief History of Ancient Israel (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2002); and the recent second edition of J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel andJudah (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2006). 29. This is not the place to make a detailed argument for the suitability of Israel as a historical subject. Suffice it to say that from the perspective of the present-day historian, Israel should be an acceptable subject of history due to the relevancy of its past to modern religious beliefs and, by extension, much of human culture in

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Israel's prophets were also concerned about losing Israel. They believed that its existence was threatened by the degradation of religious beliefs and social principles, and that this degradation was due to a number of causes, both internal and external. As I have argued here, the prophets held up examples of Yahweh's dealings with the world, not just Israel, to make these points. Therefore, an outward-looking Israel as history's subject would be richer, more well-rounded in terms of a non-Israelcentric perspective, and also truer to the Israel presented in the Bible. If historians accept that a history of Israel can and should be written with more attention to Israel's place in its cultural and geo-political environments, a number of practices and traditions familiar to readers of histories of Israel might change. For instance, historians writing comprehensive histories of Israel might alter the near-standard outline that begins with matters of setting (geographical and chronological) and methodology, moves to a discussion of Israel's origins, and men presents Israel's history following the monarchies and events reported in the Deuteronomistic History, generally splitting up the sections on the northern and southern kingdoms and perhaps ending somewhere around the time of Alexander's conquest.30 In this scheme, happenings that affected Israel from the outside can easily be dealt with in a few sentences and mentioned only as background for events such as dynastic changes and wars. Likewise, this outline allows the significance of places and events alluded to in the oracles against the nations and in the rest of the prophets to be left to the commentaries, since these may fall outside of the main story line of the emergence, monarchies, and exiles of ancient Israel and Judah.31 general. As S. Scham ("The Days of the Judges: When Men and Women Were Animals and Trees Were Kings,''JSOT 97 [2002]: 37-64 [41]) notes, "Ultimately, we must ask ourselves if it really makes sense to divorce a scholarly discipline from its primary basis of relevance to the rest of the world." One can defend writing a history of Israel on the basis of having evidence about it, as well, as long as historians recognize that Israel is not easily defined either by using the Bible or by looking at material culture. For further discussion, see Moore, Philosophy and Practice, 13 8-83 (Chapter 6). 30. In such histories, the linear progression through time is usually tied to a geographic narrowing such that Jerusalem is all that is left of Israel after both the northern and southern kingdoms are destroyed and their inhabitants taken to exile. For a discussion of problems with this perspective, see H. Barstad, The Myth of the Empty Land: A Study in the History and Archaeology of Judah During the "Exilic " Period (Symbolae Osolenses Fasciculi Suppletorii; Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996). 31. See, e.g., V. H. Matthews, The Social World of the Hebrew Prophets (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2001). The first chapter presents "historical geography"

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Histories organized around the Pentateuchal-Deuteronomistic History outline may not only leave out events and situations important to the prophets, they also leave very little room for discussion of the thought worlds of ancient Israel. Since Israel's main legacy is the Bible and, more specifically, lasting ideas about community makeup, responsibility, and the relationship of people to God, histories of Israel addressed to the modern world should give readers some idea of how the drastic changes in conditions Israel faced over almost one thousand years affected these ideas. Therefore, discussing in histories how the prophetic books reflect the ways that Israel came to terms with these changes would make the history of Israel more relevant to many of the modern communities interested in the Bible and would make history better reflect the community that produced the Bible, as well. In some ways, then, I am arguing that attention to the prophetic books should inspire a new kind of history of ancient Israel. This history would keep Israel as its subject but include in its purview other areas of Palestine and the ancient world. Such a history would also attempt to tie events within Israel and outside of it to the development of ideas and richness of expression found in the Bible, and would provide a forum for integrating the Bible, including the prophetic books, with material culture's indications of how the ancients constructed their thought world and ethnic identity. On the other hand, the type of history I propose for ancient Israel is not new, but follows in the vein of William F. Albright's From the Stone Age to Christianity.32 From today's perspective, Albright's belief that the Bible combined with archaeology could explain (and legitimate) the progression of religious belief from polytheism to Protestant Christianity is too biased for modern sensibilities. Furthermore, Albright's optimism about the historical reliability of the biblical sources and the ability of archaeology to confirm Israel's picture of itself is of course no longer tenable. Yet Albright's approach is worthy of evaluation, dicussion, and consideration since it attempts to address many aspects of Israelite existence besides the succession of kingdoms, to take the prophets seriously as useful witnesses to Israel's past, to understand the wide world of thought and experience of ancient Israel, and to take into account the relevance of Israel's history to the modern community.

but then hardly mentions other nations as part of the prophets' social world again, except for a short discussion of the oracles against the nations (pp. 139-40). 32. W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940; 2d ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957).

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TV. Conclusion Israel's prophets were not historians, and the prophetic books are not history, but the prophets can contribute to the study of Israel's past. Incidental information found in the prophetic books can help historians understand the details and organization of Israelite life. The prophetic books can also offer information about how ancient Israel practiced its religion and understood its god and how he worked in the world, and perhaps may give us some insight into political and military relationships. Calling the prophets "religious specialists" or limiting the historical interest in the prophets to these topics, however, limits the usefulness of the prophetic books for history. The prophets urged Israel to look outward and to see how the wider world could help Israel understand its experiences and its destiny.33 History will benefit from following the prophets' lead.

33. This view of the prophets also implies that the prophetic canon is held together in part by an outward-looking perspective, and thereby supports the inclusion in the prophetic canon of books that have little to say about Israelite religion or experience, such as Jonah. Also, as Gottwald (All the Kingdoms of the Earth, 45—85) implies, the idea that prophets looked outward also has the potential to illuminate our understanding of prophecy in general, as prophets such as Elijah and Samuel deal directly with non-Israelites.

DE-HlSTORICIZEMG AND HlSTORICIZING TENDENCffiS

IN THE TWELVE PROPHETIC BOOKS: A CASE STUDY OF THE HEURISTIC VALUE OF A HISTORICALLY ANCHORED SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO THE CORPUS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE* Ehud Ben Zvi

The first time I met John Hayes was a very few days after my arrival to Atlanta for graduate studies at Emory University. In less than five minutes we were involved in a vigorous debate about the book of Isaiah and some exegetical works on it. Ever since that day, we have debated with the same gusto about prophetic books, ancient Israelite history, and related topics. What a great teacher is the one who not only allows but encourages his/her students to disagree with him/her! This essay is a token of my deeply felt appreciation. I. Introduction This article explores the heuristic potential of what might be described as a historically anchored systemic approach to the corpus of prophetic literature. Such an approach would focus on implicit rules of selection that were at work in the production and "consumption" of prophetic books in ancient Israel. It would, for instance, deal with the identification of traits or features that were preferred (or dispreferred) and increased (or decreased) the chances that a book be read, reread, studied, and become part of the authoritative repertoire of the Jerusalemite literati in the Persian period.1 * An oral version of this essay was presented at a session on "The Twelve" at the 2005 meeting of the Society of Biblical literature held in Philadelphia. I wish to thank the participants for their comments. 1. Assuming, as it is most likely, that both the present form of most prophetic books and the repertoire of authoritative prophetic books, at least in the main, took shape in this period.

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Of course, the question arises: How can we know about these implicit, systemic rules of selection? The answer may be found in analyses of the outcome of these rules. In other words, we should look at clearly nonrandom distribution of traits.2 Our attention should focus on clusters of selective (or disselective) properties that at least in the surface seem consistent with the discursive/ideological worlds of the literati of ancient Israel.3 One of the potential advantages of this approach for historical studies bears particular note. Since it is based on strong, general trends and sure cases of non-random distribution of traits rather than on particular instances, it is grounded on a more solid evidentiary basis than exegetical conclusions regarding individual texts, which by nature are more open for debate.4 Within this general heuristic frame, this essay focuses on constructions of the past. One reason for this is, of course, the interest of the honouree of this volume in history; another is my own research interests as a historian; but above all, the reason is that all prophetic books provide images of the past. All are set in the past, as are the divine or human utterances that they report. Moreover, through their reading and rereading of prophetic books, the literati, who constituted the primary readership of the prophetic books, could not but evoke, develop, shape, and reflect images of the past. There are different types of constructions of the past. For instance, they may emphasize general, relatively long periods of time characterized or partially characterized by generic features that are not by themselves strongly anchored to a narrowly defined particular period, or that 2. One may approach the presence of such traits from the perspective of genre studies. After all, the selected traits become usual features attested in and characteristic of the genre of the prophetic book. I have focused, however, on the systemic aspect of this approach, namely, on the existence of a social and discursive system of rules of selection and disselection. This said, a genre-based approach to these matters may be considered the other side of the coin of the one explored here. 3. There is no point in dwelling on the obvious, such as that texts that claim that deities other than YHWH are to be worshiped are most strongly disselected. For this approach to be meaningful, it should focus only on traits that at least on the surface could have been attributed to prophetic texts or godly characters, but tended not to be. These cases raise the heuristically significant, historical question of why such was the case. 4. To be sure, these particular exegetical conclusions regarding individual texts are indispensable for most kinds of studies on prophetic literature. The point advanced in this essay is only that a general, systemic approach is heuristically valuable for particular purposes and should be explored.

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from a pragmatic perspective seem quasi-atemporal or transtemporal. Society is thus portrayed from a general overview perspective, as it was imagined to have existed during a substantial span of time, and is characterized, in part at least, by some attributes that in the essence could have potentially been associated with other periods (e.g. corruption of justice, oppression of the weak, sinful elites and their usual manifestations within agrarian societies). Alternatively, constructions of the past may place their emphasis on punctual time, on particular "historically unique" moments or events, on clear dates, which by necessity can appear only once in history. These images bring attention to unique moments within the social memory of the community/ies rather than on that which is general. Both types of constructions of the past appear in prophetic literature. Of course, the past is not evoked, at least in the main, for its own sake, but to provide the context necessary for the understanding of the text within the intended community of readers (or better, rereaders). These books, in fact, tend to carry clear textually inscribed markers asking their intended and primary rereaders (hereafter, and for simplicity, "the target rereaders" or "the target rereadership") to approach and understand them from a perspective that is strongly informed by either (a) a general image of a society associated with the past and characterized at least in part by attributes that resonate with other periods, or (b) a sharp snapshot of a narrowly defined period of time or set of circumstances that is unique in the main. In the first case, one may say that the text carries a tendency towards partial de-concretizing or de-historicizing. It de-emphasizes historical uniqueness or the importance of narrowly denned historical events and circumstances for the understanding of the book as a whole and the didactic prophetic readings that stand at its core. In the second case, one may say that the text carries a strong historicizing tendency. This essay will analyze the non-random distribution of these tendencies in the collection of books later called "The Twelve" (hereafter, "the twelve prophetic books") and explore the reasons behind the clear preference of one over the other in these books in general, as well as the reasons for the salient exceptions to the rule. Strong preference for one or the other tendency carries implications for the constructions and uses of the past in prophetic books and for the modes of reading and emphasis that they carried from the perspective of the target rereaders. Such preference also sheds light on the social, didactic, and ideological functions of prophetic books, as well as on the societies that composed, read, and reread them. The collection of the twelve prophetic books in particular provides a broad sample of several works that allows for solid conclusions about non-random trait distribution among separate compositions.

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And this specific collection demonstrates a clear preference for one of these tendencies. Yet attention may also be given, albeit briefly, to some of the heuristic questions that this analysis raises in relation to the larger prophetic books (i.e. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel). It is a very significant piece of information, though not one usually emphasized, that most of the twelve prophetic books consistently presented themselves to their readerships as not anchored in precise, particular historical circumstances. These books tended not to refer to concrete events or individual historical figures beyond those mentioned in the superscription and, for the most part, tended not to mention even those events or figures explicitly in the main body of the book. For instance, one may ask in vain where and when, within the world of Hosea, did YHWH speak the words reported in Hos 3:1 or whether YHWH spoke to Hosea those words reported in Hos 1:2 when he was alone or in a public place where others heard. The text was simply not designed to help the target rereaders reconstruct the actual sequence of events in the life of the historical Hosea. The knowledge of that sequence was not considered to contribute much to the didactic and socializing purposes for which the book was written, read, and reread. The thrust of the book was to kindle the imagination of the target rereaders toward the portrayed ideal future and to remind them of the terrible sins that characterized monarchic Israel and led to its downfall. To be sure, for reasons to be discussed below, a substantial number of these books had to be explicitly set in the late monarchic period. Unambiguous references in the superscription of these books served that purpose. In six out of twelve books, however, the superscription lacks any explicit reference to the temporal setting for the book (see Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Malachi). Moreover, in the majority of those books set in the late monarchic era, the superscription refers to & general period of several decades as the time in which the world of the book is set (see Hosea, Micah, and Zephaniah). These books suggested to their target readership that knowledge about the precise circumstances in which a (reported) revelation was received or proclaimed was secondary, if relevant at all, for the process that mattered the most: the development among the target rereaders of an understanding of the divine messages communicated and shaped by these prophetic books. The repertoire of twelve prophetic books, however, includes Haggai, a book that explicitly and emphatically dates most of its reported oracles to narrow circumstances (see Hag 1:1,15; 2:1,10,20). Moreover, the book of Zechariah shows examples (see Zech 1:1, 7; 7:1) of this tendency in its first main set of readings (Zech 1-8), even if this tendency disappears

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in the latter part of the book and is less salient in the whole than in Haggai. As it will be shown below, both the de-historicizing and historicizing tendencies strongly influenced, though in different directions, the literary form in which these books and the prophetic readings that comprised them were presented to the target rereaders, as well as the way in which the latter read the texts. Each tendency carried its own implications and served its own rhetorical purposes. This being so, the presence of these two tendencies, along with their non-random distribution among the twelve prophetic books, raises important questions: Why did the two tendencies coexist within the accepted repertoire of prophetic books? Why did they tend not to coexist within the same book within the repertoire of the twelve prophetic books? Why was one tendency so dominant in these books? And conversely, what was so unique in some cases that the other tendency was prioritized? What was at stake in those cases that overrode a strong systemic trend? Finally, even if it is beyond the scope of this essay, how do these considerations play in the larger prophetic books outside of the twelve, and why do the larger books contain both tendencies in ways rarely seen in the twelve? These matters are systemic and cut across the borders of particular prophetic books. Hence, one should take into account the interpretative expectations raised by the genre of prophetic book, as well as the functions the twelve prophetic books served in society. Particular attention should be paid to how rhetorical stances about historical circumstances serve to convey didactic and ideological messages. II. The Dominant Tendency in the Twelve Prophetic Books: Partial De-Historicizing for Didactic Purposes The ancient readers for which these books were composed would have easily noted that nine of the twelve prophetic books (Hosea, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Malachi) included no readings in which the reported production of human or divine utterances or any communicative event was directly associated with a set of precise historical circumstances within the world of these books. Of course, these utterances and communicative events assumed some world of knowledge shared by authorship and readership, as well as by the speakers and their addressees in the world of the book, but even these addressees were often not identified in a precise way or tended to

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shift.5 These features contributed to the shaping of the affective appeal of the text to its literati readers, who lived in very different times than those portrayed in the world of the book. The features also shaped the appeal to those to whom these literati readers, who embodied the voice of the text and its characters, read the text. Moreover, it can be argued that even a tenth book, namely Amos, participates in the main in this tendency. There is the reference to the "two years before the earthquake" in Amos 1:2 and the Amaziah episode in 7:10-17. But the former may have simply communicated that YHWH did roar from Zion soon after the reported speech in Amos 1:2 (i.e. even sooner than the relatively short period of three years; cf. Gen 11:10; 41:1; Jer 28:3, 11). In other words, it may convey a meaning akin to m~lp (e.g. Isa 13:6, 22, passim) and provide the obvious association between YHWH's roar and the earthquake. As for the Amaziah episode, it is an atypical narrative within the twelve prophetic books. It is also significant that the narrative does not temporally narrow the episode to any period within the lengthy reign of Jeroboam. In any event, the point here is one of general tendencies (non-random distributions) and not one of compliance in every single case. There can be no doubt about the general trend: the twelve prophetic books did not ask their readers to approach them as a whole, nor the different readings that each contains, within a narrow set of historical circumstances. Neither did they ask readers to historicize the texts through emphatic mimesis. After all, these prophetic books were not really about mimesis or historicity in contemporary terms, but about the learning of YHWH, Israel, and the relationship between the two in the past and the future. This learning included lessons, hopes, and implications for peoples other than Israel. Israel in these discourses was construed as a transtemporal entity whose manifestations included the Israel of the Exodus, Sinai, the monarchic polities, exilic Israel, and, of course, the community centred around Jerusalem in the Persian period, especially the authorship and readership of the books themselves in that Jerusalem community. These books were meant to be read and reread by readers who were supposed to identify with the books' main ideological characters: a transtemporal 5. For example, who is the addressee of the human monologue in Hos 3 and when did it take place? Another example of a lack of clarity is the "her" at the end of Hos 9:2, which stands instead of an anticipated "them" and can only refer to the land—YHWH'S land. This contributes to the construction of an ideological overlap of images between people and land. References to Israel also shift from the second to the third person and vice versa in Hos 9:1—7a to maximize the rhetorical power of the text.

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YHWH and a transtemporal Israel. Significantly, the target rereaders were, for the most part, far removed from the times in which the prophetic books were set. Therefore, among the underlying, systemic reasons for the tendency to avoid as much as possible stress on narrowly construed circumstances was the obvious rhetorical need to bridge the gap between the Israel of the target rereaders and the Israel in the world of the book. This bridge increased the affective power of the book, conveyed a sense of continuity between the Israel portrayed in the book (and any manifestation of transtemporal Israel) and the target rereadership of the book—which is essential to the latter's self-understanding—and provided paradigmatic examples from which the target rereaders and their society could learn. There is nothing strange about this. Prophetic books, as any book for that matter, bore the stamp of two worlds: (1) the world in which the book is set and (2) the world of the target rereaders. The more the message of a prophetic unit was dependent on unique, narrowly defined circumstances in the past, the less relevant it became to readerships living in substantially different circumstances. And certainly it becomes harder for the target rereadership to identify affectively with the book's characters. The more open the text was, however, the more these readers were able creatively to imagine themselves into the book and vicariously to partake in it. Thus, the more likely that the book would fulfil its functions in the text-centred discourse of the literati of ancient Israel/Yehud. Of course, the more successful the prophetic book was, the larger the chances that it will be read, reread, studied, and copied by the Jerusalemite literati, generation after generation. In other words, we are dealing with systemic aspects of the production and use of prophetic books. It is therefore not surprising that the prophetic figures that populate these books tend to be construed in a way that either verges on a-temporality (e.g. Joel) or partial a-temporality. Moreover, if they are or have to be anchored (for reasons discussed below) in a certain period, then they are associated within a limited set of wide, generally characterized periods in the past rather than with single points in time or with any specific past period. For example, the prophetic books within the twelve prophetic books that are set in monarchic times tend to concentrate around either the late northern Israelite period6 and its counterpart in Hezekianic Judah (Hosea, Amos, Micah; cf. Isaiah) or the late Judahite monarchic period (Zephaniah, Habakkuk; cf. Ezekiel, Jeremiah). No prophetic book

6. The destruction of the northern Israelite polity was understood as a prefiguration of that of the southern.

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is set in the time of Omri or Ahab, or for that matter David or Solomon.7 The periods that were systemically selected shared one central quality: they were imagined, from the perspective of the target rereaderships of the books, as directly leading to the destruction of the monarchic polities and, above all, leading Israel to exile.8 This selection carries several implications. The relevant prophetic books reflected and communicated a basic structural metanarrative of central importance within the discourses of Yehud. The metanarrative has several parts: (a) Israel grievously sinned in the past; (b) its punishment was announced to it at the time of its sinning by prophets,9 who at times unsuccessfully called it to repentance;10 (c) from the perspective of the target rereaders of these books, though not necessarily from that of those who populated the world of the book, Israel's punishment was fulfilled; and (d) an Utopian future already decided by YHWH was explicitly announced by godly speakers (the deity or a prophets) and was announced to Israel at precisely the time of and despite its seemingly incurable sin. These announcements provided much hope to the target rereaders of the book and contributed significantly to their construction of the character of YHWH and the relationship between their deity and transtemporal Israel. In other words, no matter what a particular manifestation of Israel would do, no matter even if its sin was as grievous as to justify exile and destruction of the Jerusalemite Temple, city, and monarchy, YHWH will make Israel reconcile with its deity and bring the people back.11 Of course, these prophetic books could communicate this metanarrative and its associated messages only if the world of the books and the reported words of its godly characters (either prophetic or divine) were set in the monarchic period, before the announced fulfilment of YHWH's judgment. This basic constraint could not be avoided,12 but it is worth 7. The book of Jonah is probably atypical in this regard. The target rereaderships likely related, at least at some level, the character in the book and Jonah the son of Amittay of 2 Kgs 14:23-29. On this matter and the atypical character of Jonah, see E. Ben Zvi, Signs of Jonah: Reading and Rereading in Ancient Yehud (JSOTSup 367; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 40-64, 80-98. 8. I am referring here not only to the material state of being in exile but also and mainly to the theological conception of exile. 9. Prophets, of course, were construed as always prophesying to the future. 10. A theological principle of warning before the divine execution of a "fatal" punishment seems at work. Cf. Zech 1:4-5; 2 Kgs 17:13-15. 11. See, especially, Hosea. 12. Similarly, the text of Nahum does not set the book in any particular period in monarchic Judah. From the perspective of the target rereadership, the only restriction was that Nahum must have lived before the destruction of the city because prophetic

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stressing that, within the books that fall into this category and are among the twelve prophetic books, one does not find any temporal anchoring that goes beyond setting the book in a general period that lasted decades. There is no temporal anchoring that narrows matters to a particular point in time. The periods in which these books are set were consistently portrayed in general terms. No clear information about precise dates within a period, nor about the deeds or sins of named individuals in society, was given to the target rereaders. For instance, the common reference to the sin of Jeroboam I in Kings (e.g. 2 Kgs 15:24; 17:22) has no counterpart in these books. Neither Jeroboam I nor his sin is mentioned in prophetic literature.13 Manasseh, whose sin is so central in Kings (see 2 Kgs 23:26; 24:3; cf. 2 Kgs 21:10-16) is also not mentioned at all. In fact, it is worth noting that no prophetic book was set in his reign. Neither is Ahab and his house (cf. 2 Kgs 21:3, 13) mentioned except once in Mic 6:16. The pattern is clear: for didactic purposes, "paradigmatic" sins were chosen. Thus, it is not surprising on the whole within the genre of prophetic books —as opposed to historical narrative, for instance—that general descriptions of habitual sins, which serve to portray in general terms the behaviour and spirit of a particular manifestation of Israel in the past period, tend to be preferred over descriptions of one-time, unique, sinful actions. Likewise, these books consistently refrain from emphasizing the sins of particular individuals, even if theirs were construed as paradigmatic or decisive in terms of divine judgment in other corpora of literature within the repertoire of Yehud.14 characters in a prophetic book are supposed to prophesy about what will be and not about what has already happened. Significantly, Nineveh was both a historical city and a symbol of a sinful, overbearing, exceedingly oppressive political structure whose fate was unlike all comparable cities in their world: it was totally destroyed and never rebuilt. From the perspective of target rereaderships well aware of the fall of Nineveh, such a fall from the pinnacle of glory and might becomes a paradigmatic example of the fate of worldly, powerful oppressors and, above all, of the even greater power of YHWH who brings them down. As such, the book provided a message of hope and trust in YHWH to those who saw themselves as oppressed by their own "Nineveh." See my introduction to Nahum in A. Berlin and M. Z. Brettler, eds., The Jewish Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1219-20. Cf. Ben Zvi, Signs of Jonah, 14—33. 13. For the position that the Jeroboam of Amos 7 was understood at some point as Jeroboam I, see C. Levin, "Amos und Jeroboam I," VT45 (1995): 307-17. The intended and primary readers of the present book of Amos were, however, led to believe that this Jeroboam is Jeroboam II (cf. Amos 1:1). 14. To be sure, it is very likely that the precise historical circumstances in which flesh and blood prophets prophesied played, consciously or unconsciously, a role in their actual sayings just as those of anyone around them. But we are dealing with

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Additionally, the twelve prophetic books carry textual markers that ask their readers to de-emphasize mimetic approaches to the readings of which they consist. Since boundaries between reported utterances, literary units, general outlines, and the identity of speakers and audiences are often fluid, they are inconsistent with a historicist approach that would try to understand them as a mimetic report of separate, individual events that took place at various times, places, and occasions. By contrast, prophetic texts consistently point readers only to other texts in the book. The Sitz im Buck is presented to the target rereaders as far more important than the precise circumstances in the world portrayed in the book. The target rereaders of these books were rarely explicitly informed about that world. In other words, these books shaped, reflected, and interpreted constructions of the past for didactic purposes, to socialize their readers; but they were not about "historicity" nor did they require their readers to focus mainly in narrowly conceived mimesis. Their textually inscribed markers strongly suggested to their readers that the markers of historical narratives (e.g. precise locations for events, definite dates, emphasis on the detailed actions of individuals, clearly named kings and leaders) are not the type of knowledge that should inform them as they read, reread, and study these books. Hence, it is only to be expected that these books would tend not to contain readings framed in the form of historical narratives. Rather, these books suggested a different kind of knowledge that readers should keep in mind as they read, reread, and study these books. The writings abound in textually inscribed markers that serve as signposts linking different units or texts within them. These markers indicated to the target rereaders that they should read each text of a book in a way informed by the others and thus create networks of meanings that are deeply interwoven in the book.15 The cumulative evidence of these and have access to only prophetic characters in literary works. It is the historical circumstances of the target rereaderships of prophetic books that should draw our attention, since they played a substantial role in the shaping of the characterization of the prophetic figures that populate these books. 15. I discussed these networks in detail in Micah (FOTL 21b; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) and Hosea (FOTL 21 A, part 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). See, for instance, the following quotation from the latter (pp. 269-70): "[I]t is worth stressing that this reading [Hos 13:1-14:1], as any in this set of readings (Hos 12:1-14:9) explores further some of the main themes advanced in 4:1-11:11 and is closely linked to readings in that set by a network of textually inscribed signposts that contribute to the continuous rereading and study of the book within the target readerships. At the same time, it also contains subtle signposts that remind the readers that Hos 13:1-14:1 leads into Hos 14:1-9. A few examples will

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ubiquitous networks strongly suggested to the target rereadership that neither the book's different units nor their meanings were independent of each other and should not be approached as such. The implied authors of these books were masters of interweaving different units within each book so they may inform each other. Needless to say, these networks of meaning contributed much to the feasibility and vitality of the continuous reading and rereading of each of these books by communities of literati in Persian Yehud. These very same communities were not asked by textually inscribed markers to look for punctual historical referents against which to read the book nor to expect a strongly mimetic book. In sum, there was an overwhelming tendency among the prophetic books that were included in the Twelve to contextualize their readings in terms of the book, to reduce their mimetic appeal, and partially to dehistoricize them. Readers likely understood such tendencies as consistent suffice. Hos 8:4 brings together two main offenses of Israel, the making of kings and of idols (D'DXI?), which are two main themes in this reading (see v. 2 and 10-11 [of Hos 13]; on D^SU? ct. Hos 14:9). Further, ine» Cin 'an artisan made it' in Hos 8:6 finds a counterpart D"1 ETin n&UD 'the work of an artisan' in Hos 13:2, and both reflect and communicate a theological mindset in which aniconic worship was seen as a central tenet to such extent that iconic worship of any kind is strongly derided... Explicit references to the '(male) calf/calves' (^U) appear in Hos 8:5,6 and 13:2— also cf. Hos 10:5...—again linking the two readings. There is a difference, however: whereas according to Hos 8 Israel/Ephraim will be sent into exile and its cities will be destroyed, according to Hos 13:1 Israel/Ephraim dies. Significantly, according to Hos 14:9, Ephraim/Israel will reject the idols (D^UD) and according to Hos 14:4b will not consider irT HIPPD 'the work of our [Ephraim's/IsraeFs] hands' (i.e. the calves) to be their gods (cf. and ct. Exod 32:4, 8; 1 Kgs 1:28-29)... The expression "]^n D^OD *7BD1 "ipD ]3J?D 'like a morning mist/cloud or like dew that goes away early' appears in Hos 13:3 and Hos 6:4, but nowhere else in the HB. The expression serves as a signpost suggesting the readers to relate one unit in the book to another. Whereas Hos 6:4 informs them that Israel's loyalty (hesed) to YHWH is as ephemeral as morning mist or dew and does not last long, Hos 13:3 portrays Israel/Ephraim itself as ephemeral as morning mist or dew, because its does not keep its loyalty to YHWH (see Hos 13:1-2, cf. Hos 14:1). Significantly, in Hos 14:6, it is YHWH who will be like a nourishing dew that does not fail to appear and whose effects are long lasting. It is worth noting that within the world of postmonarchic literati, dew may raise connotations of bringing those who are dead to life (see Isa 26:19) and cf. Hos 6:2...and also 13:14.... The expression DnSQ pKD "pn1^ Tl "33R1 'I am YHWH,}>0wr [Ephraim's/transtemporal Israel's) God since (your days) in the land of Egypt' occurs word for word in Hos 12:10 and 13:4. In the former instance, it serves to explain why Israel will eventually be saved...; here it serves to emphasize Israel's guilt (see w. 1-3 [of Hos 13]), while at the same time cannot but evoke in the readers a sense that YHWH will save Israel (see Hos 12:10 and cf. also 13:4b with 13:10a and 14:4)."

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with the authorial intention of the books. The overwhelming character of this trend within the twelve prophetic books is a bit astonishing given the high level of diversity that characterized the literary repertoire of ancient Israel. Yet the trend is somewhat anticipated given that it was consistent with and reflected systemic needs and functions related to the production and use of prophetic books among the postmonarchic literati and their ideological need to bridge gaps between themselves and previous manifestations of Israel.16 If these conclusions hold, they raise questions concerning some prophetic books that do not seem to follow the de-historicizing tendency. For example, the diametrically different tendency at work in the book of Haggai, and to a less extent in the first main set of readings in the book of Zechariah (Zech 1-8), is particularly salient. Why did such a very different tendency take priority in these works? In addition, systemic differences are noticeable between the smaller prophetic books eventually included in the twelve prophetic books and the larger prophetic books, especially Ezekiel and Jeremiah, since the latter do not follow the twelve prophetic books' tendency in this matter. Certainly, the matter is not simply one of size. It involves matters of structure and intention in their form-critical senses.17 The implications of these considerations will be adumbrated only briefly below. The matter goes well beyond the scope of this essay. As the honouree of this volume would often say in class, scholarly contributions are helpful not only for the questions they answer or attempt to answer, but also, and perhaps even more so, for those that they raise for future research. III. A Second Tendency: Partial Historicizingfor Didactic Purposes The book of Haggai opens with the following statement, "In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of 16. Contrast with K. Budde, "Eine folgenschwere Redaktion des Zwolfprophetenbuchs," ZAW39 (1922): 218-29. 17. Each prophetic book is presented as a separate textually coherent unit, that is, as a "system." Of course, the level of complexity and properties of, as well as the possibilities engendered by, such systems vary if it includes one chapter (Obadiah) or sixty-six (Isaiah). So even "size" is not simply "size." To be sure, these are all authoritative prophetic books; they share a basic, encompassing genre. But this feature does not preclude substantial differences. Certainly, the target rereaderships of Jeremiah or Ezekiel noticed that the book they were reading was different from the books of Zephaniah, Nahum, or Obadiah.

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Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest" (Hag 1:1). The first thing that the target rereaderships are told is a very specific date. The narrative unit continues until a second date, the twenty-fourth of the same month, is given (1:15a). The next main unit in the book (1:15b-2:9) also opens with a specific date (the twenty-first of the next month), and so do the other two main units (2:10-19, whose world is set on the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, and 2:20-23, which seems to be set on the very same day). Not only the world of every single reading in the book was set in specific dates, but the book as a whole was structured around reports associated with particular dates.18 This feature can be explained in terms of the form in which the book as a whole presents itself to the target rereaders. It is a prophetic book that consists of an apologetic, sequential narrative about the past, which advances a particular plot and contains several different scenes whose boundaries are marked by dates.19 Narratives about the communal past, that is, "historical" narratives—whether accurate from our perspective or not—most often tend to contain temporal anchors and refer to particular 18. Whether this is the result of redactional activity is not relevant to the present discussion, since the target rereaders of Haggai (as opposed to any hypothetical forerunner) were obviously asked to read a book strongly characterized by this structure and historicizing. It is abundantly clear that the final form represents the (eventually?) preferred structure of the book within the system in which it developed. On redactional and compositional proposals for Haggai (and Zech 1-8), see, among many others, W. A. M. Beuken, Haggai-Sacharja 1-8: Studien zur Uberlieferungsgeschichte derfruhnachexilischen Prophetic (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1967); R. Mason, "The Purpose of the 'Editorial Framework' of the Book of Haggai," VT21 (1977): 413-21; J. E. Tollington, Tradition and Innovation in Haggai and Zechariah 1-8 (JSOTSup 150; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press); idem, "Readings in Haggai: From the Prophet to the Completed Book. A Changing Message for Changing Times," in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times (ed. B. Becking and M. C. A. Korpel; OtSt 42; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 194—208; and note the summary of research on the matter in M. Boda, "Majoring in the Minors: Recent Research on Haggai and Zechariah," CurBS 2 (2003): 33-68 (esp. 33-37). 19. David Petersen characterizes the form of the book as "brief apologetic historical narrative" and as "apologetic history" and identifies this genre with that which Norbert Lohfink recognized in Jer 26; 36, and 37-43. Michael Floyd refers to it as "prophetic history." See D. L. Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1-8 (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 33-36; cf. N. Lohfink, "Die Gattung der 'Historischen Kurzgeschichte' in the letzten Jahren von Juda und in der Zeit des Babylonischen Exiles," ZAW9Q (1978): 319^7; M. H. Floyd, Minor Prophets Part 2 (FOTL 22; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 260-62, 639^0; see also idem, "The Nature of the Narrative and the Evidence of Redaction in Haggai," FT 45 (1995): 470-90.

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circumstances in the social memory of the group. These circumstances were within the range of constructions of the past that were agreed or potentially acceptable within the group. So it is not surprising that dates and references to particular individuals and circumstances appear prominently in these cases. When prophetic readings appear in the form of narratives about some aspect of the communal past, they cannot but historicize themselves and present themselves as deeply bound with narrowly defined circumstances in the social memory of the community. This is precisely one of the main reasons for the general lack of narratives about the communal past in the vast majority of the twelve prophetic books. Whatever one's approach to the relationship between Haggai and Zech 1-8,20 it is obvious that Zech 1-8 are also presented to their target rereaderships by and large in the form of a "historical narrative." Sykes refers to these texts as "Prophetic Chronicle" and even compares them to the Babylonian Chronicles, with some success.21 Of course, chronicles are historical narratives in which temporal anchors serve as main structural markers.22 In all these cases, the use of a particular literary form cannot but result in historicizing the text. 20. For a summary of research on the matter and main bibliographic references, see S. S. Tuell, "Haggai-Zechariah: Prophecy in the Manner of Ezekiel," in Thematic Threads in the Book of the Twelve (ed. P. L. Redditt and S. Schart; BZAW 235; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003), 273-91, and Boda, "Majoring," 51-53. My own position on the matter is that the target rereaderships of the books of Haggai and Zechariah were asked to approach them as two separate books, each with its own main prophetic character. Significantly, they characterize Zechariah and Haggai differently (cf. Petersen, Haggai-Zechariah 1-8, 124). At the same time, these rereaderships were asked to relate the books and these characters as they construe an image of the past described in the books. Not only are Haggai and Zechariah presented as contemporary prophets, but they deal with partially similar circumstances. Moreover, stylistic features such as the references to precise dating, shared personages (e.g. Zerubbabel), and the adoption of a form of historical narrative (in the first chapters of Zechariah) suggest that the rereaders were supposed to understand each book in a way informed not only by their world of knowledge in general, but by a section of it in which the other book and prophetic character figure prominently. 21. See S. Sykes, "Time and Space in Haggai-Zechariah 1-8: A Bakhtinian Analysis of a Prophetic Chronicle," JSOT 76 (1997): 97-124. Sykes refers to Haggai-Zech 1-8 as a unit, but even if this position is not accepted, the heuristic value of the comparisons with Babylonian Chronicles and of the structural slots that different types of characters fulfil (e.g. some of the roles of the Babylonian king are taken by YHWH) remain valid. 22. Even the exceptional character of Amos 7:10-17 in the rest of the twelve prophetic books may perhaps be understood in the same way, that is, as a prophetic reading that uses the form of a "historical narrative."

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Yet this formal explanation does not solve the basic issue at stake; it only slightly shifts and rephrases the question. Why would there be an entire prophetic book (i.e. Haggai) and at least a substantial portion of another (Zech 1-8)23 that defy the dominant tendency in the twelve prophetic books and historicize the text by means of a prominent use of the form of "historical narrative"? Considerations about the enhanced verisimilitude created by strongly historicizing a story per se do not contribute much to the elucidation of these matters. Surely, references to concrete dates, individuals, and places convey a sense of verisimilitude, but the question would be why similar considerations did not govern the choices expressed in the other books within the twelve prophetic books. The books that were eventually included with Haggai in the twelve prophetic books give considerations of verisimilitude nearly no sway and undermine the notion that a strong, explicit sense of narrow mimesis (or heavy historicizing) was necessary for or strongly contributed to the theological authority of a prophetic book. To address this question one must move beyond choices of particular literary forms and stylistic devices that may enhance verisimilitude. The focus should be on why an atypical choice was selected in the case of Haggai (and to some extent in the first eight chapters of Zechariah) rather than on the literary ways through which this choice was implemented. The case of Jonah is relevant in this respect. Here formal uniqueness reflected and drew attention to a substantial level of uniqueness in contents and message.24 Likewise, atypical and emphatic historicizing in Haggai most likely reflected and drew the attention of the target rereaders to the set of distinct matters that the book addressed and the central importance of the book's messages for its discourse(s). Unlike the others in the twelve prophetic books, Haggai, in which the tendency towards historicizing texts reaches the level of the whole book, dealt directly with the Temple's construction, necessity, and centrality, 23. The process of historicizing as expressed by precise dating is more emphatic in Haggai than in Zechariah. Not only are there more dating formulas in both relative and absolute numbers in Haggai than Zechariah, but also in the former they delineate the very structure of the book as a whole. In the latter they may mark the boundaries of an extended introduction (Zech 1:1-6) and two subsets of readings (1:7-6:15 and 7:1-14) within the first main set of readings in the book (1:7-8:23). It is, however, unclear whether the target rereaders were supposed to understand all eight visions in 1:7-8:23 as taking place in one single day. Moreover, the central and cumulative role of the visions provides the text with a somewhat less than typical historicizing flavour. There is nothing like Zech 1:7-6:15 in Haggai. 24. See Ben Zvi, Signs of Jonah, 80-98.

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and indirectly with the Temple's legitimacy. The narrative is about the beginning of the building of the Temple, which was a process ideologically associated with the activities of Haggai (and through him, YHWH) and which was envisaged as the beginning of the ideological "return" of Israel as a worshiping community centred around its Temple. The described process is given prophetic authority (and thus YHWH's authority) and is thereby marked for a particular time (cf. 1 Kgs 6:1; 2 Chr 3:2),25 just as the actions of kings were usually construed in such authority.26 It is also deeply marked for a particular time because the deed itself was construed as a significant turning (temporal) point in the sequential relationship between Israel and YHWH and in the memory of the target rereaderships. This was a turning point like the exodus or the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The target rereaderships were supposed to understand that theprecise historical circumstances in which the world of the book was set were most significant for understanding the messages conveyed by the book. Certainly the main goal of the book and of its implied author was not to describe a kind of general attitude that characterizes a particular manifestation of transtemporal Israel and might be applicable to other manifestations of Israel, including that of the target rereadership, but to describe attitudes and godly utterances associated with a very narrow but crucial period. Additionally, Haggai's references are to the beginning of the building of the Temple and not to its completion. In fact, the book explicitly places the full establishment of the Temple in an Utopian future (Hag 2:6-9,2023), which the target rereaderships of the book knows too well remains in the future. The strong temporality of the project's beginning is balanced with the open character of its completion. Time is also marked and organized in Haggai (and Zech 1-8) around the years of a Persian king. This is unlike 1 Kgs 6:1, in which time is organized both in terms of years counted from the exodus, an event which may be construed as the beginning of YHWH's kingship/rulership over Israel (cf. Hos 11:1; 12:10; 13:4),27 and in terms of the years of Solomon over Israel. Not surprisingly, however, Haggai balances and integrates the implicit message of such an organization of time with stress on the prophetic authority of Haggai, YHWH's actual kingship, and a partial exaltation/Davidization of Zerubbabel, even if the latter is always referred to as governor.28 25. Also cf. Exod 19:1-3; 40:2, 17. 26. That is the only main feature one would expect in a book presented to its target rereaderships as an apologetic prophetic narrative about the past. 27. Cf.Hos9:10andNum33:8. 28. On some of these matters, cf. Sykes, "Time and Space."

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The first eight chapters of Zechariah show some of the motifs and concerns of Haggai, but the book as a whole, and even these chapters alone, are markedly different in style, structure, and some content. Zechariah emphasizes repentance and exhorts the community directly addressed within the book, and, above all, that of its rereadership, to behave in accordance with the divine will, so as to avoid the fate of their ancestors (see, e.g., Zech 1:2-6; 7:8-13; 8:13-17). At the core of Zech 1-8 stand the visions (1:7-8:23), which have no real parallel in Haggai. Most significantly, chs. 1-8 is only a set of readings within a book and not a prophetic book by itself.29 The fact that the book of Haggai is presented as more emphatically historicized than the book of Zechariah is consistent with these differences, and the fact that the first chapters of Zechariah are partially historicized is consistent with the similarities in content between the two books, as well as with a sense that these books are partially related to and informed by each other. At the same time, the target rereaderships of the book of Zechariah surely noted that the historicizing never reaches the level it attains in the book of Haggai and, more importantly, fades away completely as the book progresses. In some way, one may say that Zech 9-14 "normalize" the book of Zechariah (cf. Isa 40-66 and Ezek 40-48). IV. Implications for Further Research on Historicizing and De-Historicizing in the Larger Prophetic Books Although the present study focuses on the twelve prophetic books, it carries implications and raises questions for the study of the larger prophetic books as well. Perhaps the most obvious observation that comes to mind once the researching gaze turns to these books—within a research framework informed by the previous discussion—is that they seem to be somewhat in the middle between the two poles of the majority of the twelve prophetic books on the one hand and the book of Haggai on the other.

29. It has been argued that the book of Zechariah originally included only chs. 1-8 and that only at a later stage were chs. 9-14 attached to them. This may well be the case, but the book of Zechariah in its present form does not ask its readers to approach it with this information in mind. To the contrary, the book associates all its texts with the prophet Zechariah mentioned in Zech 1:1. Moreover, if one were to grant for the sake of the argument that chs. 9-14 were attached to a preexistent chs. 1-8, the fact that chapters so saliently different from Haggai were attached to chs. 1-8 strengthens the notion that there was an ancient understanding of the different qualities of the books of Haggai and the (reconstructed) book of First Zechariah.

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The target rereaders of the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel would have easily noticed that numerous examples of precise dating appear in these books,30 but also that not every reading in either book was set in narrowly defined dates. The target rereaders of the book of Isaiah also would have noticed a few cases in which the year of a revelation or its proclamation or both is saliently mentioned (see Isa 6:1; 14:28; 20:1), but also that most of the readings in the book are not dated or explicitly attached to precise historical circumstances. Neither do most of the readings contain clear textually inscribed markers that ask the rereaders to approach them from a perspective strongly informed by a particular construction of a certain moment in the past. True, the target rereaders of Ezekiel and Jeremiah would have noticed the presence of readings shaped as biographical/historical narratives, and those of the book of Isaiah could not have missed the obvious (historical) narrative character of chs. 36-39. But significantly, Isa 36-39 led them to Isa 40-66 in which partially dehistoricizing tendencies are dominant. In Ezek 40-48 (and esp. 40^-43) historicizing seems strongly defamiliarized: a literary text portraying the building of an ideal temple replaces the building of the temple itself. The book does not authorize or legitimize an existing temple nor look forward to its future completion. Rather, the mental image the book creates stands instead of or as a (partial) substitute for the actual temple. Not surprisingly, seemingly historicizing markers (e.g. dates, spatial data) serve only symbolic purposes here.31 In sum, the target rereaders of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel noticed a substantial presence of both partial de-historicizing and strong historicizing tendencies in the larger books. This presence distinguishes them from both the majority of the twelve prophetic books and from Haggai. To some extent, the difference may be associated with the literary possibilities and constraints created by the sheer size of these books, which

30. See Jer 1:2,3; 25:3; 28:1; 32:1; Ezek 1:1; 26:1; 29:17; 30:20; 31:1; 32:1,17; 33:21; 40:1. 31. On these matters, see H. Liss," 'Describe the Temple to the House of Israel': Preliminary Remarks on the Temple Vision in the Book of Ezekiel and the Question of Fictionality in Priestly Literatures," in Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature (ed. E. Ben Zvi; Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 2006), \22-A3; cf. Tuell, "Haggai—Zechariah: Prophecy After the Manner of Ezekiel," 276. Tuell argues for Ezekielian influence on a book consisting of Haggai and Zech 1-8. The general thrust of this contribution, and factors such as the lack of references to or direct quotations from Ezekiel in the text and the lack of a well-established web of allusions (both acknowledged by Tuell), seem in my opinion to undermine his position on the matter.

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may have been more than conducive to a substantial presence of both tendencies. But other principles of selection may be at work too. For instance, the systemic approach adopted here suggests that the temporal distribution of the larger prophetic books is not random. Two of the three relevant prophetic characters are explicitly associated with a period that crosses the line between monarchic and postmonarchic Judah. They and the books associated with them convey and symbolize the continuous existence of Israel and directly bridge the chasm of the destruction of Jerusalem and monarchic Judah.32 Significantly, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are the only two prophetic personages within the entire collection of prophetic books to which this characterization applies. The third relevant prophetic figure, Isaiah, was strongly associated with the memory of an invasion/salvation in ancient Israel, as demonstrated by not only Isa 36-37 but also 2 Kgs 18:13-19:37. Yet, this invasion was construed in the social memory of the literati as a kind of counter-example to the fall of Jerusalem.33 It seems reasonable to assume that the unique temporal attributes of these three characters, and accordingly of the world in which the books are set, had much to do with the fact that these books, rather than other prophetic books (e.g. Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel), took (eventually) the form of large volumes. As in the cases discussed above, in many instances within these books strong historicizing is associated with narratives about the past and narrative frameworks. Much of this strong historicizing concerns punctual circumstances that were considered turning points within the social memory of Israel (e.g. the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple, and the counter memory of the great salvation of Jerusalem at the time of Sennacherib's invasion) or crucial steps on the way to these heightened turning points —a kind of mental "via dolorosa" of temporal events.34 None of these circumstances can be described in terms of a habitual past but of precise, non-repeatable events. In this regard, the considerations advanced above 32. Cf. the explicit reference to the prophecy of Jeremiah in 2 Chr 36:22 and Ezra 1:1 as a bridge over the chasm. Cf. the shared conclusion of Jeremiah and 2 Kings. 33. On the substantial relation between the constructions of the two in postmonarchic times, see my "Malleability and Its Limits: Sennacherib's Campaign Against Judah as a Case Study," in "Like a Bird in a Cage ": The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE (ed. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; European Seminar in Historical Methodology 4; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 73-105. 34. From this perspective, the larger books seem to stand somewhat between the rhetorical poles and needs represented by the book of Haggai, on the one hand, with its attention to particular focus on unique moments in the memory of Israel, and the majority of the twelve prophetic books, on the other hand, with their focus on longer periods and general characterization.

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about Haggai bear some implications for the study of the larger prophetic books. In sum, several elements suggest that a study of strong historicizing and partial de-historicizing tendencies in the larger prophetic books needs separate treatment: (1) the complexity of the web of messages that each of the larger prophetic books conveyed to their target rereaderships; (2) the presence of substantial narrative sections in books such as Isaiah, which cluster around the Hezekiah/Sennacherib episode; (3) the substantive presence of a deuteronomistic linguistic flavour, albeit with a particular twist, in Jeremiah but not in other prophetic books;35 (4) instances such as Ezek 40-48, in which an on-the-surface case of historicizing is so strongly defamiliarized that it conveys a de-historicizing agenda; (5) matters involving the communicative significance of an association of the entire book of Isaiah with the character portrayed in Isa 1:1 (see Isa 6:1; 14:28; 20:1); and (6) the different contributions to partial de-historicizing vs. strong historicizing that make Isa 40-66 (particularly as they follow Isa 36-39), on the one hand, and Jer 52, on the other. Yet the considerations advanced here about the twelve prophetic books, along with a more systemic approach to the distribution of substantial features within the corpus of prophetic books, are certainly not irrelevant to that endeavour, especially since one may anticipate, at least from a heuristic perspective, that a similar, basic logic of temporal preference and dispreference is, at least in part, at work in both sets.36

35. This matter should not be explained in terms of "deuteronomistic schools" or the like, but as a matter of characterization of texts. On this matter and on the related and very questionable proposals about (separate) deuteronomistic schools, see E. Ben Zvi, "A Deuteronomistic Redaction m/Among 'The Twelve': A Contribution from the Standpoint of the Books of Micah, Zephaniah and Obadiah," in Those Elusive Deuteronomists (ed. L. S. Schearing and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 232-61. 36. This is to be expected, since this type of logic reflects some of the most basic ideological assumptions of the literati and those who identified with their message in Yehud. These assumptions are not dependent on the particularities of a book but are systemic.

ANCIENT ISRAELITE PROPHETS AND GREEK POLITICAL ORATORS: ANALOGIES FOR THE PROPHETS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION* Brad E. Kelle

Throughout the last century of prophetic research, interpreters have searched for and proposed various analogies or models to aid in understanding what Israelite prophets were, how they functioned in their social-historical context, and how the writings associated with them ought to be read. The search for analogies and models has most often taken the form of attempting to identify those figures and functions in different societies, both contemporary with ancient Israel and from later periods, which potentially offer points of comparison with the biblical prophets.1 Since the Hebrew Bible presents prophecy as a complex reality with a variegated character,2 the models and analogies provided a step toward conceptual clarity concerning identity and function. The typical procedure of such study moves as follows. Interpreters begin by developing a heuristic model for Israelite prophets/prophecy from a variety of comparative sources. They then use this model to understand the nature of prophetic discourse, which, in turn, leads to a way of reading the biblical prophetic literature. The purpose of this article is to investigate what happens if one reverses this typical procedure. Perhaps the quest for the nature of prophets and prophecy should begin by analyzing the presentation of prophets and their discourse within the biblical texts themselves. What dominant analogy or model do these texts seem to demand? * It is an honor to dedicate this article to John H. Hayes, who has enriched my life by being teacher, mentor, and friend, and who first helped me encounter the prophets as rhetorical orators. 1. See, e.g., T. W. Overholt, Prophecy in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Sourcebook for Biblical Researchers (SBLSBS; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 7. 2. See J. H. Hayes, An Introduction to Old Testament Study (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), 261.

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With this question in mind, the present article examines the commonly used models for Israelite prophets in terms of their relationship to the biblical presentations and then proposes another possible analogy for the prophets: the political orators of ancient Greece (e.g. Demosthenes in the fourth century B.C.E.). A fuller extrapolation of this analogy, which has been partially suggested by, among others, John Hayes and his students,3 will show that it aligns well with the available textual data. The nature and function of the Greek orators, while different from the prophets in many respects, provide a heuristic (rather than historical) model with phenomenological similarities in social patterns, structures, functions, and characteristics. This analogy also leads to a positive assessment of the connection between the prophetic texts and Israelite history. I. The Presentation of Prophets in the Hebrew Bible As noted above, prophetic study has typically proceeded by first developing a model for the prophets and their roles using various comparative sources, and then allowing that model to determine an understanding of 3. Several earlier writers suggested the use of the Greek political orators as a potential analogy for the prophets in ways that they did not fully develop: E. Strachey, Hebrew Politics in the Times ofSargon and Sennacherib: An Inquiry Into the Historical Meaning and Purpose of the Prophecies of Isaiah, with Some Notice of Their Bearings on the Social and Political Life of England (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1853), 2; B. Duhrn, Die Theologie derPropheten als Grunlage fur die innere Entwicklungsgeschichte der Israelite Religion (Bonn: Marcus, 1875), 23; M. Buss, The Prophetic WordofHosea (BZAW 111; Berlin: Topelmann, 1969), 125. For more recent works that employ the analogy but do not offer detailed treatments of the Greek orators, see J. H. Hayes, Amos, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988); Y. Gitay, Prophecy and Persuasion: A Study of Isaiah 40-48 (Forum Theologiae Linguisticae 14; Bonn: Linguistica Biblica, 1981); S. Irvine, Isaiah, Ahaz, and the Syro-Ephraimitic Crisis (SBLDS 123; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990); C. Shaw, The Speeches ofMicah: A Historical-Rhetorical Analysis (JSOTSup 145; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); B. Jones, Howling Over Moab: Irony and Rhetoric in Isaiah 15-16 (SBLDS 157; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996); B. E. Kelle, Hosea 2: Metaphor and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective (Academia Biblica 20; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2005). Note also the rhetorician George Kennedy's implicit comparison of Demosthenes to a prophet (G. Kennedy, The Art ofPersuasion in Greece [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963], 225). The stress on the relationship of speech and historical setting, which forms a central part of the orator analogy, has its roots in prophetic studies from the first half of the twentieth century that stressed the interrelationship of prophets and politics. See, e.g., H. Winckler and H. Zimmern, eds., Die Keilinschriften unddasAlte Testament (3d ed.; Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1902-1903), 170-75.

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the nature of prophetic discourse and a way of reading prophetic texts in the Hebrew Bible. Sufficient attention given to the pictures found in the prophetic texts themselves is often missing from contemporary study,4 yet the biblical texts represent the largest and most contemporary collection of available data about the Israelite prophets. The starting point for the consideration of analogies and models for the Israelite prophets should be the textual presentations in the Hebrew Bible, a collection that comes from the very culture in which the prophets were active.5 As the following discussion will show, many of the common analogies and models do not correspond adequately to the way the Hebrew Bible pictures the prophets. There are two caveats to be made at the outset. First, the available biblical texts for such an analysis are those primarily associated with the so-called "classical" prophets of the Assyrian through Persian periods. Whereas the "pre-classical prophets" appear mostly as characters in deuteronomistic narratives, it is with the latter prophets that one finds extensive accounts of speech and action attributed to individuals. Additionally, the texts relating to the pre-classical prophets present a picture of prophetic activity that is significantly more diverse than that of the texts related to the classical prophets.6 In the texts of the latter prophets, some of the earlier diversity seems to have dissipated, and a more specifically defined practice of prophecy is apparent. The questions of the relationship between classical and pre-classical prophets and the reasons for the changes between periods remain vexed, largely due to the differences in type and quantity of data. Hence, any analogy that emerges from the main prophetic texts applies primarily to the classical prophets of the later periods. A second caveat concerns the accuracy of the textual presentations of the prophets. Scholars increasingly warn that the connection between the textual depictions and the social/historical phenomenon of prophecy is 4. For an endorsement and discussion of the approach taken here, see H. M. Barstad, "No Prophets? Recent Developments in Biblical Prophetic Research and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy," in The Prophets: A Sheffield Reader (ed. P. R. Davies; The Biblical Seminar 42; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 106-26. 5. Even if some of the biblical texts reached their final form in the later Persian period, there does not seem to be sufficient reason for assuming that Persian-period society was radically discontinuous with pre-exilic Israel and Judah. 6. For discussion, see J. Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel (rev. and enl.; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 40-64; J. H. Hayes, "Prophecy and Prophets, Hebrew Bible," DBI2:3\0; D. L. Petersen, The Prophetic Literature: An Introduction (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 215-38.

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unclear.7 Even so, the reality of the available data demands that one begin at the literary level. Only when the literary evidence has been taken seriously can one proceed to inquire about its connection to historical phenomena.8 Moreover, as the following discussion will show, these texts suggest one characteristic model of prophecy that fits well within the context of the ancient Near East. At the outset, one must acknowledge the diversity of the Hebrew Bible's depictions. As Hayes notes, there are no general explanations of the nature of prophecy given in the biblical texts, and the examples of prophetic activity are multifold: proclaiming the people's unfaithfulness and judgment, preaching repentance, predicting the future, rallying the troops for battle, denouncing the enemy, and more.9 Prophets also appear in connection with a variety of contexts and institutions: the royal court (1 Kgs 22), cultplaces (2 Kgs 4:18-25), ecstatic bands (1 Sam 10:5-13), etc.10 Nonetheless, when one turns to the literature associated with the classical prophets, there emerges a depiction of prophecy characterized by at least three traits that runs through the diversity of pictures and seems to demand a certain kind of analogy. First, the prophetic texts contain long addresses, not short, isolated statements, which are consistently communicative and argumentative in character. The prophetic texts are in the form of public address or oratory and thus call for models and methods that emphasize the "dynamic mechanism of public address" and "communicative discourse designed to appeal to its audience."11 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 7. For example, see the collection of essays in J. C. de Moor, ed., The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as a Historical Person, Literary Character, and Anonymous Artist (OtSt 45; Leiden: Brill, 2001). 8. So H. M. Barstad, "Comparare necesse est? Ancient Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy in a Comparative Perspective," in Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives (ed. M. Nissinen; SBLSymS 13; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2000), 11. 9. Hayes, "Prophecy and Prophets," 310. 10. See Hayes, Introduction, 261 -62, and R. Hutton, Fortress Introduction to the Prophets (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 14. 11. Gitay, Prophecy and Persuasion, 26-27. Cf. Shaw, Speeches, 19. Northrop Frye observes that the dominant idiom of the Hebrew Bible in its entirety is oratorical and that the canon has a pervasive emphasis on the importance of speech. See N. Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983); cf. G. Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 4,11. This characteristic is never clearer than in the prophetic texts. Witness, for example, the concerns over speaking and speaking well that are attributed to various prophets (e.g. Isa 6:5, 9; Jer 1:6; Ezek 2:4).

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the dominant understanding of prophetic discourse treated prophetic words as isolated oracles. In Sigmund Mowinckel's words, "[T]he relatively brief, in itself, complete and concluded, independent separate saying ('oracle') is the original and real form of a prophetic 'speech'...."12 As Yehoshua Gitay rightly observes, this view, which was steeped in form criticism's assumptions about the brief and conventional nature of prophetic speech, failed to attend adequately to the rhetorical and oratorical dimensions of the prophetic texts. Even newer literary and canonical approaches to the prophetic books typically overlook the argumentative nature of the texts,13 yet the prophetic texts call for a model that can account for this characteristic. A second observable characteristic is the large variety of styles and genres that are utilized in the prophetic texts. The argumentative addresses employ a diversity of styles and forms that includes rebuke, encouragement, sarcasm, metaphor, and more.14 These stylistic variations appear to be connected with different methods of persuasion for audiences in different situations.15 In contrast to form criticism's assumption that prophetic discourse is conventional and formulaic, the texts attest pragmatic stylistic variation. A final observable feature is that prophetic discourse in the Hebrew Bible has a specific, contextual, rather than general, focus. Prophets do not address religious, moral, or political issues in general; their argumentative addresses are envisioned as responses to particular situations. Prophetic speech is most often religious discourse offered against a background that assumes certain political or social circumstances. Even if these circumstances are not always fully described, the prophetic messages assume a set of shared persons and events. Prophetic speeches often appear, for example, in a chronological framework (e.g. Isa 1:1; 2:1; 6:7; 7:1; 20:1; Hos 1:1; Amos 1:1). Hence, Isa 7-12 presents the prophet's speeches not as "general theological statements" but as "concrete sayings for a definite circle pursuing specific policies at a particular 12. S. Mowinckel, Prophecy and Tradition: The Prophetic Books in the Light of the Study of the Growth and History of the Tradition (Oslo: Jacob Dybwad, 1946), 60 (emphasis added). 13. Y. Gitay, "The Realm of Prophetic Rhetoric," in Rhetoric, Scripture and Theology: Essays from the 1994 Pretoria Conference (ed. S. E. Porter and T. Olbricht; JSOTSup 131; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 220 n. 6. 14. See J. H. Hayes and S. A. Irvine, Isaiah, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), 61. 15. For example, Y. Gitay ("Prophetic Criticism—' What Are They Doing?': The Case of Isaiah—A Methodological Assessment," JSOT96 [2001]: 114-15) notes how different stylistic designs serve as personal appeals to listeners in various texts.

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time."16 The argumentative nature of biblical prophetic speeches noted above thus relates to particular circumstances. The speeches reveal an intention to argue, often calling for particular audiences to give counterarguments (e.g. Isa 1:18; Mic 6:3).n Thus, the biblical texts present prophecy as a discourse whose goal is to persuade for decisions to be made about belief and action in particular situations. Furthermore, the argumentative nature of prophetic speech, mentioned above, suggests a pragmatic function dependent on particular historical situations. John Barton, in an article that has received too little attention, provides a summary of the biblical picture of prophetic discourse in keeping with the recognition of these three characteristics. Barton notes that the Hebrew Bible's presentations lead one to conclude that the prophets did not passively receive their messages but constructed them by analyzing contemporary social and political situations from moral and theological perspectives. The prophets actively shaped and creatively constructed the messages they gave, even those purported to be divine words, in order to fit particular situations and to achieve the goal of persuasion: The genius of the classical prophets was to take the highly recalcitrant facts of history, whose religious and moral implications were in fact extremely ambiguous, and to give an account of these facts which would convince people not only that the hand of God could be seen in them, but that the operations of the divine hand were entirely comprehensible in human moral categories—indeed that given the right ethical framework one could see that history could not but have unfolded in the way that it did. Prophetic rhetoric is designed, that is to say, to make the contingencies of human history look like divine necessities.18

In this view, the prophets arrived at their conclusions in much the same way as all other analysts assess a situation, namely, they observed and evaluated the political and social developments. The prophets offered, however, a theological interpretation of these events, which did not simply deal in Realpolitikbut interpreted situations in light of Yahweh's will and attempted to persuade others of this theological dimension.19 This conception of prophetic discourse may explain why prophetic texts are often vague about specific circumstances (e.g. if the prophet is really talking about a treaty with Assyria, why does he not say so?). 16. Irvine, Isaiah, 17. 17. Gitay, "Realm," 220. 18. J. Barton, "History and Rhetoric in the Prophets," in The Bible as Rhetoric: Studies in Biblical Persuasion and Credibility (ed. M. Warner; London: Routledge, 1990), 52. Barton (ibid.) notes that this idea was suggested earlier in E. W. Heaton, The Old Testament Prophets (Atlanta: John Knox, 1977), 36. 19. Barton, "History and Rhetoric," 54.

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Prophetic discourses assumed a political or social situation recognized to some degree by the audience and interpreted in various ways by involved parties. The prophets' goal was not to extrapolate the circumstances but to cast them in a different light designed to change the audience's perception and action. In sum, the Hebrew Bible characteristically presents prophets as those who engage in discourse that is communicative, argumentative public address, which relates to specific, contextual needs and employs a wide variety of styles for persuasive effect.20 The texts call for analogies and models that can elucidate the nature and function of figures who deal in the realm of oratory and offer interpretations of events and circumstances designed to persuade audiences from theological perspectives. These observations lead one to reconsider the analogies used to understand prophets in light of their correlations with the biblical depictions. n. Analogies for the Israelite Prophets At this point, a brief note is in order concerning the most commonly used analogies and models for the prophets. The analogies/models used throughout the history of prophetic interpretation have been both historical and typological in nature: "historical" analogies being drawn from the same time period as Israel's prophets, and "typological" analogies being drawn from non-contemporary time periods. Since several surveys and evaluations of common analogies/models are available, the following discussion will provide only some selected examples that focus on the relationship of the analogies and models to the biblical presentations of the prophets.21 20. Significantly, the reference to a prophet in the Lachish Letters, the only extrabiblical pre-exilic evidence of Israelite prophecy, also portrays that prophet as offering a dire warning about political actions in the particular circumstances surrounding 586 B.C.E. See M. Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (SBLWAW 12; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2003), 212-18. 21. For surveys and evaluations of the most prominent analogies for the prophets, see D. Petersen, "Defining Prophecy and Prophetic Literature," in Nissinen, ed., Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context, 33-44, and D. L. Petersen, "Ways of Thinking About Israel's Prophets," in idem ed., Prophecy in Israel: Search for an Identity (IRT 10; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 1-21. Cf. D. W. Baker, "Israelite Prophets and Prophecy," in The Face of Old Testament Studies: A Survey of Contemporary Approaches (ed. D. W. Baker and B. Arnold; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 266-94. For an example of the search for analogies, see L. L. Grabbe, "Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy from an Anthropological Perspective," in Nissinen, ed., Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context, 13-32.

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David L. Petersen provides a useful typology under which one can organize the modern period's primary models for Israelite prophets.22 His first rubric includes analogies that operate with the view that a prophet is someone who "has an intense experience of the deity."23 This rubric encompasses the analogy ofecstatics for Israelite prophets, an analogy that focused on the psychology and personal experiences of the prophets and compared the prophets with religious persons from various cultures who underwent transnormal experiences such as frenzies or trances in order to receive or communicate messages from the deity.24 Petersen's second rubric encompasses models that see the prophet as one "who speaks or writes in a distinctive way."25 Under this rubric falls the analogy of poets. As expressed in the key work of Johann Gottfried Herder, this model emphasizes the poetic nature of the prophetic literature but The explicit use of analogies began in earnest with the modern period (eighteenth century C.E.). The Protestant Reformation, however, saw the emergence of views of the prophets that would feed directly into later analogies. Even during the periods of the Qumran community, early Christianity, and early Judaism, implicit models guided the understanding of who the biblical prophets were and how their texts should be interpreted. For both Qumran and the early church, prophetic texts were read as apocalyptic predictions of events to be fulfilled at the end of time or as descriptions of the history and destiny of the respective present communities. These reading strategies implied an understanding of prophets as predictors of the near or distant future, even if only at an unconscious level (see Hayes, "Prophecy and Prophets," 311). By contrast, Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism saw the prophets primarily as proclaimers and expositors of the Torah, who made no innovations. These later Jewish traditions began to view the prophets through the analogy of a rabbi, that is, one who expounds insights from older, authoritative traditions. See N. N. Glatzer, "A Study of the Talmudic Interpretation of Prophecy," RR 10 (1946): 115-37. 22. This typology and the following discussion present the analogies thematically, rather than chronologically in the order of their development. For an earlier version of this typology, see Petersen, Prophecy in Israel, 1-21. Cf. Hayes's (Amos, 29—39) typology of three main phases in the history of prophetic interpretation from Kuenen and Duhm to Alt and Weber. 23. Petersen, "Defining Prophecy," 33. 24. See H. Gunkel, "Die gehimen Erfahrungen der Propheten Israels: Eine religionspyschologische Studie,"Das Suchen derZeit: Blatter Deutscher Zukunft 1 (1903): 112-53, and G. Holscher, Die Profeten: Untersuchungen zur Religionsgeschichte Israels (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1914). For discussion, see Hayes, "Prophecy and Prophets," 315-16, and D. Petersen, The Roles of Israel's Prophets (JSOTSup 17; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 25-26. Anthropologists today more carefully distinguish between "trance" (ecstasy) as a kind of behavior (not a form of communication) and "possession" as a means of communication, which may be accompanied by ecstatic behavior (so Overholt, Prophecy, 333-34). 25. Petersen, "Defining Prophecy," 34.

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also sees the prophets as something akin to European Romanticists: brave individualists or free spirits, who provided oppositional voices to the institutions of their day.26 The third rubric of Petersen's typology sees the prophet as one who "acts in a particular social setting."27 This statement encompasses the model of cultic functionaries for Israelite prophets.28 Within the general model of cultic functionary is the more specific model ofcovenantmediator, the prophets as functionaries who spoke at covenant renewal ceremonies in Israel and whose preaching guarded and relied upon earlier covenant traditions.29 Petersen's fourth rubric encompasses the analogy of charismatics: "The prophet possesses distinctive personal qualities, for example, charisma."30 Max Weber saw prophets as individuals who had an extraordinary power and authority that attracted loyal bands of followers.31 They exercised this authority by working outside of traditional institutions. The fifth rubric of Petersen's typology, the "prophet is an intermediary," encompasses a number of suggested analogies.32 Several of these emerged from comparative sociological and anthropological research on the prophets, which began in earnest in the 1960s and focused on intermediaries, shamans, and diviners from other ancient and modern societies, such as Native American, African, and Indian.33 The general analogy 26. J. G. Herder, The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (2 vols.; Burlington, Va.: E. Smith, 1833). Cf. A. Heschel, The Prophets (2 vols.; New York: Harper & Row, 1962). For more contemporary examples of this analogy, see R. P. Carroll, "Poets Not Prophets: A Response to 'Prophets Through the Looking Glass,'" in Davies, ed., The Prophets, 43^49, and D. Robertson, The Old Testament and the Literary Critic (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977). 27. Petersen, "Defining Prophecy," 35. 28. In the mid-twentieth century, Mowinckel led the way in arguing that the prophets did not simply use cultic forms of speech but functioned within the realm of the temple and were often depicted as closely related to the priests (e.g. Jer 23:11; 26:7, 16; 27:16; Zech 7:1-3). See S. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien III (Kristiana: Jacob Dybwad, 1921). Cf. A. R. Johnson, The Cultic Prophet in Ancient Israel (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1962), and Hayes, Introduction, 264-65. 29. E.g. R. E. Clements, Prophecy and Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975); J. Muilenburg, "The 'Office' of the Prophet in Ancient Israel," in The Bible in Modern Scholarship (ed. J. Hyatt; Nashville: Abingdon, 1967), 74-97; G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). 30. Petersen, "Defining Prophecy," 36. 31. M. Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1964); cf. Petersen, Roles, 10. 32. Petersen, "Defining Prophecy," 37. 33. See especially Overholt, Prophecy; Petersen, Roles; and R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980). For example,

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of intermediary represents a religious figure who stands between humans and the deity to transmit divine messages.34 Another group of analogies, one that also falls under Petersen's fifth rubric, emerges from comparison with ancient Near Eastern prophets, especially those mentioned in the main prophetic collections from Mari and Assyria.35 At Mari, for example, some prophetic groups engaged in criticism of the king, especially concerning cultic matters, and prophets in both Mari and Assyria occasionally addressed public audiences in order to influence behavior or opinion.36 Most of the Assyrian oracles also stand against the background of particular historical situations facing the royal court (cf. e.g. Isa 7-11).37 The comparison with ancient Near Eastern data has also given rise to two specific analogies that emerge from political and social realities. The analogy of ancient messengers found early expression in the work of Claus Westermann, who began with the conviction that the messenger speech and accompanying messenger formula were the primary form of prophetic discourse.38 James Ross developed this analogy by drawing

T. Overholt ("Prophecy: The Problem of Cross-Cultural Comparison," Semeia 21 [1981]: 55-78) compares Jeremiah and Handsome Lake, a Seneca Indian from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries C.E. 34. See Overholt, Prophecy, 2, and Nissinen, Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context, vii. 35. For overviews of this area of study, see Nissinen, ed., Prophecy inlts Ancient Near Eastern Context; Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy; Barstad, "No Prophets," 106-26; H. Ringgren, "Prophecy in the Ancient Near East," in Israel's Prophetic Tradition (ed. R. Coggins, A. Phillips, M. Knibb; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 1-11; H. B. Huffmon, "The Expansion of Prophecy in the Mari Archives: New Texts, New Readings, New Information," in Prophecy and Prophets: Diversity of Contemporary Issues in Scholarship (ed. Y. Gitay; SemeiaSt; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 1997), 7-22; S. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (SAA 9; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1997). While the texts from Mari and Assyria constitute the primary corpora of ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts, for other texts often cited in the scholarly discussion like the Zakkur Stela, Deir cAllah inscription, and the report of Wenamon, see Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy, 1,201-3,219-20, and Ringgren, "Prophecy in the Ancient Near East," 1-11. 36. See Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies, XLV, and Huffmon, "Expansion," 18. 37. For example, ten oracles of the first Assyrian collection come from the setting of Esarhaddon's war with his brother before 681 B.C.E. See Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy, 101—11. 3 8. Westermann argued that the basic messenger speech consisted of the following parts: (1) messenger formula, (2) description of the situation, (3) wish of the sender, and (4) concluding characterization. See C. Westermann, Basic Forms of

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more directly upon the characteristics of royal messengers in the ancient Near East. On analogy with the king and royal court, the prophets located their authority in the one who sent them and received their messages from the deity and divine council.39 Similarly, John Holladay, Jr., drew specifically upon Assyrian statecraft and diplomatic practices to offer the analogy of royal heralds for the Israelite prophets. As Holladay described, the royal herald "stood in the court of the Great King, participated in the deliberative processes of the court, received the declaration of the king's wishes from the king's own mouth, and then carried the tablet or sealed roll of papyrus to its destination.. ."40 The final rubric of Petersen's typology, the "prophet has a distinctive message," encompasses two other models/analogies.41 Under the nineteenth-century influence of Julius Wellhausen, Bernhard Duhm, and others, when the view of prophets shifted from "fore-tellers" to "forthtellers," an emphasis also emerged on morality as the defining characteristic of prophetic religion and preaching.42 Hence, scholars offered the model of ethical monotheists to characterize the prophets. In this view, the prophets were bold individualists, whose preaching centered on religious issues and stressed the individual and internal elements of religious experience. A similar analogy partially returns to the generation after the Protestant Reformation but moves in a slightly different direction: social reformers. This analogy sees the prophets as challenging existing institutions related to religion, politics, and so on.43 Prophetic Speech (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), and Hayes, Introduction, 276-77. 39. J. F. Ross, "The Prophet as Yahweh's Messenger," in Petersen, ed., Prophecy in Israel, 112-21. 40. J. Holladay, Jr., "Assyrian Statecraft and the Prophets of Israel," in Petersen, ed., Prophecy in Israel, 122-43. It is significant to note that the offices of messenger and herald are non-prophetic offices, yet they come from societies that had prophetic figures. The fact that it is these non-prophetic offices that are held up for comparison reminds us that the most useful analogies for understanding Israel's prophets may not be other so-called "prophets." This observation is important for assessing the analogy of the Greek orators offered here, since ancient Greece also knew of "prophets," but the following discussion will suggest that Greece's political orators provide a better analogy for Israel's prophets. 41. Petersen, "Defining Prophecy," 38. 42. For discussion, see Hayes, "Prophecy and Prophets," 315. 43. For example, see A. S. Kapelrud, Central Ideas in Amos (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1961); cf. M. A. Cohen, "The Prophets as Revolutionaries,"^/? 5 (1979): 12-19; H. Gossai, Justice, Righteousness and the Social Critique of the EighthCentury Prophets (American University Studies 7: Theology and Religion 141; New York: Peter Lang, 1993).

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The point of this listing of sample analogies and models is to show their lack of correspondence with the Hebrew Bible's depictions of the classical prophets. As the previous section suggested, the biblical texts most characteristically present prophetic discourse as communicative, situational, argumentative public address. Although each of the common models/analogies for Israelite prophets captures some elements of the Hebrew Bible's depictions, they do not seem fully adequate when closely compared with the textual presentations. The analogies of poets, charismatics, and social reformers, for example, which cast the prophets as heavily anti-institutional, falter because the biblical texts often portray the prophets as functioning in conjunction with, rather than in opposition to, the major institutions of their day.44 One simply cannot restrict the prophets to oppositional revolutionary leaders. While they predominantly call for change, the prophets do not seem to articulate a morality or vision of society that is in complete discontinuity with the contemporary institutions of their society.45 Conversely, the models of cultic functionary or covenant mediator accurately represent that cultic institutional connections were present for some prophets, but these connections do not appear as an essential characteristic of prophets in general.46 Similarly, the intermediary analogies drawn from anthropological data often come from contexts that do not involve states that are headed by kings and possess active political and legal institutions. Even the analogies of royal messenger and herald, which are drawn from evidence for prophecy in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, have a larger set of dissimilarities with the biblical presentations than is normally recognized. Assyrian prophecies, for example, consistently emanate from the temples of Ishtar, serve to offer divine support for the king, and depend for their legitimacy upon testing through divination.47 More importantly, these analogies, which have both phenomenological and historical points of contact with Israelite prophets, imply a near-passive transmitting or mediating function for the prophet. Even though Holladay allows that a 44. For example, Carroll's argument ("Poets," 47) that, as the prophetic literature developed, the originally anti-institutional prophets were redacted to serve the very structures they opposed is a tacit acknowledgment that the biblical texts do not envision a model of prophets as anti-institutional individualists. 45. So Petersen, Prophecy in Israel, 15, and Gene M. Tucker, "The Role of the Prophets and the Role of the Church," in Petersen, ed. Prophecy in Israel, 166. 46. For example, Wilson (Prophecy and Society, 235-52) argues that the covenant mediator role of prophets is prominent only in northern or Ephraimitic traditions. 47. For discussions of similarities and differences, see Barstad, "Comparare," 3-11, and H. B. Huffinon, "A Company of Prophets: Mari, Assyria, and Israel," in Nissinen, ed., Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context, 47—70.

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herald was involved in the construction of the king's message, these analogies seem to miss the creative and shaping (i.e. rhetorical) dimension of the prophet's speaking that appears in the biblical presentations. III. Israelite Prophets and Greek Orators: A New Analogy? Given the apparent amount of distance between prophetic study's most common analogies and the Hebrew Bible's presentations, the political orators of ancient Greece may provide an analogy that better elucidates the nature and function of Israelite prophets and suggests a particular way of reading the prophetic literature with implications for the relationship between the prophetic texts and Israelite history. Studies of Greek oratory typically focus on the stylistic characteristics of the orators and their speeches and the legal or political situations that produced the speeches.48 To these foci one should add the social roles and functions of Greek orators. As the following discussion will show, the Israelite prophets played a social role similar to that of the political orators in ancient Greece. This comparative social function, then, illuminates other analogous characteristics, which operate at the levels of topics, styles, and circumstances. Thus, the comparison is typological (rather than historical) and examines similar phenomena in different cultural contexts without positing any direct connection between Israel and Greece.49 The designation "Greek political orators" traditionally identifies the ten so-called "Attic Orators" from the fourth century B.C.E., with Demosthenes as the most significant representative.50 Historians typically see the fourth century as a period of decline for ancient Athens, a decline marked by the Peloponnesian War and ending with the conquest of Alexander the Great.51 Athens's troubles particularly came in the form of Philip of Macedonia, who rose to dominance during this time and came 48. Kennedy, Art of Persuasion, 125-26. 49. J. Pairman Brown (Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece: Religion, Politics, and Culture [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003], 1,71) suggests that there may be historical connections between the Hebrew and Greek worlds, but he compares Israelite prophets with Hellenic reforming poets rather than political orators. Prophets were a part of ancient Greek society, but they primarily functioned as part of the temple personnel, who communicated the ecstatic messages of priestesses of Zeus or Pythia. They also appear as ecstatic groups connected with the cult of Dionysos and as predictors of the future. See Blenkinsopp, History of Prophecy, 27. 50. Kennedy, Art of Persuasion, 125. 51. See H. Montgomery, The Way to Chaerona: Foreign Policy, Decision Making and Political Influence in Demosthenes' Speeches (Oslo: Oslo Universitetsforlaget, 1983), 9.

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into conflict with a league of Hellenic states that included Athens. During this turbulent period, the Greek political orators functioned within the Athenian law courts and political assembly. The majority of orations were judicial speeches designed to function in the law courts. Some extant speeches, however, were deliberative addresses by the orators in the Athenian political assembly and were connected to political and social circumstances in the 300s B.C.E.52 In their speeches that emerge from this context, figures like Demosthenes define the functions and duties of an orator. Demosthenes's On the Crown (246) provides the most important of such statements as a defense of his own performance: [Tjhose duties for which [an orator] should be held responsible...what are those duties? To discern events in their beginnings, to foresee what is coming, and to forewarn others... Again it is his duty to reduce to the smallest possible compass, wherever he finds them, the slowness, the hesitation, the ignorance, the contentiousness.. .he must stimulate men to unity, friendship, and eagerness to perform their duty (246).53

This conception provides the closest comparison to the Hebrew Bible's presentation of the Israelite prophets. The Greek orators discern and articulate the meanings and implications of events before they are evident to the common people. They also deal in the realm of ethics, as they seek to move people to just and harmonious relations. Finally, the orators not only interpret situations and events, but they specifically aim to convince and convict their hearers to follow the courses they see as right. Put simply, an orator is a rhetor, that is, one who is skilled in speaking and addresses a public audience in order to have an effect upon it.54 As Milns concludes, "The orator frequently exhorts his fellow citizens to rouse themselves from their apathy, to serve in person, to order their priorities correctly and to uphold and emulate the glorious traditions and examples of their ancestors."55 This nature and function of the Greek orators, as well as their correlations with the Israelite prophets, become clearer when one attends to 52. Kennedy, An of Persuasion, 125-27,152. Kennedy notes that the third main type of oration was epideictic and that orators delivered speeches at city festivals and multi-city games (see ibid., 152-53, 166). 53. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, trans., Demosthenes' Public Orations (London: Everyman's Library, 1963), 385-86. 54. D. Jasper, Rhetoric, Power and Community (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster JohnKnox, 1993), 17. 55. R. D. Milns, "The Public Speeches of Demosthenes," in Demosthenes: Statesman and Orator (ed. I. Worthington; London: Routledge, 2000), 215.

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their social location. The social setting of most of the extant speeches of the Greek orators was the law court. Athenian legal practice centered on trial by jury, and the litigants were required to speak for themselves in court by offering a speech delivered without interruption.56 Juries in Athens, however, were often very large, at times numbering in the hundreds and thousands, so this legal presentation took the form of a public persuasive speech. Perhaps for this reason, litigants could have professional orators write and/or present their speeches for them, and several prominent orators like Demosthenes functioned in this capacity.57 The social location of the law court and its concomitant social role for the orators does not closely correlate with the Hebrew Bible's portrayals of prophets. The role of the Greek orators in the Athenian political assembly, the orators' other major social location, however, forms a closer comparison. This context was not entirely discontinuous with the legal setting. The courts themselves often heard political trials that were outworkings of the political assembly and allowed the people to decide between rival political leaders and courses.58 Yet the Athenian assembly was responsible for political decisions and the orators played a part in that process. Since Athens was an "open society" and full democracy, all citizens were involved in the political process of the assembly.59 That process involved the gathering of information about events, the proposal of a decree or recommendation, and the pursuing debate leading to a decision. The latter stage of public debate saw the orators perform their role. The Greek orators addressed the audience with regard to a particular situation and employed all available means of persuasion to lead to action. The orators' aim was never simply observation but persuasion. They sought to help the public discern the significance of what was transpiring and to lead them to see its ultimate conclusion or to steer them toward an appropriate response.60 56. Kennedy, Art of Persuasion, 126-27. There are very few extant political speeches from the assembly but many from the law court. For example, only about fifteen of Demosthenes's assembly speeches are extant (see Montgomery, Way, 12). 57. C. Carey and R. Reid, eds., Demosthenes: Selected Private Speeches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1-8. The profession of speechwriter (logographos) emerged in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. but functioned much like a modern lawyer. 58. Ibid., 12-13; cf. H. Yunis, Demosthenes On the Crown (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 8. 59. Nonetheless, the "citizens" actually constituted a minority of the population: women, foreigners, and slaves were excluded from the assembly (Montgomery, Way, 11). 60. See ibid., 28, and L. Pearson, The Art of Demosthenes (American Philological Association Special Publications 4; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981), vii.

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The specific functions of the orators' political speeches were diverse, a factor that may also illuminate the speeches of the classical prophets. In some cases, for instance, the orators commended a particular course of action, while in other cases they dissuaded the assembly from what they thought was a bad decision. For example, in his speech On the Peace, Demosthenes tried to convince a hesitant assembly to accept new arrangements of peace with Philip of Macedonia being made at Delphi, while in his earlier On the Symmories, he tried to dissuade an excited assembly from going to war against the king of Greece.61 In all cases, the orators attempted such persuasion not only by giving information but also by placing the event into a broader social and historical context and extrapolating the future consequences of various courses of actions. The orators, not unlike the prophets, relied on the prediction of future outcomes as a powerful means of persuasion. In his Third Philippic, for example, Demosthenes warned the Athenians against engaging Philip in battle by predicting their imminent defeat.62 Again not unlike the prophets, the Greek orators found themselves functioning in an assembly that was often divided among competing groups and attacking the competing voices of other orators, who were advocating opposing courses of action. Hence, Demosthenes's Against Medias accused wealthy orators of speaking only for the interests of the wealthy citizens.63 Another way in which the nature and function of the Greek orators and their correlations with the Israelite prophets become clear is through the styles and topics they employ. Any single orator cannot be limited to one particular style that characterizes all of his authentic words, and he may even use contradictory styles and topics in different orations.64 The likely explanation for this phenomenon is the determinative role of the audience and context in the orator's speeches. The circumstance determines the style, and the orator may take up any style that serves to persuade the audience within that circumstance.65 Several specific topics and styles that appear in the Greek orators bear similarities to the speeches of the prophets and may attest to phenomenologically shared practices among those who functioned as orators in 61. Montgomery, Way, 49. 62. Ibid., 53-54. 63. Ibid., 21-22. 64. For a discussion of the various rhetorical devices used by the Greek orators, see J. F. Dobson, The Greek Orators (repr.; Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 244-52. 65. See J. Miller, "Warning the Demos: Political Communication with a Democratic Audience in Demosthenes," History of Political Thought 23 (2002): 401-17 (403).

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various societies. For example, the Greek orators appeal to national character and identity as motivational bases for their arguments, especially arguments for unpopular courses of action. A particular type of this appeal that finds counterparts in the prophetic literature is the use of historical retrospectives, that is, references to past events or traditions to support the orator's advocacy.66 The orators also frequently employ metaphorical imagery in their discourses that is not unlike what one finds in prophetic texts. One sees in Demosthenes, for example, metaphors of disease/sickness to describe political situations and the imagery of a trial scene to litigate against his Athenian audience (cf. Mic 1:9; 6:l-8).67 Demosthenes in particular also engages in verbal and metaphorical personal abuse of his opponents. Although normally used to attack individuals rather than groups, this abuse often takes the form of language related to gender and sexuality not unlike some prophetic texts. In his On the Embassy, for instance, Demosthenes claims that Aeschines's mother was a prostitute and his father a slave—a family background that renders Aeschines depraved in Demosthenes's assessment.68 The orators also occasionally attack the character of the demos itself.69 Attention to social issues concerning the wealthy and poor is an area of concern that produces such attacks and constitutes another parallel with the function of the prophets. Demosthenes's On the Crown calls upon the wealthy to shoulder the burden of needed state preparations and even explicitly demands that they stop oppressing the poor. In words reminiscent of the biblical polemic against false prophets, Demosthenes insists: "[I]n internal policy, I did not prefer favors from the rich to justice toward the poor..."70 66. See Montgomery, Way, 52, and Milns, "Public Speeches," 215. Demosthenes ' s For the Liberty of the Rhodians uses references to Persia's past difficulties in a particular rebellion to emphasize their present weakness, and his On the Symmories refers to the past battles of Salamis and Marathon for guidance in a present situation. Cf. the use of appeals to the Jacob tradition in Hos 12. 67. E.g. see Demosthenes, On the Cheronese. Cf. Montgomery, Way, 52, and Milns, "Public Speeches," 213. 68. Pearson, Art, 189. m other contexts, Demosthenes attributes loose sexual conduct to his opponent personally (see Montgomery, Way, 78). Dobson (Greek Orators, 233) observes that Demosthenes tends to avoid such personal attacks in the political assembly but not the law court. 69. See Miller, "Warning," 408-17. 70. J. J. Keaney, "Demosthenes' Oration On the Crown (a Translation)" in Demosthenes' On the Crown: A Critical Case Study of a Masterpiece of Ancient Oratory (ed. J. Murphy; A Random House Study in Speech; New York: Random House, 1967), 81.

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A final characteristic that clarifies the Greek orators' nature and function is the contextual dimension of rhetorical speech. The orators' discourses are not general but are related to and shaped by particular situations or issues before the assembly. Hence, they contain references to contemporary political and social events.71 The majority of these situations center on actions to be undertaken by Athens, often in the realm of foreign policy. Some speeches, however, address the internal politics of other countries. Demosthenes, for example, critiques the actions of Philip's soldiers and the conditions within Macedonia.72 The reliability of the orators' depictions of other countries is, of course, unclear, but they would likely have gained information from Athenian emissaries abroad. Yet a lack of explicit detail is characteristic of the orators' speeches. Though clearly offered in response to particular situations, the orations often do not spell out the persons, events, and details involved. Full understanding of a speech requires that its references be supplemented with information gained from other sources. The fact that the orators' discourses took shape within a historical situation that was shared by the speakers and their audience provides a likely explanation for this phenomenon. There is no need to name explicitly the persons and events involved. Indeed, imagistic, metaphorical, or allusive references may prove more persuasive to the audience. The discourses do not offer descriptions but interpretations of events, which assume that the audience knows the events themselves. The goal of the orators is not an objective report but a compelling construal of the past or present.73 This sketch of characteristic functions, locations, and phenomena suggests that the analogy of the Greek orators fits better with the three major characteristics of the Hebrew Bible's presentation of the prophets than any of the traditional analogies noted above. First, the Hebrew Bible predominantly characterizes the classical prophets as figures who expressed their convictions through the medium of the spoken word, a medium that took the form of extended discourses rather than brief sayings. As Nissinen has observed, all other factors, such as social location, psychological factors, and so on, must be seen as subordinate to the 71. See, for example, Demosthenes' s speeches For the People of Megalopolis, which responds to a request for help from Sparta and Megalopolis, and On the Peace, which responds to a communication received from Delphi concerning Philip. Cf. Dobson, Greek Orators, 217. 72. Montgomery, Way, 16. 73. As Carey and Reid (Private Speeches, 19) remark concerning discourse in the law court: "Its end is persuasion; this need not rule out, but it does not necessitate, truth. The Greek litigant is not an objective narrator of truth but a man with something at stake. Anything he says must be treated with caution."

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"transmissive or communicative aspect" of prophecy that centers on a divine message, human transmitter, and human recipient.74 The Greek orators also typically offer sustained, communicative addresses designed to persuade an audience. While these orations do not usually have a religious or theological component, that feature represents only an optional variation on the shared phenomenon of persuasive oratory. Secondly, the biblical texts picture prophetic discourse as using a wide variety of styles, forms, and topics: rebuke, assurance, sarcasm, metaphor, and so on. The Greek orators help explain this practice by showing that the style or topic of an oration shifts on the basis of circumstance and audience. The nature of rhetorical oratory itself demands that style, form, and topic at times be inconsistent. Along these lines, the third characteristic element of the Hebrew Bible's depiction of the prophets is that they do not address religious, social, and political issues in general but tailor their comments to specific situations. The Greek orators also both contrive and deliver their orations in response to particular exigencies associated with domestic or international circumstances. Both prophets and orators develop their messages on the basis of what they perceive to be the broader theological, political, or social significances of local, contingent events. Like the orators, however, the prophets do not often make explicit and detailed references to the presumed historical situation. One may ask, for example, "If Isaiah is referring to a treaty with Assyria, why does he not say it?" The orator analogy suggests that the familiarity of a shared situation between the speaker and audience renders such explicit references unnecessary and perhaps even less rhetorically effective. Alongside these specific correlations, there is above all a similarity in the general functions of the prophets and orators. The prophets as depicted in the Hebrew Bible fulfill Demosthenes's functions of the orator given above. Like their Greek analogues, the prophets discern the meaning of contemporary events, often before it is evident to the common people— whether those events be a shift in Assyria's strength or a newly instituted policy of royal latifundialization. In keeping with these perceptions, the prophets frequently foresee results and forewarn others. They then also engage in the practice of calling the public to address the ills of their society and insisting that they attend to ethics and character. While the Greek orators may make their appeals on the basis of near-mythological 74. Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy, 1-2. For an example of the analysis of a prophetic text as a "full [persuasive] speech and not a brief communication," see Y. Gitay, "Rhetorical Criticism and the Prophetic Discourse," in Persuasive Artistry: Studies in New Testament Rhetoric in Honor of George A. Kennedy (ed. D. Watson; JSOTSup 50; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 13-24.

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national traditions about the character of Greece and the prophets may find their bases in the revealed traditions and character of the god Yahweh, both use rhetorical oratory as the means to their end. IV. Implications: On Reading, History, and Models If the analogy of the Greek orators holds, it raises implications for at least three areas of prophetic study: (1) ways of reading prophetic texts, (2) connections of prophetic texts and Israelite history, and (3) conceptions of the nature and function of models/analogies in general. Although they cannot all be developed in detail here, some of these implications are particularly germane to the question of the intersection of the prophetic literature and Israel's past. The first implication concerns the way of reading prophetic texts that emerges from the Greek orator analogy. If the analogy holds, one should understand prophetic discourse in terms of a rhetorical perspective that focuses on the transaction between a speaker and audience within a shared situation. Hence, one may profitably analyze the prophetic texts, which ostensibly present these discourses, from the perspective of rhetorical criticism. The rhetorical criticism envisioned here is not the stylistic criticism represented within biblical studies by the work of James Muilenburg, but a method informed by the study of classical rhetoric in antiquity.75 Taking its cue from the ancient Greek practice of public speaking in the law courts and assemblies and from Aristotle's definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of discovering in the particular case what are the available means of persuasion,"76 this approach understands rhetorical discourse as persuasive speech designed to affect particular social and political circumstances.77 75. See J. Muilenburg, "Form Criticism and Beyond," repr. in Beyond Form Criticism: Essays in Old Testament Literary Criticism (ed. P. House; SETS; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 49-69. For a critique of the limitations of the stylistic approach to rhetorical criticism and a description of the system of classical rhetoric, see Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 3, 12-30. Several scholars have recently taken a more "classical" rhetorical approach to the prophetic literature in particular and offer examples of its results. See especially, M. Fox, "The Rhetoric of EzekieFs Vision of the Valley of the Bones," repr. in The Place Is Too Small For Us: Israelite Prophets in Recent Scholarship (ed. R. Gordon; SETS 5; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 176-90; Gitay, Prophecy and Persuasion; and Kelle, Hosea 2, 29—34, and the works cited there. 76. Aristotle, Rhetoric (trans. L. Cooper; New York: Appleton, 1932), 1355. 77. So Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 3; Fox, "Rhetoric"; and C. Black, "Keeping Up With Recent Studies XVI: Rhetorical Criticism and Biblical Interpretation," ExpTim 100 (1988-89): 252-58 (254).

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Thus, rhetorical criticism of the prophetic texts examines the transaction between the speaker and audience by focusing on the persuasive elements of the text and their relationship to the rhetorical situation presupposed by the text.78 This process involves reading for the external factors of the audience, situation, and problem being addressed, as well as the internal factors of the styles, devices, and arrangements used.79 In contrast to older historical-critical methods, however, this process does not attempt to bring closure through a definitive statement of an author's intentions and a text's historical context. Rather, operating from the text's presentation of the prophets and their discourse, rhetorical criticism offers a heuristic model for reading. It does not preclude other means of engaging the prophetic literature that do not take the text's presentation of the nature and role of the prophets as their starting point.80 78. Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 13-20. The emergence of rhetoric as a technique for persuasion is usually connected with Syracuse in the fifth century B.C.E., particularly the works of Corax and Tisias. "Classical rhetorical theory" then refers to the system developed to put the phenomenon of rhetoric into Greek categories. The basic concepts of this rhetoric appeared in Aristotle's Rhetoric (mid-fourth century), which drew on Plato's Phaedrus, and were later developed by Cicero and Quintilian. See Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 11-12,52-124. For a fuller discussion of the components of classical rhetoric and a survey of its historical development, see E. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (2d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), and G. Kennedy, "Historical Survey of Rhetoric," in Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period 330 B.C.A.D. 400 (ed. S. E. Porter; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 3-42. Such criticism centers on the major factors of speaker, audience, and discourse, and involves the classical elements of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery, as well as proofs related to ethos, pathos, and logos. 79. See J. M. Ericson, "Rhetorical Criticism: How to Evaluate a Speech," in Murphy, ed., On the Crown, 129-36. Cf. Kennedy's (New Testament Interpretation., 33) steps of determining the unit, identifying the situation and "rhetorical problem," and examining the arrangement. 80. The Greek orator analogy may answer some possible objections to the use of rhetorical criticism for biblical interpretation. First, one may question how rhetoric, which originated in the study of oratory, can rightly be employed on written texts. As Gitay (Prophecy and Persuasion, 45) notes, however, the distinction between oral and written literature was less pronounced before the modern period, and virtually identical rhetorical techniques are employed in both oral and written discourse. One may also ask how the later practice of Greek oratory can legitimately be applied to biblical texts. While one might be able to claim direct influence on the New Testament writers, the same claim cannot be made for the Hebrew Bible. As Kennedy (New Testament Interpretation, 10-11) notes, however, rhetoric is a "universal facet of human communication," and the Greeks simply provided a system and categories for this universal phenomenon.

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The second implication of the orator analogy is the most relevant to the issues under consideration in this volume. If the prophets are analogous to the Greek orators and the prophetic texts preserve their speeches that are analogous to rhetorical oratories, then there is an inextricable link between the prophetic discourses and specific historical circumstances, which should be at least partially recoverable through the texts themselves. In recent prophetic scholarship, however, difficulties involved in the use of texts to reconstruct history have produced skepticism about the ability to relate the biblical prophets and their sayings to the historical realities of ancient Israel. Contemporary prophetic study is predominantly literary in perspective and focuses on canonical and theological analysis of artistically designed books, often with little optimism expressed about the connection of these texts to historical prophets and contexts.81 The same debate exists within the study of the Greek orators. The longstanding assumption is that, since rhetorical orations intended to persuade audiences and influence behavior, they necessarily presupposed and depended upon specific contexts that initiated the appeals. Hence, the discourse contains and reflects elements of the circumstance. This understanding grows out of the key concept of the "rhetorical situation." As Lloyd Bitzer defines it, the rhetorical situation is a circumstance with an exigency, which calls forth and controls the discourse that seeks to address it.82 In this view, the rhetorical situation is essentially equivalent to the historical situation, and without it, the discourse makes no sense. So, for example, Demosthenes's On the Crown is typically read as a source for political, social, and legal events and circumstances that led up to the battle of Chaerona in 338 B.C.E. and Ctesiphon's trial in 330 B.C.E.83 In recent rhetorical study, however, some rhetoricians have questioned whether the extant speeches of the Greek orators are reliable sources for reconstructing the history of ancient Greece.84 As noted above, the speeches characteristically offered only analyses and interpretations not extended and concrete descriptions of the shared situation.85 Moreover, the orators' efforts to persuade at times seem to have produced occasional 81. For discussion of this trend, see Barton, "History and Rhetoric," 51-64, and Gitay, "Prophetic Criticism," 101-27. 82. L. Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1-14. For a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of Bitzer's definition of the rhetorical situation, see Kelle, Hosea 2, 24—27. 83. See, for example, Yunis, Demosthenes, ix, 1-6. 84. For instance, Yunis (ibid., 97) notes that recent scholars have expressed skepticism about the history presented by Demosthenes's On the Crown. 85. See Pearson, Art, 31, and Montgomery, Way, 40.

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errors in specific details. Some scholars have also questioned the concept of the rhetorical situation and its determinative function for the speeches. Richard Vatz, for instance, argued that the rhetorical situation is more akin to an implied situation derived from the text, which is not always primary for the discourse and cannot be assumed to equate with the historical situation.86 These challenges have even led some interpreters to conclude that the extant political speeches originated as purely literary products, which did not stem from the orator's original words in a specific setting.87 One of the issues that has produced this debate is that the orators' extant political speeches show evidence of having been reworked after their original oral delivery. While such editing was likely done by the orators themselves for the purpose of immediate publication, the process raises doubt about how accurately the speeches reflect their historical situations.88 On the Crown, for example, was not written down at the time of delivery but circulated later in a written version likely including minor editorial changes made by Demosthenes himself.89 A much more significant issue that has prompted the debate over the usefulness of the orators' speeches for historical reconstruction is that the persuasive aims of these speeches led the orators not simply to represent but to shape, color, and even distort the events to which they refer. Rhetoric by nature does not simply communicate the truth but partially creates it.90 As Worthington states, There is no such thing as an objective presentation of information in oratory, since we are dealing with rhetoric; when dealing with past and even contemporary history in speeches, facts, persons and events were exploited and manipulated in order to persuade the audience, all causing us to doubt the accuracy of the historical information found in the Greek orators.91 86. R. Vatz, "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy and Rhetoric 6 (1973): 154—61. For further discussion, see D. Watson, "The Contributions and Limitations of Greco-Roman Rhetorical Theory for Constructing the Rhetorical and Historical Situations of a Pauline Epistle," in The Rhetorical Interpretation of Scripture (ed. S. E. Porter and D. Stamps; JSOTSup 180; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 128-29. 87. Montgomery (Way, 40) attributes this view to E. Schwartz as early as 1893. 88. Support for such editing largely emerges from the comparison of extant manuscripts; see Worthington, ed., Demosthenes, 6, and Kennedy, Art of Persuasion, 128. 89. Yunis, Demosthenes, 26. 90. Porter and Olbricht, eds., Rhetorical Interpretation, 18. See also H. Yunis, "Politics as Literature: Demosthenes and the Burden of the Athenian Past," Arion 8 (2001): 100, and Pearson, Art, v. 91. Worthington, ed., Demosthenes, 6. See also I. Worthington, "Greek Oratory, Revision of Speeches and the Problem of Historical Reliability," Classica et

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Notwithstanding the significance of some of these challenges to the historical usefulness of the Greek orators, the majority view within the study of rhetoric remains that the present literary quality of the extant speeches does not invalidate them as historical sources; rather, they yield, in various degrees, direct and indirect information concerning situations and events in Greek history.92 Their persuasive goals certainly shape some, if not many, of their depictions, and one should guard against the simple acceptance of a speech's rhetorical situation as the historical situation. Nonetheless, the crucial role played by rhetoric in Athenian society makes it likely that the orations hold high historical value: even a speech's constructed rhetorical situation must have borne significant continuity with the original circumstance for the sake of credibility.93 The similarities of these points of debate with the questions about the relationship of the prophetic literature and Israelite history are unmistakable. One may similarly raise the issue, for example, of whether the prophetic discourses correspond to and accurately represent rhetoricalhistorical situations. Can the preserved speeches be relied upon as sources for reconstructing the circumstances that may have prompted them? As discussed above, the prophetic texts often lack explicit and concrete details. Many of them also show evidence of later editing that resulted in their canonical form, and some interpreters conclude that the texts originated as purely literary compositions. Evidence of editorial activity does not, however, automatically entail the "death of the historical prophet."94 Assyrian prophecies show that the collecting and ordering of prophetic messages was known at least as early as the seventh century B.C.E., and such editing surely maintained some kind of significant contact with the original content and context of the prophet's words. As was the case with the Greek orators, the prophets themselves may have done some of the editing of prophetic speeches.95 In any case, without falling victim to Mediaevalia 92 (1991): 55—74. For a discussion of the shaping activity of rhetorical discourse, particularly in connection with the rhetoric of New Testament texts, see Jasper, Rhetoric, 18-41. 92. Dobson, Greek Orators, 4,201; see also Montgomery, Way, 40; C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tytecha, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 20-21; Watson, "Contributions," 125. 93. So Montgomery, Way, 58, and Watson, "Contributions," 131. 94. Y. Gitay, "The Individual Versus the Institution: The Prophet Versus His Book," in Religion and the Reconstruction of Civil Society: Papers From the Founding Congress of the South African Academy of Religion, January 1994 (ed. J. W. de Gruchy and S. Martin; Miscellania Congregalia 51; Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1995), 290. 95. For example, A. A. Macintosh (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea [ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997], Ixxiii) argues that Hosea withdrew

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simplistic, positivistic assumptions, redaction criticism can help identify the relationship between original and redactional materials. If the Israelite prophets were analogous to the Greek orators, their original speeches likely shaped, colored, and perhaps even distorted the events to which they referred in the service of persuasion. Just as with the Greek orators, however, this rhetorical practice of shaping does not entail a complete lack of historical usefulness. While prophets may have shaped the presentations of events and circumstances, it seems most unlikely that they could have made a presentation that did not have at least a significant connection with the historical realities as observed by their audience. While not every detail of a prophet's speech represented straightforward presentation, the nature and function of prophecy surely demanded a certain level of plausibility and accuracy in order for the prophet to be credible to the audience. The realization that the Israelite prophets possibly shaped what they presented as "divine revelation" may, in fact, be one of the greatest benefits of the orator analogy. The Jewish and Christian traditions have often resisted this notion on the basis of beliefs concerning divine mediation and inspiration. Yet the Hebrew Bible has preserved the impression that the prophets were more than passive mouthpieces. If prophets were analogous to orators, the effectiveness of their speeches required rhetorical competence and crafting. Thus, if the analogy of the Greek orators fits the Israelite prophets, it leads to the likely conclusion that the prophetic discourses in the Hebrew Bible reliably link to and reveal specific historical circumstances and events. Even if these discourses present only "rhetoricized history" designed to appeal to an audience and cannot be historicized in a simplistic way, the nature and function of rhetorical discourse demands that they should not be excluded altogether from providing some usable information for historical reconstruction, evidence to be used in conjunction with other sources.96 A rhetorical or oratorical approach to these biblical from public life around 733 and reworked and expanded his publicly delivered oracles. 96. Yunis ("Politics," 101-2) reaches the same conclusion concerning Demosthenes's speeches. For example, L. Boadt ("The Poetry of Prophetic Persuasion: Preserving the Prophet's Persona," CBQ 59 [1997]: 1-21) argues that the prose of certain prophetic texts contains "marks of orality" that point to public oration, marks such as formulaic language, repetitions, structural unity, and dramatic echoes. He concludes that these marks indicate that extended discourses in the prophetic books were originally given as public orations and can be used to identify the parts of the discourse that are original to the prophet. Similarly, Gitay ("Realm," 227) argues that rhetorical criticism of the prophets "enables us to sense the person behind the speech rather than simply regard the book as a literary-theological production."

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texts may help develop a connection between literary and historical studies of the Bible. The "rhetorical situation" envisioned by the discourse must have some significant continuity with the original historical circumstances or else the discourse would have been ineffectual. Admittedly, however, moving from this rhetorical situation to the historical situation is difficult. It is, for example, somewhat circular to use the discourse to reconstruct the situation and then use the situation to interpret the discourse. Hence, one must see the historical interpretation of prophetic texts as able to produce only a hypothetical reconstruction of a rhetorical situation that can undergo adjustment and thus can continually cast the text in new lights. As a final implication alongside those of a way of reading prophetic texts and the question of their connections to history, one might ultimately conclude that the exploration of a new possible analogy such as the Greek orators, as well as the uncertainties and difficulties it entails, underscore the tentativeness of all such models and analogies for the prophets. The temptation throughout the history of scholarship has been to see models such as ecstatics, charismatics, poets, and so on, as capturing the historical reality of the prophets. Even if the Greek orator model comes the closest to achieving this goal, the uncertainties involved suggest that all analogies ultimately remain at the level of heuristic devices. After all, the primary focus of prophetic interpretation is the reading of texts, assisted by imaginative devices that provide illumination. Whatever contributions the analogies for the prophets make to the reconstruction of Israel's past, it is perhaps best to see them ultimately as metaphors for reading and imagination rather than models of precise historical reality.

Part II THE PROPHETS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

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AMOS THE PROPHET AND AMOS THE BOOK: HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK* Gene M. Tucker

If more than a century of critical inquiry has taught us anything it has taught us that the books of the Bible emerged from a strange and different world. Furthermore, it is only with great effort if at all that one can read a biblical text without presupposing some ancient historical horizon. Thus, to open any biblical book is to enter a different world, one in a distant past. This is no less true for the prophetic books than for those such as 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, and 1-2 Chronicles that report and interpret the events of the past in chronological order. First, the prophetic texts consider history, understood as events in time and space, of great importance; in fact, these events bear ultimate significance since they result from the interaction of human and divine decisions. Everything from the language to the specific contents of the prophetic books reflects and often speaks directly of such events. Second, all readers of these books have inherited some image of the past, for good or ill. Thus, when readers go to a book such as Amos, they carry with them a vision of the world from which it came. The image they take to the book may be shaped by a religious or theological tradition, or it may be formed by either vague or detailed knowledge of the history of interpretation. Reading will evoke further images of that world. Therefore, interpretation of biblical texts must take historical questions seriously, and critically examine all preconceived images as well as all historical reconstructions. * In an era when many question the importance of history in biblical interpretation, few in our generation have done more than John Hayes to keep historical issues alive in the scholarly debate. It is no secret that he and I have very different approaches to the prophetic literature in particular and have reached very different conclusions about it. This was the source of many years of collegial conversation, but neither of us has managed to persuade the other. These reflections on Amos are offered as a contribution to that discussion, and with respect for the work of John Hayes.

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I. Historical Method That the history of Israel and the history of biblical literature are inexorably linked has been recognized since the rise of historical-critical methods. One cannot write a history of Israel without first reaching conclusions about the dates and circumstances of the sources for that history, including the books of the Bible. After all, the purpose of Wellhausen's Prolegomena was to write the history of the development of the Pentateuch in order to provide the foundation for writing the history of Israel, particularly its religion. History is a human enterprise, a game played according to certain rules. So what are the rules of the game? Some students of the Bible make the rules for writing the history of Israel too easy and some make them too difficult. The present situation in the study of the history of Israel makes the conflict in the 1950s and 1960s between the Albright/ Bright approach on the one hand and that of Alt and Noth on the other look like a tempest in a tea cup, as recent approaches appear to be testing the extremes. That is, many now trust the historical references in the biblical texts with little or no question, and others trust them not at all. With regard to the prophetic books, and Amos in particular, several recent works trust the received form of the book and reconstruct the life and teachings of Amos with confidence.1 On the other hand, some historical critical works restrict themselves to the interpretation of the final form of the written work and its use in its supposed time of composition.2 1. J. H. Hayes, Amos, the Eighth-century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988); S. M. Paul, Amos: A Commentary on the Book of Amos (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 24A; New York: Doubleday, 1989). See M. D. Carroll R., Amos—The Prophet and His Oracles: Research on the Book of Amos (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2003), for an extensive bibliography and analysis. 2. See especially the works of E. Ben Zvi: Micah (FOTL 21B; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); Hosea (FOTL 21 A/1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); A Historical-Critical Study oftheBookofZephaniah (BZAW 198; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), A Historical-Critical Study of the Book ofObadiah (BZAW 242; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996). These are perceptive and valuable analyses of the received forms of the books in question in the historical context in which Ben Zvi believes them to have been written and originally read. He concludes that there is insufficient evidence for any history of composition before that. Cf. also R. F. Melugin, "Prophetic Books and the Problem of Historical Reconstruction," in Prophets and Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker (ed. Stephen Breck Reid; JSOTSup 229; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 63-78.

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Other literary and theological approaches question or even reject historical inquiry as a distraction or irrelevant to the interpretation of the texts. For instance, Brevard Childs' canonical interpretation of Amos focuses upon the final composition and seeks to understand "how the message of Amos was appropriated and formed to serve as authoritative scripture within the community of faith."3 Others focus on various literary features they see in the received form of the book.4 Treatments of the history of the composition of the book of Amos also push at the extremes. Many, such as the creative and innovative commentary by John Hayes, take the book as composed of the words of Amos in the eighth century. Shalom Paul treats the final form as a unit from the eighth century, and uses the historical and archaeological data from that time to explain the text. At the other extreme are those who treat Hans Walter Wolffs six redactional stages as far too modest, identifying a dozen or so stages.5 Jôrg Jeremias does not see so many stages, but he links the history of the composition of Amos with others of the book of the Twelve.6 The fact that the final form of a prophetic book is a coherent presentation does not necessarily demonstrate that it had no history of development and composition, as those at the one extreme argue. On the other hand, the fact that a book had a history of composition does not necessarily mean that there is sufficient evidence to reconstruct all the steps in that history, as many redaction critics insist with confidence. Generalizations are no substitute for the careful critical analysis of individual texts and the presentation of evidence and arguments for their provenance. Thus, the prophetic literature, by its very contents, demands answers to historical questions. What is one to do? Is it possible to deal reasonably with historical issues without moving to one extreme or the other? Is it possible that the problem lies in the old nineteenth-century definition of historical inquiry as "scientific," as the confident determination of "what actually happened"? Such goals set the bar too high. It is never 3. B. S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 400, and for more detailed application of the approach see his Isaiah: A Commentary (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 4. Paul's Amos is a good example of the integration of literary and historical approaches. For a summary of various literary interpretations of Amos, see Carroll R., Amos, 43-47. 5. H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos: A Commentary on the Books of the Prophets Joel and Amos (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977); D. U. Rottzoll, Studien zur Redaktion und {Composition des Amosbuches (BZAW 243; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996). 6. J. Jeremias, The Book of Amos: A Commentary (Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox, 1998).

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possible to know what actually happened, especially in an ancient era for which the evidence is so meager. Nevertheless, answering questions about the past are life and death issues that human beings must resolve every day, for example in law courts. In American law courts it is not simply a question of what happened, or who said what and when, but of what can be demonstrated with reliable evidence and testimony.7 In the courts, the "facts" are not the reconstructions of the events by attorneys and juries, but the evidence upon which such reconstructions are based. In American criminal trials, the burden of proof rests with the prosecution, and guilt must be demonstrated "beyond a reasonable doubt" in order to protect the rights of the accused. In the reconstruction of the events and circumstances of antiquity, including ancient Israel, seldom is there sufficient evidence to meet the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." The model of American civil cases fits these circumstances better. Li such cases juries are told to reach their conclusions based on "the preponderance of the evidence." If one continues the image of the law court, where does the burden of proof lie when considering the history of Israel or of a book such as Amos? Does one assume that the text is what it says it is unless proven otherwise? Or does one begin with a hermeneutics of suspicion, assuming the text is misleading unless shown to be reliable? I am convinced that one must assume the burden of proof to establish that the text is not what it claims to be; one should trust but verify. So, if a prophetic text is presented as from a particular era, such as the eighth century for Amos, that needs to be the starting point. Of course, one must read the text closely in order to establish what it actually claims to be. Indeed, Amos 1:1 locates the prophet historically and geographically, but that verse (along with 1:2) clearly is secondary to what follows, an interpretation of the prophet and his words. Thus, the first verses of Amos do not claim to be the words of the prophet, but is a third person report about him and must be treated critically. It is perhaps better to put it this way: anyone who puts forth a case for a particular interpretation must assume the burden of proof and produce evidence and argumentation. An additional caution that needs to be kept in mind when locating the prophets and their books historically, and in interpretation generally, is that historians and interpreters bring their own values into the analysis. With regard to historical questions, often judgments of fact (e.g. date and 7. G. M. Tucker, "The Futile Quest for the Historical Prophet," in A Biblical Itinerary: In Search of Method, Form and Content. Essays in Honor of George W. Coats (ed. E. E. Carpenter; JSOTSup 240; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 144-52.

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authorship) have been confused with judgments of value such that either earlier or later material is considered better, more valid, or more "authentic." In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, for instance, the earlier or more primitive material was valued more highly than the later, and for a variety of reasons. In the case of Amos in particular, the actual words of the inspired individual were considered to be the voice of God, and "secondary" additions were genuinely inferior.8 Likewise, some early form-critical works seemed to value the supposedly original oral utterances and evaluated the later written work as mere serialization.9 On the other hand, Childs and others explicitly value the canonical form, and its use in communities of faith, above any earlier stage. Value judgments of either sort are fully legitimate, and in many ways unavoidable, but they must be distinguished from historically informed conclusions. In other words, if one concludes that some parts of a book arose at different times and in different circumstances, judgments about the worth or validity of those different parts will need to be made apart from the historical judgments. Moreover, if one is concerned to interpret the text, no part of it nor any discernible stage in its development should be thrown away. Both before and after one reaches conclusions concerning historical background or the history of the book's development (e.g. that a particular section is a secondary addition), the interpreter must face the text in its final form. That, finally, is what the interpreter or historian must deal with, and what we must deal with when considering Amos. II. Historical Allusions in Amos Historical allusions within the prophetic books are crucial both for locating the prophet in some historical horizon as well as for reaching conclusions about the history of the book's composition. To be sure, in both cases other evidence must be considered, including literary features such as affinities with other literature that can be dated with some reliability and the compositional evidence within the book that might indicate how its parts were either composed, edited, or collected. Nevertheless, the interpreter must investigate all possible historical references and allusions in order to understand their contexts in the past. The identification and interpretation of such allusions depends in turn on information 8. W. R. Harper, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Amos and Hosea (ICC 23; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1910). 9. Koch, however, argues for attention to all stages in the development of genres, noting how they change from oral to written; see K. Koch, The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form Critical Method (New York: Scribner's, 1969), 220.

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concerning the history and culture of Israel as well as that of the wider ancient Near East.10 It is not surprising that students of Amos, from the earliest times to the present day, have identified historical references throughout the book. Doubtless there are a great many allusions to events and circumstances. A few allusions in Amos are clear and specific, but many are not. The problem, then, is determining the specific events and activities to which they allude. The main basis for the dating of Amos, from the earliest times to the present, is the date in the superscription (1:1). The superscription contains not one but two historical allusions, as well as some information about the background of the prophet. The synchronistic royal date, "in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and in the days of King Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel," has always been the foundation for dating the activity of the prophet. Of course, details of the dates of these two kings continue to attract debate, but this certainly locates Amos in the mid-eighth century B.C.E. and thereby enables one to relate the prophetic words to conditions (often imagined) in the period before Israel and Judah faced the rise and advance of the Assyrian empire. This historical location of the prophet has profoundly influenced the interpretation of the prophet, providing the point of departure for any historical conclusions.11 The accuracy of this synchronistic royal date cannot go unquestioned. It is clear on the face of it that this verse is not part of the words of Amos, nor does it claim to be. Rather, like other superscriptions to the prophetic books, it is a later addition. One might legitimately consider it the earliest attempt to place the prophet in a particular historical horizon. Like the other superscriptions to the prophetic books, however, this one was not developed primarily to provide what we would consider reliable historical information. The prophetic superscriptions have theological agendas.12 The editors who added them wanted to make it clear that the words that followed were divinely inspired, addressed to a particular set of historical events, and that the written form of the old addresses was authoritative. Specifically, the editor responsible for the superscription in Amos 1:1 would have wanted to legitimize the words of Amos as prophetic words by locating him before the fall of the northern kingdom. 11. The frequent prophetic references to future events do not constitute historical allusions unless it can be shown that they have been provided after the fact. 11. E. Ben Zvi, "Studying Prophetic Texts Against Their Original Backgrounds: Pre-Ordained Scripts and Alternative Horizons of Research," in Reid, éd., Prophets and Paradigms, 125-35. 12. G. M. Tucker, "Prophetic Superscriptions and the Growth of a Canon," in Canon and Authority: Essays in Old Testament Religion and Theology (éd. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 56-70.

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It is possible, even likely, that the superscription's date is correct and that it was not pulled out of the air because there is evidence within the book for locating Amos in the time of Jeroboam. The account in 7:10-17 of the confrontation between Amos and Amaziah the priest identifies Jeroboam as king in Israel, as does the announcement in 7:9. These passages, in fact, are the superscription's main sources for dating Amos. These sources are not necessarily neutral; the account of the encounter between Amos and Amaziah is a third person report that probably came from early supporters of the prophet. Yet, there is no good reason to mistrust the identification of the king in that account, and more importantly, the other allusion to Jeroboam is embedded in a prophetic address that appears to be among the earliest tradition of Amos's words (see below). The second historical allusion in the superscription is quite specific, referring to "two years before the earthquake." There has been no shortage of attempts to date this particular event, and to draw conclusions about the activity of Amos from it. Specifically, this reference has been used to support the conclusion that Amos was active for only a short time, and that conclusion appears to be justified. But how could it be possible to use this reference to date the prophet's activity? Surely earthquakes would not have been unusual in that geologically instable region. Nevertheless, the allusion suggests but does not prove something significant about the history of the development of the book; precisely because earthquakes were not uncommon, the hand that supplied at least this part of the superscription would not have been far removed from the time of Amos. Otherwise this "date" would have been confusing to the readers. This factor, along with the syntax of the superscription, suggests that the superscription itself has a history of composition. A shorter version of the superscription probably existed, and may have circulated at the head of the collection of vision reports in Amos 7-9, since the title refers to the words that Amos "saw" (HT!"!).13 The superscription reflects scribal and scholarly—though not necessarily "wisdom"—concerns. All of the oracles against the nations in Amos 1-2 (with the exception of the one against Judah, 2:4—5) contain allusions to international events. The references to events are presented as violations of the accused nation against a neighbor, violations that the original hearers of the prophet are supposed to have understood. That is, they appear as events in the remembered and even likely recent past. All of them, however, are so vague and unspecific as to be unidentifiable by the modern reader; there simply is not enough evidence to correlate the references with particular events, 13. A. Weiser, Die Profetie des Amos (BZAW 53 ; Giessen: Tôpelmann, 1929), 255; cf. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 117.

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not beyond a reasonable doubt, nor even is there the preponderance of evidence.14 What can be said is that a striking number of the elements of this unit derive from the traditions concerning Yahweh's holy war. Hayes has shown that the dominant original setting of the oracles against the nations was warfare, and that is particularly obvious here.15 Additionally, John Barton has shown that Amos knows and appeals to conventional or customary law about international conduct, especially concerning warfare.16 The next obvious historical allusions are the references to Jeroboam in 7:9 and 10. They are different in important respects. The one in v. 9 appears in the concluding line of a prophetic announcement of judgment, itself part of the third prophetic vision report (7:7-9). The announcement does not mention the king directly but "the house of Jeroboam." This phrase could be taken as a reference to the dynasty, but in any case locates the prophet in the time of that particular king. The reference in v. 10 is part of the third person account of the confrontation between Amaziah, "the priest of Bethel," and Amos. The priest is said to have sent an accusation against Amos to "King Jeroboam of Israel." This would have been the same "Jeroboam son of Joash" of Amos 1:1, generally dated 786-746 B.C.E. Since it seems likely that the editor who supplied the synchronistic royal date of the superscription likely relied on these references in 7:9-10, these two verses provide the most reliable basis for dating the activity of Amos in the mid-eighth century B.C.E. Moreover, the vision reports in the first person are the most likely of all the material in the book to come from the earliest Amos tradition, if not from the prophet himself. Consequently the allusion to Jeroboam in 7:9 is the most substantial evidence for the date of the prophet. Additionally, the book of Amos contains a great many references to practices and circumstances and other reflections of culture seen through the eyes of the prophetic speaker. These do not constitute historical allusions in the precise sense, but they may allow one to reconstruct something of the time and circumstances from which the prophetic words emerged. To be sure, many of these allusions to social and religious circumstances could apply to almost any time during the period of the divided kingdom, including accusations against the rich and powerful because of their oppression of the weak (2:6-7; 3:15; 4:1; 6:4-6; 8:4-6), 14. Melugin, "Prophetic Books and the Problem of Historical Reconstruction," 72-74. 15. J. H. Hayes, "The Usage of Oracles Against Foreign Nations in Ancient Israel," JBL 87 (1968): 81, 83. 16. J. Barton, Amos's Oracles Against the Nations: A Study of Amos 1.3-2.5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 59-60.

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and pronouncements about corrupt courts (5:10-13). Such circumstances are consistent with a period of relative political stability leading to selfsatisfaction on the part of those in power, and with social and economic conditions that led to a widening gap between rich and poor. But even those circumstances can be reconstructed only with caution since, after all, what we have in these texts in the perspective of a prophetic critic of society. It is also noteworthy that in Amos there is no clear allusion to either the Assyrians or the Babylonians. This makes it is reasonable to locate Amos historically before the incursions of the Assyrians into Israel and Judah. This was indeed a time of relative stability in Israel, although this would not have been the only time when the ruling powers and classes could have been accused of being self-satisfied. The references to Bethel and Gilgal are also significant. The prophet has Yahweh promising to "punish the altars of Bethel" (3:14) and admonishing the people against seeking Bethel or entering Gilgal "for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing" (5:5). He utters the ironic call to the people: "Come to Bethel—and transgress; to Gilgal—and multiply transgression" (4:4). Amaziah, "priest of Bethel," (7:10) identifies Bethel as a royal sanctuary, "a temple of the kingdom" (7:13). Hans Barstad goes too far in concluding that Amos attacks these worship centers because their cults were "non-Yahwistic or strongly Yahwistic/synchrestic," and Paul, along with most other commentators, correctly rejects this interpretation of the references to Bethel and Gilgal.17 The important point from the perspective of historical inquiry is the obvious one: the prophetic addresses assume that Bethel and Gilgal are flourishing religious centers. This perspective is fully consistent with a mid-eighth-century horizon, before the fall of Samaria to the Assyrians. Now that we have a general time frame for the historical horizon of Amos, what, if anything, can the historian know about the Amos mentioned as the source of the prophetic words in the book? Although there are a few references to Amos and his background, it must be emphasized at the outset that none of reports about him originated with what we would call a biographical purpose, that is, in order to give insight into his personality. Direct references to Amos the person appear in two places: (1) in the superscription, and (2) in the account of the prophet's encounter with Amaziah, the priest of Bethel (7:10-17). The superscription, as we have seen, has a fundamentally theological intention, and the historical and personal information about Amos serves that intention. The 17. H. M. Barstad, The Religious Polemics of Amos (VTSup 34; Leiden: Brill, 1984), 56; Paul, Amos, 139.

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purpose of the third person report in 7:10-17 concerns the authenticity and authority of the prophet, and provides the context for the announcement of judgment against Amaziah, the one who opposes the word of Yahweh through Amos.18 Nevertheless, these two texts provide some evidence for the prophet's background. The lines in 7:12 make no sense unless Amos was a Judean who came to Israel to announce the word of Yahweh. The superscription is more specific, locating him in the Judean town of Tekoah, in the hills south of Bethlehem. The few words concerning Amos' occupation have evoked considerable speculation and debate. In 1:1 he is called one "among the shepherds of Tekoah," and the account of the confrontation with Amaziah has him saying that he was "a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees... following the flock" (7:14—15). Was he poor or rich, educated or uneducated? Given especially the knowledge of history and tradition reflected hi the earliest prophetic material, he could hardly be called uneducated. Most likely he was neither poor nor rich, but a member of the traditional rural, agrarian culture of Judah.19 His reported response to Amaziah's charge indicates that he has an occupation apart from that of some kind of religious specialist. The enigmatic sentence "I am no prophet nor a prophet's son" (trDD p K1?! 'DJK ira K1?, 7:14) has been at the center of the discussion of whether or not Amos was, or considered himself to be, a prophet. But since the unexpressed verb of the two clauses can be read either as present or past tense, the argument cannot be resolved on the basis of this verse. According to the report in 7:10-17, Amos understood himself to have been called to prophesy to Israel (7:15). Moreover, regardless of whether he was willing to accept the title "prophet," in every way he functioned as one. Put another way, if one defines an institution as customary practices and language over time, Amos was a part of a prophetic institution: he uses traditional prophetic language and appeals to commonly held religious traditions. One cannot say a great deal about Amos the prophet and his historical context, but some cautious conclusions can be drawn. Amos would have been active in the mid-eighth century B.C.E. during the time of Jeroboam, before the Assyrians moved against Israel. With the exception of some later additions (see below), there is nothing in the book that contradicts a 18. G. M. Tucker, "Prophetic Authenticity: A Form Critical Study of Amos 7:10-17," Int 27 (1973): 423-34. 19. Wilson probably goes too far in concluding that Amos was "a member of the Judean establishment"; see R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 270. See his discussion of the issues related to translating D"Hp3 (1:1) as "shepherds" (p. 268). The identification of Amos as a shepherd in 7:14—15 is less problematic.

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mid-eighth-century date for the prophet. Most likely, given the reference to "two years before the earthquake" in 1:1 and the account of Amaziah's move against him, including his report to the king, it is likely that Amos was active for only a short time. Just how long cannot be known. Also, since so many of the words are addressed to Bethel and Samaria, it is reasonable to conclude that he presented at least some of his addresses in those two centers. HI. The History of the Composition of the Book of Amos It is clear on the surface that the book of Amos did not originate all at one time, written by a single author, whether in the eighth century B.C.E. or later. At the very least, the superscription and the account in 7:10-14 are third person reports that present themselves as distinct from the speeches and vision reports. These texts thus open the question of the growth of an earlier "book" into its received form. When examining this growth, the issue is not fundamentally what the history of composition was, but how much of that history one can reconstruct. In other words, how much evidence is there for different stages in authorship and their relative or absolute dates? These questions may be approached from two directions. One is to sort out the most likely secondary material on the basis of the balance of probability, that is, to re-examine the old "sourcecritical" proposals. A second is to examine the structure of the book for evidence of how it came together. Throughout the modern history of the interpretation of Amos, many parts of it have been considered "secondary." Among the most obvious of these, as I have pointed out, are the superscription (1:1) and the third person account in 7:10-14. These two very likely stem from quite different eras. The report of the conflict between Amos and Amaziah is written from the perspective of one who presents himself as an eyewitness who shares the perspective of the prophet. It is not possible to know if the first of these claims is true, but it is likely that the report arose and was perpetuated by supporters if not disciples of Amos. The superscription in its present form presumes the existence of a book (not necessarily the final form of the book), and, as discussed above, reflects the scribal concerns of groups or individuals that wished to identify books as sacred scriptures.20 Also, Amos 1:2 most likely should be included with 1:1 as an introduction to and interpretation of the book that follows, as this verse is unlike most of the prophecies of judgment in the remainder of the book. Unlike other prophecies in Amos, 1:2 is a broad and general statement 20. Tucker, "Prophetic Superscriptions."

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about the effectiveness of Yahweh's word from Jerusalem, lacks any reasons for judgment, and is hymnic in style. The only clear secondary addition among the prophecies against the foreign nations and Israel (1:3-2:16) is the announcement against Judah (2:4-5). Although this announcement uses most of the formulas found in the other oracles, the remaining language and content are significantly distinctive. This unit employs technical theological language common to Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History to specify reasons for punishment: "rejected" (DKD), "law of Yahweh" (niPP min), and "after which their fathers walked."21 The addition of this prophecy alone— regardless of one's judgment concerning other possible additions— demonstrates that the setting for the final redaction of our unit was with deuteronomistic circles in Judah in the exilic or postexilic period. As a result, the words of Amos continued to live—and to be reinterpreted— long after the punishment prophesied for Israel had occurred, and even after a similar disaster had befallen Judah as well. Many commentators consider the oracles against Edom (1:11-12) and Tyre (1:9-10) secondary as well, primarily because of their formal similarity to the one against Judah. That is possible, but the case is not convincing. Structural or formal evidence alone is not sufficient without clear and convincing linguistic and historical-linguistic evidence. The so-called "epilogue" (9:8c-15) long has been considered a secondary edition. First it should be pointed out that these verses are not a single unit, and can be called an "epilogue" only because they comprise the final part of the book. The line that concludes v. 8, "except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, says the LORD," has the appearance of a Judean gloss on the preceding announcement of total destruction of "the sinful kingdom" (9:8). The line is most likely a correction from the perspective of the time of the Babylonian Exile. It is not unreasonable, however, to argue that the prophetic voice responsible for the announcement of judgment is clarifying its meaning. The second part of the section, 9:9-10, is suspect on the grounds of its contents. It introduces an understanding of Yahweh's judgment not found elsewhere in the book, namely, that there will be a separation between the guilty and the innocent: "All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say, 'Evil shall not overtake or meet us.'" Not only in the preceding announcement (9:8) but throughout the book, the prophet announces judgment on the people as a whole. On the other hand, one finds individuals (7:16-17) or groups (4:1-3) singled out for 21. W. H. Schmidt, 174-78; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 163-64; J. L. Mays, Amos: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 41-42; and many others agree.

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judgment, and condemnation of people for arrogance is a major basis for judgment in Amos. So these two verses may or may not be secondary. The strongest case can be made that the final verses of the book, 9:1115, the announcement of restoration, are secondary additions. Although both the language and the vision of the future are unlike those in the rest of the book, this is not the primary basis for considering these verses to be much later than the eighth century B.C.E. These lines should not be considered secondary because the prophet would have been incapable of announcing salvation after announcing judgment, but mainly because of their historical perspective. The expressions "the booth of David that is fallen," "rebuild as in the days of old" (v. 11), "restore the fortunes of my people Israel," "rebuild the ruined cities" (v. 14), and "they shall never again be plucked up" (v. 15) presume that the announced destruction has come. The unit assumes disaster and announces reconstruction. Additional evidence is the distinctive style and vocabulary.22 Of course it is possible that a prophet could turn from the announcement of judgment to salvation. In this case the critical historical imagination must posit one of two things: first, that the eighth-century prophet has projected himself into the era of the exile to announce that once the judgment has come then will come salvation. The interpreter will need to supply the missing transition. Second, that a subsequent editor/author has seen the destruction and then reinterpreted the prophetic voice, the word of God, in a new time. Given the facts that there is other evidence for a history of redaction (Judah oracle, third person materials, etc.), and that the pattern of judgment followed by salvation is known in other prophetic books, the latter is the more likely, and meets the balance of probability. The conclusion that these words do not come from the original prophet in no way diminishes their validity; rather, it shows that subsequent tradents have continued to take the old words seriously and reinterpret them in a new age. The three hymnic passages in Amos (4:13; 5:8-9; 9:5-6) raise important questions about the history of the redaction the book. Each one stands out in its context as distinctive, because in every case there is a dramatic break in style and function. There is a shift from the words of Yahweh to words addressed to Yahweh, from announcement of the future to praise of the creative activities of the one whose name is Yahweh, the God of hosts. Using series of predicative participles and refrains they affirm the power and authority of the one who has just pronounced judgment on his people, and have most appropriately been called doxologies

22. See, e.g., Harper, Amos and Hosea, 192-200.

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of judgment.23 Because of their common themes and refrain, "the LORD, the God of hosts is his name" (1Û27 HINDim1^ mrp), it has been commonly concluded that the three are parts of a single hymns.24 Some argue there is no reason to believe the hymn could not have been in use in the time of Amos.25 It certainly is possible that they were known before the mid-eighth century, but they hardly correspond to the style and genre of the Amos discourses, and they clearly reflect a cultic, liturgical setting.26 Based on the structure and setting of the final form of the book, it is most likely that the hymnic fragments reflect the liturgical use of the prophetic traditions in the exilic or post-exilic period. Efforts to see these doxologies as conclusions to distinct sections of the book, like the hymns in Isa 12, have been unsuccessful. Nevertheless, they, along with the old prophecies, functioned for the community that had experienced the judgment as confession and praise of the one who was both creator and judge.27 This is a modest list of later additions to an earlier form or forms of the tradition. There doubtless are more additions and modifications than we can establish on the basis of the balance of probability. That leaves most of the book, not as the original oral or written words of Amos, but as the most likely early tradition. When these later texts are set aside we are not left with the ipsissima verba of Amos. There is no way to reach that level of certainty. Rather, what remains is the earliest tradition of the words of the eighth-century prophet. Moreover, although one can identify different additions to the book from various periods and perspectives, we are not left with a series of redactions of an original text, although there is evidence for texts from different periods. For any further insight into the history of the redaction of the book we need to turn to its structure. 23. See especially J. L. Crenshaw, "Amos and the Theophanic Tradition," ZA W 80 (1968): 203—16; idem, Hymnic Affirmation of Divine Justice: The Doxologies of Amos and Related Texts in the Old Testament (SBLDS 24; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975); F. Horst, "Die Doxologien im Amosbuch," ZA W41 (1929): 45-54; repr. in idem, GottesRecht (TB 12; Munich: Kaiser, 1961), 155-66; K. Koch, "Die Rolle der hymnischen Abschnitte in der Komposition des Amos-Buches," ZA W 86 (1974): 504-37. 24. For the history of interpretation, see Werner Berg, Die sogennanten Hymnfragmente in Amosbuch (Europaische Hochschulschriften 12; Bern: Herbert Lang, 1974). 25. Mays, Amos, 83-84. Paul attributes them to the prophet (Amos, 152-56). 26. Crenshaw identifies the unit concluded by the first doxology (4:6-13) as "a liturgy of wasted opportunity"; see J. L. Crenshaw, "A Liturgy of Wasted Opportunity (Am. 4:6-12; Isa. 9:7-10:4; 5:26-29)," Semitics 1 (1970): 27-37 (36). 27. Cf. Josh 7:19, and Horst, "Die Doxologien im Amosbuch."

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The question of the history of the composition of the book—indeed, all issues of interpretation—must be based on a descriptive analysis of the configuration or outline of the book in its received form. How many units are there, and what is their relationship to one another? There are many legitimate answers to the question of how many units there are, depending upon one's perspective and the goals of the interpretation. Of course, there is one unit, the book itself. But at another level even that "unit" is part of a larger one, the Book of the Twelve. Or there are two units, the introduction ( 1:1-2, or 1:1, some would argue), and the body of the book (1:3-9:15). It is also accurate to say that there are fifty-five or even more units. In that analysis one needs to recognize that many of those smaller units are constitutive parts of larger wholes, such as the specific addresses in the announcements against the foreign nations and Israel (1:2-2:16).28 So, the question is not just how many units and what they are, but what conclusions one draws from such distinctions. For example, were they originally independent oral addresses, as early form-critical analysis often argued, or simply parts of a greater literary whole? Answers cannot be taken for granted, but must be determined in each case. Remarkably, at the level of the outline of the book as a whole there is widespread agreement among interpreters. Such agreement stems from the fact that there are so many clear markers for units and sections. There is, of course, considerable disagreement about what to make of that structure, including the relationship of the parts to one another and especially concerning the history of the book's composition. There are markers for units that signal both conjunction and disjunction, that is, some that link units and some that separate them. Formal indicators that show the connection of units to one another include refrains or repeated formulas, such as those in each of the sections of 1:3-2:16 and the refrain "yet you did not return to me, says the LORD" (miT DK3 ni? Draer»X 4:6-12). The common genre, structure, and formulas link the five vision reports together (7:1-9:4) in spite of intervening material. Introductory formulas, such as "Hear this word" ("1UEE? ^mrrnK) in 3:1; 4:1, and 5:1, as well as "Woe" ('in, 5:18; 6:1) clearly indicate the beginning of a new unit, if not necessarily an originally independent speech. Shifts in genre, for example, from prophetic address to narrative or hymnic language, indicate breaks in the book. Some markers signal both conjunction and disjunction, such as the catchword "Jeroboam" in 7:9 and 10 (cf. also Isa 1:9 and 10). 28. One could go even further to argue that each sentence, as the smallest unit of meaning, is a unit, but each one is significant fundamentally as part of larger contexts.

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One can hardly think of Amos as a single composition, organized sequentially, either in terms of development of thought or chronologically. To be sure, elements of organization and development can be discerned, particularly in individual sections. The body of the book readily divides into two major sections, the first as a series of prophetic addresses (1:3-6:14) and the second shaped around the five vision reports (7:19:15). The contents of the first section are organized variously. Some parts are longer compositions and others appear as collections of independent prophetic speeches. Because of their rhetorical consistency, the oracles against the nations and Israel (with the prophecy against Judah in 2:4-5 as a later addition) would have been a composition; none of the parts would have been independent speeches. Also, the calls to attention in 3:1; 4:1, and 5:1 frame separate more-or-less organized collections of prophetic addresses. Moreover, in the context of the collected speeches of Amos, the general and somewhat reflective theological character of 3:1-2 allows it to serve as a fitting introduction to the collection of speeches in 3:1-6:14.29 One also may argue for the existence of compositional units in the first six chapters of Amos on the basis of literary features. Because of the appearance of mrP "Ql ("the LORD has spoken") in 3:1 and ~D1 HIT ("the LORD has spoken") in 3:8, Melugin has concluded that 3:1-8 is a composition rather than a collection of diverse speeches.30 Additionally, although 5:1-17 consists of quite distinct materials with clearly discernible shifts of genre, speaker, addressee, and theme, there is sufficient coherence and organization to conclude that diverse materials were assembled to form a compositional unit rather than a simple collection of diverse speeches.31 Another principle for the organization of some of the material in the book appears to have been geography, as the speeches in Amos 3-4 focus upon Samaria in particular. On the other hand, scholars have tried in vain to discern the geographical pattern of the prophecies against the foreign nations in 1:3-2:16, apart from the turn to Israel in the last unit. Although some prophetic books, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, follow a broad chronological organization, there simply is insufficient evidence in the form of specific historical allusions to make such a case for the book of Amos. 29. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 175. 30. R. F. Melugin. "The Formation of Amos: An Analysis of Exegetical Method," in SBL Seminar Papers, 1978 (2 vols.; SBLSP 13-14; Missoula, Mont; Scholars Press, 1978), 1:369-91. 31. J. de Waard takes this conclusion further to argue for a careful literary composition in "The Chiastic Structure of Amos V 1-17," VT21 (1977): 170-77.

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Amos 7:1-9:15 is organized around the five vision reports. As argued above, an earlier form of that section concluded with 9:8b. Although this section includes a third person narrative, prophetic addresses, and one of the doxologies of judgment, the vision reports present themselves as a once independent composition that has been expanded by the other materials. All of the reports have a great deal in common: they are first person accounts of prophetic visions that turn to announcements. It is their differences, however, that reveal the rhetoric of the composition. In the first two (7:1-3, 4-6) the prophet sees a threat to the people ("locusts," "shower of fire"), intercedes with Yahweh on their behalf, and Yahweh relents. In the next two (7:7-9; 8:1-3) the vision is not a threat ("plumb line," "basket of summer fruit") but an occasion for a proclamation of judgment, given without any explicit reasons for it. Amos does not intercede. The final vision (9:1-4) is introduced differently for it is a vision of the Lord himself proclaiming total and unrelenting destruction from which there is no escape. It is tempting to relate this development to the life of the prophet, interceding early on but eventually convinced that the end will come. Given, however, the rhetorical coherence and power of these reports as a whole, it is unlikely they were originally independent vision reports given at different times. The early tradition of the vision reports has drawn other material into its orbit. What accounts for the insertion of the third person account of the conflict between Amos and Amaziah (7:10-17) between the third and fourth vision reports? A simple answer is the connection of the catchword "Jeroboam" in w. 9 and 10. But the connection is deeper. The third vision report concludes with the Lord's promise to "rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword," and Amaziah reports that Amos has said "Jeroboam shall die by the sword" (7:11). Preservation of the story of the conflict in relation to an announcement that provoked it was more significant to an editor than maintaining the coherence of the vision reports.32 It is not so difficult to understand the location of the prophecies of judgment between the fourth and fifth vision reports (8:4-14). For the most part their theme is consistent with that of the vision reports, and especially the final one: the end has come for Israel. Moreover, both the first person vision reports and the third person narrative contain proclamations of judgment.

32. Mays, Amos, 123. For a different view, see P. R. Ackroyd, "A Judgment Narrative Between Kings and Chronicles? An Approach to Amos 7:9-17," in Coats and Long, eds., Canon and Authority, 71-87, and Jeremias, Amos, 137.

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It is not possible to know as much as one would want about the historical context of Amos and the history of the book's development. It is possible to reach some reasonable historical conclusions, including locating the prophet in the mid-eighth century B.C.E. and knowing a few facts about his background. It is also possible to recognize some of the steps along the way from the earliest tradition of the words of Amos to their appropriation and modification in the exilic and post-exilic periods. With regard to both history and the history of composition, one does well to be cautious and modest about one's conclusions and claims.

REDACTION, HISTORY, AND REDACTION-HISTORY OF AMOS IN RECENT SCHOLARSHIP Marc Zvi Brettler

How should a historian of ancient Israel view the book of Amos? Certainly, it may be used as a source to be mined, so that a more complete picture of the eighth century might emerge.1 It is, however, difficult to make use of prophetic material, with all its rhetoric, as a straightforward historical source. Furthermore, the issues related to the composition of Amos are so complex, with different scholars suggesting wildly different ideas of the book's redaction and when various parts were composed.2 This makes it especially difficult to know which sections of Amos may be used to reconstruct the eighth century. The following comments will examine these issues in relation to the well-known oracle against Judah (Amos 2:4-5), the penultimate oracle against the nations. It is especially appropriate to dedicate this study to Professor Hayes, who has done so much important research in prophetic material and in reconstructing the ancient history of Israel.3 The oracle reads: Thus said the LORD: || For three transgressions of Judah, || For four, I will not revoke it: || Because they have spurned the Teaching of the LORD || And have not observed His laws; || They are beguiled by the delusions || After which their fathers walked. || I will send down fire upon Judah, || And it shall devour the fortresses of Jerusalem.4 1. See most recently W. Houston, "Was There a Social Crisis in the Eighth Century?," in In Search ofPre-Exilic Israel (éd. J. Day; JSOTSup 406; London: T. &. T. Clark International, 2004), 130-49. 2. As summarized by S. N. Rosenbaum, "Amos," DBI, 32, scholars "seem to vie with each other in proposing ever more layers of accretions." 3. Since Professor Hayes always enjoys good academic debate, I am certain that he will not mind my approach and my differences with his Amos the Eighth Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988). 4. Unless indicated otherwise, translations follow NJPS Tanakh. The siglum || indicates the conventional poetic division of the text.

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nm-iir^in rmrr ^uœs ntfw^B mrr no» rn

TIÛB? «^ rpm mrr rmrrn» oawy^s "WOR n1? ^nn^en orrirm orrat* iD^mon crrnn mum o'^enT mao-ia n^D»i rmrrn œ« Two main problems are typically discussed in relation to this passage: whether or not it is original to Amos, and the referent of D^TD, here translated as "delusions." Unfortunately, most scholars have not realized the extent to which these two issues are intertwined. I will highlight this issue by focusing on two major, relatively recent Amos commentaries: the Anchor Bible Commentary by Francis Andersen and David Noel Freedman, and the second Hermeneia commentary on Amos, by Shalom Paul.5 Though these commentaries are quite different in many ways, including their interpretation of these verses, they are fundamentally similar in that they focus on the book of Amos. For example, Andersen and Freedman note that even though "[a]n editor is at work putting the book together, certainly using materials taken directly from the prophet," "[w]e are more concerned with its literary form as a finished, though not necessarily perfect, product than with the forms of the numerous and very diverse ingredients that were used in the making of it."6 Their logic for interpreting in this manner is not entirely consistent. On the one hand, they present what seems to be in interpretive premise: "What concerns us most is the interpretation of the book of Amos as it now stands complete."7 On the other hand, they claim: If we finish with a reluctance to discard any part of the book as "certainly not Amos," it is partly because we have come to the conclusion, after working through the whole business many times and weighing all arguments, that there are no compelling reasons against accepting most if not all of the book as possibly, indeed probably (we can never say "certainly") Amos.8

It is thus somewhat unclear if their reading of the book as a literary unity is their beginning point or their conclusion; if it is both, the argument is certainly circular. 5. F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos (AB 24 A; New York: Doubleday, 1989); S. M. Paul, Amos (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). This follows H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977). Not surprisingly, the OTL commentary by J. Jeremias, The Book of Amos: A Commentary (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster, 1998) does distinguish between editorial layers, even setting them in distinct typefaces in the translation. 6. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 74, 3. 7. Ibid., 143. 8. Ibid., 143-44.

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Paul is also deeply critical of the "scissors-and-paste method" used by many German scholars.9 He claims that rejecting this approach was not his starting point, but was developed after close analysis convinced him "[a]lmost all of the arguments for later interpolations and redactions, including a Deuteronomistic one, are shown to be based on fragile foundations and inconclusive evidence."10 These scholars may be seen as representative of a new tendency in prophetic studies, in fact, in biblical studies as a whole. Many scholars have begun to doubt our ability to discern different layers in texts, and have instead studied texts as complete entities.11 Attention has moved to the prophetic book as it now stands, rather than to its building blocks.12 Perhaps this is a reaction against the hyper-critical methods practiced in Germany and elsewhere.13 This is not the place to critique holistic readings of texts. Given, however, that Andersen and Freedman and Paul claim that they conclude rather than assume that the book is a compositional unity, it is appropriate to offer a test example in order to see if the text of the oracle against Judah bolsters their position. My beginning point, which may differ from that of many of my readers, comes from my study of biblical historical texts. I contend that each historical text must be examined independently, with neither a presumption that it is historically accurate nor a presumption that is historically inaccurate.14 Similarly, each prophetic oracle needs to be examined independently, and there is no reason either to presume that, for example, just because something is in the book of Amos it is by Amos, or that nothing in Amos is by the prophet of that name. As seen with Andersen and Freedman and Paul, some scholars seem to assume that a proper initial assumption is that all of Amos is by Amos unless over-riding proof may 9. Paul, Amos, 6. A similar argument is made by Hayes, Amos, 33,37-38,54-58. 10. Paul, Amos, 6. 11. The most famous statement about this is by Edmund Leach, who described source criticism as "unscrambling the omelette"; see E. Leach, "Introduction," in Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth (ed. E. Leach and D. A. Aycock; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 3. 12. See especially E. Ben Zvi, "The Prophetic Book: A Key Form of Prophetic Literature," in The Changing Face of Form Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (ed. M. A. Sweeney and E. Ben Zvi; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 276-97. 13. Note especially Paul's (Amos, 26) explicit comment that "It is not probable that any Hebrew prophet wrote with the fear or the standards of German literary criticism before his eyes." 14. See M. Z. Brettler, "Method in the Application of Source Material to Historical Writing (With Particular Reference to the Ninth Century BCE): Textual Sources," in Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (éd. H. G. M. Williamson; British Academy Symposium Series; Oxford; Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

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be found that this is not the case. Given, however, what we understand about other prophetic books like Isaiah—namely, that it had a long and complicated history—and of non-prophetic works such as the Deuteronomistic History, which underwent complex editing, I do not understand why we should presume that all of Amos is by Amos unless we can adduce very strong evidence to the contrary. Every oracle or phrase in the book of Amos should have the initial status of "possibly belonging to Amos," and it is our job as scholars to adduce evidence of different types that suggests, with different degrees of probability, that it either is or is not original to that prophet. I believe that scholars such as Hans Walter Wolff have offered evidence that suggests that Amos 2:4-5, the oracle against Judah, is likely secondary, though not all of the arguments that Wolff adduces are equally compelling.15 For example, his claim that the phraseology of the verses is deuteronomistic, even though v. 4 uses D^DTD rather than the expected ^IFI, is of no value. His general arguments are weighty, however, including his observation that the oracles against Damascus, Gaza, Ammon, and Israel, which he considers original, share a common fivepart structure: an introductory formula, a claim or irrevocable punishment, an indictment using ^U followed by the infinitive construct plus pronominal suffix, an announcement of punishment, and a concluding formula, "said the LORD" (mrr "ID»). When these criteria are brought to bear on the oracle against Judah, it is obvious that the final element, "said the LORD" is missing. In addition, the third section (indictment) is longer than that found in the oracles that are likely original, while the announcement of punishment is shorter. In addition, YHWH is mentioned only in this oracle in the third person—contrast 2:4, mrr mirm» DDKU'^r 1"1QCD »*? Vpm ("they have spurned the Teaching of the LORD \\ And have not observed #w laws"), with 2:9, DiTDfiD "HDKrrnK TTOZn '33K1 ("Yet I Destroyed the Amorite before them"). Especially if we start from the neutral position that any verse may or may not be original to the prophet, it seems that Wolff's conclusions should be accepted. Paul directly addresses Wolffs points, especially in a section "Additional Literary and Form-critical Criteria," where he claims that even the oracles that Wolff views as original show some variation, so the deviation of the type seen here with Judah should not suggest that it is secondary.16 15. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 140. According to John Barton (Amos's Oracles Against the Nations: A Study of Amos 1.3-2.5 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980], 24), the oracle against Judah is "certainly.. .not by Amos." 16. Paul, Amos, 24—27. Some similar arguments for the originality of this oracle are made by Hayes, Amos, 101-4.1 will not focus on this work, since the arguments of Paul and Andersen and Freedman are more recent and more detailed.

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The internal differences, however, between Wolffs original oracles are much smaller than the differences between those four and the oracle against Judah. In general, Paul objects to the idea that variations indicate secondary insertions, suggesting instead that later editors "naturally would have harmonized the differences and produced a literary unity."17 This is incorrect. Jeffrey Tigay has adduced several examples where awkward redaction is found in the standard version of the Gilgamesh Epic.18 Also, I have shown how the four originally separate stories that now comprise the Samson cycle have beenpartially homogenized, while some tensions still are allowed to exist.19 Thus, Paul's contentions that later editors succeeded in introducing their additions in a neat, unified fashion, and that lack of unity is some sort of indication of originality, are faulty.20 Furthermore, Paul's argument that if we keep all of the oracles we have a 7-8 pattern, well-known in the Bible and the ancient Near East, carries little weight—almost every type of X/X+1 pattern is well-known in the Bible and the ancient Near East.21 Finally, and most significantly, as I will show below, the content of the oracle suggests that it is very unlikely to be original. In many ways, the arguments of Andersen and Freedman are similar to those of Paul. For example, they note: In terms of plan and style, Amos 2:4-5 is not much different from 1:32:3... Only v 4b is distinctive; and there are two questions: (1) Is it so different from genuine Amos that we cannot leave it with the rest of his

17. Paul, Amos, 26. 18. This and many other helpful insights are found in J. H. Tigay, ed., Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), to which M. Cogan, "Some Text-Critical Issues in the Hebrew Bible from an Assyriological Perspective," Textus 22 (2005): 1-20, should be added. 19. M. Z. Brettler, The Book of Judges (Old Testament Readings; London: Routledge, 2002), 40-60. For example, the editor of these texts has allowed it to remain ambiguous whether Samson is naturally strong, as when he rips off the city gates of Gaza (Judg 16:1-3), or if he is strong only when the spirit of the LORD descends upon him (see, e.g., 14:6). 20. I also do not find compelling the arguments of A. E. Steinmann, "The Order of Amos' Oracles Against the Nations: 1:3-2:16," JBL 111 (1992): 683-89. Several of the patterns that he discerns strike me as overly subtle, and he never explains the purpose of these patterns. In addition, his evidence from concatenous patterns may be editorial rather than compositional, as is the case in adjacent units in the book of Judges. (See the discussion cited in the previous note.) 21. Paul, Amos, 27-30. On X/X+1 patterns, see W. G. E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its Techniques (JSOTSup 26; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986), 144-49.

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Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past word? (2) Does it resemble Deuteronomistic writings, so that its source can be discovered or at least suspected?22

Contrary to Andersen and Freedman, v. 4b is not the only problem—the Judah oracle does not contain the concluding formula "says the LORD" and its announcement of punishment is shorter than the other oracles. Any claim that all the oracles are from the same hand must deal with all the evidence. Furthermore, like Paul, they claim that this oracle is really similar to the others, while it is not. They do not explain why certain types of variation are found in these oracles, why four are so alike, and why the rest are different in a variety of ways. Without specific suggestions for why the particular variations appear in these specific cases, it is worth considering these verses as secondary, especially if other evidence is available. In addition, I believe that the way that Andersen and Freedman frame their question is wrong. They ask, "is it [the oracle against Judah] so different from genuine Amos that we cannot leave it with the rest of his word?" The issue is not whether we can or "cannot leave it with the rest of his word." That phraseology requires a strong burden of proof before something is found secondary. Instead, we should ask, more neutrally, should we or should not view it as original, given its form and content and what we understand about the process of composition of prophetic books? I believe that we should consider it secondary since, as discussed above, its structure is exceptional, and, as I will now discuss, its content suggests that it is secondary. As Wolff notes, "the isolation of a secondary stratum... is based not only on form-critical analysis of the transmitted text, but can be judiciously supported by linguistic and historical-theological considerations."23 Most scholars suggest that the transgression (I7CS) of Judah in the oracle is idolatry. Already Wolffhas inadvertently highlighted the problem of this interpretation: "delusions" (3TD), which appears in v. 4b, never elsewhere refers to idols.24 Thus, Paul is inaccurate in stating "The Hebrew D^TD ('delusions, lies') is one of several cacophonie words employed in the Bible to describe idolatry."25 Instead of "idolatry," the standard understanding of this word, it is better to follow the suggestion of the late twelfth and early thirteenth-century Jewish exegete and grammarian, David Qimhi, who glosses "They are beguiled by the delusions" 22. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 295. 23. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 140. 24. Ibid., 164. 25. Paul, Amos, 75. So more recently in R. J. Coggins, Joel and Amos (NCBC; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 98.

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(Dn'DTD DIIHTI) as "pen ^D] nm OH, "these are the words of the false prophets." This interpretation has been rediscovered by Andersen and Freedman, and by Eberhard Bons, who have not, however, cited Qimhi.26 The most compelling supporting evidence that they adduce is mat the noun DTD ("delusions") is used seven times of false prophets in Ezekiel (13:6, 7, 8, 9, 19; 21:34; 22:28), and that the verb '0n ("to beguile"), found in the same verse in Amos, is also at home in false-prophet pericopae. Thus, the phrase D1TDTD D1Um suggests that false prophecy is being condemned; the following phrase DiT"inK DPIDK ID'n "1BR ("After which their fathers walked") suggests that the children were misled by the very same (optimistic, but false) prophecies that had already misled their parents, so they did not change their ways. The rest of this oracle contains additional phrases that appear elsewhere in conjunction with false prophecy. For example, miT mm ("the Teaching of the LORD") refers to prophetic teachings in a variety of contexts.27 In addition, 1"1DC? &'"> Vpm ("And have not observed His laws") likely also refers to prophetic words, as in 2 Kgs 17:13, where they (Tllpn) were "transmitted to you through My servants the prophets." In sum, the study of other appearances of terms in Amos 2:4 suggests strongly that this verse is condemning Judah for not heeding the prophets, the transmitters of "the teachings of the LORD," and for ignoring true prophetic "injunctions" (Vpn).28 Instead, the people of Judah and their parents have been misled by false prophets and their prophecies, that is, "their delusions" (DÎTDTD).29 Thus, biblical usage suggests that this interpretation of "their delusions" (DÎT3TD), advocated by Qimhi, Bohns, and Andersen and Freedman, is preferable to the suggestion that it refers to idolatry. It is very unlikely, however, that an oracle condemning false prophecy would have 26. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 300-304; E. Bons, "Das Dénotât von DÎT3TD 'ihre Lugen' im Judaspruch Am 2,4-5," ZAWU8 (1996): 201-13 (209-13). His arguments overlap very significantly with Andersen and Freedman's. 27. For a discussion of various uses of torah in the Bible, see Michael Fishbane, "Torah," Encyclopedia Biblica (9 vols.; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1950-88 [Hebrew]), 8:469-83, and F. Garcia Lopez, "min torah" ThWAT'8.597-637. On its possible meanings in Amos, see Bons, "Das Dénotât," 205-9. Most scholars, however, do not adequately emphasize the extent to which torah may refer to prophetic teachings. Hayes (Amos, 102—4), suggests that torah here is neither a religious reference nor a reference to false teachings but refers to proper political courses of action. 28. I am not following NJPS here. 29. Contrast, for example, the position of Bons, "Das Dénotât," 213, who has a different understanding of torah here, and thus speaks of "der Achtung der Tora Jahwes und seiner Propheten" (my emphasis).

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arisen at the beginning of the period of classical prophecy.30 Andersen and Freedman are aware of this problem, and suggest: "The problem of false prophets was long-standing in Israel" and they speak of "the preoccupation of all eighth-century prophets with it."31 This strong assertion, however, is not bolstered through the citation of sufficient sources. The book of Amos contains no parallels to units like Jer 23:9-40, the collection condemning the false prophets, or Jer 27-28, which highlights Jeremiah's conflict with Hananiah son of Azur, or Ezek 13, which condemns those who prophesy lies pTD).32 Finally, even though it is possible that false prophecy is as old as the rise of classical prophecy and the period of Amos, it is highly unlikely that it would be offered as the single reason for condemning Judah in the eighth century. Furthermore, it would be inaccurate to criticize Judah by claiming that this has been going on for generations ("after which their fathers walked"). As suggested earlier, the positions of Paul and Andersen and Freedman may be seen as a reaction against those scholars who had earlier distinguished a specific number of clearly delineated redactional layers in Amos. Their positions also could be seen as a continuation of the critique by Roy Melugin, who noted already in 1978: "Indeed, anyone who studies the problem of the formation of the Book of Amos must ask to what extent such a reconstruction is even possible."33 The legitimate critique, however, that it is difficult to determine precisely these redactional layers—a critique supported by the tremendous diversity of models suggested by different scholars—does not mean that we should treat the book as a unity. Instead, it suggests that we need to present any redactional conclusions more tentatively, and can rarely, if ever, be positive that a specific verse should be assigned to a specific level of redaction and dated to a very specific time. As a result, only general suggestions about the redaction of books such as Amos should be made. This does not, however, mean that we are better off suggesting that Amos is the author of the entire book. In addition to the points raised here, I would explore the oracle against Judah's connection to Amos 3:7 and 8:11. Those verses also deal with 30. I am not following here the position of R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), who suggests that the term "classical prophecy" should be abandoned; I continue to find this term helpful. 31. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 304. 32. On this unit as a collection or a cycle, see, for example, R. P. Carroll, Jeremiah (OIL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 449-50. 33. R. F. Melugin, "The Formation of Amos: An Analysis of Exegetical Method," in SBL Seminar Papers, 1978 (2 vols.; SBLSP 13-14; Missoula, Mont; Scholars Press, 1978), 1:369-91 (375).

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prophecy, and also show signs of being secondary. Some indications of their secondary nature include the fact that "Indeed, my Lord GOD does nothing || Without having revealed His purpose || To His servants the prophets" (3:7) is in prose (in contrast to the surrounding poetry) and interrupts the flow of the rhetorical questions in SrS-S.34 Furthermore, the phrase "His servants the prophets" is "otherwise used chiefly by writers of the age of Jeremiah."35 In sum, 3:7 is likely post-Amos. Likewise, the famous, "A time is coming—declares my Lord GOD— when I will send a famine upon the land: not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the LORD" (8:11) is also likely post-Amos.36 Its opening phrase, "A time is coming" (D^ND U*№ !"!]!"[) is predominantly found in Jeremiah, while the phrase "words of the LORD" (mrp *HD"7) in the sense of a prophetic oracle, is found in the prophets almost exclusively in Jeremiah.37 Thus, one or more editors concerned with prophecy as an institution probably added verses to the prophetic book of Amos, projecting backwards key ideas concerning the nature of prophecy, the evils of false prophecy, and the ultimate end of prophecy.38 It is difficult, however, to determine if these verses are the product of a single or multiple school of redactors, and when he or they lived, and what other verses he or they might have been responsible for.39 These difficulties or uncertainties do not mean, however, that it is best simply to assign them to Amos, as some have done. 34. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 181. 35. S. R. Driver, The Books of Joel and Amos (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 162. 36. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 324-25. 37. Fifteen out of 19 or 20 occurrences of D^ND D"1^ run are in Jeremiah. The others are Amos 4:2; 8:11; 9:13; 2 Kgs 20:1 - Isa 39:6. Whether we speak of 19 or 20 occurrences depends on whether or not the parallel texts from 2 Kings and Isaiah are counted as one or two texts. In the case of miT "HUT, I am not including cases of the singular miT ~Q"T; the occurrences of the plural are Jer 36:4, 6, 8,10,11; 37:2; 43: l;Ezek 11:25. 38. The projection of the present backwards when reconstructing the past is a fundamental principle of pre-modern history writing, including biblical history writing. See M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995). There is no reason to assume that the prophetic corpus would be any different. 39. Although the tendency in scholarship would be to speak of a single later redactor concerned with prophecy who added these three verses, I am becoming more sympathetic in general to fragmentary hypotheses, which see a much more complex and nuanced history of the development of the text. See my forthcoming "Method in the Application of Source Material to Historical Writing (With Particular Reference to the Ninth Century BCE): Textual Sources."

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Why does any of this matter? There are many ways of reading biblical texts, and of using biblical texts. One use of these texts is to reconstruct history. For this purpose, it is important (1) to understand properly the referent of "their delusions" (DïTDTD) in Amos 2:4; and (2) to understand when this text was written. I believe that this study does not produce any evidence pertinent to the eighth century, since Amos 2:4-5 was likely written later than that. Given that "delusions" likely refers to false prophets, this text instead should be grouped with other texts that show significant anxiety about the nature and power of false prophecy and provide additional evidence for the later concern that prophecy is a dangerous institution because prophets have tremendous power to mislead the people with their "delusions."40

40. See, for example, J. L. Crenshaw, Prophetic Conflict: Its Effect Upon Israelite Religion (BZAW 124; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), and Thomas W. Overholt, The Threat of Falsehood: A Study in the Theology of the Book of Jeremiah (SBT 216; Naperville, 111.: Allenson, 1970). Concerning Deuteronomy's very ambivalent attitude to this issue, see H. M. Barstad, "The Understanding of the Prophets in Deuteronomy," SJOT8 (1994): 236-51, and, concerning a similar attitude in Kings, see E. Ben Zvi, "Prophets and Prophecy in the Compositional and Redactional Notes in I-n Kings," ZAW105 (1993): 331-51.1 would like to thank Professor Ben Zvi for offering comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

AMOS, MAN AND BOOK Philip R. Davies

The relationship between literature and history has always lain at the centre of biblical exegesis. In recent years some literary critics have ignored history or relegated it to a place of minor importance in biblical studies, seeing the Bible as a collection of contemporary texts to be addressed by self-consciously modern authors. John Hayes is not such a scholar; on the contrary, he has distinguished himself by his work on Israelite and Judaean history. He has also shown a keen interest in the prophets, in which the literary and historical issues, that is, the relationship between the author and the book, are at the fore. In this tribute to John Hayes I want, therefore, to make some observations about the prophet as author and as literary character, as creator and as creature. I shall take Amos as my example and Hayes's influential 1988 commentary on Amos as a starting point.1 My thoughts are unlikely to provoke his agreement, but a man with such a fine sense of humour will surely derive some amusement from my impudence. Searching for Unity in Amos Hayes's commentary set a new agenda for Amos studies in suggesting a unified message in the book and a precise historical context for that message. His interpretation is, as he makes clear, somewhat innovative: During the past century of research on Amos, scholars have repeatedly defended a number of conclusions about the book and activity of the prophet, some of which have reached the level of presupposed axioms from which any interpretation must begin... None of these conclusions can withstand close scrutiny; all should be discarded as interpretative assumptions.2 1. J. H. Hayes, Amos, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988). 2. Ibid., 13.

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These "interpretative assumptions" he lists as follows: • Amos was the earliest of the "classical" prophets; • He addressed a nation prosperous under Jeroboam II; • He delivered a large number of short addresses; • His primary concerns were social justice; • For him, the essence of religion was ethical behaviour; • Amos offered a pessimistic view of Israel's future; • He saw Assyria as the instrument of divine punishment; and • The book is the product of a long editorial process.3 Hayes concludes that Amos delivered his speeches on one occasion, at the autumn festival in 750, at a time not of prosperity but of economic retrenchment, and that the enemy to which Amos alludes threateningly is not Assyria, but a coalition formed against Assyria by the very nations listed in the oracles in 1:3-2:3. Moreover, according to Hayes, Amos "never unequivocally proclaimed the total destruction and end of the people";4 the final words promising restoration and addressing a defeated and exiled Judah (9:11-15) in particular "should be considered authentic to the prophet Amos."5 As for the origin of the book, "it is easier to assume either that Amos wrote his own words, whether before or after delivering them, or, more likely, that they were written down by someone in the audience."6 A number of other commentaries have followed Hayes's lead in defending all or nearly all of the book of Amos as the work of the prophet, including the promises of survival. In most instances, such commentaries also find a rhetorical and theological unity to the book's contents as well. Andersen and Freedman, Paul, and Sweeney all follow Hayes in challenging the "traditional" critical view (as represented, for instance, by the commentaries of Mays and Wolff), that the original words of Amos consisted of short sayings that were secondarily supplied with doxologies including 4:13; 5:8-9; 9:5-6 and, especially, 9:11-15.7 Also, according to the still more usual view, 9:11-15, hi their positive forecast, seem to overturn the message of unqualified destruction that 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 39. 5. Ibid., 223. 6. Ibid., 39. 7. F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos (AB 24A; New York: Doubleday, 1989); S. M. Paul, Amos (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); M. A. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets (2 vols.; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000); J. L. Mays, Amos: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969); H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).

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appears to characterize the rest of the book. The counter-argument offered is that such a message would make little sense and that these final verses, far from being a corrective or an afterthought, are central to the prophet's message. Sweeney, for instance, contends that the prophets would surely not have confronted their listeners with the unavoidable prospect of destruction or exile without offering some grounds for positive reaction that might avert that fate: Such a contention seems to be the more morally defensible and intellectually consistent route insofar as it portrays the prophets—and G-d—as figures who are ultimately interested in effecting constructive change in ancient society and indeed as figures who are themselves morally accountable.8

Sweeney appeals further to Amos 5:4 and 6, where we find the exhortations to "seek me and live, but do not seek Bethel," and "seek Yahweh and live." These sayings, as he rightly points out, have not generally been regarded as later additions to an original message, and hence it has been acknowledged, at least implicitly, that Amos did call for a change of behaviour that could avert the threatened punishment: Such exhortation establishes the fundamental rhetorical purpose of Amos' portrayals of coming judgment—and restoration. Amos' oracles can not be taken individually as past scholars have done, but as components of a larger well designed text—whether oral or written—that presents a rhetorical argument designed to convince its audience to adapt the book's viewpoint and recommended course of action.9

Paul makes a similar point: Punishment for punishment's sake is not the prophetic ideal. The prophet's chastisement is meant to serve as a transitional stage to a period of future restoration, at least for the surviving remnant.10

This view has a certain logic, even common sense, but quite apart from the contention of Jer 28:8-9 that "the prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms," it does not follow necessarily that these final words actually do come from Amos (even if he might have agreed with such sentiments). Does the oracle against Israel in 2:6-16 imply a 8. M. A. Sweeney, "The Dystopianization of Utopian Prophetic Literature: The Case of Amos 9:11-15," in Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature (éd. E. Ben Zvi; Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2006), 175-85. 9. Ibid. 10. Paul, Amos, 289.

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call to repentance? If so, should the same not also be true of the other oracles in 1:3-2:3? From the opposite perspective, Auld points out that "nowhere in the preserved public words of Amos do we find any intercession for his people (assuming he did regard them as 'his' people), since the intercession within the visions—if that is the correct term— takes place after the destruction has occurred."11 Another approach to the unity of the book is to attribute virtually all of the book to the prophet on literary grounds, as do Andersen and Freedman. They claim that the book is a "highly structured unity" because they "recognize the early prophets, and Amos in particular, as versatile verbal craftsmen, quite capable of using cultic and wisdom pieces as well as the more direct oracles in their speeches."12 A "highly structured unity," however, can as well indicate an editor with some literary skill, while their claim that the prophets possessed a variety of literary skills is a mere assertion that contradicts a large body of work on the Hebrew Bible generally. The evidence of their own commentary points, if anything, towards a highly competent assembly of various pieces of material into a coherent and well-structured whole.13 Despite the weaknesses in some of the arguments for Amos's unity, Hayes and his successors have a point: the "traditional" critical view effectively sees the message of the prophet and that of the book in tension, holding that the words of Amos were transmitted and remained relevant for succeeding generations, and that the book in its canonized form addresses readers that the prophet did not originally confront. This 11. A. G. Auld, Amos (OTG; Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1986), 22. It might be countered that in the first two visions of Amos (7:2, 5), the prophet intercedes, but, according to 7:2, the locust plague is already over ("TON1? n^D'DN; NRSV: "When they had finished eating"). Some interpretations, however, have implied that the locusts are about to consume and thus left open the possibility for Amos's intercession. For instance, Charles Torrey's emendation to n^3Q N1H TP1 (C. C. Torrey, "Notes on Am 2:7; 6:10; 8:3; 9:8-10," JBL 13 [1894]: 63), is followed by Mays, Amos, 127. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 292, translates the phrase, without emendation, as "about to finish off." Paul, Amos, 228, on the contrary, insists that the destruction has occurred, and that Amos is asking for pardon and for no further action. Likewise, n^DKT in 7:4 is more probably a simple perfect; the fire had already consumed, despite the NRSV's "was eating up." It might be that Amos is interceding, not to avert the punishment but for there to be no more of it (so ^"F!"!, v. 5). 12. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 144. 13. The rhetorical study of K. Môller, A Prophet in Debate: The Rhetoric of Persuasion in the Book of Amos (JSOTSup 372; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), by contrast, does not attempt "to establish an Amosian authorship" (p. 118) on the basis of a coherent structure, though Môller does in fact prefer a date before the end of the kingdom of Judah.

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traditional view of the book does makes sense of the fact that the words of Amos, or at least a book in his name, were preserved well after he is supposed to have lived. If this understanding is correct, the tension is not really a problem. Indeed, any tension inherent in the disjunction between the words' original context and later contexts in which they were read may in fact be tension that ancient (as well as modern) readers were well able to sustain, as they saw the words of a prophet from the past coining home to them in a different place and time. But as usually formulated, the traditional view also maintains that a prophetic "tradition" —or a set of short oracles—about Israel, that in fact turned out to be correct, was preserved, somehow re-applied to Judah after the fall of Israel, and then contradicted, first in 9:8c (regarding Israel? or Judah?) and then by 9:1115. The final words, when read from an exilic or postexilic standpoint, are not, then, seen to apply to the "house of Israel" that had long disappeared, but refer to Judah, which can also see itself in some way as "Israel." In arguing against this understanding of the growth of the book, Hayes is right to point out that there is "no evidence whatever" for any "disciples" developing and transmitting an "Amos tradition."14 It certainly has to be conceded that at the heart of scholarship on biblical prophecy lies a deep chasm of ignorance about how and why prophetic scrolls were really written down, then copied and recopied, reworked and canonized.15 Thus, though the "traditional" view may not in fact be wrong, it is rather hypothetical, and is hardly a model of coherence. The efforts of Hayes, Andersen and Freedman, Paul, and Sweeney to find a more coherent interpretation are understandable. Yet are they on the right track by simply assigning virtually everything in the book to the original prophet? In addressing this question, we may as well maintain the focus on 9:11-15 and the reference to the "falling (or fallen) booth of David" (n^SDH TIT HDD, v. 11). In what sense would an eighth-century prophet have used this term in addressing Israelites? Andersen and Freedman, with Paul, explain the promise of a reconstituted Davidic line by assuming Israelite awareness of a once glorious past in which Judah and Israel were united under David. Thus Paul speaks of a "nostalgic reflection 14. Hayes, Amos, 39. 15. Cf. Ibid. : "how the book of Amos came into being remains unknown." I have discussed the problem—without providing any definite solution—in an essay on the literary origins and transmission of the prophetic literature: P. R. Davies, "'Pen of Iron, Point of Diamond' (Jer 17:1): Prophecy as Writing," in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy (ed. M. Floyd and E. Ben Zvi; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2000), 65-81.

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upon the ideal period of David"; for him, the "fallen booth" was the "concomitant result of the rupture of the United Kingdom."16 Andersen and Freedman likewise regard the "fallen booth of David" as the "empire" that "had happened long ago," a "nostalgia" that "must have started early and increased steadily over the years."17 Some caution must be taken with this assumption. First, the view that the "booth of David" refers to a once-united kingdom depends, of course on accepting that such an entity actually existed, which the present state of discussion leaves far from certain.18 Also, for this interpretation, the more plausible translation "falling" for n^S3n should surely be preferred; it is strange, then, that these supporters of an eighth-century date prefer "fallen," which favours exilic dating.19 Hayes (followed by Sweeney) indeed insists that the "booth of David" is described as "falling," not "fallen," and so is still in existence, though in a weak state relative to its neighbours, especially Israel.20 Yet another way to account for these verses as Amos's is demonstrated by Sweeney, who sees in them a possible attempt by the prophet to elicit repentance from his audience by employing Utopian images of the idyllic future that will follow a change of attitude. As for the specifics of such an idyll: Given the presentation of Amos as a Judean who appears at the northern Israelite sanctuary at Beth El at a time of Judean subservience to northern Israel and the Jehu dynasty, such an idyllic scenario would call for the rejection of the house of Jehu and the restoration of Judean, Davidic kingship over Israel.21

The suggestion that Amos uttered such words at Bethel is problematic. Perhaps, as Sweeney suggests, there were (Judaean) traditions (whether based on historical reality or not) that underlay Amos's words, but, even so, could Amos have really been unaware that these might not be shared, 16. Paul, Amos, 291. 17. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 916. 18. The debate about the historicity of the United Monarchy remains intense and unresolved. See I. Finkelstein, "The Archaeology of the United Monarchy: An Alternative View," Levant 28 (1996): 177-87, and A. Mazar, "Iron Age Chronology: A Reply to I. Finkelstein," Levant 29 (1997): 157-67, for the beginning of the ceramic aspects of the debate. For a good review and discussion of the wider question, see G. Knoppers, "The Vanishing Solomon: The Disappearance of the United Monarchy from Recent Histories of Ancient Israel," JBL 116 (1997): 19-44. 19. Andersen and Freedmen, Amos, 885; Paul, Amos, 288. 20. Hayes, Amos, 224. 21. Sweeney, "The Dystopianization of Utopian Prophetic Literature," 178.

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let alone welcomed, by Israelites? Even allowing for a memory of a historical "united monarchy" among the population of Israel, the biblical traditions themselves imply a good deal of animosity between the two "houses," beginning in the time of David himself—an animosity perhaps fuelled by the quite different policies and relationships towards Assyria which Israel and Judah promoted. It is doubtful that any political "unity" between Israel and Judah, whether or not it had existed previously, would have been welcomed by Israelites. In short: to present rule under a member of the Davidic dynasty as a reward for repentance would have been tactless and counter-productive in the eighth century B.C.E. Hayes, as usual, is alert to the problem and offers at least a partial solution: Amos was calling for an uprising against Jeroboam, inviting his hearers to switch their allegiance to Jerusalem. For Hayes, "at a minimum, Amos may have considered the Davidic house to represent the only viable political entity among his people" or, as an alternative, Amos "actually exhibits a pro-Davidic bias."22 Hayes further claims that Amos's threats against the "house of Israel" are confined to the ruling dynasty in Israel, which will be toppled by an invading force (Aram and Philistia).23 The "house of Jacob" in 9:8 denotes, by contrast, the wider Israelite nation, some of whom would survive.24 Judah would be strengthened by the fall of the Israelite dynasty and could turn its attention to recovering territory from Edom.25 In addition, Hayes's suggestion makes good sense of Amaziah's message to the king in 7:10 (though Amos's expulsion from Bethel must then have been an extremely mild reaction!). Hayes's case for the "authenticity" of Amos 9:11-15 is sustained by a unique reconstruction of the historical context. Otherwise, there remains a high degree of implausibility in Amos's offering his Israelite audience the prospect of a Judaean resurgence. If Amos is not inviting the allegiance of its hearers to the Judaean ruling dynasty, promises about the future of Judah would not have resonance in Bethel at all, and might well hinder the impact of his call for a rebellion against Jeroboam.26 22. Hayes, Amos, 226, 227. 23. The problem here is that deportation was unlikely to be foreseen at the hands of the Philistines or Aramaeans: to where would they have exiled Israelites? And why? By contrast, deportation was a well-known Assyrian imperial strategy—not merely a punitive measure, but politically and economically rational. 24. Hayes, Amos, 220. 25. Ibid., 225. 26. An additional problem is how such positive predictions for Judah here fit with the oracle against Judah in 2:4-5, which, despite these verses' curious content, Hayes also takes to be authentic words of Amos. Unfortunately there is no space here to discuss this issue in detail. Concerning the oracle against Judah, Hayes says,

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Beyond the difficulties of 9:11-15, there are other problems with systematizing the entire contents of the book as a coherent message of an eighth-century prophet. I noted earlier Sweeney's allusion to Amos 5:4 and 5:6 as calls to repentance. The verb in these instances, CTfT, "seek," implies of course some kind of cultic activity, and the book's critique of cultic behaviour deserves more attention than it generally receives. This is especially important since in the book no specific cultic malpractice is adduced and it is hard to see exactly what an eighth-century Amos would have been objecting to. Some clues might be found in 4:4, where we find Bethel and Gilgal as places where people "sin" (I7CS), and 5:5, which specifically threatens doom on them, as well as on Beersheba. The reference to Beersheba looks very much out of place here, but it recurs in 8:14. Paul suggests that some Israelites used to cross the border to visit Beersheba.27 But what would Amos have against this (non-Israelite) sanctuary? An eighth-century prophet is unlikely to have held the view that Jerusalem was the only proper place for worship, and had he expressed that view, his effectiveness at Bethel would surely have been rather minimal. Is there perhaps some other agenda requiring an attack on a sanctuaries challenging Jerusalem through their geographical proximity? We might turn to 5:21-25 for some indications of what Amos is critiquing. It reads, in part: "I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies... Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?" These statements, however, seem to relate to all sacrifice, without discrimination, and thus presumably would include sacrifice at Jerusalem.28 Religious practice without a cult makes no sense in any period of ancient Israelite or Judaean history, except perhaps in the Babylonian exile, and Amos the prophet can hardly have favoured the abolition of cult. Most commentators thus understand that the words mean only that cultic behaviour should be accompanied by social justice, but this attitude "The generality of the statements concerning Judah's wrongdoings make it difficult to know to what Amos was referring," (ibid, 103), but Hayes does try to impart a political/ethical meaning to its deuteronomistic-sounding language. 27. Paul, Amos, 163. 28. Note the interesting but speculative suggestions by Bic that Amos was a cultic official (a hepatoscoper), in M. Bic, "Der Prophet Amos—Bin Haepatoskopos?" FT 1(1951): 293-96, and the suggestion by Steiner that Amos supplied sacrificial animals for the Jerusalem temple (a view, incidentally, that in my own undergraduate days was relayed by G. Henton Davies in his lectures), in R. C. Steiner, Stockmen from Tekoa, Sycomores from Sheba: A Study of Amos ' Occupations (CBQMS 36; Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2003).

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hardly justifies an attack on the sanctuaries themselves. There is a hint of idolatrous practice, perhaps, in 5:26 and 8:14, where again Beersheba is mentioned, and there are threats against deities invoked in Samaria and (perhaps) in Dan, but no critique along the lines of Hosea or Isa 40-55 seems to be part of Amos's agenda. Thus in such criticisms we encounter an issue intrinsic to the rhetoric of the book of Amos that has yet to find a satisfactory explanation: Amos is here presented as calling for these sanctuaries to be abandoned, and is predicting their destruction. This certainly runs counter to the widely prevailing traditional view that Amos was concerned only with social ills and not bothered about cultic matters.29 There are further difficulties facing any attempt to create more coherence in the book of Amos, namely, the question of whether we have a secure knowledge of a historical prophet behind the book whose life and message we can reconstruct. Searching for the Prophet What we know about the prophet Amos is frequently taken for granted, but is far from solid, as the advocates of the "traditional" view of the book generally recognize. The superscription in 1:1 is agreed to be editorial (even by the scholars mentioned earlier who promote the book's original eighth-century unity), and follows the pattern of many such headings in the Book of the Twelve that seem based on correlations with 2 Kings.30 Where does this historical dating, and the other information in 1:1, come from? Some of it could be derived from elsewhere in the book, such as the dating to Jeroboam II, which could derive either from 7:9 (the culmination of the third vision report) or 7:10 (the narrative). 29. Hayes (Amos, 157-58) excepts himself from the views that Amos implies that Jerusalem is the "only legitimate place of worship." He associates Bethel and Gilgal with Jeroboam and Pekah, and thus worship there as activities of "rival political groups" (p. 145). Beer-sheba, he says, was likely the cult centre of a Judaean anti-Assyrian faction (p. 159). Amos's insistence that worshippers avoid these places, Hayes claims, is his way of urging "non-participation in the civil strife that soon tore Israelite society apart" (ibid.). 30. The correlation here with Uzziah conforms to the statement of 2 Kgs 15:1. A table and an analysis of the superscriptions can be found in Davies, " 'Pen of Iron,' " 66-69. On the problematic chronology of Uzziah, see Hayes, Amos, 45. It is worth asking why Amaziah is not mentioned, as he reigned in Judah during the first part of Jeroboam's reign. In the superscriptions of Hosea and Micah more than one Judaean king is named; why not here? A simple explanation is that the editors took Amos to have uttered his words within a year, and perhaps, ideally, shortly before Jeroboam died.

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Similarly, the description "among the herdsmen" could be derived from 7:14, though this cannot be certain. The reference to Tekoa certainly must come from information external to the book, especially since, as most commentators point out, Tekoa is not a place for sycamores.31 The same appears true of "two years before the earthquake" (or "for two years..."); the reference to the earthquake might be partially deduced or amplified from 1:2, but the "two years" is presumably derived from elsewhere—possibly reflecting some obscure chronological deduction, but also possibly a memory of an event associated with the words of Amos.32 Thus "two years before the earthquake" and "from Tekoa'" are the only data that could not be created out of the contents of the book itself and thus may in fact be part of the original collection.33 If the scroll of Amos's words had an original title, then, it may have been "Words of Amos of Tekoa: what he saw about Israel. Two years before the earthquake," in other words, author, content, date (the latter being sufficient as long as the earthquake was remembered).34 If the narrative of 7:10-17 is reliable, of course, then we can add its details to our knowledge of the prophet. But even those scholars who regard it as a reliable report accept that it appears to be secondary to the vision cycle in which it is embedded and which it interrupts.35 That obviously raises a question about its provenance. Was it transmitted together with the words of Amos (though not among his "words"?). Even scholars of the "traditional" persuasion largely assume that it relates a real event, including Wolff, though he observes that the story is primarily about Amaziah and his fate, not about Amos, Israel or Jeroboam.36 Why, then, was it inserted into a scroll of Amos's words? What exactly is its function? It certainly fulfils several incidental functions: offering data 31. See Steiner, Stockmen from Tekoa, for amplification. 32. Zech 14:5, of course, alludes to an earthquake in the time of Uzziah, and the possibility of an inventive link with this on the basis of 1:2 cannot be ruled out. 33. If, however, noqedis not a clarification ofboqer, then the entire phrase "who was among the noqedim from Tekoa" might have been part of an original collection of Amos sayings rather than editorially deduced. Paul, Amos, 248, claims that there is simply no contradiction between the terms (which to many interpreters seem to imply different kinds of animal), but even if he were right, the use of two different words remains to be explained. 34. Several commentators find the collocation of "seeing" and "words" troublesome, though it occurs also in Isa 2:1 and Mic 1:1. My proposal to separate the two as indicated in my translation here avoids that issue and could also apply to the Micah superscription, but not to the Isaiah text. 3 5. Including Hayes, Amos, 231. 36. Wolfif, Joel and Amos, 308.

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about the circumstances of Amos's call and about his profession, and repeating the threat of exile for Israel. But a complicating issue is the parallel story in 1 Kgs 13, in which an unnamed prophet prophesies the destruction of Bethel's altar. A Judaean connection, a Jeroboam, the Bethel altar and eating bread are shared features of both narratives.37 If we have more than a coincidence here, then one story is influenced by the other (or both by a common tradition). The issue of historicity in the case of Amos is thus rather fraught. By way of illustrating the possibilities of exploiting the Kings narrative, I shall allude to Christoph Levin's far-reaching deductions.38 He suggests that the phrase "house of Jeroboam" in 7:9 implies Jeroboam I, the founder of the "high places" and of the kingdom of Israel, rather than Jeroboam II. This connection would give a particular emphasis to the promise of restoration of the "fallen/falling booth of David" since this restoration would amount to a reversal of Jeroboam's "sin"— both in setting up Bethel and in breaching the unity of the kingdom. Thus, "the message of Amos about the end of Israel will have included the entire history of the northern kingdom, up to its downfall" and "at the time of the later conclusion to Amos the connection between Amos and Jeroboam I was still current."39 In Levin's view, the relationship between 1 Kgs 13 and Amos 7:10-17 confirms that this identification continued to be made when the latter narrative was inserted into the Amos scroll. The author of the superscription, however, misunderstood Amos 7 and placed Amos in the time of Jeroboam n, leading also to a misreading of the point of the message that the prophet had given. Other scholars have explored with less radical conclusions the relationship between 1 Kgs 13 and Amos 7:10-17. Ackroyd, for example complicated the issue by noting the case of 2 Chr 25:14-16, in which the Judaean king Amaziah is challenged by an unnamed prophet.40 Whatever view is taken of these intriguing aspects of the Amos narrative, we must not allow ourselves to assume that the narrative has its origin in a historical event involving Amos that was reliably transmitted. And since so much of what we know, or think we know, about the prophet Amos is derived from this narrative, any interpretation of the book that is based on a detailed reconstruction of Amos's career and 37. Auld, Amos, 28, adds the "lion" (Amos 1:1; 3:4, 8; 5:20). 38. C. Levin, "Amos und Jerobeam I," FT745 (1995): 307-17. 39. Ibid., 310,313. 40. P. R. Ackroyd, "A Judgment Narrative Between Kings and Chronicles: An Approach to Amos 7.9-17," in Canon and Authority (ed. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 71-87.

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historical context requires a good deal of conjecture. The profile of the prophet is simply not a historical "given," as even Hayes seems to me to believe. I do not, of course, wish to argue a historical Amos out of existence simply by raising doubts or from a prejudicial scepticism. That a written collection of oracles entitled as suggested above came from a historical Amos is quite probable. It is certainly not unreasonable that written collections of prophetic words were lodged in the palaces and temples of Israel and Judah; we have ample evidence of such texts and of their preservation in archives.41 But we cannot be confident that everything in the book comes from this prophet, nor that the legend about him in 7:1017 really is reliable. The insertion of the narrative itself suggests that the scroll was later modified and that the original contents did not remain or were not simply retrieved in their pristine state until their incorporation in a Scroll of Twelve Prophets. But equally, the "traditional" idea that the scroll was transmitted as an ongoing religious or theological resource, teaching Judaeans a lesson about the fall of Israel before being reapplied to Judah itself, is not the only alternative. There is another possibility, one that also maintains a coherence within the book without assigning the entire contents to a prophet whose profile cannot really be reconstructed with great confidence. The Unity of the Book of Amos Arguments about the "unity" of a prophet's message are in the end arguments about the unity of the book itself. While it is never wise to presume that all biblical books must display some kind of literary unity, we should always expect to discover a certain integrity of purpose and theme. These are not necessarily the result of a single author; they are as much a product of a reasonably skilful editor, or even of a process of transmission in which the shape and purpose of the document is gradually acquired, in some cases bringing originally disparate contents into a meaningful shape.42 How do we, then, decide whether the book of Amos is best understood as the product of a single prophet (as Hayes and the other commentators mentioned earlier argue), or a longer process of 41. See, e.g., Floyd and Ben Zvi, eds., Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, throughout, and H. Huffinon, "A Company of Prophets: Marl, Assyria, Israel," in Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Environment (éd. M. Nissinen; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2000), 47-70. 42. The very fact that a document was preserved and copied itself presupposes a certain purpose, whether or not that purpose coincides with that of the text's original author.

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redaction (the "traditional" critical view), or a single process of composition, using existing and newly created material? While there should be no presumption in favour of any of these, the existence of the superscription and the narrative of 7:10-17, and of different forms and diction (the hymn fragments, the occasional Deuteronomic phrases, all of which have been identified and discussed at length in the commentaries) show that the prophet Amos himself was not simply "the author" of the book bearing his name. If the contents were even largely Amos's own words, the fact of their preservation well beyond their immediately relevant context points to purposes or "messages" in the book beyond those of the prophet himself. Apart from Hayes, virtually every commentator has concluded that that the book of Amos—and the message of the prophet himself—is primarily concerned with social justice in Israel. But the book itself has other features that do not fit this topic. The prediction about the "booth of David" does not fit (and, I have suggested, does not fit any plausible historical scenario for the prophet himself). Neither do the hymnic passages (Amos 4:13; 5:8; 9:5-6), whose lofty creation theology is close in sentiment and language to Second Isaiah (compare Isa 45:7 with Amos 5:8-9). But particularly awkward is the attack on Israelite sanctuaries, especially Bethel (and its priest), which points to other concerns as well. The book's invective has, in fact, three targets: Israel as a whole, the city of Samaria, and Bethel (sometimes with other sanctuaries). The first assault on Israel in 2:6-16 is quite general, as it is in ch. 3, where "Samaria" in w. 9 and 12 is perhaps singled out because it is the royal seat and thus the seat of royal luxury and oppression. That critique is resumed in 4:1. But Bethel is singled out for punishment in 3:14 and again, with Gilgal, in 4:4. After this, Samaria is mentioned again in 6:1 and (indirectly) in 8:14, while in 5:4—5 Bethel (and other sanctuaries) are also singled out again. In ch. 6, the sins of Samaria are laid out—wealth and oppression—and in ch. 7, while the first two visions relate to "Jacob," the third vision (7:7-10) speaks not just of the destruction of Israel but specifically of the "sanctuaries of Israel." The use of "Jacob" is also important here. It occurs six times in the book altogether: we find "house of Jacob" in 3:13 and 9:8, and "pride of Jacob" in 6:8 (which Hayes thinks may be a reference to Samaria; the literal, abstract meaning would be, as Wolff notes, unusual for Amos) and again in 8:7.43 "Jacob" alone occurs in 7:2 and 9:8. The proximity of "Jacob" and "Bethel" in Amos 7-9 is especially significant, since Bethel 43. Hayes, Amos, 188; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 282.

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was the sanctuary especially connected with that ancestor. The fate of the sanctuaries of Israel remains a topic in the book until the end (even if in 8:3 ^!DTI means "palace" rather than "temple," 8:5 alludes to new moons and sabbaths, and 8:10 to religious festivals [D3T1]). The section also ends: those who swear by Ashimah of Samaria, and say, "As your god lives, O Dan," and, "As the way of Beer-sheba lives"— they shall fall, and never rise again.

The vision series then culminates in 9:1-4 with a vision of an altar being destroyed and the people killed and exiled. Which altar? Most, including Mays, Paul, Andersen and Freedman, and apparently Hayes ("worshipers at the royal festival") assume Bethel.44 The text then moves on to the prospect of exile, until it returns to the "booth of David." What, then, might we expect the "booth" of David to refer to? As discussed above, the almost universal assumption is the Judaean dynasty, but the context suggests rather that it is the sanctuary of Jerusalem. This meaning creates a more powerful opposition than the political regimes of Israel and Judah, namely, the hegemony of Jerusalem vs. the existence of other sanctuaries, and especially Bethel. And this is an opposition that we could not plausibly assign to an eighth-century prophet. Hayes makes another critical point: "there is nothing in the book that would indicate the Israelites were officially practicing any form of religion other than Yahwism."45 Although as early as the Masoretic tradition 5:26 seems to be interpreted as an indication of idolatry, JTOD seems to be the same word as used in 9:11, where, I have suggested, it means the Jerusalem sanctuary, while DDTI^N does not have to be translated as a reference to multiple deities. Hayes's comment also underlines a crucial aspect of the book's critique: while the crimes of "Israel" and "Samaria" are all too clearly spelled out, those of Bethel (and other sanctuaries) are not. It is almost as if their existence were of itself an offence, or, perhaps, that while offering no specific pretext for their own destruction, they are guilty just by being Israelite.46 In short, the themes of social injustice, national destruction, exile, cult and Bethel are thus intertwined in the book of Amos in a way that is hard 44. Mays, Amos, 152; Paul, Amos, 274; Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 835; Hayes, Amos, 217. 45. Hayes, Amos, 39. 46. Contra Hayes, Amos, 157-58, who says, "The statements themselves are not a condemnation of certain sanctuaries and, by implication, advocacy of Jerusalem as the only legitimate place of worship."

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to attribute to an eighth-century prophet. Furthermore, the intertwining forms a kind of pattern, with a gradual shift of emphasis from national, social transgressions towards more specifically cultic ones (though neither of these aspects is ever entirely absent; they are juxtaposed throughout). This trajectory suggests that the end of the book may not be, after all, an afterthought or a correction, contradicting the "social" message of the remainder; rather, it may be precisely the culmination of the book's main theme: the supersession of Israelite sanctuaries by Jerusalem within the context of a broader supersession of "Israel" by Judah, or, perhaps, a supersession of "old" Israel by "new Israel." The idea of the ascension of a "new Israel" over an "old" Israel can indeed be discerned in the book itself. In his comments on ch. 9, Hayes separates the "booth of David" in 9:11, meaning the Judaean royal house, from the "remnant" of Jacob in 9:8, which, he claims, means the rump of the kingdom of Israel.47 A similar distinction is made by Paul, for whom, however, the "booth of David" is a unified "Davidic" empire.48 As long as both verses are assigned to an eighth-century prophet, such a differentiation is unavoidable, but problematic. Wolff also finds two distinct addresses, for he concludes that 9:8, though not from Amos but his disciples, refers to survivors of the kingdom of Israel, and regards 9:11 as a later addition emanating from, and referring to, Judah.49 At least his different entities relate to different times and purposes. Mays, however, while agreeing that 9:11 comes from, and relates to, exilic Judah, asserts that "In its present form the text of 8b simply contradicts the rest of the oracle and makes the foregoing pointless."50 In fact, he suggests emending the text from S D DSN to N *?!"!, "shall I indeed not destroy the house of Jacob."51 Mays thus seeks a greater consistency in what the "traditional" interpretation sees as the book's closing Judaean gloss, but he overlooks that fact that after the fall of Samaria, and especially in texts of the sixth-fifth century B.C.E., "Jacob" is apparently used in prophetic texts to refer to Judah: Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and have come out of the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of Yahweh, and make mention of the god of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness. (Isa 48:1) 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

Ibid., 221-22. Paul, Amos, 284-85. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 348, 352-54. Mays, Amos, 160. Ibid.

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Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and my elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall live there. (Isa 65:9)

This phenomenon is also evident in Isa 46:3 and 58:1, but can also be discerned in First Isaiah (Isa 10:20-21; 14:1; 29:22) as well as in Jeremiah (2:4; 5:20; 10:16,25; 30:7,10,18; 31:7,11; 33:26; 46:27-28; 51:19), Micah (5:7,8) and in Lamentations ( 1:17 and in 2:2-3: "Yahweh has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not shown pity.. .he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire"). When and why the name "Jacob" was transferred from the kingdom of Israel to Judah is too large a question to consider in detail here, but it is likely to be connected (either as a period of origin or as one of reinforcement) with the period after Benjamin was annexed to Judah. This process, too, is extremely difficult to reconstruct, but it almost certainly occurred after the fall of Samaria.52 Another crucial question here is the precise status of Bethel, both religiously and politically, not only in the eighth century but in the succeeding era. According to Josh 18:22, Bethel is allotted to the tribe of Benjamin, yet it was taken over by the "house of Joseph" in Judg 1:22. According to 2 Kgs 23, Josiah sacked Bethel, which scholars usually take to be part of an attempt at expanding his territory (but which on a careful reading of 23:19 is not included in the territory of Samaria). In Ezra (implicitly 2:28) and in Neh 11:31, Benjamin belonged with Judah: "The people of Benjamin also lived from Geba onward, at Michmash, Aija, Bethel and its villages." At all events, during the Neo-Babylonian era the territory of Benjamin was at the political heart of Judah. Blenkinsopp has argued that at this time Bethel also became the major sanctuary of Judah.53 Unlike Jerusalem, it was not destroyed by the Neo-Babylonians (nor, apparently, was it destroyed by the Assyrians when Samaria fell). This fact might seem to favour an eighth-century date for Amos, when Bethel was presumably still a royal Israelite sanctuary, but in fact it does not. The memory of Bethel's earlier prestige would have lingered, especially as Bethel remained a sanctuary in Judah until some point in the Persian period 52. The account in 1 Kgs 12:16-21 that links Benjamin with Judah in the time of Rehoboam is almost certainly secondary; note the statement in v. 20 that "There was no one who followed the house of David, except the tribe of Judah alone" and v. 21, where Rehoboam "assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin." Yet see further in 2 Chr 13:19, where the Judaean king Abijah, the successor of Rehoboam, captured Benjamin from Jeroboam. 53. J. Blenkinsopp, "The Judean Priesthood During the Neo-Babylonian and Achamenid Periods: A Hypothetical Reconstruction," CBQ 60 (1998): 25^3.

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which we cannot as yet determine. The same is probably true of Gilgal and Beersheba. During the Neo-Babylonian period, Beersheba would have been in the territory of Edom. This explains why Amos 9:12, proclaiming the restored sovereignty of the Jerusalem temple, embraces the reconquest of Edom in its Utopia: how else could Jerusalem ensure the destruction of all its Yahwistic rivals? The above observations, though far too brief, permit the statement of a new hypothesis about the origin and purpose of the book of Amos: it was compiled in the fifth century B.C.E. (or possibly somewhat later) as part of a much wider process of text-production in which the former political hegemony of Benjamin and the privilege enjoyed by its sanctuaries was removed and Jerusalem became not only once more the capital of Judah, but also for the first time championed as the only legitimate sanctuary for Yahwists.54 How do the contents of the book of Amos fit this agenda? First, we can reasonably assume that a collection of "words of Amos" formed the starting point: here were oracles that denounced Israel's depravity and were probably preserved in Bethel, the royal sanctuary; it was, after all, the custom for prophetic oracles to be addressed to the king and to be deposited in the royal archives (as mentioned earlier). There is, correspondingly, little reason for them to have been kept anywhere else (except possibly Samaria)—certainly not in Jerusalem; Amos the prophet had no message for Judah and his message for Israel had little relevance in Judah. The growth of the book begins, then, after Bethel has become part of Judah and as its status is being challenged by Jerusalem. The oracles create a pretext for a scroll that not only denounces Israel and proclaims its death as divine punishment, but is expanded to identify Judah as the "remnant" of "Jacob" that has been divinely preserved. The destruction of Yahwistic sanctuaries (Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba—and Samaria?) is now explicitly included, and the story of the prophet who prophesied the destruction of Bethel, of which we find a version in 1 Kgs 13, is exploited in an inserted narrative that denounces the high priest of Bethel (possibly, indeed, Amos was "identified" as the unknown prophet, if Levin's hypothesis is correct). Finally, as a climax, the restoration of Jerusalem as the sole temple of the sole god (the monotheistic features of the book ought not to be overlooked, especially the hymnic passages and

54. For more information on this process, see D. Edelman, The Origins of the "Second" Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (London: Equinox, 2005).

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9:7, though not 3:2, which nevertheless might reflect a covenant theology not present in the original oracle collection) is proclaimed as a divine promise.55 Amos is thus a book that betrays the same processes that we find elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible: the denunciation of the now defunct kingdom of Israel and the claim of Judah to be the legitimate survivor of an "Israel." (The tradition that this "Israel" once included both former kingdoms is not assumed in the book, however.) But why did Judaeans need to take on the identity of Israel? Two answers may be given. First, for over a century most Judaeans had come to be addressed by their god as "Jacob," which, we may infer, was standard practice in Benjaminite sanctuaries, and probably in other Israelite sanctuaries also. This identity could not have been denied without effectively proclaiming and enforcing a new god in Judah, hence the strategy of identifying Judah as the remnant of Jacob, so securing the legitimacy of the returning Judaeans (almost all, presumably, "Zionists" in the strict sense) as representatives of the "god of Jacob." A second reason was the existence of a Yahwistic Samaria. No doubt for some time after the restoration of Jerusalem as capital of Judah both Judah and Samaria coexisted relatively peacefully as Yahwistic entities, to the extent of sharing a common canonized Torah (with minimal textual divergences). Jerusalem's ambitious claim for preeminence as the only seat of the universal god Yahweh could not therefore deny some degree of legitimacy to Samaria, while requiring by all means possible to characterize its population either as secondary Yahwists (see 2 Kgs 17:24-28; note the pointed reference to Bethel in v. 28) or, more harshly, as formerly chosen by Yahweh but later rejected because of its sins. (Or, as the Chronicler chooses, effectively ignored altogether.) Conclusion: Amos—Book Rather than Man My hypothesis has much in common with Hayes's conclusions in his Amos commentary. I agree with him that the book has a fairly unified message that makes sense within a reasonably specific political context. I also agree that the core of the book consists of some probably genuine oracles from an Amos, perhaps even written by the prophet himself since in the ancient Near East oracles were regularly transmitted to their

55. It may be added that the oracle against Judah in 2:4-5 reflects the concerns of the ruling elite in Jerusalem in the fifth century onwards for the acceptance of the torah of Yahweh as the basis of social and religious life.

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recipient in writing.56 Whether the original Amos was from Tekoa or was at least a Judaean we shall never be certain. I further agree with Hayes about the importance of 9:11-15 to the message of the book as a whole. I would, however, disagree with him about the content of what the prophet Amos said (or even wrote); Amos's original pieces were most probably individual, short pieces collected and then copied onto a scroll that dealt mostly with social behaviour. Whether the foreign nation oracles or visions, both neat rhetorical units, subsequently disturbed, are also to be attributed to Amos or to some later contributor to the book, is also very hard to say, and also relatively unimportant. The rhetorical arrangement looks to be more likely the product of the author of the book, not by the author of the original oracle collection. The unifying agenda of the book of Amos, at any rate, is one of turning a scroll of collected oracles from the past to legitimize later Judaean assumption of the mantle of "Israel." Its purpose is to justify Jerusalem's triumph over Bethel and Judah's over Israel. If recent work on prophecy has moved towards any broad conclusions, it is that surely we should pay closer attention to what the existence of prophetic literature tells us about the history of Israel and Judah rather than trying to make plausible historical figures from their heroes. I hope that despite his almost certain disagreement, John Hayes will agree with me that history is still not only very important, but can be a lot of fun.

56. See Floyd and Ben Zvi, Writings and Speech, throughout.

"How CAN JACOB STAND? HE is so SMALL!" (AMOS 7:2): THE PROPHETIC WORD AND THE RE-IMAGINING OF ISRAEL J. Gordon McConville

The prophet Amos is best known, rightly, for his uncompromising demands for justice and righteousness in Israel. Perhaps only secondarily, however, is he remembered for the curious incongruity between the place of his origin and the place of his proclamation. The "herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees" from Tekoa in the southern kingdom of Judah, without prophetic pedigree, finds himself in the northern kingdom of Israel, in classic prophetic mode, confronting royal authority at its heart.1 Yet this dislocation is arguably the single most intriguing feature of the portrayal of the prophet's life and message. The question of where he belongs and where he has a right to prophesy is the issue identified by Amaziah the priest of Bethel as he exerts the authority of state and sanctuary to expel the turbulent Judean (7:12-13). Was Amos, after all, "in his own country," to borrow the later words of Jesus about unwelcome prophets (Luke 4:24)? In my view, both the narrative of the encounter at Bethel and the vision sequence in which it is embedded pose a question that goes beyond Amos's identity: they forcefully raise the question of the true nature of Israel. Hence, my interest in the present essay is in the concept of Israel in Amos, especially how that concept is expressed in the visions and narrative of Amos 7-9. The question that stimulated the inquiry is why Amos used the name "Jacob" in the first two visions (7:1-3,4-6) in imploring God not to permit the catastrophes portrayed there to occur. I want to suggest that Amos's choice of this name in his first two visions opens the question as to the true nature of 1. The exact nature of Amos's occupation, though much discussed, need not concern us here. We will return below to the meaning of his famous "not a prophet" declaration (7:14). The suggestion that he may not have been a southerner, but rather from a certain Tekoa in the north, has received little following; see J. Jeremias, The Book of Amos (OTL; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 13.

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Israel and that the visions, narrative, and oracles in chs. 7-9 combine to offer an answer to this question with persuasive force. The rhetorical function of Amos's terms for Israel appears when these terms are considered against the prophet's historical context: Amos uses the concept of a historic "Israel" to call into question false notions of Israel that prevail in his day. Since this essay is particularly concerned with the interaction of prophetic rhetoric and rhetorical situations, I am pleased to dedicate it to John Hayes, who has done so much to further the understanding of the rhetorical effectiveness of the prophetic books. I. Jacob, Israel, and Others in Amos The book of Amos compels us from the outset to think about the duality of Israel and Judah. Its opening line, in introducing what follows as "the words of Amos," already postulates the enigmatic relation between "Tekoa" and "Israel," a duality men reinforced by the names of the kings Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam n of Israel (1:1). Separate oracles for the two kingdoms are also included among the Oracles Against the Nations (2:4—5, 6-16), and Zion and Samaria are cited in parallel in 6:1. But what part does this doubleness play in the book? Is Amos not after all essentially a prophecy to the northern kingdom of Israel, with the prophet's origin in Judah somewhat incidental, and the scattered words concerning the southern kingdom merely tangential? The underlying narrative of Amos's purposeful trek north inclines us to the supposition that the recorded words of Amos had the north as their immediate target. Yet this understanding has its own difficulties, because there are texts in which neither Judah nor the northern kingdom is precisely in view, but rather a concept of the historic people of Israel, who were brought out of the land of Egypt as the object of God's choice (2:10; 3:1-2; 9:7-8). At the least, then, behind the separate kingdoms of his day lies the memory of an Israel that corresponded exactly to neither. This observation raises the question not only of what Amos means each time he uses the name "Israel," but also of the nature of his mission. Does the memory of historic Israel's past serve simply to persuade the northern kingdom to become a better form of itself? This might be implied by the allusion to the exodus in 2:10, in an oracle against "Israel" which (at least in the book's present form) is distinguished from Judah. Or is the memory of historic Israel in Amos broader, and perhaps more subversive, than this? These questions yield quite disparate answers among commentators. Hans Walter Wolff is one of those who regularly take "Israel" to refer to

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the north. When, in Amos's second vision, Yahweh says: "I am setting a plumb-line hi the midst of my people Israel" (7:8),2 Wolff writes: "'Israel' means here, as always in Amos, the northern kingdom," and reinforces the point by observing the contrast between "Israel" and "Judah" in 7:12,15.3 This view is then applied consistently to other texts. "Isaac" (7:9) also means the north because of pilgrimages by northerners to the sanctuary at patriarchal Beersheba (cf. 5:5),4 and "Jacob" in the visions is regarded simply as a synonym for Israel, that is, the northern kingdom. Of Amos's use of this name in 7:2 Wolff thinks it does not imply any appeal to ancient tradition, whether promise or election; it is merely a device to picture Israel's helplessness.5 By taking the rhetorical force of the name in this way he has neatly parried the possibility of an echo in it of the unified people. To account for those places where allusions to Judah and the historic people Israel are inescapable, Wolff postulates southern redactional layers. A Josianic layer steps up the invective of the prophet against Bethel in keeping with the account of Josiah's measures against that sanctuary (2 Kgs 23:15). This may be seen in certain additions to Amos's words (e.g. 3:14bcc; 5:6), designed to recall the destruction of Bethel and persuade a Judean audience not to fall victim to the same fate.6 A further deuteronomistic layer brings in the oracle against Judah (2:4-5) along with oracles against Edom and Tyre (1:9-12) and the allusion to Zion in 6:1. It is also responsible for 2:10-12 and 3 : Ib, in which the grounding of the prophetic message in the election of the historic unified people of Israel is unmistakeable. Finally, Wolff sees the superscription (1:1), with its chronological interest and its identification of both Israel and Judah as the scope of the prophet's words, as clearly deuteronomistic.7 By these means Wolff is able to sustain his view that when Amos said "Israel" and "Jacob" he meant the northern kingdom only. A number of others adopt a similar position.8 The important factor to note for our purposes is that 2. The meaning of the difficult "pN requires no special discussion here as it does not affect the point being pursued. 3. H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 301. He goes on to say: "Israel as the unified people of God would have been called 'Israel, my people' (SD17 ^HKT)"; (ibid). He does not substantiate this, however. The terms QS and ^NIET are variously combined in the exodus narrative. 4. Ibid., 301-2. 5. Ibid., 297-98. 6. Ibid., 111. 7. Ibid., 112-13. 8. Cf. R. B. Coote, Amos Among the Prophets: Composition and Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981 ), 48,63. Coote postulates a three-stage composition, in

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no attempt is made to offer a coherent understanding of the meaning of Israel in the book. Shalom Paul, for example, is like Wolff in his opinion that Amos thought of the northern kingdom when he spoke of Israel and Jacob and also in his supposition that Amos's use of the name Jacob in his intercession does not have connotations of the election of historic Israel.9 However, he credits Amos himself with almost all of the sayings in the book, and so attempts to give a coherent account of them.10 The oracle against Judah, for instance, is attributable to the prophet and rhetorically effective in a series designed to culminate in the unexpected accusation of (northern) Israel.11 The allusion to Zion in 6:1 is merely an allusion en passant in an oracle essentially directed to the north.12 For Amos 3:lb, however, Paul adopts a redactional solution and, like Wolff, suggests it is an addition to show that the oracle applies to Judah as well as Israel.13 In this way, Paul maintains that "Israel" consistently means the north, but he is not quite able to avoid the redactional method that he otherwise largely eschews. His project—to explain Amos entirely in terms of Amos's mission to the northern kingdom—stumbles over the meaning of "Israel" itself. Francis Andersen and David Noel Freedman, who also attribute most of the book to the prophet, examine at length each case of the various names used in the book.14 They attempt to resolve the problem inherent in the names, especially in the double potential of "Israel," by assigning fixed meanings to the names and their variations. Thus, "Israel," when it stands alone, means the northern kingdom, a usage derived from the contemporary political environment. This accounts well for many instances, such as the beginning of the oracle in 2:6. Other terms, such as "Joseph" and "Isaac" are parallels to "Israel" and also designate the northern kingdom. Expanded phrases such as "my people Israel," "house of Israel," and "sons of Israel," however, refer to historic Israel, or the united kingdom, or a future ideal kingdom. This deals well with the important passages 3:1 and 9:7a. Similarly, they state, "...ycfâqôb [Jacob] always stands for historic Israel, not for the northern kingdom as which a major B-redaction, post-722 B.C.E., challenges the claims of the Bethel sanctuary and is close to Dtrl. 9. S. M. Paul, Amos (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 229. 10. Ibid., 6. 11. Ibid., 20-24. 12. Ibid., 200. 13. Ibid., 100. 14. F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos (AB 24a; New York: Doubleday, 1989), 98-139.

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such, for that usage is never elsewhere attested."15 In Andersen and Freedman's view, therefore, unlike the views of Wolff and Paul, "Jacob" in Amos's first two visions refers to historic Israel. Andersen and Freedman have made an important contribution to understanding the problem of the names in Amos. Yet their analysis is strained at certain points. At 7:10, where Amaziah uses the extended expression "house of Israel" in his complaint against Amos, the context strongly suggests a reference to the northern kingdom, as Andersen and Freedman concede. They sustain their thesis here, however, by supposing that Amaziah deliberately includes the south in his accusation of conspiracy, knowing that Amos was from the south. This seems unlikely because it attributes to Amaziah a view of "Israel" that runs counter to the view he evinces in the dialogue, which involves an opposition between "Israel" and "Judah" (7:10-12).16 Andersen and Freedman encounter a further difficulty in 9:7-8, where, following their hypothesis, "Jacob" (v. 8b, historic Israel) is distinguished from "the sinful kingdom" (8a, the north), which in turn is identified with "Israel" in v. 7. This is supported by a reading of v. 7 in which "Israel" (in v. 7b) means the northern kingdom, while "sons of Israel" (v. 7a) refers to the historic people. Andersen and Freedman are aware of the anomaly of taking "Israel" as northern kingdom in 9:7, yet they maintain it on the basis of a chiasmus of Israel-sons of Israel-sons of Israel-Israel in 2:6, 11; 9:7.17 Yet the explanation runs counter both to a natural understanding of 9:7 and to the parallelism in it of the two phrases "Israel" and "sons of Israel." The above examples demonstrate that the attempt to resolve the problem of the names for Israel in Amos by attaching permanent fixed meanings to them fails to deal with the nuances of some of the actual texts. A more important issue is raised, however, by the method adopted by Andersen and Freedman. If Amos speaks sometimes about the northern kingdom and sometimes about historic (or ideal future) Israel, what is the rhetorical and theological significance of this? When there appears to be some tension in a text between the narrower and broader meanings of Israel, Andersen and Freedman tend to interpret this by saying that Amos is simply not thinking exclusively. In 2:9-11, for example, where they acknowledge a shift at v. 9 to a memory of historic Israel, they explain that Amos is using these traditions to show that what he is saying applies 15. Ibid., 98-99. 16. I shall return to Amaziah's concept of Israel below, as it is central to the argument offered here. 17. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 122-24.

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to both kingdoms.18 At 3:13, "Jacob," which they take to be always inclusive, occurs in a context which clearly has only the north in view. They meet this difficulty by arguing that, while the term includes the north here, "the emphasis is on the non-Israelites in the audience."19 Thus, they explain the incongruities between the narrower and broader references by relating them to audiences whom Amos may have in mind. In so doing, they overlook the question of whether Amos may be using the names with the rhetorical and theological intention of asking a question about the true nature of Israel. II. The Visions of Amos 7-9 in Rhetorical Context The historical impact of the visions in chs. 7-9 is bound up with the narrative in 7:10-17. While the visions and narrative are widely held to be unified in the present text, this unity is generally regarded as secondary, since the narrative interrupts the first four visions that originally formed a unit in themselves. Hence, scholars account for the present form of the text in numerous ways.20 According to Wolff's redactional account, for example, the visions and narrative explain each other: the third and fourth visions explain how Amos came to the conviction that he must preach judgment on the north, and, conversely, "the eviction from Bethel (7:12) explains why Amos wrote down his visions."21 This kind of explanation tries to understand the literature in terms of Amos's experience. Wolff goes on to speak of the prophet's painfully won conviction concerning his message of judgment on the northern kingdom: "[T]he hard road along which Amos was led in the visions, unbroken until at least the third or fourth vision, must be considered the decisive preparation for his appearance in the northern kingdom."22 Jorg Jeremias and Andersen and Freedman also explain the progression from oracles of forbearance in 7:1-6 to oracles of judgment in 7:7-9 and 8:1-2 in terms of Amos's own experience, memorializing a change of mind either in himself or in Yahweh.23 These commentators again understand the 18. Ibid., 101. 19. Ibid., 103. 20. An account of the various theories is given by H. G. M. Williamson, "The Prophet and the Plumb-Line: A Redaction-Critical Study of Amos vii," OTS 26 (1990): 101-21 (esp. 101-5). 21. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 295. 22. Ibid., 296. 23. Jeremias (Amos, 125) sees the sequence of visions as charting the prophet's learning curve: "Amos had to learn that there are limits to the divine patience... This changes the prophetic function in a fundamental way." Andersen and Freedman

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juxtaposition of visions and narrative in terms of events and moments in the prophet's life. In this approach, Amos's experience is apparently understood by analogy with that of the prophet Jeremiah.24 Reconstructions of this sort suffer from the general weakness that they have to postulate much that is unknown about the prophet's life and experience. In addition, they rarely explain satisfactorily why w. 10-17 are inserted between the third and fourth vision rather than after the fourth (or indeed in some other position in the book).25 In my view, however, their greatest weakness is that they fail to see the challenge that the discourse puts to the concept of Israel itself because they sit too comfortably within "northern" or "southern" readings. If we postpone historical reconstructions and read the text according to its internal development, I suggest that a different picture emerges. The careful integration of the visions and narrative in the present text is well known. The naming of Jeroboam (II) (7:10) at the beginning of the narrative forms a catchword link with the final phrase in v. 9, which announces the destruction of the "house of Jeroboam." Yahweh sets a plumb-line "w the midst (3"lp3) of my people Israel" (7:8b); Amaziah accuses Amos of fomenting conspiracy "w the midst p"lpD) of the house (Amos, 750) associate the visions closely with the plague-sequence in 4:6-11. The first two visions correspond to occasions when Yahweh brought a halt to the plague, while the second two visions signal "a radical change in Yahweh's policy: no more postponements." Their thesis involves a degree of speculation about other oracles that must have been given (ibid.): "There must have been oracles of repentance along with the plagues, and the result is coherent if Amos himself brought them." 24. This is acutely observed by Brueggemann as a tendency in the history of Amos studies, especially in English, citing G. A. Smith and R. S. Cripps. See W. Brueggemann, "Amos' Intercessory Formula," FT 19 (1969): 385. The tendency is noticeable in Wolff (Joel and Amos, 302b) too, however: "The prophet leaves no doubt that he, for his part, passionately suffered with Israel and, in solidarity with the helpless, strove with the Almighty on their behalf (7:2, 5)." 25. Williamson ("Plumb-Line," 104) points out this problem specifically in Wolffs theory. In his own account (ibid., 116), the narrative follows on the "plumbline" vision because the prophet himself is presented as "the plumb-line," the means by which Israel is found wanting. This requires placing the decisive shift towards judgment between the third and fourth visions, however, which underestimates "I will never again pass by them" in v. 8c. R. O'Connell ("Telescoping N+l Patterns in the Book of Amos," VT 46 [1996]: 56-73) offers a different kind of argument, finding that the intrusion of the narrative into the sequence of the first four visions yields an example of the 3 + 1 pattern exhibited elsewhere in Amos, for example, in 1:3-2:16. J. Limburg ("Sevenfold Structures in the Book of Annas" JBL 106 [1987]: 217-22) had previously also identified 7:1-8:3 as a redactional unit (one of six in Amos) on the basis of seven occurrences of divine speech-formulae in each unit.

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of Israel" (7: lOb). Yahweh says: "I will no longer (Til? syDWK'?) pass by them" (7:8c); Amaziah tells Amos: "You shall no longer (TIE *f DirTK1?) prophesy" (7:13). Other links involve "the sanctuaries C'CTTpD) of Israel" (7:9), "the king's sanctuary (enpQ)" (7:13), the "sword" (7:9, 17), and the name of Isaac (7:9, 16), which is unusually spelt in both places and occurs nowhere else in Amos.26 In addition may be noted the resonances of Jacob (in the first two visions), Bethel (in the narrative), and Jeroboam (in both parts). Jacob met God at Bethel (Gen 28:10-22), and Jeroboam I set up a calf for worship there (1 Kgs 12; cf. Exod 32). While the reference to "Jeroboam" may strictly be to Jeroboam II in both w. 9 and 10, Jeroboam I is also inevitably brought to mind by the theme of Bethel and worship. These echoes between the narrative and the visions make it clear that it has been forged into a redactional unit with them. If, then, we have a redactional unit of visions and narrative that begins Amos 7-9, upon what rhetorical traditions about "Israel" does this unit rely for its rhetorical strategy? For example, does the name "Jacob" make an implicit appeal to ancient election tradition? Paul thinks that Amos, in his response to the first two visions, makes no appeal to "traditional guarantees of salvation" and indeed his prayer "is not even motivated by a reminder of Israel's election."27 This is in direct contrast to Brueggemann, who finds in Amos's prayers examples of an intercessory formula rooted precisely in election and covenant, and thinks Amos himself functioned as a covenant mediator within the southern Davidic tradition.28 In these two opposing views, quite different rhetorical values are put upon the use of the name "Jacob." Interestingly for our purposes, these stress respectively Amos's address to the north (Paul) and his origin in the south (Brueggemann). A consideration of Brueggemann's approach will help us take further our inquiry as to the rhetorical context of the visions and their terms. He proposes a connection between Amos's plea that Jacob is "small" (|Dp) and the Jacob narratives in Genesis. In Genesis, Jacob is "small" in the 26. These links are noted by Jeremias, Amos, 137. He refers to H. Utzschneider for fuller analysis: "Die Amazjaerzahlung (Am 7,10-17) zwischen Literatur und Historic," £#41 (1988): 76-101. See also J. Wood, Amos in Song and Book Culture (JSOTSup 337; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 73; and Paul, Amos, 249, on the spelling of Isaac (pHET1). 27. Paul, Amos, 229. 28. Brueggemann, "Intercessory Formula," 397-99; cf. M. Policy, Amos and the Davidic Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 159. Others too have thought that Amos was originally a salvation-prophet, active in a cultic context, for example, E. Wiirthwein, "Amos-Studien," ZA W62 (1950): 10-52. Paul (Amos, 236) cites Weiser and Reventlow for similar views.

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sense of "younger," in contrast to Esau, who is older (Gen 27:15,42). A similar sense of "small" occurs in a number of other texts in Genesis and elsewhere. This smallness implies helpless dependence on another, a feature of the Jacob narrative that reappears in his prayer to Yahweh for help in his impending encounter with Esau on his return from Aram (Gen 32:9-12).29 The comparison between Genesis and Amos at this point is helpful, in my view, not only because of the conjunction of "Jacob" and "small," but also because the idea of Jacob/Israel's "smallness" as grounds for the appeal to Yahweh is hard to account for apart from such an explanation.30 Brueggemann is less convincing, however, in his further argumentation, in which he attempts to show that Amos's language, including Kin ]Bp SD ("he is [so] small"), n^D ("forgive"), and lrrn ("cease"), derives from a covenantal, cultic tradition and that Amos operated as a covenant mediator within the Davidic covenant. This is based on his view that the first two visions express a theology of divine grace, as in the Davidic theology (2 Sam 7:18-28), and that this is resumed in Amos 9:11-15.31 The chief problem with this, I think, is that it does not account adequately for the transition from the first two visions to the remainder of the material in chs. 9-II.32 When we read the first two visions in 29. Brueggemann, "Intercessory Formula," 386-87. Brueggemann refers also to Rachel (Gen 29:16-18), Benjamin (Gen 42:13, 15), Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen 28:19), Saul (1 Sam 15:17), and Solomon (1 Kgs 3:7). 30. Jeremias (Amos, 128) appears to accept the same idea but without expressly referring to Genesis: "Jacob is, after all, 'small,' that is, diminutive, powerless, and thus incapable of life without the help and care of its God, who has taken up with the weak... It is the name of Jacob with all its attendant associations [i.e. not merely a name for the northern kingdom] that brings success to the intercession." He refers further to J. Jeremias, Hosea und Amos: Studien zu den Anfangen des Dodekapropheton (WMANT 35; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchen Verlag, 1970), 257. Wolff and Paul, in declining "pregnant" readings of Jacob's smallness, offer little explanation of the choice of terms apart from their belief that Amos does not appeal to the election tradition as a basis of salvation. See Wolff, Joel and Amos, 297-98, and Paul, Amos, 229. For Wood (Amos in Song and Book, 41 and note), "small" refers prosaically to Israel's actual weakness politically, and in the face of God's superior might. She declines to interpret it according to wider biblical usage in the manner of Brueggemann. 31. Brueggemann, "Intercessory Formula," 388,397-99. "Perhaps the center of Amos is not to be found in chapters iv-v where we have usually located it but in the promise of ix 11-15 where the fidelity of Yahweh is affirmed and therefore the future of Israel is secured" (ibid., 399). 32. A further problem is that the covenant is not appealed to in Amos as a basis of salvation. As Paul (Amos, 229) notes: "For the prophet, the special status of Israel

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relation to what follows we will find that Amos is postulating a concept of Israel that is not defined by the Davidic covenant. III. Jacob/Israel in Amos 7-9 Throughout the preceding discussion, I have suggested that the conjunction of Amos's first four visions and the narrative of his confrontation with Amaziah has the effect of posing a quite radical question about the true nature of Israel. While the exploration of this is most penetrating in the narrative itself, it begins in the opening two visions (7:1-3,4-6). A. "Jacob " in Visions One and Two Amos 7:1 is generally taken to initiate a new section of the book by recording two visions that surprisingly report for the first time acts of forbearance on Yahweh's part (7:1-6). This is done, as has been widely observed, without reference to either particular sin or repentance, though sin is acknowledged in the prayer to "forgive." The accent is all on Yahweh's decision to relent from his revealed purpose to bring judgment. The first two visions are in a sense complete in themselves, charting a course from vision through intercession to Yahweh's decision to relent: "This shall not be" (7:3). More precisely, they are complete as a pair, the conscious doubling signalled by the variation of the second word of forbearance to "This also shall not be" (7:6). The repetition of the pattern, like the double dream of Pharaoh (Gen 41:14-36), has the function of reinforcement.33 The variation from "forgive" (7:2) to "cease" (7:5) even seems to tip the balance further in favour of forbearance grounded in mercy alone. These opening visions stir the reader's curiosity. The text is silent on whether the visions correspond to actual disasters that almost came about but were forestalled.34 The relation of the visions to Amos's preaching up to this point is unspecified and obscure. Indeed, they run counter to the drift of that preaching. If Amos's rhetoric typically packs an unexpected punch at the end of units,35 here is a surprise at the beginning of a new section. Is this a new definitive word, overturning what went before? does not serve as a pretext for any favoured treatment or privilege, but is rather the basis for judgment (compare Amos 3:2)." 33. Note v. 32 in particular; see C. Westermann, Genesis 3 7-50 (London: SPCK, 1986), 37-38. 34. This is the question which Andersen and Freedman answer by linking the visions with the plague sequence in ch. 4. 35. See O'Connell, "Telescoping N+l Patterns," 56.

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Among the factors stirring the reader's curiosity are the terms that Amos employs. In the predicate "small" we have already found an echo of the narrative of the patriarch Jacob, and so of the merciful but inscrutable providence of Yahweh. But the term "Jacob" in Amos 7 is also somewhat open. We have seen above that commentators who think it interchangeable with "Israel" have assigned it quite different values (congruent with either north or south). In the context of these visions, however, which, as we have seen, are also opaque in other respects, the choice of "Jacob" seems significantly different from a choice of "Israel." At the least "Jacob" avoids the possible ambiguity in "Israel" between the historic people and the northern kingdom.36 But there is more than this to its rhetorical effect. The image of a "small," defenseless Jacob trades on the notion of the individual in a way that the name "Israel" could not, despite its bestowal on the same Jacob in Gen 32:28, because it is customarily used to designate the nation. This is the Jacob whose early confidence was chastened by experience into the knowledge that he could not master people or events, let alone God, who faced Esau in weakness and fear (Gen 33:6-12), and who was finally the helpless victim of his sons' rash actions (Gen 34:30). Even then, the question remains how the choice of "Jacob" relates to the Israel (or Israels) of Amos's day. Some have rightly seen that "Jacob" here is not congruent with the extant political entities.37 "Jacob" has no immediately obvious referent, and there is in this opacity an invitation to inquire into what Jacob truly is. It is as if the memory of the patriarchal tradition is held up against the realities of the day in an expression of perplexity that has echoes of the lament.38 The question implicit in the use of the term is further accented by the strange phrase 3plP D1|T 'D. This is usually translated, "How shall Jacob stand?," but the interrogative ''Q, regularly "Who?" in Biblical Hebrew, is admittedly anomalous. Proposed analogies for the meaning "How?" are imperfect,39 36. Cf. Jeremias, yl/Hos, 128. 37. For Jeremias (ibid.), "...'Jacob' [in Amos] never refers to the state, but rather always to that entity which is totally focused and dependent on God." 38. Wood (Amos in Song and Book, 41—42) notes an echo of 5:1-2, with its lament for the fallen virgin Israel, especially because of the verb Dip in both places: "there is none to raise her up" (5:2). Brueggemann ("Intercessory Formula," 394) also finds affinities with the lament. 39. Ruth 3:16 is often cited as an analogy, where TQ fWQ is generally translated with "How," for example, "How did you fare, my daughter?" (RSV; cf. Paul, Amos, 229). But the cases are dissimilar, since '0 in Ruth is followed by a pronoun rather than a verb and is intelligible literally. The translation with "How?" is an attempt to give an idiomatic rendering. Paul's alternative, the use of SQ as an

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and emendation to "Who will raise up Jacob?," based on LXX, unsatisfactory.40 Thus, there is good reason to retain the personal interrogative, with Wolffs literal reading, "As who [ = how] can Jacob stand?" perhaps best.41 However (pace Wolff), this "As who?" is not simply a practical equivalent of "How" but supports the rhetorical effect of the question about the true nature of Jacob, albeit in a way that is difficult to translate. B. Israel and Isaac in Vision Three We now need to ask how the next section of the discourse develops the line of inquiry opened up by the first two visions. The third vision (7:79) begins, like the first two, with the phrase ^vnn ro, "he showed me," but thereafter varies markedly from them. Yahweh is no longer specified as the subject of the verb but becomes part of the vision, in which he holds a plumb-line beside a wall (7:7) and addresses Amos, explaining that the vision symbolizes his purpose to destroy Israel. There is no intercession and no relenting. The dominant tone of Amos's prophecies, with the accent on judgment, is thus resumed. Furthermore, the nomenclature moves towards specification: we no longer read of Jacob but of "my people Israel," "the high places of Isaac," "the sanctuaries of Israel," and finally, "I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword" (7:8-9). "My people Israel" evokes the historic people involved in the ancient redemption from Egyptian slavery.42 "Isaac" has been taken variously to refer to the north and the south.43 It may be that "high places interrogative in later Hebrew, producing "Will Jacob survive?," is also unlikely in the absence of evidence in Biblical Hebrew, and also, in my view, because it would be rhetorically weak. 40. Brueggemann and others ("Intercessory Formula," 393; cf. W. R. Harper, A Critical andExegetical Commentary on Amos andHosea [ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1905], 160) read D^p"1 (Hiphil), following the LXX, rather than Dip1 (Qal), resulting in: "Who will raise up Jacob?" The LXX presumably knew no alternative to "Who?" for ""Q but found the construction with Qal difficult; cf. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 292. 41. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 292. B. K. Waltke and M. O'Connor (An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 320 n. 10) find that the use of 1D in this case cannot be classified under regular uses of the pronoun but suggest, "Who is Jacob that he can stand?" This rightly retains the personal interrogative, but the translation needs refinement. 42. Pace Wolff, Joel and Amos, 301. 43. Wolff (Joel and Amos, 302) thinks it points to the north because of pilgrimages made by northerners to Beersheba (5:5). This underestimates the force of an allusion to Beersheba at Bethel. J. H. Hayes (Amos, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching [Nashville: Abingdon, 1988], 206) takes the Beersheba

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of Isaac" and "sanctuaries of Israel" together connote both north and south. The triplet in v. 9 culminates, however, with the finger pointing unmistakeably to the ruling house of the northern kingdom. Jeroboam is named here for the first time since the superscription (1:1), and on the brink of the encounter between Amos and Amaziah. The stage is set for a turn to the underlying narrative of Amos's northern mission. The third vision, in itself, has the effect of negating or at least neutralizing the first two. There is something ominously terminal about, "I will no longer pass by them" (v. S).44 Yet this new triad is no more conclusive than the combination of the first two. There is an eloquent silence: should not Amos intercede again, as we expect him to? Unlike Jeremiah, he has not been forbidden from doing so (Jer 7:16). The postponement of the fourth vision, which resembles the third in form, shows that the immediate answer lies in the intervening narrative. C. "Israel" in the Narrative of Amos 7:10-17 With the turn to narrative (7:10-17), the time, place, and purpose of Amos's mission are only now fully disclosed. In 7:10, we are transported into the royal sanctuary at Bethel, the sphere of Jeroboam, upon whom Yahweh's word of judgment has just been announced. And we discover for the first time that Amos is present in the north. Hitherto we have observed only that most of his prophecies have been directed against the north, but that in itself does not entail his presence there, any more than his oracles against Philistia, Aram, and others (Amos 1) implied his presence in those places. The superscription apparently placed him in Tekoa (1:1), and Yahweh made his voice heard "from Zion" (1:2). While Amos is inevitably read from the perspective of the information in ch. 7, a rhetorical analysis must give due weight to the novelty of the information at this point. Verse 10 has the effect of suddenly placing the prophet at the heart of the kingdom upon which he has been announcing God's judgment, facing a formidable foe in the person of "Amaziah the priest of Bethel." This character is previously unknown but politically diametrically opposed to Amos. In Amaziah's words, Amos is situated "in the midst of the house of Israel." The impact of the unexpected switch of scene, with the new light it sheds on the setting of the prophetic words, is heightened immediately connection to point more directly to the south and thinks Amos has a coalition of rebellious southern cities in mind. 44. The expression *7 "QI? must be taken in a salvific sense, as is clear from the context. It is close to the Deuteronomic ^S1? "Qtf, which signifies God's accompanying presence with Israel on their successful occupation of the land (cf. Deut 9:3).

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by the fact that the new scene is portrayed in the words of Amaziah. The device of Amaziah's communication with Jeroboam, postponing the crucial encounter of priest and prophet, both signals that Amos is effectively confronting the highest power in the land and allows the whole issue at stake to be viewed from the standpoint of that power. That being so, the language chosen by Amaziah for his report of "conspiracy" must be read with a careful eye on its ideological assumptions and its intended impact on the king. The description of Jeroboam as "king of Israel" (7:10) is not merely a point of clarification but implies the claim that Israel is defined as the northern state.45 Amaziah then interprets Amos's words as a conspiracy against Jeroboam himself. The threat of conspiracy may have been much in the air in Samaria. According to 2 Kgs 15, the period between Jeroboam and the fall of the northern kingdom comprised a succession of short-lived reigns in which conspiracy and palace coup played a recurring part.46 There is no evidence of Amos having been party to such a conspiracy against Jeroboam, and, as Hayes points put, no other Old Testament prophet met this precise accusation.47 Amaziah's accusation of a conspiracy of regicide is now located "in the midst of the house of Israel" (SKHCTTI'O DlpD). In this expression Amaziah both echoes and departs from Yahweh's words in the second vision, "in the midst of my people Israel" ("aner
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people Israel, but he means by it the land of the state of Israel. In his view this is distinct by definition from "the land of Judah" (miIT j*")N, 7:12), with a line between them across which Amos can be deported. Amaziah's language presents the northern state as the true heir to the covenantal privileges of Yahweh's chosen people. The land indeed cannot bear the words of a prophet (7: lOc) who calls such an account of Israel into question. Amaziah's report of Amos's words also expresses his own agenda. In 7:9, Amos threatened that Yahweh would "rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword," but Amaziah turns this into a threat against Jeroboam himself (7:11), in line with his accusation of conspiracy.49 Amos had threatened exile (Amos 6:7; cf. 5:5, 27), but Amaziah formulates his report of the prophet's words to reiterate the connection between "Israel" and "his land" in such a way as to assert by implication his own belief in their inseparability. The clash between Amos and Amaziah comes to a head in their exchange recorded in 7:12-17. In these verses, scholarly discussion has focused on Amos's denial that he was (or had been) a N"OD (7:14). Was Amos denying that he was a IT 3D even as he spoke to Amaziah, or that he had not been one until Yahweh had called him from his regular work? Either is possible, since his exact words contain no verb. Context offers no conclusive guidance. Either way, he insists on divine warrant for his mission. It is probably best to suppose he means that he has never been one of those who might be recognized as prophets but that he now asserts his divine authority to "prophesy."50 Amos's response to being called run is to talk about his right to "prophesy," or be a prophet (N'OD), and this may merely mean that he equates the two terms.51 In that case, it is part of Amos's concern to rebuff his opponent's implication that he is a timeserver. 49. In fact the sword would fall on Jeroboam's son Zechariah (2 Kgs 15:8-10). Amaziah's reported words of Amos do not support the view that Amos prophesied wrongly concerning Jeroboam and that his error was later corrected by the editor responsible for v. 9 (as Wolff, Joel and Amos, 295,310). This mistakenly supposes that Amaziah reports Amos factually. Hayes (Amos, 207, 233) rightly sees that w. 10-17 represent a take on what Amos said, not necessarily what he actually said (cf. Paul, Amos, 240). 50. Wolff and Paul are close on this point. See Paul's full account of the issues in Amos, 243—47; cf. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 312-13. Amos's experience is in this respect close to Jeremiah's, who had to contend that his prophetic words could only be verified apart from publicly acknowledged prophetic status (Jer 23:9-40; 28). 51. Paul (Amos, 241; cf. Hayes, Amos, 233-34) says that Amos's response gives an "oblique identification of the two terms." Wolff (Joel and Amos, 309a), in contrast, thinks Amaziah may actually have used the term IT 31

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Yet is there a function in this dissonance between the priest's use of HTn and the prophet's use of WD3? It has been thought that the former might be a distinctively southern term, while the latter was more at home in the north. While this is not sustainable as a general rule, Amaziah's employment of HTFI is bound up with his instruction that Amos should go back to his own country. The issue about Amos's status is not just whether he is a true prophet, but how his prophetic calling relates to Israel. In his response to the priest, Amos refuses to engage the terms of Amaziah's polemic: he declares Amaziah's radical distinction between Israel and Judah false and invalid. To the priest's reduction of Amos to "a seer in Judah," Amos responds that he is authorized to prophesy to what Yahweh calls "my people Israel." There is no overt response to the statist claim about Bethel, with its near-incantational bid to put it beyond the reach of reproach: "for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom" (7:13). Rather, Amos's unexpected line, "my people Israel," repudiates this claim by arguing that Yahweh's Israel is not the same as Amaziah's Israel. Amos's assertion of his own qualification to prophesy simultaneously challenges both his opponent's qualification to dispose over prophecy and the authenticity of his authority in Israel. Where Amaziah says: "Go, flee away to the land of Judah," Amos calls in evidence Yahweh's contrary word: "Go, prophesy to my people Israel." The dialogue culminates in a proclamation by which Amos, citing the priest's prohibition of his prophetic activity, defies him by uttering a word of judgment, which not only invokes exile on Israel, but also exile and ruin for Amaziah himself. If Amaziah had some kind of final word in the form of an escort to the border, the editor of Amos allows him no response to this. D. Re-Imagining "Israel" As we come to the fourth vision (8:1-3), we not only recognize that the pattern of the third vision is now repeated, and thus we return in a sense to a previously established train of thought (inevitable ruin), but we have also witnessed Amos's deconstruction of the false notion of Israel held by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. "My people Israel" is now understood to be a different entity from "the house of Israel" construed as "the house of Jeroboam." The force of Amos's searching plea, "How can Jacob stand?" comes more clearly into focus. Amos of Tekoa, preaching in Bethel, takes in the full sweep of the northern and southern kingdoms and confronts both with the destiny of Israel. The final two chapters of the book tend to evoke Israel in its largest scope. In 8:13-14, Amos's habit of criticizing the worship at certain sanctuaries recurs, with the triad of Samaria, Dan, and Beersheba. While

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Samaria and Dan need no special explanation in the context, the pairing of Dan and Beersheba occurs in other contexts as a way of expressing the full extent of the land incorporating both Israel and Judah.52 Beersheba's ancient association with the patriarchs, furthermore, suggests that it should not be viewed in Amos as merely a place of resort for northerners. At other points, however, Amos's language shows a studied ambiguity, and might be taken to refer to either the northern kingdom or the historic people. In the fourth vision, for example, the phrase "the songs53 of the temple shall become wailing on that day" (8:3 NRSV) is admittedly ambiguous, since "EDTF might be palace, and even, though less probably, the sanctuary at Bethel (which was ETTpQ in 7:13). Commentators often take it, along with the reference to "the altar" in 9:1, in the context of Bethel, because of their understanding that Amos still essentially addresses the north.54 What Amos actually had in mind when he uttered this line is beyond our reach. In terms of the text as it stands, with the nature of Israel posed afresh to the reader or hearer as a question, and the image of Yahweh "roaring from Zion" in the farther background (1:2), a reference to the songs of the Jerusalem temple comes readily to mind. The same is true for the vision of Yahweh standing beside "the altar" in 9:1. The idea of such a vision at Bethel, though unparalleled, cannot be excluded, since this is an appearance of Yahweh in judgment. But Bethel is not specified, and so once again the language and ideas can equally imply Jerusalem. It follows that ch. 8 in its entirety can be taken to relate to all Israel in the whole land on the grounds that Amos has turned the concepts of people and land in that direction. The closure of the chapter with the reference to Beersheba supports this conclusion. This broad concept of Israel continues in Amos 9, which opens with an echo of the temple and moves through to a vision of restoration whose scope is clearly the whole people and land. Amos's rhetoric turns explicitly to the tradition of the election of Israel in 9:7-8, as it did at 3:2. 52. Cf. 1 Sam 3:20; 2 Sam 3:10; 17:11; 24:2. This isrecognized by Andersen and Freedman (Amos, 707), who say of the text: "Because the three named cover the full length of both countries or greater Israel, they seem to be representative rather than exhaustive." 53. "Songs" is a hapax legomenon often taken as "songstresses" (see Wolff, Joel and Amos, 317, and Paul, Amos, 254b). Andersen and Freedman (Amos, 798) moderate, saying that the expression "should mean singers but apparently means 'songs.'" The reading "songstresses" may push the meaning towards "palace," but the point is moot. 54. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 798,835; Paul, Amos, 254b, 274; Jeremias, Amos, 145-46; D. A. Hubbard, Joel and Amos (TOTC; Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1989), 219.

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In both these places, expectations associated with election are turned on their head, and the point is comprehensible only in terms of the notion of the ancient unified people. In the light of w. 7 and 8, it is clear that the thrust of 9:1-10 is to dismantle the election of the historic people: "all of them" (D^D, v. I),55 "sons of Israel" ("aner 'Dn, v. 7), "house of Jacob" ppir1 rrn, v. 8), and "house of Israel" ('arier rT3, v. 9) all refer in effect to the historic people. So too does the "sinful kingdom" (rtNBnn ra'^DDD, v. 8a). This phrase chimes with 7:13, where the "house of the kingdom" (ro^DQ ITQ) is expressly northern, but the chord struck is ironic, because the new context shows that it is Israel in its broadest sense that suffers this accusatory epithet.56 The effect of w. 7-8ab is to challenge the concept of election. Verse 8c (" 'except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,' says the LORD") is also to be understood in this context. It is a mistake to try to apportion separate meanings to the names in these verses in order to overcome the difficulty of contradiction hi v. 8.57 The plain sense of w. 7 and 8 is that the whole historic people is intended throughout. The final line, in that case, is to be reckoned with as what it is, a word of grace supervening on a word of judgment, that is, a non-sequitur exactly mirroring the non-sequitur that occurred in the progression from the first two visions to the third, where grace gave way to judgment. Judgment now gives way to grace. The mercy of Yahweh towards his people will come by means of a differentiating judgment (Amos 9:9-10). Then, however, restoration will follow (w. 11-15). In the final passage (9:11-15), the vision of restoration is evidently a vision of Israel in its broadest sense. The reference to raising "the booth of David that is falling" (9:11) is too narrowly understood if taken to mean the restoration of the primacy of Jerusalem and Judah. The critique of all Israel has been too thoroughgoing for such a conclusion. The allusion to David evokes the promises of perpetuity, and the Edom connection (9:12), with its origins in the Jacob story, recalls Israel's ancient election by another route. The image of the bountiful restored land has echoes of Exodus and Deuteronomy (Exod 3:17; 33:3; Deut 6:10-11; 8:7-10; 11:10-12); "my people Israel" (9:14) is the historic people and the land the whole land. 55. The first half of v. Ib is obscure, but the term D^D is clear. 56. Here I differ directly with Andersen and Freedman (Amos, 869): "The reference to 'kingdom' could be an oblique attack on some specific monarchical regime. In the wake of chap. 7, it could only be that of Jeroboam" (emphasis added). In my view the effect of ch. 7 on the meaning of chs. 8-9 is diametrically opposed to this. 57. As Andersen and Freedman (Amos, 124-25; 869-70) do.

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IV. Conclusion: Israel in Amos 7-9 I have argued that Amos's prayer following his first two visions (Amos 7:1-6), and his use of the name "Jacob" in that prayer, function to open the question of who Israel really is. The confrontation with Amaziah at Bethel sharpens the issue by highlighting the division of Israel, north and south. Yet the issue is not a simple clash of rival claims.58 Rather, Amos deconstructs Amaziah's equation of Israel with the northern state and redirects attention to the fundamental calling of historic Israel. The narrative's interruption of the vision sequence paves the way for a reading not only of the fourth vision but of the remainder of the book. The inbuilt ambiguity of some of the language there ("Israel," "people," "land") is best understood, especially following 7:10-17, as referring to the historic nation in relation to its vocation. Paradoxically, the refutation of the northern kingdom's claim to embody historic Israel has an impact on Judah too. This may count as one of those rhetorical surprises for which Amos is known (not unlike the oracle against the northern kingdom in 2:6-16). The exploration of what is truly Israel has been won via a confrontation with a candidate to be "Israel." Judah may become another—and others down the line. Yet no claimant to be "Israel" can assert that it embodies "Israel" absolutely or unconditionally.59 Amos's rhetoric has the effect of always bringing hearers back to first principles.60 The message of Amos goes deeper than the simple question of whether he speaks only to and about the north and whether he speaks only about a coming once-for-all judgment on that nation. The issue is always the nature and prospect of salvation. Brueggemann rightly sees that the theology of grace invoked in the first two visions re-emerges in 9:11-15.61 What the sequence of visions, narrative, and oracles in chs. 7-9 establishes, however, is that forms of "Israel" 58. Pace Coote (Amos Among the Prophets, 48), who finds in his "Amos B" "a religiopolitical opposition between Bethel and Jerusalem as cult sanctuaries." Likewise pace Policy (Amos and the Davidic Empire), who thinks Amos has a southern nationalist agenda. 59. R. Bach (Die Aufforderungen zur Flucht und zum Kampf im alttestamentlichen Prophetenspruch [WMANT 9; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1962] ,155; cited in Paul, Amos, 100) rightly observes, with respect to Amos 3:1-2; 5:25; 9:7: "Amos refers to two 'Israels': the nation = northern Israel, (and) a people with a history.. .two repositories of Israel—Israel and Judah." But these "repositories" have only passing and relative status and are subject to prophetic correction. 60. Jeremias (Amos, 128 n. 3 7) expresses this when he offers his interpretation of the name Jacob. 61. See Brueggemann, "Intercessory Formula," 388, 397-99.

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that co-opt the traditions of election and covenant to support a statism that must defend itself at all costs are liable to judgment, and that the way of salvation lies in the recovery of a true vocation to be God's elect people.

THE BIBLICAL pniD: WHAT Is IT? Oded Borowski

During his scholarly career, John Hayes has dealt in depth with the prophetic literature, especially its connection to historical situations and events. In his honor I devote this paper to the examination of a particular term used by the prophet Amos (and also found in Jeremiah and Zechariah), in order to see if it can be identified and illustrated with material culture examples supplied by archaeology. I hope in doing so we can get a clearer picture of the background of the text, and in particular, the offenses that Amos found so egregious. In Amos 6:4-6 we read: You loll on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches; you feast on lambs from the flock and stall-fed calves; you improvise on the lute and like David invent musical instruments; you drink from ]" sp"1TD and anoint yourself with the richest of oils...

The biblical term plTD is quite puzzling. The term appears frequently in a cultic context.1 For the Hebrew term }" ""pHTD in Amos 6:6, Philip J. King offers the traditional translation "wine bowls" and further claims that these bowls were used in the marzeah ritual.2 King offers two 1. See, e.g., Zech 14:20 and 2 Chr 4:8. The plTD discussed here (pi. D'pnTQ) is probably different then the ones named mplTD (nplTD) that appear in Exod 27:3; 38:3; Neh 7:69. Also, the p~ITD mentioned in Num 7 must be a different vessel since it is used to hold a mixture of flour. The references in Exodus and Numbers are identified as being from P, thus likely being much later than Amos, as well. 2. P. J. King, "The marzeah: Textual and Archaeological Evidence," Erlsr 20 (1989): 98-106. For the marzeah more generally, see J. L. McLaughlin, The marzeah in the Prophetic Literature: References and Allusions in Light of the ExtraBiblical Evidence (VTSup 86; Leiden: Brill, 2001).

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examples of bowls that might have been used in the performance of the marzeah, one from an uncertain provenance in Lebanon and the other from Dan.3 The one from Lebanon has an inscription dedicating "two cups to the marzeah of Shamash"4—however, the term inscribed on the bowl itself is DIDp rather than p~lTQ. The biblical equivalent of DIDp is ninp, which appears in Isa 51:17 and 51:22 and in both instances it is connected with DID ("cup"), a use which suggests that DIOp indeed was an open vessel, possibly a bowl. This still leaves the term plTQ unexplained, and I would like to suggest that this term refers to the ring kernos and the kernos-type bowl. My suggestion is based on the cultic nature of the vessel and on a linguistic analysis of its name. First, what is a kernos? A kernos is a clay vessel made of a tubular ring with protrusions attached to its top (Fig. 1). These protrusions are in the shape of animals or birds, fruit (pomegranates), or other objects all of which are hollow. The number of the protrusions can range from as few as four (Fig. 2)5 to as many as eight.6 Most ring kernoi come from Iron Age I levels and the majority are connected with Philistine sites or sites where Philistine cultural influence can be detected. It has been suggested that the origins of this type of vessel are in either Cyprus or the Aegean region. In addition, some vessels that are not actually ring kernoi are considered kernos-type. One example is the kernos bowl from Beth Shemesh, which has a tubular ring forming its rim and two animal heads attached to the ring on opposite sides. One head is raised and is pointed forward while the other is attached behind and is bowed down as if drinking from the bowl (Figs. 3 and 4).7 Another example is the Iron Age II rimmonbowl from Tell Halif, which has a hollow clay pomegranate attached in the center of a red burnished, shallow bowl.8 3. King, "The marzeab" 104-5. 4. Ibid, 104. 5. See Z. Gal, "A Kernos from Horvat Rosh Zayit in Lower Galilee," Qad 23, no. 1-2 (1990): 51-52, and also idem, "Two Kemoi from Lower Galilee," Atiqot 23 (1993): 121-24, esp. Fig. 2. 6. See R. Amiran, The Ancient Pottery of Eretz Yisrael (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1963), 366 PI. 358. 7. See T. Dothan, The Philistines and their Material Culture (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1982), 225 PI. 8 and 226 Fig. 4. A similar vessel is shown in Gal, "Two Kernoi from Lower Galilee," Fig. 3. 8. See J. D. Seger and O. Borowski, "The First Two Seasons at Tell Halif," BA 40 (1977): 156-66; O. Borowski, "News from the Field: Tell Halif—Biblical Rimmon(?)," BA 40 (1977): 99; idem, "The Pomegranate Bowl from Tell Halif," IEJ 45 (1995): 150-54.

Figure 1. Kernos ring from Beth Shan (middle) flanked by fragments of other rings with bird protrusions (courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority)

Figure 2. Kernos ring from Rosh Zayit (courtesy of Z. Gal)

Figure 3. Kernos bowl from Beth Shemesh (courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority)

Figure 4. Drawing of a kernos bowl from Beth Shemesh (T. Dothan, The Philistines and Their Material Culture; by permission of the author)

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In describing the cultic use of ring kernoi, Trude Dothan notes that "each of the attached vessels was connected to the hollow ring, so that any liquid poured into one vessel would circulate and could be poured out again through the bull," adding that "it can safely be assumed that these kernoi were used in ritual libations."9 It is most likely that kernos vessels were used in cultic rituals, and Dothan is also correct in her suggestion concerning the way bowl kernoi were used, especially those with two animal heads. According to her, "[I]f one were to suck at the spout (the bull facing forward), any liquid in the bowl would be drawn up into the mouth of the other (drinking) bull, along the tubular rim, and out through the spout."10 This method was probably used also with ring kernoi. Furthermore, as suggested by Dothan, tipping the ring kernoi forward when it was full was another way of using this vessel; the front of the vessel can be carefully tipped down so the liquid would pour out in an arch from the spout to the mouth of the drinker. It appears that the ring was filled through a cup-shaped protrusion, which in many kernoi, such as those from Megiddo and Rosh Zayit, is positioned opposite the spouted animal. The other protrusions have very small openings not large enough for pouring in liquid.11 It seems that the air hole at the top of each protrusion could be blocked by the fingers of the worshipper sucking from the ring kernos or by the priest holding the kernos and ministering. By blocking the holes, a large amount of liquid could be sucked out. With one of the holes of any of the protrusions uncovered, however, the kernos could be refilled with liquid even during the "sucking ceremony" and thus the ring could have been kept full continuously while, one after the other, worshippers would suck the liquid out of the spout. Thus, the ring kernos could serve a long line of worshippers without interruption, while the kernos bowl allowed only a limited number of worshippers to suck liquid before having to stop for a refill. Now, how can we tie together the cultic vessel we call kernos and the p"lTQ? The term p~)TQ stems from the root p"IT that appears frequently in the Old Testament in cultic context and can mean "to throw, cast" and "to sprinkle, scatter."12 As mentioned above, the traditional translation 9. Dothan, The Philistines, 222. 10. Ibid., 224. 11. Some protrusions, such as those resembling birds, do not have any openings. 12. See L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner, Hebrdisches undAramdisches Lexikon zum alien Testament (5 vols. and supplement; Leiden: Brill, 1967), 2:272, who interpret the verb p~lT I as "sprengen, werfen" and interpret the root in Akkadian as "schutten"; see CAD, 21:65 for zaraqu, "to sprinkle (liquids)"; and Affw 3:1515 for zaraqu(m), "(be)sprengen, streuen." Mishnaic and Talmudic language support the association of pIT with "throw" or "cast" rather than "sprinkle." See D. G. H. Dalman,

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for p~lTQ is "bowl," and, indeed, translators have sought to connect this bowl with throwing, as evidenced by BDB's suggestion "bowl, basin (prob. vessel for throwing or tossing a liquid)."13 However, it would be much more appropriate to identify the p~lTQ with the kernos. As described above, drinking from a kernos can be done by suction, and it can be used for pouring also, like a spouted jar. Since in the latter instance the liquid is being thrown in an arch from the vessel to the mouth of the drinker, the ring kernos as p")TD fits very well with the root p"lT. This identification of the ring kernos as Amos's p~)TD makes the behavior of the drinkers in Amos 6 easier to visualize and the prophet's disgust easier to understand. One gets the impression, upon reading Amos 6:4-6, that he describes a Bacchanalia of the worst kind. What would be more disgusting than watching the drunken nobility pouring wine into their mouths, and even missing it, creating a big mess? One final note about the p""!TQ: on the basis of Jer 16:5, King concludes that the marzeah was, at times, connected with mourning and funerary rituals.14 The discovery of the nwmow-bowl, a kernos-type vessel, at an Iron Age II tomb at Tell Halif, and the fact that the rimmon (pomegranate) was considered in the ancient Near East a symbol of life and fertility, strongly suggest that kernoi were used at funerary rituals.15 How ironic, then, that the revelers in Amos 6 act out a ritual appropriate for a funeral without concern for the "ruin of Joseph." Aramdisch-Neuhebrdisches Handworterbuch zu Targum, Talmud und Midrash (Gottingen: Pfeiffer, 1938), 134, and J. Levy, Worterbuch iiber die Talmudim und Midrashim (Berlin: Hartz 1924), 556. 13. BDB, 284; see also L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1953), 511, who interpret it as a "bowl (for tossing; of metal)" and the term in Amos 6:6 as "Weinschale." Similarly, W. L. Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 189, calls it "metal sprinkling basin." W. Gesenius, Hebrdisches und Aramdisches Handworterbuch iiber des alte Testament (Leipzig: Vogel, 1910), 408, interprets the term in Amos 6:6 as "Weinkrater," and B. Davis, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament (London: Asher & Co., 1872), 345, calls it "a sprinkler or basin, for sacrificial use" that in Amos 6:6 is, more specifically, "a wine-bowl, perhaps so called from its resemblance to the sacred basin." All of these interpretations do not relate at all to the archaeological evidence. No metal bowl dating to the Iron Age II has been found in archaeological excavations. 14. King, "The marzeah" 100, citing D. Bryan, "Texts Relating to the Marzeah: A Study of an Ancient Semitic Institution" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1973), M. H. Pope, "A Divine Banquet at Ugarit: Response to Sasson on the Sublime Song," Maarav 2, no. 2 (1979-80): 207-14 (209), and B. Margalit, "The Ugaritic Tale of the Drunken Gods: Another Look at RS 24.258 (KTU 1.114)," Maarav 2, no. 1 (1979-80): 65-120. 15. Borowski, "The Pomegranate Bowl from Tell Halif," 150-54.

RELATING PROPHETS AND HISTORY: AN EXAMPLE FROM HOSEA 13 Stuart A. Irvine

Historical reconstruction and the study of Hebrew prophecy are mutually supportive. On the one hand, the prophets often speak about people and events in poetic, figurative, even cryptic language, and usually they assume, rather than state explicitly, the situations they address. Modern interpreters must reconstruct those situations primarily on the basis of historiographical texts, for example, the biblical books of Kings and Near Eastern inscriptions. Only then can they hope to grasp the import of the prophetic speeches for ancient audiences. On the other hand, the speeches themselves can serve as sources for historical reconstruction. They occasionally provide information that contributes to an understanding of Israel's past, especially the settings in which the prophets preached. Relating prophets and history has been a prominent feature of John Hayes's scholarship during the past twenty years. Our commentary on Isaiah, as well as his on Amos, regard the prophets as orators concerned with the political and social developments of their time, and interpret their speeches in the light of very specific and often novel historical reconstructions.1 Conversely, in works devoted primarily to Israelite history, Hayes frequently cites prophetic texts as evidence for the historical details of the eighth through sixth centuries B.C.E.2 This practice is especially clear in an article written with Jeffrey Kuan on the final decade of the northern kingdom.3 A brief examination of their reconstruction of 1. J. H. Hayes and S. A. Irvine, Isaiah, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987); J. H. Hayes, Amos, the EighthCentury Prophet: His Times and His Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988). 2. J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel andJudah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986). See especially Chapters 10-14. 3. J. H. Hayes and J. K. Kuan, "The Final Years of Samaria (730-720 BC)," Bib 72 (1991): 153-81.

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events in 725-724 B.C.E. serves to highlight the potential usefulness of prophetic texts as historical witnesses. According to Hayes and Kuan, the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V campaigned to the west in the late spring and summer of 725 B.C.E. His goal was to subjugate Tyre and Israel, both of whom had revolted the previous year. The king moved first against Israel. He destroyed BethArbel (Hos 10:14), looted the royal sanctuary of Bethel and confiscated its calf image (Hos 10:15a), attacked and captured Samaria (Babylonian Chronicle l.i.28; Isa 32:14), arrested and imprisoned the Israelite king Hoshea (2 Kgs 17:4b; Hos 10:15b), and ordered the provincialization of the state. Subsequently, Shalmaneser marched against Tyre, and when he failed to conquer the city, he placed it under a blockade that would last until the fall of 722 B.C.E. (Josephus, Ant. 9.283-87; Hos 9:13). As Assyrian forces fought against Tyre in 725, the Israelites rebelled again. They enthroned a new king in Hoshea's place and established a new sanctuary, with a new calf icon, in or near Samaria (Hos 8:4—6; 10:5; Nimrud Inscription of Sargon II, Fragment D. col. IV:32). In the fall of 724, Shalmaneser responded to the revolt by invading "the whole land" and besieging the capital city (2 Kgs 17:5; 18:9). The Assyrian siege of Samaria would last until the fall of 722 B.C.E. (2 Kgs 17:6; 18:10-11). While much of the evidence for this scenario comes from historiographical texts, the contribution of prophetic speeches is clear. One may observe, furthermore, that the value of the speeches as reflections of historical events depends often on translations that avoid unwarranted emendations of the Masoretic text (MT). Thus, for example, Hayes and Kuan retain "TUJ1? in Hos 9:13a and thereby preserve the allusion to the siege of Tyre: "Ephraim, just as I have seen Tyre.. .so Ephraim will lead his sons to slaughter" (cf. NRSV). Or again, in Hos 10:15, they retain **rrT3 and translate the perfect verb n&U in the past tense. Thus, they see a reflection of Shalmaneser's actions against the sanctuary of Bethel: "Just as he [Shalmaneser] did to you, O Bethel..." (cf. RSV and JB). In the rest of this essay, I wish to continue the work of Hayes and Kuan by exploring the possibility that Hos 13:15a is another allusion to circumstances during the last years of Israel. As with many texts in the book of Hosea, the interpretation of this passage involves issues of text and translation. I. The Translation of Hosea 13:15a Hosea 13:15-14:1 predicts imminent disaster upon Ephraim. The passage begins, J^HST DTTK p Kin "*D, and then threatens, "an east wind shall come, a wind from Yahweh is about to ascend from the wilderness,

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and his [Ephraim's] fountain shall dry up4 and his spring shall run dry." The description of punishment continues: Ephraim's treasury shall be plundered (13:15b|3) and Samaria shall be conquered with excessive brutality (14:1). The opening *3 clause in v. 15 appears to say literally, "Although he among brothers flourishes."5 Most scholars regard the clause as problematic because its meaning within the immediate context is obscure and because it views Ephraim as simply one of several brethren tribes that constituted Israel, especially in pre-monarchical times. Elsewhere in the book of Hosea, the name Ephraim refers to the whole northern kingdom of the prophet's own day, not to one tribe among others. This is true even in an earlier section of ch. 13, where the names Ephraim and Israel are used synonymously (13:9, 12). The usual solution is to emend the MT. For example, William Rainey Harper changes DTIK p to infc D^Q pD and translates the line, "Although he, as does the reed-grass in water, shows fruitfulness."6 Theodore H. Robinson reads ima for DTTK p and msr for WIST, and thus he renders the text, "Wenn es wie Riedgras bliiht."7 James L. Mays, following Hans Walter Wolff, emends irisr DTTK to KnSD 1FTK and translates, "Though he were to flourish midst the rushes."8 Jorg Jeremias handles the Hebrew in the same way, and the reading proposed by Douglas Stuart is similar.9 Most of the major translations speak of Ephraim flourishing among "reeds" (see NRSV, NJPSV, JB, NEB, and TEV), and so they too reflect the same change of DTfN ("brothers") to inN ("reeds, rushes, weeds"). 4. Read CET1 (the Qal of BT, "be dry") for the MT's BIT! ("and he shall be ashamed"). Cf. the LXX'S ("he shall dry up [his veins]"), which seems to assume a Hiphil form of 2D\ 5. This translation regards the preposition in the MT as a defective spelling of)1? ("between, among") and the verb tiHST as a Hiphil form of the root ms ("be fruitfill"). See GKC, 216-17 (par. 75rr). 6. W. R. Harper, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Amos and Hosea (ICC; New York: Scribner's, 1905), 402, 406. J. Wellhausen earlier proposed the same emendation (Die kleinen Propheten ubersetzt underkldrt [3d ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1898], 133). 7. T. Robinson and F. Horst, Die zwolf kleinen Propheten (2d ed.; HAT 14; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1954), 52. 8. J.Mays,Hosea(OTL;Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 179,183;H. Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 222. 9. J. Jeremias, Der Prophet Hosea (AID 24/1; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 160; D. Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (WBC 31; Waco, Tex.; Word, 1982), 199-200.

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The noun IffK is an Egyptian loan-word that occurs only three other times in the Hebrew Bible. Job 8:11 hints at the demise of the godless by asking rhetorically, "Can reeds flourish where there is no water?" Genesis 41:2 and 18, which narrate a dream of Pharaoh, speak of sleek and fat cows rising from the Nile River and grazing "in the reed grass." The rarity of this noun presumably helps to explain why the Masoretic copyists failed to recognize it in Hos 13:15 a. The word provides a floral image that is thought to fit well with the subsequent threat against Ephraim's sources of water (cf. again Job 8:11). Wolff suggests further that, as an Egyptian loan-word, ION makes for an apt allusion to the Egyptian king and military, whose help the Israelites solicited in 725724 B.C.E. for their rebellion against Assyria (see 2 Kgs 17:4a).10 As sensible as the case for emendation may seem, it suffers from a complete lack of textual support in the ancient Versions. For example, the Septuagint (LXX) reads "Because this one in the midst of brothers (a8eX(j)cc)v) shall cause a division." The Vulgate reads, "Because he shall make a separation between brothers (frates)" Likewise, the Peshitta reads, "Because of him, the house of brothers (>/p) is divided," and the Targum translates, "For they are called sons (p3), but corrupt deeds they have multiplied." The Greek, Latin, and Syriac readings all match the MT in regard to the word "brothers" but not in regard to the verb (they appear to assume I"1 "IS"1, the Hiphil of "PS, meaning "divide, separate," rather than tVIS11). The Aramaic translation of the Targum is highly paraphrastic, and it is difficult to discern the exact Hebrew text behind it. Like the other versions, however, it knows nothing of the image of "reeds."11 A few commentators retain the MT but construe the verb as a Hiphil denominative related to the noun K1S, "wild ass." Andersen and Freedman thus render the Hebrew, "He became the wild one among his brothers."12 The translation of Macintosh is similar: "Since he is the one who behaves wilfully among brothers."13 According to these scholars, the prophet employs the verb N'HB'1 here as a pun on the name Ephraim (D'HSK) and thereby suggests that, by its essential character, the nation is 10. Wolff, Hosea, 224, 228. 11. The specific restoration ofinN p in v. 15a is objectionable for another reason. The word iriK is a collective noun which, as Gen 41:2 and 18 indicate, properly goes with the preposition 3, notp. Cf. A. A. Macintosh, Hosea: A Critical andExegetical Commentary on Hosea (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 551. 12. F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Hosea (AB 24; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 625, 640. 13. Macintosh, Hosea, 550-52.

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wild, wilful, or selfish. Hosea 8:9 supposedly supports this view by attesting the same word-play: "For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild ass (K~!S) wandering alone; Ephraim has bargained for lovers." As for the reference in 13:15a to Ephraim's wildness specifically "among brothers," Macintosh explains that "the contemporary nation in relation to its neighbors is pictured as if in terms of the eponymous son of Joseph and his relationship with his brothers (cf. Gen 48:19)."14 A close look at all of Hosea's puns on "Ephraim" raises doubt about this interpretation. The prophet plays on the name four times, and in two instances he clearly connects it with a nominal form ofms, "be fruitful." Hosea 9:16 thus reads: "Ephraim has been struck, their root is dried up, they shall not bear fruit (HB)." The divine speech in 14:9 presents the same pun: "Ephraim, what are cultic images any longer to me?... I am like an evergreen tree, from me your fruit CyHS) is found." The MT in Hos 8:9 does describe Ephraim as a "wild ass wandering alone," but the image seems to conflict with the rest of v. 9, which speaks of the nation's association with Assyria and "lovers." Elsewhere I have argued for repointing the Hebrew here as D'HSIJ "ft TH N"1S and translating the sentence, "Ephraim has sprouted up on his own." As a form of mB, the verb K"}2 is reflected by the LXX ("flourishes"), and the idea of the nation "sprouting" fits well with the agricultural imagery and talk of consumption in 8:7-8a.15 If this translation of 8:9 is accepted, three of Hosea's four puns on Ephraim relate the name to the root ms, "be fruitful," and so the likelihood of the same word-play in the fourth instance, 13:15a, is strong.16 There, too, the image of the nation "flourishing" fits the immediate context, which predicts the drying up of the nation's "spring" and "fountain." The best solution to the problem of 13:15a is to retain the MT and rethink the meaning of DTFK. The noun PIN literally means "brother," but occasionally it has the political connotation of "ally." In 1 Kgs 9:13, for 14. Ibid., 552. 15. See S. A. Irvine, "Politics and Prophetic Commentary in Hosea 8:8-10," JBL114 (1995): 292-94.1 argue further that the sentence should be (a) moved from v. 9 to a position immediately after v. 8a, and (b) understood as an allusion to the Israelite rebellion in 725-724 B.C.E. 16. As additional support for this view, one might note the etymology of the name Ephraim in Gen 41:52: "And the second [child] he [Joseph] named Ephraim, 'for God has made me fruitful 031BH) in the land of my misfortunes.'" Macintosh defends his translation by pointing to Gen 49:22, which refers to Joseph as a ms p (Hosea, 553). Even if the phrase were rendered as "wild ass" (the traditional translation is "fruitful bough"), it still applies to Joseph. Macintosh must guess that "Joseph" is a late substitution for "Ephraim."

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example, Hiram of Tyre refers to Solomon as "my brother." The two were allies by virtue of an economic treaty (see 1 Kgs 5:26). Similarly, in 1 Kgs 20:32, the king of Israel declares that Ben-Hadad of AramDamascus is "my brother," that is, a treaty partner (see 20:34). The same sense is apparent in Amos 1:9, which castigates Tyre for not honoring the "covenant of brothers," that is, Tyre's treaty with an ally, probably Israel.17 Ancient Near Eastern inscriptions also attest the political meaning of "brother." In the thirteenth century B.C.E., the treaty between the Hittite king Hattusilis and Ramses n of Egypt refers to the former as the latter's "brother" and speaks of the peace and "brotherhood" between them (ANET, 199,201). Similarly, in the eighth century B.C.E., Barrakkab of FWy-Samal boasts of his prestige among allies: "My brethren, the kings, are envious because of all the prosperity of my house" (ANET, 655).18 If DTIK means "allies" in Hos 13:15a, the full line can be rendered, "Although he [Ephraim] hopes to flourish among allies."19 Some sort of political scheming appears to be in mind, and the rest of the verse asserts that it will fail. It remains to be seen what specific historical situation the passage addresses. II. The Historical Context ofHosea 13:15a If Hos 13:15 derives from the same period as the rest of 13:1-14:1, one should think of a time between what the prophet describes as the "death" of Ephraim (13:lb) and a siege of Samaria (14:1).20 The material could 17. See J. Priest, "The Covenant of Brothers," JBL 84 (1965): 400-406. 18. For a fuller discussion of the idea of "brothers" in Near Eastern diplomacy, see E. Gerstenberger, "Covenant and Commandment," JBL 84 (1965): 40-46. 19. This translation construes the imperfect verb iV IS1 as desiderative (compare Wellhausen's rendering of the verb: "Mag Ephraim griinen..." [Kleinen Propheten, 20]). The text, then, does not presuppose a period of prosperity, as some scholars have thought (see, e.g., G. I. Davies, Hosea [NCBC; London: Marshall Pickering, 1992], 285, 297). 20. According to Wolff (Hosea, 224), 13:1-14:1 consists of several rhetorical units relating to a single speech occasion in 724 B.C.E. Jeremias (Hosea, 161) sees the material as a redactional unity composed of originally independent oral sayings, but he assigns all of them to the same general period, 724-722 B.C.E.. Stuart (HoseaJonah, 184-88; 198-202) takes 13:1 as the conclusion to the unit beginning in 12:1 and interprets 13:2-14:1 as an oracle from 725 or 724 B.C.E. The detachment of 13:1 from what follows is questionable. The threat against Ephraim in 12:15b ("his Lord shall repay [ITC1] him for his contempt") forms a good ending to the "indictment" (T"!) by Yahweh beginning in 12:3, and the repetition of the verb T2T in 12:3 and 15 reinforces this impression. Furthermore, the past tense of the final statement

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refer to developments during the last three years of Israelite independence. Hayes and Kuan argue persuasively for the following reconstruction of events in 722-719 B.C.E.21 In the late fall of 722 B.C.E., Samaria surrendered to Assyrian forces. Apparently Shalmaneser V was not personally present to confiscate spoil, and thus, when his troops looted the city's sanctuary, they sent its calf image to the king in Assyria.22 With Shalmaneser's death in December of 722 B.C.E., Sargon II became king of Assyria. The Assyrian forces occupying Samaria quickly returned home to attend to the turmoil that accompanied the new king's accession. Sargon's troubles were considerable during his first year in power. He faced opposition within Assyria proper, as well as an uprising in Babylon aided by the king of Elam. In addition, widespread revolt erupted in the west, led by Yaubi'di king of Hamath and Hanno king of Gaza. An Egyptian force supported this rebellion, and Arpad, Simirra, Damascus, Samaria, and probably Hadrach were participants. Not until the end of his second year (720-719 B.C.E.) did the Assyrian king finally campaign to the west. Besides defeating Hamath, Gaza, and the Egyptian army, Sargon besieged and captured Samaria, confiscated "the gods of their trust," appointed one of his officers as governor, and enacted other provincializing measures. Several statements in Hos 13:1-14:1 make good sense against this background. In 13:lb, the prophet declares that Ephraim already has "died." The metaphor indicates the severity of the disaster, and the allusion is probably to the capitulation of Samaria in 722 B.C.E.23 The fall of in 13:1 ("he [Ephraim] died [nb-?l ]") fits poorly with the future tense of the threat in 12:15b (Stuart has to revocalize the verb as miTl, "he must die"). Finally, 13:1 and 14:1 form an inclusio by means of the repeated verbal root ntBN ("incur guilt, bear the punishment of guilt"). 21. Hayes and Kuan, "Final Years," 168-78. 22. As evidence for this detail, Hayes and Kuan cite Hosea's speech about Israel in 10:1-8. According to their translation, w. 5-6a state: "Over the calf of the house of iniquity they have been agitated, the one set up in Samaria. Surely its people mourn over it, and its priests concerning it. They wailed over its glory, because it has departed from them; for it has been carried as tribute to Assyria to the great king." Presumably this calf image is the one that Israelites manufactured in the fall of 725 B.C.E. (see Hos 8:5-6). Its loss in 722 is presupposed by Hos 13:2, which attests the production of new calf icons in 721-720 B.C.E. 23. According to other scholars, Hos 13:Ib reflects back on the events of 733 B.C.E., when Tiglath-pileser in supposedly imposed harsh punishment on Israel (see Wolff, Hosea, 225; Mays, Hosea, 172; Jeremias, Hosea, 161-62). Elsewhere I have argued that the Assyrian king's treatment of the northern kingdom was relatively lenient in 734-731 B.C.E. ("The Southern Border of Syria Reconstructed," CBQ 56 [1994]: 21-41). The areas that he converted into the provinces of Megiddo, Gilead,

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the city marked the end of the Israelite rebellion that had begun three years earlier and perhaps also the initial implementation of Assyrian measures for the provincialization of the state. Hosea 13:2 charges that Israelites again are sinning, even after the "death" of the nation. Their activity includes the manufacture of new religious images and human sacrifice. In 8:4-10, which comments on events in 725-724 B.C.E., the production of cultic paraphernalia is related to the enthronement of a new Israelite king and rebellion against Assyria. One may reasonably guess that the images described in 13:2 similarly were part and parcel of a political revolt, specifically the one that erupted after the death of Shalmaneser. Presumably the new cultic icons in Samaria are the same as "the gods of their trust" that Sargon counted as spoil in 720-719 B.C.E. Verse 7 presents a divine threat against the Israelites: "I [Yahweh] am24 like a lion to them; like a leopard I lurk (TICK) beside the road." The verb here appears to pun on the name "Assyria" ("11 OK), and the statement makes sense as an allusion to the imminent attack of Sargon in 720-719 B.C.E.25 The threat is matched by the more explicit prediction in 14:1: Samaria soon "shall bear the punishment of her guilt.. .they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women shall be ripped open." Hosea apparently expected Sargon's capture of the city to involve great atrocities.26 Finally, if Hos 13:15a is translated correctly to say, "Although he [Ephraim] hopes to flourish among allies," it too reflects circumstances in 721-719 B.C.E. As noted above, the nation's revolt in 721 was not an isolated uprising. The recent death of Shalmaneser and the attendant and Dor probably had been confiscated from Aram-Damascus, not Israel. Furthermore, in 731 B.C.E. Tiglath-pileser may have re-established an Israelite entity called "Beth Omri" under the rule of Hoshea. The state probably lay west of the Jordan River and south of Jezreel, and perhaps exercised control over the kingdom of Judah as well (for the details of this reconstruction, see Hayes and Kuan, "Final Years," 154; and especially B. Kelle, "What's in a Name? Neo-Assyrian Designations for the Northern Kingdom and Their Implications for Israelite History and Biblical Interpretation," JBL 121 [2002]: 659-61). These circumstances hardly provide a plausible background for understanding the prophet's statement about the death of Ephraim. 24. Read nTWl ("I am" or "I shall be") for the MT's TWl ("I was"). Cf. the LXX and the imperfects that follow in v. 8a. 25. Rather than construe the consonants "1108 as a verb that plays on the name "Ashur," the LXX understands the word explicitly as Assyrians and connects it to v. 8a: "Along the way of the Assyrians, I will meet them..." 26. Historically, the Assyrian punishment of Samaria in 720-719 B.C.E. turned out to be moderate; see Hayes and Kuan, "Final Years," 178.

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turmoil in Assyria and Babylon emboldened states and provinces throughout the west to revolt against Assyria, and the inscriptions of Sargon name a number of them. In several texts, Sargon blames the extensiveness of the rebellion specifically on the machinations of Yaubi'di of Hamath: he "induced the cities Arvad, Simirra, Damascus and Samaria to desert me, made them collaborate and fitted out an army" (ANET, 285). The accusation clearly indicates a high degree of coordination among the various rebels, and the prospects of their joint success undoubtedly looked more and more promising in 721 and 720 B.C.E., as Sargon delayed in responding to them. Against this background, Hosea's statement about Israelite confidence in "allies" is easy to understand. III. Conclusion While text criticism and translation are fundamental to all biblical exegesis, they are especially crucial in the interpretation of prophetic speeches. The MT is not sacrosanct, and strong arguments can be made for departing from its exact wording in places. Nevertheless, one should always be mindful of the risk involved in emendation, namely, that one thereby forfeits a surprising but historical meaning in pursuit of a meaning that is expected but unhistorical.27 The case of Hos 13:15 demonstrates this danger. Scholars have been too quick to change DT1N to iriK, and thus they have failed to recognize the text's value as an historical witness. By retaining the reference to Ephraim "among brothers/allies," one salvages an allusion to the political scheming of the nation in its final days.

27. See J. H. Hayes, "Historical Reconstruction, Textual Emendation, and Biblical Translation: Some Examples from the RSV," Perspectives 14 (1987): 5-9.

A PROSTITUTE UNLIKE WOMEN: WHORING AS METAPHORIC VEHICLE FOR FOREIGN ALLIANCES Peggy L. Day

The personification of Jerusalem and Samaria as adulteresses and whores in the Hebrew Bible prophets has recently received a great deal of scholarly attention.1 In this brief paper, I wish to focus on two, related features of Jerusalem figured as a prostitute that have, to date, not been adequately explicated in the scholarly literature. In Ezek 16:1-43, Jerusalem is figured as both adulteress and whore in an extended metaphor that condemns Jerusalem's political and religious elite for acts of apostasy (16:16-22) and for pursuing alliances with Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldea (16:23-29). While whoring as a metaphor for apostasy was a wellestablished trope in both prophetic (e.g. Hos 2;2 4 [esp. w. 10-14];3 9:16; Jer 2 [esp. v. 20]; 3:1-13; 13:20-27 [esp. v. 27]) and extraprophetic, especially deuteronomistic, literature,4 its use as a metaphoric vehicle for 1. For specific references, see my "Adulterous Jerusalem's Imagined Demise: Death of a Metaphor in Ezekiel XVI," VT 50 (2000): 285-309 (288 n. 13), and "Yahweh's Broken Marriages as Metaphoric Vehicle in the Hebrew Bible Prophets," in Sacred Marriages in the Biblical World (ed. M. Nissinen and R. Uro; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming), esp. nn. 1 and 6. 2. For a detailed presentation of the view that Hos 2 is concerned with foreign alliances rather than apostasy, see B. E. Kelle, Hosea 2: Metaphor and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective (Academia Biblica 20; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2005). His interpretation founders primarily because it necessitates understanding the chapter's references to Baal (2:10, 18) and the Baals (2:15, 19) as having political overlords as their implicit tenors. 3. For the use of HDT as a figure for cultic apostasy in Hos 4:13—14, seeK. Shrofel, "No Prostitute Has Been Here: A Reevaluation of Hosea 4:13-14" (M.A. thesis, University of Winnipeg, 1999), esp. 167-84. 4. For citation and discussion of the relevant texts, see E. Adler, "The Background for the Metaphor of Covenant as Marriage in the Hebrew Bible" (Ph.D. diss.,

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the condemnation of foreign alliances receives extensive employment only in Ezek 16:1^13 and 23:1-35.5 It is this latter figurative use of prostitution that will concern us here. In Ezek 16:3 lb-34, the text acknowledges two prominent features of Jerusalem's metaphorical whoring that are contrary to the practice of prostitution, literally understood. These features are giving payment rather than receiving it (16:31, 33-34; see also 16:41) and actively pursuing liaisons rather than being sought out for them (16:33-34). In what follows, I shall demonstrate that previous scholarship has treated these features inadequately. I shall then bring Ezek 16:3 lb-34 to bear on the larger topic of the use of extended metaphors in the Hebrew Bible prophets. But first, the text. After accusing personified Jerusalem of building multiple structures for prostitution and of whoring insatiably with foreign nations (16:23-3 la), we read (16:3 lb-34 [my translation]): But by scorning payment you6 were not like a7 prostitute, O adulterous wife, who takes strangers8 instead of her husband. To all whores a gift9 is given, but you gave your gifts10 to all your lovers, and you bribed them to come to you from round about in your whorings. You were unlike women1' in your whorings: you were not sought out for prostitution, and by your giving hire rather than hire being given to you, you were [literally, "became"] different.

University of California, 1989), 317—49, and J. Galambush, Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City as Yahweh 's Wife (SBLDS 130; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 27-35. 5. See n. 2. 6. Reading second person feminine singular, with the Qere, rather than first person singular. The necessity to follow the Qere in this regard is frequent throughout Ezek 16:1-43 (cf. w. 13, 18, 22, 31a, and 43). 7. Hebrew n]lJ3. The definite article functions to denote membership in a group, in this case, prostitutes. My translation is not controversial: see the standard commentaries. 8. Numerous commentators have noted that the direct object marker of MT with the indeterminate D^IT is awkward here. For varying resolutions of this problem, see the standard commentaries. 9. MT n"|] is a hapax. I am following the standard commentaries by translating it as "gift." 10. MT •^3*1) evidences another hapax, rendered "gifts" in the standard commentaries. 11. MT D^n. The definite article denotes women as a group. My translation, "women," is not controversial.

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That the implicit metaphorical tenor12 of the above verses is indeed foreign alliances and not apostasy is clear. Elsewhere in Ezek 16 (w. 36 and 37) and 23 (w. 5,9, and 22), the term "lovers" (C'OnKD) is used only of foreign nations and never of foreign gods. This usage also coheres with treaty terminology13 and is therefore particularly apt for denoting the foreign nations whom personified Jerusalem is accused of pursuing. Furthermore, v. 33's employment of the verb "IlfC?, "to bribe," is consistent with the use of this word's nominal form to describe the material incentives (silver, gold, etc.) offered to foreign rulers in exchange for political alliance and military support (1 Kgs 15:18-19; 2 Kgs 16:7-9; cf. Isa 45:13).14 Thus, in my understanding of the passage, personified Jerusalem is described as having sought out foreign alliances via bribery. These aspects of personified Jerusalem's alleged behavior directly contradict the potential client's propositioning and payment for services that was characteristic of literal prostitution as the author of the passage15 knew it. Hence, in these respects, personified Jerusalem's metaphorical whoring was different from literal prostitution. ^Jerusalem's whorings, we are told, she was "unlike women" (16:34). My basic quarrel with the manner in which the vast majority of commentators explicate the passage in question16 is that, by various means, 12. In some metaphorical statements (e.g. "life is a cabaret"), both the tenor and the vehicle of the metaphor are explicit. When the tenor of a metaphor is not explicitly stated, I refer to it as an implicit tenor. See further my "Adulterous Jerusalem," 293-95. 13. W. L. Moran, "The Ancient Near Eastern Background for the Love of God in Deuteronomy," CBQ25 (1963): 77-87; J. A. Thompson,"Israel's 'Lovers,'" VT21 (1977): 475-81. Kelle (Hosea 2, 156-58) cites four additional examples from the treaties of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. See S. Parpola and K. Watanabe, NeoAssyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988), 37 1. 207, 391. 268, 66 11. 18', 32'. 14. Note also Aramaic ] "in EM, in a broken context in a list of treaty stipulations imposed upon a vassal king, in Sefire III 28. See J. A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire (BibOr 19; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1967), 100. 15. Numerous scholars (e.g. W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1 [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 345^6; G. A. Cooke, The Book of Ezekiel [ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937], 172; W. Eichrodt, Ezekiel [OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970], 208) opine that all or part of 16:3 lb-34 is secondary. For my purposes, whether the verses are secondary or not is largely irrelevant, as they expand upon metaphorical language that is clearly intrinsic to the primary level of the text. 16. It is impractical, and perhaps unfair, to footnote all of the scholars I have read who have commented on the passage. It is impractical because of the number of citations that would be required, and perhaps unfair because not all of the scholars who have commented seem to have given the passage much thought. Thus, I am

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they collapse (or conflate)17 literal and metaphorical prostitution such that the distinction between the two is minimized, if not entirely erased. This conflation evidences a failure to grasp the fundamental fact that some degree of dissonance, or difference, between tenor and vehicle is a feature of every metaphor.18 This notion of dissonance is crucial to understanding the passage at hand correctly as it explicates two ways in which personified Jerusalem's activities do not cohere with the activities of real-life prostitutes. This lack of coherence signals that prostitution as a metaphoric vehicle for seeking foreign alliances is not apt with respect to who propositions and pays whom. The first means by which scholars obscure the differences between literal and metaphorical prostitution is by typing personified Jerusalem in our passage as an uncommon or unnatural prostitute19 on the basis of her unwhorelike behavior. This typing maintains that personified Jerusalem's abnormal behavior does not disqualify her from being categorized as a whore. It understands her to be a deviant whore, but a whore nonetheless. This interpretation is dependent upon collapsing the passage's references to literal whores (H31T, 16:31; m^T, 16:33) and Jerusalem's metaphorical whoring (*ni3Tn, 16:33,34) into a single semantic entity. Regarding personified Jerusalem as an uncommon or unnatural literal prostitute flies in the face of the plain meaning of the text when it states "but by scorning payment you were not like a prostitute," "to all prostitutes a gift is given, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers," and "you were not sought out for prostitution, and by your giving hire rather than hire being given to you, you were different." While not as explicit as those scholars who describe personified Jerusalem as an uncommon or unnatural harlot, a similar collapse of confining myself primarily to citing the authors of major, critical commentaries, as well as of books and articles that treat Ezek 16 in some depth. 17. Shrofel, "No Prostitute," 142. See further my "Metaphor and Social Reality: Isaiah 23.17-18, Ezekiel 16.35-37 and Hosea 2.4-5," in InspiredSpeech: Prophecy in the Ancient Near East—Essays in Honor of Herbert B. Huffman (ed. J. Kaltner and L. Stulman; JSOTSup 378; London/New York: T. & T. Clark International, 2004), 63-71. 18. For further discussion, see my "Metaphor and Social Reality." 19. K. W. Carley, The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 99; J. W. Wevers, Ezekiel (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), 99; Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1,328; Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 200; Galambush, Jerusalem, 98; G. Baumann, Love and Violence: Marriage as Metaphor for the Relationship Between YHWH and Israel in the Prophetic Books (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003), 150; cf. N. Stienstra, YHWH is the Husband of His People (Kampen: Kok, 1993), 148.

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metaphorical and literal whoring is evidenced by those scholars who maintain personified Jerusalem's identity as a whore in spite of the text's assertion to the contrary. One means of accomplishing this identification is to qualify the passage's references to whores by adding the adjective "other," which does not appear in the text. A good example of this line of interpretation can be found in Moshe Greenberg's commentary on Ezekiel. Greenberg translates 16:31b as "nor were you like other harlots, in that you scorned hire."20 Similarly, Carol Dempsey states that "Jerusalem was different from other whores because.. .she sought the men for prostitution instead of vice versa."21 This addition of the adjective "other" serves to conflate literal and metaphorical whoring such that personified Jerusalem continues to be viewed as a prostitute despite the text's clear statement to the contrary. Ronald Hals and Lamar Cooper, for example, achieve the same effect by simply asserting personified Jerusalem's continued membership in the category of whore. Regarding personified Jerusalem in w. 30-34, Hals states that "this whore must pay her 'customers' in reversal of the standard practice."22 Likewise, Cooper asserts that "while most harlots exacted a price for their services, Israel [sic] the harlot bribed her clients and paid them to commit adultery with her."23 20. M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20 (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1983), 271 (emphasis mine); cf. 284, 293, and "Ezekiel 16: A Panorama of Passions," in Love and Death in the Ancient Near East (eds. J. H. Marks and R. M. Good; Guilford, Conn.: Four Quarters, 1987), 144. 21. C. J. Dempsey, "The Whore of Ezekiel 16: The Impact and Ramifications of Gender-Specific Metaphors in Light of Biblical Law and Divine Judgment," in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (ed. V. H. Matthews, B. M. Levinson, and T. Frymer-Kensky; JSOTSup 262; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 68 (emphasis mine). 22. R. M. Hals, Ezekiel (FOTL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 106 (emphasis mine). Note that Hals places quotation marks around the word "customers," thus indicating that he understands the word figuratively. He does not offset the word "whore" in like fashion, which leads me to conclude that he takes the word literally. 23. L. E. Cooper, Sr., Ezekiel (NAC; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 173. M. Shields ("Multiple Exposures: Body Rhetoric and Gender Characterization in Ezekiel 16," JFSR 14 [1998]: 5-18) does not contemplate our passage in much depth. She does, however, make this puzzling statement regarding Jerusalem's actions (p. 11): "rather than being paid, like a prostitute, she pays her clients for sex." While this statement seems to exclude personified Jerusalem from the category of literal prostitute, it also evidences a lack of clarity of exclusion in that "she pays her clients for sex" retains the language of the vehicle of the metaphor, that is prostitution. To my knowledge, the only scholar who maintains a clear distinction between personified Jerusalem's giving payment and literal prostitution is G. Corrington Streete (Power and Sex in the Bible [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John

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The final means I shall document by which scholars conflate literal and metaphorical prostitution is also the most common. Verse 34 says of personified Jerusalem, "you were unlike women in your whorings." In my reading, this statement expresses a demarcation between literal and metaphorical prostitution by distinguishing prostitution as practised by women (i.e. literal prostitution) from personified Jerusalem's alleged activities (i.e. metaphorical prostitution). The verse goes on to specify in what respects literal and metaphorical whoring differ. Literal prostitution entails being sought after and payment for services; personified Jerusalem's metaphorical whoring does not. These dissonances are compromised by scholars who append "other" to "women" in their translation and/or discussion of v. 34.24 Adding "other" (i.e. "you [Jerusalem] were unlike other women in your whorings," or the like), which does not appear in the text, effects an inclusion of personified Jerusalem among the ranks of real-life women, which in turn bespeaks a conflation of the literal and the metaphorical. Jerusalem can be a figurative woman, but most decidedly cannot be a literal one. What can the passage under consideration teach us about the use of metaphorical language more broadly in the Hebrew Bible prophets? I will address this question with particular respect to the passages that personify cities or countries as adulteresses and whores, as this is the material with which I am most familiar. If I understand w. 31b-34 correctly, an important inference that we need to draw from them is that actions portrayed in the language of metaphor need not be constrained by a necessity of having an appropriate counterpart on the literal level. According to our passage, all real-life prostitutes receive payment, but this characterization does not prevent the author from presenting Jerusalem's metaphorical whoring as characterized by giving payment rather than receiving it. Real-life prostitutes, the author says, are sought out for Knox, 1997], 93), who states: "Ezekiel/YHWH points out the real difference between a whore and his bride: the former takes payment, while the latter, an adulterous wife, does it for nothing, exchanging strange men (zarim [sic]) for her husband (v. 32). The whore receives gifts, but the adulterous wife bestows the gifts her husband gave her on foreigners in order to entice them to her 'whorings' (w. 33-4)." 24. Of the scholars previously cited, Carley (The Book, 99), Greenberg (Ezekiel, 271), Eichrodt (Ezekiel, 200), Galambush (Jerusalem, 66-67, 98), Cooke (Ezekiel, 172, "(other) woman [sic]"), and Baumann (Love and Violence, 137) add "other." So also do A. B. Davidson, The Booh of the Prophet Ezekiel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906), 111; W. H. Brownlee, Ezekiel 1-19 (WBC; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1986), 217; and S. T. Kamionkowski, "Gender Reversal in Ezekiel 16," in Prophets and Daniel (ed. A. Brenner; FCB, Second Series 8; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 181.

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prostitution by their potential clients, but this does not prevent the author from portraying Jerusalem's metaphorical whoring as characterized by the active pursuit of liaisons. These dissonances can be accounted for by what the author seeks to convey about the actions of Jerusalem's elite with respect to making foreign alliances, that is, on the level of the implicit tenor of the metaphor. Jerusalem's elite are understood as having actively pursued alliances with foreign nations and as having paid said nations to enter into these politico-military alliances,25 and it is this understanding that determines our passage's depictions of personified Jerusalem's metaphorical whoring. The lesson to be learned from Ezek 16:3 lb-34 is that we must jettison the idea that all aspects of figurative portrayals must be consistent with the commonplaces26 associated with the same language employed literally. Otherwise personified Jerusalem's metaphorical whoring could not include giving payment rather than receiving it, and could not be described as unlike the prostitution engaged in by women.

25. For further examples and discussion of extended metaphorical portrayals being controlled by what the respective Hebrew Bible authors wish to express on the level of the tenor, see my "Yahweh's Broken Marriages." 26. Associated commonplaces are those culturally conditioned qualities or activities commonly associated with either the tenor or the vehicle of a metaphor. For further discussion and illustration, see my "Metaphor and Social Reality," 64-66.

(E)MASCULINITY IN HOSEA'S POLITICAL RHETORIC Susan E. Haddox

Much of the content of Hosea's oracles can be related to political situations in the eighth century B.C.E. According to the superscript, he prophesied during the reigns of Jeroboam of Israel and Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, which corresponds to the period from the end of the Jehu dynasty through the end of the northern kingdom. During this period Israel suffered considerable domestic political turmoil, which stemmed at least to some degree from shifting foreign policy alliances. Hosea's critique of the political decisions of Israel's leadership is sharp and employs gendered language. While a significant amount of attention has focused on the female imagery found particularly in the first three chapters of Hosea, the following study suggests that the key to Hosea's rhetoric is an attack on the masculinity of Israel's leaders. Hosea utilizes standard conceptions of masculinity found in the ancient Near East, which are particularly developed in the language of politics and warfare.1 Hosea uses his oracles to criticize the leaders for offending YHWH through their political actions. Analyzing the book from the perspective of masculinity studies provides insight into the way the oracles function rhetorically within a historical-political context. I. The Political Situation and Hosea's Audience If, as the following discussion argues, Hosea's gendered language represents his criticism of Israel's political misdeeds, then the geo-political situation of the prophet's audience is crucial for interpreting that imagery. During the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.E., Assyria was the dominant power, controlling much of the ancient Near East, primarily through 1. Several of the elements of masculinity in Assyrian political rhetoric are described in C. R. Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the IsraeliteAssyrian Encounter (HSM 62; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2004).

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vassal relationships. Both biblical texts and Assyrian records, for example, show that Israel paid tribute to Assyria. Such vassal relations with the highly bureaucratic Assyrian empire were cemented through treaties, which were witnessed by the gods of both sides.2 Vassal treaties generally imposed substantial tributary obligations on the vassal nation, which put stress on the economic system and reduced local autonomy. These conditions led to frequent revolts in various parts of the empire. Assyrian records show that dating back to the Omride dynasty, Israel vacillated between submission to Assyria and rebellion against it, usually in alliance with Syria.3 Jehu appears to be the first Israelite king to take a pro-Assyrian stance, and his gifts are recorded in Assyrian inscriptions.4 He seems to have maintained his loyalty for his entire reign, and the successors in his dynasty also followed a pro-Assyrian policy. During the period of the Jehu dynasty, Aram frequently dominated Israel.5 Because of this, when Assyria was strong and oppressed Aram, Israel fared more favorably. Israel's strength was linked to that of Assyria.6 Israel's pro-Assyrian stance lasted throughout the Jehu dynasty, when Hosea began prophesying, but dissatisfaction with that stance may have led to the downfall of the dynasty. Shallum, likely supported by a rising anti-Assyrian faction, usurped the throne from Zechariah. Shallum, who may have been the choice of the general populace, did not gain the 2. A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 238; J. Galambush, Jerusalem in theBookofEzekiel: The City as Yahweh 's Wife (SBLDS 130; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 34. The understanding that an offense against a political treaty impugned the name of the god can be seen in the writings of the time. For example, in the annals of A§§urbanipal, an entry describing an Arab revolt reads: "The People of Arubu asked one and other [sic] again and again, 'Why has such an evil thing as this overtaken Arubu?' (and) they say, 'Because we have not kept the mighty oaths of the god Assur, we have sinned against the favor shown us by Assurbanipal, the king beloved of Enlil," quoted in W. L. Moran, "The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy," CBQ 25 (1963): 83-84. 3. Several Assyrian inscriptions mention Israelite kings in lists of those defeated or paying tribute. See, for example, the Monolith Inscription of Shalmaneser HI in 853-852. 4. An inscription dated twelve years after Shalmaneser's 853-852 campaign records a tribute from Jehu. The Black Obelisk Inscription records Jehu's tribute in greater detail (see J. K. Kuan, Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Syria-Palestine [Jian Dao Diss. 1; Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 1995], 63-64). 5. J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel andJudah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 289. 6. Kuan, Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions, 65.

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support of Israel's leaders and was quickly deposed in favor of Menahem.7 Menahem evidently had difficulty establishing full control over the country and turned back to the Assyrians, sending to Tiglath-pileser IE in order to hire a mercenary army (see 2 Kgs 15:19-20). The Iran Stela, a summary inscription of Tiglath-pileser shows that Menahem continued to pay tribute in subsequent years.8 When Pekah deposed Menahem's successor, Pekahiah, Israel's proAssyrian policy came to an end.9 Pekah apparently had widespread support from the anti-Assyrian contingent in Israelite society, and he joined Rezin of Damascus in rebelling against Assyria.10 Their attempts to persuade Ahaz of Judah to join forces with them resulted in the SyroEphraimitic War. When Tiglath-pileser HI responded to the rebellion in his campaign of 734-732 B.C.E., he quashed the revolt led by Rezin and Pekah, destroying Damascus and turning Syria into an Assyrian province. He also took control over most of the territory of Israel, except for the hill country surrounding Samaria, so that Ephraim was all that remained of the northern kingdom.11 Although Tiglath-pileser apparently did not have a direct role in Pekah's overthrow, his attack on the country gave impetus to the pro-Assyrian movement in Israel that deposed Pekah, placed Hoshea on the throne, and quickly paid concessionary tributes to Assyria.12 The pro-Assyrian party did not retain ascendancy, however, and after a few years Hoshea withheld tribute from Assyria and made overtures to "King So" of Egypt (2 Kgs 17:4). The rebellion resulted in Hoshea's arrest, the siege of Samaria, the deportation of its intelligentsia, cultic 7. J. H. Hayes and P. K. Hooker, A New Chronology for the Kings of Israel and Judah and Its Implications for Biblical History and Literature (Atlanta: John Knox, 1988), 55. 8. Kuan, Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions, 147-48. 9. There is much confusion about the chronology of Pekah's reign, which according to 2 Kgs 15:27 was twenty years. Such a long reign does not fit well into the parallel Judean royal chronology. Pekah may have established a rival kingdom in about 750 B.C.E., composed of most of the territory outside of Samaria and the surrounding hills. His twenty-year reign would include both the time he ruled concurrently with other kings and the time after he seized power in Samaria from Pekahiah (H. J. Cook, "Pekah," VT14 [1964]: 121-35; Hayes and Hooker, A New Chronol°gy> 54). 10. Hayes and Hooker, A New Chronology, 60. 11. Miller and Hayes, History of Ancient Israel, 332; Hayes and Hooker, A New Chronology, 63. Syria may have already controlled most of the former Israelite territory. 12. Miller and Hayes, History of Ancient Israel, 334.

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and political leaders, and large landholders, and the eventual conversion of what remained of the nation into an Assyrian province. Hosea's metaphorical imagery for the nation's turning from YHWH makes sense against the background of this political situation. Hosea criticizes the extensive political maneuvering of Israel's leadership and warns of the negative effects it will have on the state. Although it has frequently been argued that Hosea opposed all foreign alliances as rebellions against YHWH, a policy of non-alignment was not a serious political option in the region.13 Rather, Hosea opposes rebellion against Assyria. As noted above, Israel had a vassal relationship with Assyria. When Ephraim appeals to Egypt and rebels against Assyria, it violates a treaty sworn in the name of YHWH. Hosea's oracles describe YHWH's displeasure with such violations and his threats to enforce the curses listed in the vassal treaty between Israel and Assyria, which frequently invoke elements of masculinity. It is particularly this implied audience—Israel's political decisionmakers—that calls for analysis of Hosea's imagery as an attack on the masculinity of Israel's leaders. The oracles in Hosea are either directly addressed to men (priests, prophets, and rulers) or discuss their actions and thoughts.14 When women are mentioned outside of Hos 1-3, they are not directly addressed. Instead, their fathers or husbands are the ones spoken to and held accountable.15 Even within Hos 1-3, where the addressee is ostensibly the wife, she represents a larger political entity, rather than an individual woman.16 Moreover, most of the oracles address issues that concern leaders, rather than common men or women, and their topics include foreign alliances, cult matters, political coups, and 13. For assertions of Hosea's anti-alliance stance, see, among others, J. Day, "Pre-deuteronomic Allusions to the Covenant in Hosea and Psalm LXXVm," VT36 (1986): 1-12; J. Mays, Hosea (OIL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 112. 14. See Hos 4:5-9; 5:1, 10; 6:9; 7:3, 5, 7, 16; 8:4,10; 9:15. 15. For example, in 4:13-14, Hosea complains about the seeming idolatry of the people and continues: "That is why your daughters fornicate and your daughters-inlaw commit adultery. I will not punish your daughters for their fornication and your daughters-in-law for their adultery, because they [m.pl.] turn aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with the holy women." 16. The exact nature of this entity is a subject of debate, but nearly all of the commentators agree that the wife represents some political entity (city, land, country, people of Israel/Ephraim, etc.) of which males are the leaders and are thus the main focus of the oracles. I assume the wife represents the capital city of Samaria as discussed in B. E. Kelle, Hosea 2: Metaphor and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective (Academia Biblica 20; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2005); cf. Galambush, Jerusalem, 45.

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appointments. These considerations suggest that even when Hosea uses female imagery, it is directed towards males.17 II. Masculinity Studies Because Hosea's implied audience is male and his rhetoric is geared toward male concerns and sensibilities, masculinity studies provide a helpful interpretive lens. The field of masculinity studies examines the construction of the male gender and shares with feminist studies the goal of bringing ideas about gender and sex roles into consciousness.18 What distinguishes the relatively recent interest in masculinity studies from the centuries of scholarship that focused almost exclusively on men is the degree of self-awareness. Rather than assuming that men and the masculine are the norm for analysis, masculinity studies look specifically at the role and expectations for men in a given culture.19 Masculinity studies examine the ways in which masculine elements and ideals pervade the scaffolding of society as a whole.20 Construction of masculinity is usually associated with construction of power in a society. Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne observe: 17. Among others emphasizing this point are C. Bucher, "The Origin and Meaning of ZNH Terminology in the Book of Hosea" (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1988), 162-63; R. P. Carroll, "Desire Under the Terebinths: On Pornographic Representation in the Prophets—A Response," in A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets (ed. A. Brenner; FCB 8; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 285; R. J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (OBT; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 41-^2; M. J. Winn Leith, "Verse and Reverse: The Transformation of the Woman, Israel, in Hosea 1—3," in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (ed. P. Day; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 97-98; F. Landy, "Fantasy and the Displacement of Pleasure: Hosea 2:4-17," in Brenner, ed., Feminist Companion, 155. 18. The term "gender" usually implies a social construction, rather than a biological marker, of sex. Marilyn Strathern (The Gender of the Gift: Problems -with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia [Studies in Melanesian Anthropology 6; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], ix) provides a typical definition: "By 'gender' I mean those categorizations of persons, artifacts, events, sequences, and so on which draw upon sexual imagery—upon the ways in which the distinct!veness of male and female characteristics make concrete people's ideas about the nature of social relationships." 19. See, for example, H. Brod, "Introduction and Theses of Men's Studies," in The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies (ed. H. Brod; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 2. 20. Here I utilize primarily an anthropological approach. The other main approach to masculinity studies is a psychoanalytic perspective. The most prominent source for such work is M. Foucault's Histoire de la sexualite (3 vols.; Paris: Gallimard, 1976).

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Interpretations of maleness, manhood or masculinity are not neutral, but rather all such attributions and labels have political entailments.. .the processes of gendering produce difference and inequality: and nowhere more obviously than in the versions of masculinity associated with (masculinized) notions of power.21

Masculinized power as a social structure can be further distinguished from that of individual men because it is usually presented as "hegemonic masculinity." There are two elements of this hegemony that are of interest here. One is the establishment of a particular definition of masculinity as normative, to the exclusion of any other expressions of masculinity. Few, if any, men may actually conform fully to this definition, but it is the standard that most men in the society accept and upon which social relations are built.22 The imposition on a society of a particular kind of masculinity as the norm leads into the second element of hegemony: hegemonic masculinity makes itself known through the institutions and power structures of society. It is not a static concept, but reflects power struggles within a given culture: "Hegemony," then, always refers to a historical situation, a set of circumstances in which power is won and held... To understand the different kinds of masculinity demands, above all, an examination of the practices in which hegemony is constituted and contested—in short, the political techniques of the patriarchal social order.23 21. A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne, "Introduction," in Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (ed. A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne; Male Orders; New York: Routledge, 1994), 10. Even when women act in power structures traditionally dominated by men, they are sometimes described by male characteristics. In Andalusia, a powerful female entrepreneur is sometimes described as a cojonuda, a "big-balled woman." Such women are said to "have balls inside" and "should have been bom as men" (S. Brandes, Metaphors of Masculinity: Sex and Status in Andalusian Folklore [Publications of the American Folklore Society New Series 1; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980], 93). Philo, known for his denigration of women, argues in his commentary on Gen 18:11 that the verse "and it had ceased to be for Sarah according to the ways of women," refers to the "ways of women" as irrational passions. Sarah now is in the place of men "where properly dwell the masculine thoughts (that are) wise, sound, just, prudent, pious, filled with freedom and boldness, and kin to wisdom" (QG 4.15, trans. L. E. Galloway in Freedom in the Gospel: Paul's Exemplum in 1 Cor 9 in Conversation with the Discourses ofEpictetus and Philo [CBET 38; Leuven: Peeters, 2004], 128). 22. T. Carrigan, B. Connell, and J. Lee, "Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity," in Brod, ed., Making of Masculinities, 92. Carrigan introduced the term "hegemonic masculinity." 23. Carrigan et al., "New Sociology," 94.

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Those who "win" the power dictate the norms of masculinity. When the elements of a particular hegemonic masculinity become embedded in the power structures, however, they become self-perpetuating. Once a hegemonic masculinity takes hold, gender comes to symbolize aspects of power and social organization. Often gender represents the contrast between domestic production and public activity, traditionally female and male realms, respectively.24 Political weakness and lack of social status are often expressed in sexual or gender-linked language. Becoming like women or being feminized, for example, functions as a metaphor across various cultures to represent loss of social prestige or power.25 Losing, whether in the area of politics, economics, or class, is equated with feminization.26 These observations from anthropological masculinity studies suggest that across many cultures, conceptions of gender and gendered language signify complex relations of power, economics, and social status. In these relations it is usually the masculine that comes out on top, so to speak, at least in public arenas. Hence, there is great concern among men with maintaining and enhancing their masculinity, as well as with keeping themselves from becoming feminized, which would lower their status in many aspects of social life.

24. Strathern (Gender of Gift, 77) notes that in Melanesia, when men encourage each other to be involved in public activity, they say not to "behave like women." 25. Brandes (Metaphors of Masculinity, 6, 12, 25, 31, 63,212) observes that in Andalusian male folklore, the butt of a joke is often a male character who is put in the position of a woman sexually. Conversely, G. P. Miller in his study of the Song of Deborah ("A Riposte Form in the Song of Deborah," in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East [ed. V. Matthews, B. M. Levinson, and T. Frymer-Kensky; JSOTSup 262; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998], 114) proposes that claiming that a society's women were acting like men was an insult and associated with uncouth hill people. He argues that as a riposte, the song accepts the truth of part of the insult and turns it around as a virtue. In this way, the manly women dominate not their own men, but Sisera and the Canaanites. One should note, however, that the insult in Judges was not solely that the women were manly, but that they dominated their men, who were thus feminized. 26. The connection between politics, social standing, and gender is explored in Andalusia by D. D. Gilmore, "Above and Below: Toward A Social Geometry of Gender," American Anthropologist 98 (1996): 56. P. Loizos ("A Broken Mirror: Masculine Sexuality in Greek Ethnography," in Cornwall and Lindisfarne, ed., Dislocating Masculinity, 72) notes that sexual penetration is a symbol of subordination in the Greek community he studied. The stigma of a homosexual relationship fell mainly on the passive partner, who took the female position, whereas the masculinity of the penetrating partner could even be enhanced.

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A. Masculinity in the Ancient Near East Ancient Israel and its neighbors share characteristics with some of the Mediterranean societies that have been the focus of much anthropological work on masculinity: clear gender role distinctions, power based in a patriarchal system, and an emphasis on honor and shame, among others.27 In particular, the connection between political rhetoric and gendered imagery is quite strong in biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts. Assyrian royal inscriptions describe several important elements of masculinity: sexual potency and military prowess, an ability to provide for and protect one's family or people, the ability to leave an inheritance for one's family or people, and bravery. The Assyrian king is shown to possess these traits in abundance. The inscriptions often explicitly claim through various epithets that the king is a man who possesses potency and vigor.28 Palace reliefs invariably portray the king with a full beard in a strictly upright posture, often carrying a drawn bow.29 Vassal kings, in contrast, prostrate themselves before the Assyrian king, and sometimes are shown wiping the king's feet with their beards.30 Assyrian texts often describe defeated kings as fleeing in fear to save their own lives, abandoning their people. Assyrian treaties also reflect these standards of masculinity. The curse lists in the treaties involve several threats to the masculinity of the vassal kings. They threaten that the rebellious king and his soldiers will become women, that they will lose their land, that their people will be deported from their inheritance, and that the king's family will become vulnerable to capture and starvation.

27. See, for example, the work of H. Eilberg-Schwartz, primarily on Genesis (God's Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism [Boston: Beacon, 1994]); D. J. A. Clines, who focuses on David, but also treats some of the prophets (Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible [JSOTSup 205; GCT 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995]); H. C. Washington, who examines the relationship between masculine imagery and warfare ("Violence and the Construction of Gender in the Hebrew Bible: A New Historicist Approach," Biblnt 5 [1997]: 324-63); and K. Stone, who focuses on David (Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History [JSOTSup 234; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996]). Stone turns his attention to components of masculinity in Hosea in "Lovers and Raisin Cakes: Food, Sex, and Divine Insecurity in Hosea," in Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible (ed. K. Stone; Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2001), 116-39. For an anthology with an excellent bibliography of masculinity studies, see S. D. Moore and J. Capel Anderson, eds., New Testament Masculinities (SemeiaSt 45; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2003). 28. See Chapman, Gendered Language, 22-24. 29. Ibid., 26. 30. Ibid., 39.

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B. Virility as Power in the Biblical Texts In the patriarchal context of the biblical texts, especially that of eighthcentury Israel, sexual potency is likewise an important symbol of power. The ability to display one's sexual virility was thus an important component of male honor.31 In 2 Sam 16, for example, after Absalom has claimed his father David's kingdom, he proves his potency as a potential king by having intercourse with his father's concubines one after another in the view of "all Israel" (2 Sam 16:22). Through this action he not only displays his own potency, but also demonstrates David's impotence, which is evidenced by his inability to protect his household, an important aspect of masculinity.32 Ahithophel advises Absalom to perform this act so that Israel may hear that he has become odious (fllZJK23~1'D) to David. The same terminology appears in 2 Sam 10:4, when the Ammonites shaved the beards of David's envoys and cut off their robes "in half, up to their hips" (diTmne? Itf ^TO), which probably left their genitals exposed, or nearly so. These particular actions were a direct assault on the men's masculinity, causing them shame. David recognized this and let them stay in Jericho until their beards grew back. Because the act was intended to shame David and his messengers, and not merely to rebuff them, the Ammonites became "odious" to David. The use of the term HE?ND] thus underscores the idea that Absalom's assault on David's concubines was a direct challenge to his masculinity in several ways.33 First, he caused David to flee, leaving his family behind. As noted above, in the Assyrian curses and chronicles, the shamed and defeated king flees to save his own life, but leaves his family to fend for themselves. Second, Absalom's actions underline the fact that David left his concubines to guard the house. Not only did he flee himself, but he did not even appoint another man to protect his family. Instead, he left his concubines in charge, women with even lower status than his principal wives. Third, Absalom had intercourse with David's wives, cuckolding him. He made himself odious to David and simultaneously raised the status of his own masculinity. The inverse situation occurs in 1 Kgs 1, where the symbol of David's final decline and loss of political control is his impotency in the presence of Abishag, the most beautiful virgin in the land (1:4). His impotence extends to matters of state, as he remains out of the loop in the battle for succession and learns of the situation from his wife (1 Kgs 1:18). Solomon's potency as king is, in turn, partially expressed through his harem, 31. G. Yee, "Hosea," NIB 7:208. 32. Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power, 121. 33. Ibid., 121-22.

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which comprises 700 princesses and 300 concubines (1 Kgs 11:3). The princesses display his political power, representing the many alliances he has made with other nations. The concubines represent his sexual potency. While these many wives ultimately led to Solomon's downfall, in his prime they symbolized the great extent of his power. III. Gender Imagery in Hosea Similar to the above examples, male sexual imagery forms an important component in Hosea's oracles, which has been largely overlooked in previous studies. Much of the gender-based imagery in Hosea shares the perspectives on masculinity in the Assyrian and biblical texts cited above. In fact, Hosea may be deliberately invoking treaty curses against the apostate Israelites. As the following discussion will show, Hosea employs both female and male imagery in the text, but both primarily address masculine concerns.34 The female imagery primarily addresses challenges to YHWH's masculinity, whereas the male imagery focuses on human masculinity. A. Female Imagery 1. Marriage metaphor. Female imagery occurs primarily in the first three chapters of Hosea, with a few additional references later. The image that has the most narrative development is the marriage metaphor, which is one of the most discussed prophetic images in the literature. The image begins in ch. 1 when YHWH orders Hosea to marry a D^IUT H2JN ("woman of fornications") and he marries Gomer.35 The text implies that the wife has sexual relations with a man other than her husband, but the exact nature of the relationship is not described, which probably indicates that the details are not important to the rhetorical point of the author. The focus is not ultimately on the woman, but rather on the husband and the marital relationship. The point is that the woman has sex outside of the marital relationship, which symbolizes the fact that the land, Israel, has a 34. Gender and gender relations in the text do not, of course, necessarily reflect actual gender relations in ancient Israel. Real gender relations are complex and often differ from normative statements (see J. K. Chance, "The Anthropology of Honor and Shame: Culture, Values, and Practice," Semeia 68 [1994]: 145-46). 35. Many interpreters translate this as "harlot," which does not have the professional connotations of prostitution. Phyllis Bird translates this with the more rhetorically neutral "woman of promiscuities" ('"To Play the Harlot': An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor," in Day, ed., Gender and Difference, 75—94). I use the term "fornication" to represent extra-marital sexual relations, without the need to go into details.

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relationship outside of its bond with YHWH. Supporting the idea that YHWH is the focus here more than the wife/land is the somewhat unusual terminology mrp miKD pan rmn ronD ("The land fornicates from after YHWH"). Though the Israelites are frequently accused of "HOR H3T ("whoring after") other gods in deuteronomistic texts,36 this phrasing places the other gods as the object, not YHWH. In deuteronomistic texts the Israelites whore after other gods, whereas in Hosea they rather awkwardly whore "from after" YHWH.37 This observation suggests two points. First, YHWH is the focus. Where the wife/land goes is insignificant— what is important is that she is going away from YHWH. Second, other gods are not specifically mentioned, meaning that the phrase does not necessarily refer to cultic matters, as is usually assumed. The marriage metaphor is further developed in Hos 2, where the relationship is clearly between YHWH and his wife, likely Samaria. In 2:7, YHWH accuses the wife, or rather the mother of the children, of fornicating and acting shamelessly, which has caused her children to be declared illegitimate. Further, she pursues her lovers, attributing to them her bread, water, wool, wine, oil, and drink. That this pursuit will be fruitless is iterated in 2:8 and 2:9. She will not be able to find her paths; she will pursue her lovers, but will not overtake them. In 2:4, the wife/mother becomes the object of rebuke. She will be stripped naked as on the day of her birth, turned into a desert, and left to die of thirst (2:5).The husband will snatch away his wool and flax that cover her nakedness and will expose her before the eyes of her lovers (2:11-12). The husband will also take away the food provisions. The grain, oil, and wine that the husband initially provided (2:10) will be taken away (2:11). Similarly, the wife's fig trees will be destroyed by the husband, because she thinks them her fee from her lovers (2:14). They will be left uncultivated and the wild beasts will eat them (2:14). The husband will also put an end to the wife's celebrations by removing her festivals. He will hedge up her ways so that she cannot find her lovers. In addition, not only will he punish the wife, but he will disown her children (2:6-7). 2. Implications of the female imagery for masculinity. This female imagery gives rise to three major categories of implications for the metaphorical husband's masculinity. 36. Galambush (Jerusalem, 37) notes that "whoring after" is used as a dead metaphor in extra-prophetic texts, representing cultic apostasy. A dead metaphor is one that ceases to be considered a metaphor in typical speech, such as the leg of a table. 37. Bird ("Play the Harlot," 81) observes that this construction appears only in Hosea and in Ps 73:27.

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a. Provisioning. Providing sufficient provisions for his wife and family was an important part of the male role in the ancient Near East. Many marriage contracts required the husband to provide his wife with stipulated amounts of items such as clothing, oil, and foodstuffs.38 Failure to do so could be grounds for divorce in the Middle Assyrian Laws.39 The same is true in at least one set of circumstances in biblical law: "If he takes another [wife], he shall not diminish her food, clothing, or marital rights. If he does not do these three things for her, she may go out freely, without [paying] money" (Exod 21:10-11). Additionally, many of the curses in Assyrian treaties relate to the provisioning/protecting features of masculinity.40 The curses contain threats to the vassal king's personal family, as well as the larger population. One common curse predicts that cannibalism will result from the king's inability to provide food for his people, once he has violated the treaty. For example, the Treaty of Assur-nerari V with MatiMlu, king of Arpad, curses the violator, saying: "May Adad, the canal inspector of heaven and earth, put an end to MatiMlu's land, and the people of his land through hunger, want, and famine, may they eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and may it taste as good to them as the flesh of spring lambs."41 Similar curses occur in Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty, which phrases the predicted cannibalism in more personal terms for the rebellious king. The most developed example states: May Adad, the canal inspector of heaven and earth, cut off sea[sonal flooding] from your land and deprive your fields of [grain], may he [submerge] your land with a great flood; may the locust who diminishes the land devour your harvest; may the sound of mill or oven be lacking from your houses, may the grain for grinding disappear from you; instead of grain may your sons and your daughters grind your bones; may not (even) your (first) finger-joint dip in the dough, may the [...] of your bowls eat up the dough. May a mother [bar the door] to her daughter. In your hunger eat the flesh of your sons! In want and famine may one man eat the flesh of another; may one man clothe himself in another's skin.42

In light of these expectations of provisioning, the wife's misattribution of the provisions of the grain, oil, wine, and clothing in Hosea is an insult to 38. M. Buss, The Prophetic Word of Hosea (BZAW 111; Berlin: TSpelmann, 1969), 88. See also H. J. Hendriks, "Juridical Aspects of the Marriage Metaphor in Hosea and Jeremiah" (Ph.D. diss., University of Stellenbosch, 1982), 67. 39. See MAL A 36 (ANET, 183). 40. Chapman, Gendered Language, 42-43. 41. S. Parpola and K. Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (S AA 2; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988), 11. 42. Ibid., 46.

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the husband's honor, in effect stating that her husband did not provide for her, but rather another man did. As Stone notes, this misattribution in Hos 2 affronts the husband's masculinity just as much as the sexual straying.43 b. Fidelity. The second category—the threat of the wife's infidelity— has been discussed more thoroughly in scholarship. The fidelity of a man's wife is necessary for his honor and thus his masculinity. If a man's wife strays, it affects masculinity in multiple ways. First, the husband faces the shame of not controlling his wife. Julie Galambush applies this idea to her analysis of the marriage metaphor in the prophetic texts: "Although adultery did not defile the name of the husband, the shame created by Yahweh's failure to keep his subjects 'at home' would have found powerful expression in the image of the god as cuckolded, and therefore shamed, husband."44 Second, adultery may suggest to other people that the husband has failed to provide the necessities of life: sufficient food, clothing, and other provisions and/or sufficient virility.45 In such a case, the shame falls on the husband rather than the wife. Third, the lover himself may be seen as challenging the husband's masculinity. In a society in which male relatives are responsible for the protection of a female, provisionally and sexually, the making and breaking of relationships between men and women are in large part relations between men, with the woman as the focal point.46 The issues related to the wife's infidelity therefore also challenge YHWH's masculinity by reflecting his inability to control his people and raising questions about his provision for the people. 43. Stone, "Lovers and Raisin Cakes," 128-30. 44. Galambush, Jerusalem, 34. That the shame of the cuckolded husband, in this case the man Hosea, has occurred to readers in the past is expressed poetically by E. H. Plumptre, Lazarus and Other Poems (4th ed; London: Griffith & Farran, 1884), 86. 45. David Gilmore cites a case in which the wife of a childless couple ran off with another man. Villagers suspected that the husband was impotent, so in this case the blame and shame fell on the husband rather than on the wife. See D. D. Gilmore "Honor, Honesty, Shame: Male Status in Contemporary Andalusia," in Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (ed. D. D. Gilmore; Special Publication of the American Anthropological Association 2; Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, 1987), 96-97. 46. See D. D. Gilmore, "Introduction," in Gilmore, ed., Honor and Shame, 4-5; Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power, 48. The challenge to the man's protection and provision do not have to be true to affect his social status as a man negatively. See N. Lindisfarne, "Variant Masculinities, Variant Virginities: Rethinking Honor and Shame," in Cornwall and Lindisfarne, eds., Dislocating Masculinities, 87.

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c. Reproduction. The strong emphasis on female fidelity in marriage is often justified by a concern with paternity. In order to assure that a man's offspring are indeed his own, he must make sure that he is the only one having intercourse with his wife. Children themselves, especially sons, serve, among other things, as proof of their father's virility. Although the female who is childless is often castigated as barren, in many areas of the world the male is considered the real source of the child, while the mother serves as an incubator. The language of seed, sowing, insemination, and so forth is quite common cross-culturally, including ancient Israel.47 In this model the male provides the seed, while the female is the soil. Soil can be fertile or barren, but it ultimately plays a passive role.48 The active role of the male must be continually proved.49 In Hosea's female imagery, the presence of children vouches for the virility of the husband, but the possibility that they are not his threatens this element of his masculinity. 3. Responses to challenged masculinity. The husband's response in chs. 2 and 3 indicates his desire to defend and regain control of his masculinity. Part of the irony of a system of hegemonic masculinity is that the subordinated female has considerable control over the reputation of the dominant male.50 Considerable pressure is put on the male relatives to ensure their reputations through their females' chastity. Having an unchaste female relative causes the man to lose honor, but the most shameful situation in many cultures is for a husband to know about his wife's infidelity and do nothing about it.51 The metaphorical husband in Hosea tries to avoid this fate. He threatens to disown the children and to punish the wife.52 In addition to 47. JHT is the most common way to discuss progeny in the biblical texts. See, e.g., Gen 12:7; 35:12; 38:9; 2 Sam7:12. It was also used to refer to semen, see, e.g., Lev 15:16. Likewise treaty curses often include the threat to destroy the king's seed from the land, meaning his progeny. See Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties, 46, 51. 48. See C. Delaney, "Seeds of Honor, Fields of Shame," in Gilmore, ed., Honor and Shame, 35^8. 49. For procreation as expected evidence of virility, see Gilmore, "Honor, Honesty, Shame," 96; idem, "Introduction," 10; Lindisfarne, "Variant Masculinities," 88. 50. Cornwall and Lindisfarne ("Dislocating Masculinity," 25) note that this sort of backhanded power has not been sufficiently studied from the viewpoint of the subordinate, whose actions may be intentional. 51. See Brandes, Metaphors of Masculinity, 88. 52. The effect of the punishment on the perception of the husband's masculinity is undercut, however, by the desire to reconcile expressed in the second half of

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reclaiming his masculinity through his direct actions on his wife and children, the husband makes a counter-attack on the masculinity of the lovers: "Stripping her naked before her lovers will not only expose her body and the foolishness of her ways, it will also prove, contrary to her claims, how feeble and impotent are her lovers to protect and provide for her (v. 12)."53 Showing that the lovers are incapable of saving the woman from the punishment of her husband places the blame for the straying back on the woman. The wife did not leave because her lovers were more manly than her husband. 4. Rhetorical effects of the female imagery. In addition to addressing challenges to YHWH's masculinity, the female imagery has important implications for the masculinity of the male audience. Because the largely male audience of the oracles is cast in the role of the wife in Hos 1-3, the rhetorical force is to turn the men into women. The metaphor of turning men into women has several powerful significations. Primary among these is the fear of men in most cultures of appearing to be feminized,54 especially as a symbol of the loss of power in political offices, social status, and economic arenas, as well as in sexual contexts. To portray the male, elite audience as a woman thus attacks many facets of their self-identity. According to Yee, this results in a loss of status, and effectively "castrates" the elite. In political terms, representing the elite as the promiscuous, penetrated wife symbolizes the nation as penetrated by foreigners.55 By portraying the men as women, Hosea emphasizes the idea that they are not really in charge. They may think they are the potent, active partners, making and breaking alliances to control the destiny of the country, but in fact, they are the passive recipients. As noted above, the shame of becoming women appears in both biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts (e.g. 1 Sam 4:9). Nahum 3:13 characterizes the useless and fearful soldiers of the defeated Nineveh as women: "Truly your troops within you are women; the gates of your land indeed were opened to your enemies." The transformation of men into women is also a treaty curse in Esarhaddon's succession treaty: "May all the gods who are called by name in this treaty tablet spin you around like Hos 2 and in Hos 3, although this reconciliation will be on the husband's terms. He rejected the wife's attempt to return in 2:9. 53. R. J. Weems, "Gomer: Victim of Violence or Victim of Metaphor?," Semeia 47 (1989): 97. 54. See Gilmore, "Introduction," 9. 55. G. Yee, Poor Banished Children of Eve (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 98-99.

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a spindle-whorl, may they make you like a woman before your enemy."56 Similarly, the treaty between Assur-nerari V and MatiMlu, the king of Arpad threatens, If MatiMlu sins against this treaty with Assur-nerari, king of Assyria, may MatiMlu become a prostitute, his soldiers women, may they receive [a gift] in the square of their cities like any prostitute, may one country push them to the next.57

Notable in this curse is that the king and the soldiers are not only cursed with becoming women, but with becoming prostitutes, who are near the bottom of the social status structure. This curse is the closest match with the situation in Hos 1-3, with the difference that Hosea characterizes the men as an adulterous wife rather than as a prostitute. The former may, in fact, may be considered worse because it represents a stronger challenge to masculinity and thus warrants harsher punishment. The rhetoric of the female images in Hos 1-3 thus serves two major purposes. First, it accuses the men of challenging YHWH's masculinity by breaking the treaty and shaming him like a cuckolded husband. The rhetoric responds to this challenge by placing the blame on the wife, showing the impotence of the lovers, and reasserting the husband's power to punish and restore at his whim. Second, the rhetoric undercuts the masculinity of the leaders who had raised the challenge by portraying them as a woman. They are not treated on an equal basis as a rival man but are put in their place as a woman under the authority of YHWH the husband. B. Male Imagery In addition to undermining the masculinity of the male audience by portraying them as a wife, Hosea also makes direct attacks against them through male imagery, which predominates in chs. 4—14. Much of the male imagery in Hosea has been overlooked in favor of the female imagery. An examination of ancient Near Eastern texts that have overt sexual and gender connotations, however, reveals a common image base, which is useful for bringing to light some of the more obscure metaphors 56. Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties, 56. Spindles are instruments used to signify women in many Akkadian texts, as bows often symbolize men. The transformation of men into women (and vice versa) is especially attributed to Inanna, a goddess associated with love and war. See K. McCaffrey, "Reconsidering Gender Ambiguity in Mesopotamia: Is a Beard Just a Beard?," in Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East [ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting; Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002], 380). 57. Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties, 12.

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in Hosea. A collection of seventh-century Akkadian potency incantations with accompanying rituals, called the SA.ZI. GA ("Rising of the Heart"), provides a particularly illuminating comparison.58 While Hosea may or may not have been aware of these or similar texts, they serve to illustrate what kinds of images for male sexuality were present in the cultural milieu of the ancient Near East under Assyrian domination.59 1. Categories of male imagery. Hosea's male imagery takes a variety of forms. First, he uses illicit sexual relationships to associate men with treachery and deceit. He also challenges potency, an important component of masculine identity, by using categories that include sticks and staffs, J1K, baking imagery, and bow imagery. a. H3T. The term H3T characterizes the first category of illicit sexual relationships. Forms of 113T occur in nine verses in Hos 4-14 with a male subject or implied subject.60 While much scholarly attention has focused on the cases with a female subject, including long discussions about whether they are intended literally or figuratively, the cases with male referents have largely been neglected.61 Treatments of the male cases jump to a figurative interpretation almost immediately, so that in effect the metaphor is treated as if it were dead.62 While this may be true of the non-prophetic material, in Hosea, at least, the metaphor seems to be very much alive, and as such, has broader rhetorical implications. The first time the verb appears in the masculine is 4:10: &7\ 1*7381 liTIS11 tf7\ 1DTH liner ("They will eat, but not be sated, they will fornicate but not break out/through").63 The verb )HS has two basic meanings: to break through, as in breaching a wall, and to break out, or to multiply 58. R. D. Biggs, SA.ZI.GA: Ancient Mesopotamian Potency Incantations (TCS 2; Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J. Augustin, 1967). 59. Marvin Chancy, of San Francisco Theological Seminary, introduced me to the relevance of SA.ZI. GA literature to the text at hand in a seminar on Hosea. 60. See 4:10, 11, 12, 15, 18; 5:3,4; 6:10; 9:1. 61. Bird ("Play the Harlot," nn. 33 and 50) acknowledges the presence of male referents and proposes that the Hiphil form, which appears three times in Hosea (4:10, 18; 5:3), could indicate the male role in prostitution. She characterizes the other references as still playing on female imagery, despite the male subject. 62. See, for example, Bucher, "Meaning ofZNH" 146. John J. Schmitt highlights the multiple instances of il3T with a male subject, but his main point is that Israel always takes the masculine gender ("The Gender of Ancient Israel," JSOT26 [1983]: 121). 63. JPS translates the verb here and in 4:18 as "to drink," but as "fornicate" in 5:3.1 translate H3T as "fornicate" to emphasize the illicit nature of the sexual activity. While not all male extra-marital activity may have been considered illicit, that with women under the supervision of other men would have been.

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quickly and spread out in space. There is thus a possible double entendre in the verse. One connotation relates to infertility: the man will be promiscuous, but will not have offspring. Loss of fertility even with much effort is a common treaty curse. The treaty between MatiMlu and Assurnerari V, for example, reads: "may Mati'ilu's (sex) life be that of a mule's."64 Similar curses come from Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty: "May Belet-ili, the lady of creation, cut off birth from your land; may she deprive your nurses of the cries of little children in the streets and squares."65 The second connotation relates to lack of satisfaction in the sexual act itself. The male will fornicate, but will not breach the female's "wall."66 The imagery of breaking through is sometimes used in the military defeat of cities, which are often portrayed as female. Breaching the wall is the symbolic equivalent of sexual penetration.67 Either of these two connotations parallels the preceding colon expressing the lack of satisfaction from food. Other uses of H3T link fornication with shamefulness and impurity (4:18; 5:3; 6:10) and with apostasy (4:11,12,15; 5:4; 9: l).The references to male illicit sexual activity keep the rhetorical focus on the wrongdoing of the audience as males, excluding the possibility of evading responsibility through the construction of a female "other," as occurs in Hos 1-3. b. *)&]. Hosea also characterized the men as adulterers (7:4).68 "Adultery" in Hosea's context denoted sexual relations with or by a married woman, regardless of the marital status of the man. Adultery was thus a crime against a husband rather than against a wife. In the context of a chapter filled with political intrigue and apparent conspiracy against the king, committing adultery against the king means that the conspirators are making a direct challenge to his masculinity.69 By comparison, the 64. Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties, 12. 65. Ibid., 46. 66. Francis Landy links sexual and sacred boundaries, interpreting the audience as the priests, who in this verse are "threatened with unremitting frustration"; see his Hosea (Readings; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 58-59. 67. Chapman, Gendered Language, 88, 110. 68. A few commentators emend this to a form of *pN ("to burn") in the sense of consuming rage. See, e.g., S. Paul, "The Image of the Oven and the Cake in Hosea VII4-10." VT18 (1968): 115; cf. W. Rudolph, Hosea (KAT 13; Gutersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1966), 146. 69. Hendriks ("Juridical Aspects," 89) sees Hosea as an innovator in the figurative use of *}t«. He notes that the context clearly suggests the word is a figure for political, not cultic or marital situations. Outside the prophetic literature, *]tW is used only twice in a feminine form (Lev 20:10; Prov 30:20). Within the prophets, the feminine form occurs eleven times, most of which are in figurative expressions. In

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strong masculine images in Hos 7 also suggest that the issue is a contest between men. In addition to the use of adultery as a trope for competing potencies, it also implies treachery and deceit.70 An analogous passage appears in Jer 9:lb, which pairs adulterers and bands of traitors, who tell lies and forsake truth: D'TD m!H? D'BiWD D^D 'D ("because they are all adulterers, an assembly of traitors"). What makes this an especially relevant parallel is that treachery pervades Hos 7 and a raiding band appears in 7:1. Both passages link adultery, deceit, and celebrations, while women are conspicuously absent. The adultery imagery emphasizes the treacherous competition between men. c. Sticks and staffs. In addition to the fields of illicit sexual relations, there are several categories of masculine imagery in Hosea that relate to potency. One of the more blatant cases of potency imagery is in 4:12, which reads: 1 *? Tr 1 bpDI ^WT13JID ^U ("my people asks his stick and his staff tells it"). The majority of commentators interpret the stick and staff as cultic items.71 Another way to interpret the verse, however, is through phallic imagery, where the rod and staff are euphemisms for the penis.72 The immediate context of an oracle describing promiscuity and adultery increases the likelihood that this is phallic imagery. The oracle follows w. 10b-l 1: :^TI|T BTTTTI ]"T niDT "IDE/? 1372 mrPTltr'D ("Because they abandoned YHWH to observe fornication, and wine and new wine takes away [their] heart") and precedes v. 12b: D^IST m~l ""3 DlTn^N nnnD 1]n ni?nn ("For a spirit of fornication leads them astray, the masculine form the verb occurs nine times in a literal context (Exod 20:14; Lev 20:10 [3x]; Deut 5:18; Job 24:15; Prov 6:32; Isa 57:3; Mai 3:5) and five times in what are probably figurative contexts (Jer 5:7; 9:1; 23:10; 29:23; Hos 7:4), in which adultery seems to be a symbol for lying and deception in general, and perhaps also of apostasy. 70. So also F. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Hosea (AB 24; New York: Doubleday, 1980), 455. 71. See Mays, Hosea, 73; H. W. Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 84; M. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets (Berit Olam 1; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000), 48. Landy (Hosea, 61) likewise sees these as idols even though he interprets nearly everything else with sexual connotations. Macintosh (Hosea, 151-52) acknowledges that others have seen these as phallic symbols, but finds this interpretation unlikely. Andersen and Freedman (Hosea, 366) mention the possibility, but then equate this with either phallic shaped idols or with a derogatory reference to the idols. 72. So JPS; Bird, "Play the Harlot," 83; H. L. Ginsberg, "Lexigraphical Notes," in Hebrdische Wortforschung (ed. James Barr; VTSup 16; Leiden: Brill, 1967), 74. Compare line 28 from the Akkadian potency incantation no. 22: "May the penis of NN son of NN be a stick of warfti-wood!" (Biggs, SA.ZI.GA).

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and they fornicate from under their God"). In other words, wine has taken away the men's minds and they are thinking with another part of their anatomy.73 The chapter as a whole is quite dense with sexual imagery, especially concerning excessive or illegitimate sex, and the phallic nature of the rods and staffs fits nicely in that context. Cognate literature also provides several examples of rods and staffs as phallic imagery. In the Ugaritic text of "The Birth of the Gods of Dawn and Dusk," for example, after having intercourse with his two wives (with his "hand" as long as the sea), El evidently needs a break before resuming activities with his passionate wives: Surely El entices two women; lo! the two women cry out: "Oh husband, husband, thy sceptre is lowered, the staff of thy hand laid aside (?) Lo! the bird is roasted at the fire; scorching hot at the coals are the two women, wives of El—wives of El (now) and for evermore!"74 d. )1N. The word }1N is an equivalent term to potency in English, with connotations of sexual, physical, economic, and political power.75 Jacob exerts himself with God in his ]1N ("manly vigor") in 12:4. EilbergSchwarz comments on the allusion to Jacob in this passage and its implications of unwarranted pride: Hosea's retelling emphasizes that Jacob's struggle with God occurred in his manhood ('ono). Furthermore, it makes Jacob's supplanting of Esau parallel Jacob's struggle with God. Hosea views the struggle with God as part of Jacob's (Israel's) hubris. He is so defiant that he is willing to stand against God.76

73. Brandes (Metaphors of Masculinity, 92) observes that in Andalusia the male genitals are referred to as the source of the will. If a man does something because he wants to, and does not really care what other people (especially his wife) think, he says he is doing it "because it comes to me from the balls" or "because it comes out of my prick." A related expression with more pejorative connotations is present in American slang. "Thinking with one's dick" indicates that lust is overriding rational thought. 74. Translation by G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends (OTS 3; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), 123. S. H. Smith (" 'Heel' and 'Thigh': The Concept of Sexuality in the Jacob-Esau Narratives," FT40 [1990]: 467) translates the phrase as "Your staff is going down; weakened is the rod of your hand." 75. Multiple connotations of the term are evident in Gen 49:3. Cf. Deut 21:17; Ps 78:51. 76. Eilberg-Schwarz, God's Phallus, 156. He also asserts that in the Genesis version, Jacob's "hip" injury is really a genital injury, thus making Jacob submit his potency to God's power. With regard to the Hosea version, he writes: "Although

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The economic connotations of jlK appear a few verses later in Hos 12:9, still in a context of unwarranted hubris, where Ephraim says: "Surely I have become rich. I have found potency (jlN) for myself." This is followed by the enigmatically worded justification: "All of my acquisitions do not find for me iniquity (pi?) that is sin." There is a play here between what Ephraim has found for himself (JIN) and what his acquisitions have not found for him (J1J7).77 Of course, the implication of the passage is that iniquity has indeed been found. e. Baking imagery. Another group of male sexual images, especially prevalent in Hos 7, relates to baking. The relationship between food and sex is common in Hebrew and other literatures and vernaculars. Song of Songs provides particularly obvious food linkages.78 Judges 14, which recounts the tale of Samson and his Philistine fiancee, associates honey with marriage and sex. Negative connotations of food and sex appear in Prov 30:20, which describes an adulteress with implications of eating: "Thus are the ways of a woman who is committing adultery: She wipes her mouth and says I have done no wrong." Connections between food and sex in Hosea occur in ch. 2, where the promiscuity of the wife is rewarded or punished through the giving and taking away of foodstuffs. The baking metaphor in Hos 7 links issues of food and potency. First, the image of the oven itself occurs three times in w. 4, 6, and 7. The type of oven here is a "H3P, which is an upright cylindrical oven. The fire is lit at the bottom, and the food, usually bread, is placed through a hole in the top.79 The image has obvious phallic possibilities, which warrant further exploration because of the link between sexual and political potency. Verse 4 most clearly puts the oven in the realm of sexual symbolism: "They are all adulterers (D^Bi^O) like an oven (Ttfn) stoked by a baker (nSNQ)." The verse connotes the heat of the oven and the heat of illicit sex, an association underscored by the play between D^StWD ("adulterers") and HSKQ ("baker").80 All of this heat in turn symbolizes political treachery and regicide. The next use of "TUP is in 7:6: "They brought near their hearts like an oven ("nuro) in their ambush." Theremainder of the verse describes how their baker slept all night, then Hosea does not explicitly allude to Jacob's injury, Jacob's weeping may be an oblique reference to that event. In his manhood, he has been made to cry." 77. R. B. Coote ("Hosea 12," VT2\ [1971]: 393) assertsthatpfc and|1K meaning ''iniquity" (cf. 12:12), were pronounced identically in northern Israel. Thus the mention of the former in this verse brings up the connotations of the latter. 78. See, e.g., Song 1:2; 2:3,4; 4:11, 16; 5:1. 79. J. F. Ross, "Bread," IDE 1:462. 80. KB notes that the verb HSK is mostly used for men, and lists only one instance of female bakers mSN in 1 Sam 8:13.

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in the morning flared up like a blazing fire. Subsequently in 7:7: "All of them burned (1QIT) like an oven (T13rD) and consumed (I^DNI) their rulers. All their kings have fallen." The conspirators assert their own potency over that of the kings and princes, who have fallen, a description of impotency in all of its various senses. A second group of baking images concerns dough and bread. In addition to the oven and adultery references mentioned above, 7:4 states: "He stops stoking from the kneading of the dough until its leavening." While waiting for the oven to blaze up in full strength, the conspirators wait for their potency to rise. The first stage of bread preparation has shown the conspirators' assessment of their own potency as growing and consuming their rulers. Hosea then develops the imagery further in order to show that their self-image is delusional. The people are not kneaded into potency, rather in 7:8: "Ephraim is kneaded/mixed up (^DTP) among the peoples." The related Akkadian root is used in Assyrian texts to indicate the mixing of peoples for trade and other purposes.81 Thus the implication may be that the conspirators will not gain independent political power, but will be subject to Assyrian control. Moving onto the next phase of baking, 7:8 reads: "Ephraim is a cake not turned (rmsn ^D)." Such a cake would be raw on one side and burned on the other, unfit for human consumption.82 Here Ephraim thinks it is potent, like risen bread, but turns out to be simultaneously burnt and squishy, that is, impotent.83 In political terms, Ephraim is caught between two nations. Its appeals to Egypt are unsuccessful, and its revolt against Assyria has dire consequences. In the terms of the imagery, Ephraim is unsupported by Egypt (squishy) and burned by Assyria. Finally, there are images relating to the finished bread in 7:9: "Strangers consume his strength (1PQ), but he does not know (ITP). Also gray hairs/mold (ra^tD) sprout on him, but he does not know." Ephraim is unaware that strangers consume his "strength."84 !"D like "pR connotes 81. Paul, "Image of the Oven," 118. See H. Tadmor, "The Campaigns of Sargon n of Assur: A Chronological-Historical Study," JCS12 (1958): 34: "The Assyrians and the Egyptians I mingled together and made them trade with each other." 82. Macintosh, Hosea, 268; Mays, Hosea, 108; Rudolph, Hosea, 153. 83. While E. Nwaoru ("The Role of Images in the Literary Structure of Hosea VII 8-Vffl 14," FT 54 [2004]: 219) does not discuss this chapter in particular, his assessment of the imagery used here is telling: "The prophet's verdict is that Ephraim is totally worthless in his international contacts, for his failed political outing results in a total emasculation as expressed in the subsequent verbal metaphors" (emphasis added). 84. Ironically, here the conspirators who have consumed (^SK) their rulers in 7:7 are themselves consumed (^DK). Nwaoru (ibid., 221) notes that the imagery recurs in 8:8 where Israel is S^ ("swallowed up").

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virility as well as physical strength, power, and the produce of the land. Ephraim's lack of knowledge about being eaten has multiple implications. First, in the symbolic realm, Ephraim has lost his virility and is no longer able to "know," that is, to perform sexually; moreover, he does not even realize it. Second, in the political and economic realm, Ephraim has lost his potency, being mixed up among the nations, but again does not realize it. Third, Ephraim's military might has been eviscerated, but he does not realize this, as evidenced by the multiple rebellions against Assyria. The subsequent line has similar connotations. The translation is somewhat difficult, being either "gray hairs sprout on him" or "mold sprouts on him." Paul supports the latter meaning and notes that the phrase !"QT np"lT has an Akkadian equivalent in the Gilgamesh epic: siba ittadi ("it had thrown off a mold"), although siba means literally "white hairs."85 It is possible that a pun is intended, playing off both meanings. Mold, of course, sprouts on bread and denotes decay, the opposite of potency. Gray hair symbolizes old age, with its attendant loss of virility (cf. Gen 18:12).86 f. Bow imagery. A significant field of male sexual imagery that finds many analogies in ancient Near East literature revolves around military might. In particular, the image of the bow as a symbol of potency is widespread. As an instrument of power in military situations and in hunting, it is a natural symbol for masculinity in general.87 In both biblical texts and ancient Near Eastern texts and reliefs, bows and archers represent strength and dominance. Many occurrences of HCp throughout the biblical texts, for example, serve to describe warriors, both Israelite and 85. Paul, "Image of the Oven," 119. The meaning of mold is clearly intended because the story describes the level of decay a cake of bread shows after a particular number of days. 86. At an age when wisdom is supposed to be present, Ephraim does not even know his own condition. Choon Leong Seow ("Hosea 14:10 and the Foolish People Motif," CBQ 44 [1982]: 212-24) notes that motifs from wisdom literature, particularly relating to the foolish person, appear several times in Hosea, including this verse. 87. Harry A. Hofmer Jr. ("Symbols of Masculinity and Femininity: Their Use in Ancient Near Eastern Sympathetic Magic Rituals," JBL 85 [1966]: 326-34 [327]) observes that since "the ancients" assessed masculinity through prowess in battle and the ability to sire children, the image fields often overlapped, so that, in particular, weapons took on sexual symbolism. Pamela Gordon and Harold C. Washington ("Rape as a Military Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible," in Brenner, ed., Feminist Companion, 308-25 [313]) also link military and sexual imagery, but concentrate on the representation of military defeat and violence as sexual violence.

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foreign (e.g. 2 Sam 1:17-27). Elsewhere the vanquished flee before the bow (e.g. Jer 4:29; Isa 21:15; Ps 11:2). If a warrior is particularly blessed and strengthened he will bend an extra strong bow. David, for instance, praises God for strengthening his hands for battle so that he can bend a bow of bronze (2 Sam 22:35; cf. Gen 49:23-24; Ps 18:35). A broken bow, on the other hand, indicates total defeat. In the biblical texts, it is often YHWH who breaks the bows, as a symbol of YHWH'S dominion. The nations whose bows are broken are no longer the powerful actors, and in the particular contexts of the verses, this signals a significant reversal of power. For example, Hannah champions the overturning of the expected order, where the powerful are dethroned: "The bows of the mighty are broken, and the faltering are girded with strength" (1 Sam 2:4). Broken bows also signify peace under the dominion of YHWH (e.g. Ps 46:9; Zech 9:10). The first reference to the bow in Hosea employs these connotations of YHWH's dominion: "I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel" (1:7). Assyrian reliefs also often show the king standing upright, holding a bow, representing his power and dominance, while the defeated parties appear with their bows down or abandoned.88 One particular relief depicts a prisoner kneeling next to a stack of bows he has surrendered, while Assurbanipal stands upright, testing the newly confiscated equipment, with a bow fully drawn.89 Thus, the bow is a multifaceted symbol, incorporating several elements of masculinity. Some of these features appear in ancient Near Eastern treaties of the time, especially in the extensive curse lists. These lists also contain references to sexuality and its connotations for fertility. Hence, the threat to break bows symbolizes the crushing of both military might and sexual power. Violating the treaty engenders punishments in which many of the important elements in the construction of masculinity are destroyed: military might and protective, provisional, and procreative abilities. The curses in the Sefire inscription, for example, after describing how the land, as well as its inhabitants, will become barren and how the fields will be sown with salt and weeds, adds, "Just as (this) bow and these arrows are broken, so may Inurta and Hadad break [the bow of Mati'el] and the bow of his nobles!"90 Likewise, a treaty between Assurnerari V and Mati'-ilu reads:

88. See Chapman, Gendered Language, 173-79. 89. Ibid., 176. 90. J. A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire (rev. ed.; BibOr 197A; Rome: Pontifical Bible Institute, 1995), 47.

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Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past May Mati'-ilu's (sex) life be that of a mule, his wives extremely old; may Istar, the goddess of men, the lady of women, take away their bow, bring them to shame, and make them bitterly weep: "Woe, we have sinned against the treaty of AsSur-nerari, king of Assyria."91

The association between having one's bow broken and being forced to crouch also appears in treaty curses.92 Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty, for instance, states: "[May Istar, lady of warfare, break his bow in] the thick of battle, and have him crouch as a captive [under his enemy],"93 and "May Astarte break your bow in the thick of battle and have you crouch at the feet of your enemy, may a foreign enemy divide your belongings."94 The humiliation of breaking a man's bow and forcing him to crouch takes on special significance when one considers the sexual connotations of the bow image. Bows appear in the Ugaritic poem, "The Birth of the Gods of Dawn and Dusk," as a symbol of sexual potency: 'El bends his bowstave, He drew his mighty shaft, He lifts (it), He shoots skyward. He shoots a bird in the sky, He plucks (it), he sets (it) on coals. 'El seduces his wives, Lo, the two women cry: O husband! Husband! Stretched is your bowstave, Taut is your mighty shaft.95

Bows are also used in the SA.ZL GA incantations. Two examples are No. 3, line 20, "And who has made you fall limp like slack cords?,"96 and No. 18, lines 3'-4', "May the [qu]iver not become e[mp]ty! May the bow not become slack! Let the batt[le of] my love-making be waged! Let us lie down by night!"97 A further example comes from a Hittite impotency ritual of the sorceress Paskuwatti, which involves taking a spindle, a mirror, and women's clothing from the impotent man and giving him the bow and arrow.98 Psalm 127:3-5 also incorporates fertility, protection, and military might in its bow imagery: 91. Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties, 12. This treaty seems to involve the same person as Sefire treaty, as Mati'ilu and Mattel are equivalent. The mysterious king of KTK has not been identified, however, so one cannot say that these are versions of the same treaty. 92. Note that crouching puts the man in a submissive, feminized position. 93. Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties, 23. 94. Ibid., 27. Note here the additional humiliation that the man will not be able to protect his possessions. 95. F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 35. 96. Biggs, SA.ZI.GA, 19. 97. Ibid., 37. 98. Hoffher, "Symbols of Masculinity," 331.

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Sons are the heritage of YHWH, a reward is the fruit of the womb Like arrows in the hand of a warrior thus are the sons of youth Happy is the man who fills his quiver with them. He will not be ashamed when they drive away the enemy at the gate.

The above material suggests a possible solution to the translation problems of Hos 7:16. The first line is quite terse: ^S vft imtZT ("they will return but not up[ward]")." The comparative imagery suggests that one translate the line as it stands: "not up."100 Read with the following colon, it is a potency image: "They return, not 'up'—they are like a slack bow!" The surrounding context supports this understanding, as YHWH complains that the people have been deceitful. YHWH has strengthened their arms (another potential military image), but they plot evil against him. Then they return but "not up"; they are like a slack bow, and their officials will fall by the sword (7:15-16). They are defeated and (symbolically) emasculated. 2. Implications of male imagery for masculinity. The several types of male imagery contribute to a multi-dimensional picture of masculinity. The terminology of illicit sexual unions, for example, represented by the use of HDT and ^ND, suggests the treachery and deceit of the male leaders, as well as their challenge to YHWH's masculinity. The potency images relate more directly to general characteristics of masculinity. The general, multi-faceted term for masculine virility, ]1K, is played upon, showing that the source of masculine pride can lead into hubris and self-delusion, which often lead one into iniquity and forgetting the true top of the power structure, namely, YHWH. The phallic imagery of the sticks, staffs, and bows has a visceral connection to masculine understanding, which is then ridiculed. The men are shown to be self-deluded about their potency and will suffer military humiliation and defeat. The extended imagery of baking also allows for the development of several aspects of masculinity. The initial association of men with food 99. Translation proposals include understanding "upward" is a reference to YHWH (see Wolff, Hosea, 108; Landy, Hosea, 99; Macintosh, Hosea, 284); taking bu Kb together as "Not High," a disparaging reference to Ba'al (see Sweeney, Twelve Prophets, 83; Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 477); emending the text itself to tob (see H. D. Beeby, Grace Abounding [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989], 92; William Rainey Harper, Amos and Hosea [ICC 23; Edinburgh: T. &T. Clark, 1905], 307); and emending or reversing the words to "turn to what is nothing/useless" (see Mays, Hosea, 110; Rudolph, Hosea, 151). 100. hs is a rare term. A similar construction occurs in 2 Sam 23:1: DKD1 bu Dpn "O3n ("The utterance of the man who has been raised up").

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reminds one of the provisioning aspect of male honor. Sexual heat and power mix with political intrigue and power structures, which rise like dough before breaking forth into lawlessness and murder. Inappropriate mixing with foreign nations leads to political and economic impotence, and decay ultimately sets in for old bread and old men, leaving them useless and weak, consumed by others. IV. Conclusion The gendered language in Hosea has two major rhetorical effects on the male audience. First, the female imagery feminizes them, casting them in the role of the wife. This imagery identifies the breaking of the treaty in question as an affront to YHWH. By playing on the fears and concerns about masculinity in the lives of the leaders, the rhetoric dramatizes the nature of the offense against YHWH. As often threatened in the treaties themselves, the men are turned into women. The imagery also details the punishment that the city will face when besieged by the Assyrians. Second, the male imagery emasculates them. The oracles enumerate the various ways that the men are not as manly as they think they are. The rhetorical effect of the fairly dogged assault on the audience's masculinity is to disparage their political decisions and capabilities. The men are not acting with honor. They are instead deceitful, treacherous, and ultimately impotent. Because of their maneuverings, they have brought upon themselves the treaty curses. Their bows will be broken, their pride will be humbled, they will face infertility and starvation. The males in the text strive after the normal attributes of masculinity, including military prowess, the ability to provide for and protect one's family, and the desire not to be perceived as feminized. It is those very goals that they will lose through breaking the treaty. By contrast, the gendered language portrays YHWH as the ultimate masculine figure: the husband to the leaders' wife, the bow-breaker, the one who reveals the leaders' impotency. Because the leaders have violated the treaty with the Assyrians that YHWH had witnessed, YHWH now enforces the curses against an Israel powerless to resist. Hence, Hosea effectively criticizes the actions of Israel's leaders using the rhetoric of masculinity, which is central to the construction of political power. The leaders are weak and delusional, not acknowledging that YHWH holds the true power.

ISAIAH'S EGYPTIAN AND NUBIAN ORACLES* J. J. M. Roberts

In addition to a number of brief allusions to Egypt's role in Israel's early history (Isa 10:24-26; 11:11,15-16) and to its contemporary roles as an agent of Israel's punishment (7:18), as a place of Israel's exile (11:11), and as a shocked observer of Tyre and Sidon's fates (23:5), Isaiah of Jerusalem also issued a number of oracles specifically concerned with Egypt (19-20; 30:1-7; 31:1-3) and Nubia (18; 20).1 If one could date these oracles, they would provide a fascinating historical commentary on Isaiah's interpretation of Israelite-Egyptian relations in the late eighth century B.C.E. Isaiah 20's synchronism with Sargon's Ashdod campaign,2 anchors it to a particular circumstance, but the other oracles are lacking such a secure anchor, and their contents allow more than one possible historical context. The purpose of this study is to explore those possible contexts, to suggest the more likely, and to comment on the resulting picture of Isaiah's critique of late eighth-century Judean and Israelite foreign policy. Before turning to the biblical texts, however, it will be helpful to review Danel Kahn's revision of the chronology of the Egyptian Twentyfifth or Nubian Dynasty necessitated by the republication of Sargon H's * It is a delight to present this study to John Hayes, a friend and discussion partner of many years. While I have often differed from John's conclusions, I have always learned from the acuteness with which he poses the questions and from his critical evaluations of the various options. 1. Standard English translations customarily render 271D as Ethiopia, but modern Ethiopia is too far east to correspond to biblical "Cush." The term refers to the area of the Nile Valley between Aswan and Khartoum, the area of southern Egypt and northern Sudan that used to go by the name Nubia. 2. See my "Egypt, Assyria, Isaiah, and the Ashdod Affair: An Alternative Proposal," in Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period(ed. A. G. Vaughn and A. E. Killebrew; SBLSymS 18; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2003), 265-83.

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inscription at Tang-i Var.3 Since this inscription, dating from 706 B.C.E., specifically names Shebitku, not Shabako, as the Nubian king who extradited Yamani, the leader of the Ashdod revolt, from Nubia to Assyria, Shebitku must have succeeded Shabako by 706, not 702 or 701 as earlier assumed. That in turn requires an adjustment in the dates assigned to the earlier members of this dynasty. According to Kahn and Anson Rainey, who follows him,4 the dates assigned to the members of this dynasty are as follows: Alara Kashta Piye (Pi-cankhy) Shabako Shebitku Taharqa (Tirhakah) Tantamani

? ? to 753 B.C.E. 753-721 B.C.E. 721-706 B.C.E. 706-690 B.C.E. 690-664 B.C.E. 664-653 B.C.E.

According to Kahn, Piye's campaign against Tefhakht of Sais and his Delta allies began in 734 B.C.E. and was the reason why Hanun of Gaza, who had sought asylum with his Egyptian supporters, now threatened by the Nubians, did not remain in Egypt but returned home to submit to Tiglath-pileser EL Better the evil that Hanun knew than the unknown and uncertain evil of the Nubians. Nubian contact with Assyria is clearly attested by 732, when both Nubians and Egyptians were among those receiving rations of wine at the Assyrian capital Calah.5 Piye did not remain in the Delta to consolidate his rule, however, and Tefhakht soon reasserted control of the Delta and assumed royal titles from ca. 733725. He was the major power in the Delta, and it was either to him directly or perhaps to him through his vassal Osorkon IV of Tanis that Hoshea sent tribute to secure Egyptian aid for his revolt against Shalmaneser V. Temakht was succeeded by his son Bakenranef (725720), who attempted to regain control of Memphis, provoking a Nubian

3. D. Kahn, "The Inscription of Sargon II at Tang-I Var and the Chronology of Dynasty 25," Or n.s. 70 (2001): 1-18. His doctoral dissertation, "A Grammatical Analysis of the Victory Stela of Pianky and the Political, Military, Cultural Reality Arising from the Text" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001), was not available to me. For the inscription itself, see G. Frame, "The Inscription of Sargon II at Tang-i Var," On.s. 68 (1999): 31-57. 4. A. F. Rainey and R. S. Notley, The Sacred Bridge: Carlo's Atlas of the Biblical World (Jerusalem: Carta, 2006), 233. 5. J. V. Kinnier-Wilson, The Nimrud Wine Lists: A Study of Men and Administration at the Assyrian Capital in the Eighth Century B. C. (Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud 1; London: The British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1972), 91-92.

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response. Shabako invaded Egypt in 720, killed Bakenranef, and reasserted control over the Delta. Yet he also continued the anti-Assyrian policies of the Delta rulers. In 720, he apparently sent an army under Reu to relieve Sargon's siege of Gaza. Reliefs from Sargon's palace at Dursharruken show Nubian soldiers defending the walls of Raphia and Gabbatuna.6 In 715 B.C.E., when Sargon sent an Assyrian army to replace the rebellious Azuri in Ashdod and to deal with the Arabs on the Egyptian border, Osorkon IV of Tanis sent a gift of horses to the Assyrian court, and this may have provoked a hostile Nubian response in the eastern Delta. Such a response would help explain the boldness of the Ashdodites in throwing out Ahimeti, whom the Assyrians had appointed king in Azuri's place, and in elevating an apparent foreign adventurer, variously known as Yamani or Yadna, as their king.7 This Yamani resumed the anti-Assyrian diplomacy of Azuri with the obvious expectation of Egyptian and Nubian support. Isaiah 20 suggests that such expectations of Egyptian and Nubian support for this revolt were widely held in Judah and the other Palestinian and Transjordanian states that Yamani had invited to participate. Those expectations are easier to understand if messengers from the Nubian court and their Egyptian vassals had actually visited the royal courts of these small states, including that of Hezekiah in Jerusalem. Nonetheless, despite the protracted negotiations of 714-711, Judah did not join the revolt, and, when the Assyrians marched on Ashdod in 711, no Nubian-Egyptian army came to the rescue of the city. Yamani fled through Egypt to the border of Nubia where he received political asylum for the rest of Shabako's reign. When Shebitku replaced Shabako in 706, however, the new Nubian king decided that an exiled Yamani was no longer of value to him, and he extradited him to Assyria. Whether this was a serious attempt to establish 6. N. Franklin, "The Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharruken and Sargon IF s Western Campaigns," TA 21 (1994): 255-75, esp. 264-68 Figs. 3-7. 7. The variation in the name suggests that both names might be nicknames, derived from the man's ethnicity or place of origin—Yamani as a gentilic JOHWK for "the Greek" and Yadna as a shortened form of Yadnana, "Cyprus," for "Cypriot." Some have rejected this explanation, however, because neither Yamani nor Yadna are written in Akkadian with the normal Akkadian gentilic ending -ayyu. Yet this would be a compelling argument only if the names had been given by the Assyrians. It is far more likely they were nicknames given by Phoenicians or Philistines speaking a West Semitic dialect in which the gentilic ending is simply —i. The Assyrian scribes may have understood the names as simple proper names and rendered them as they were pronounced, rather than converting them into proper Akkadian forms.

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more amicable long-term relations with Assyria, a temporary appeasement to gain more time to prepare for serious conflict, or a tactical move to get rid of an expensive and no longer useful vassal in exchange for better intelligence on the plans and capabilities of the Assyrian state is hard to say. Whatever the motivation, it did not produce long-term peace with Assyria. When Sargon died unexpectedly in 705, Nubia became a major supporter of the anti-Assyrian revolt in the west, and in 701 a Nubian-Egyptian army tried to drive Sennacherib's army from southern Palestine. As mentioned above, Isa 20's account of Isaiah's repeated public appearances in the nude during his shocking three-year long demonstration against any possible Judean participation in the Ashdod revolt clearly relates to the years 715-711 B.C.E. Isaiah's explicit announcement of judgment on both Egypt and Nubia in 20:3-5 suggests that during the extended negotiations between Hezekiah and Ashdod the promise of Egyptian and Nubian support for the revolt was communicated not just by Philistine messengers, but by actual envoys from Egypt and Nubia. Isaiah took the promise of Egyptian and Nubian military assistance seriously enough to direct his main threat against these powers in whom the Philistines were placing their reliance. Several other texts are probably best dated to this period as well. Unless one emends the text, the oracle against the Philistines in Isa 14:28-32 dates to the year of Ahaz's death. According to the synchronism in 2 Kgs 18:13, Ahaz died in 715 B.C.E., the approximate time that the Philistines of Ashdod under Azuri began sending letters to the surrounding states asking them to join in a revolt against Assyria. The death of Ahaz, who had remained a staunch Assyrian ally during his whole reign, may have encouraged the Philistines, who imagined that Hezekiah, Judah's new king, might be open to their entreaties. The references in 14:29 to the rod that smote the Philistines and to the root of the serpent from whom will emerge a viper and a flying cobra are often taken as references to the Assyrians, but it is more likely a reference to Ahaz and his successor Hezekiah as oppressors of Philistia. Hezekiah certainly became a dominant force in Philistine affairs as his later imprisonment of Padi, the loyal Assyrian vassal and legitimate Philistine ruler of Ekron, indicates.8 Biblical readers tend not to attribute such a reputation to Ahaz, however, since the Deuteronomistic Historian attributes no military successes to Ahaz (2 Kgs 16:1-20) and the Chronicler has the Philistines oppressing Ahaz, not the reverse (2 Chr 28:18). Yet one 8. D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (OIP 2; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924), 31 ii 73-78; 32 iii 8-17.

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should not make too much of this. The Deuteronomistic Historian and the Chronicler both have a theological bias against Ahaz, and, while the Philistines as a part of the anti-Assyrian coalition probably did ravage Judean territory early on during the Syro-Ephraimitic war (Isa 9:11), it is likely that Ahaz, as the sole loyal Assyrian vassal in the region, ultimately benefited from the outcome of that war. Just as Sennacherib rewarded the loyal Padi with Judean territory after the Assyrian defeat of Hezekiah in 701,9 the loyal Ahaz likely benefited from the Assyrian defeat of Philistia in 734. There are hints in Hosea that Judah extended its border northward into former Israelite territory in the aftermath of the Syro-Ephraimitic war (Hos 5:10), and it would be surprising if Judah did not also extend it westward into Philistine territory at that time. Moreover, as a loyal Assyrian vassal, Ahaz probably also benefited from Sargon's defeat of the Hamath-Samaria-Philistine coalition of 720. If these conclusions hold, the "messengers of the nation(s)" in Isa 14:32 would be the messengers from Azuri, and perhaps slightly later from Yamani, encouraging Hezekiah to join Ashdod and the Philistines in their revolt against Sargon. If the plural reading "nations" is correct, these messengers might also have included Egyptian and Nubian representatives. Isaiah's answer to these messengers is, "No thanks. Yahweh has founded Zion, and we will take our refuge in the security God has promised it, not in the bogus security of an anti-Assyrian alliance supported by Egypt and Nubia." A similar background should probably be assigned to Isa 18. The reference to swift messengers moving back and forth by boat to and from Nubia suggests very active diplomatic activity in Palestine by Nubian messengers. Though not as clear as one could hope, the reference to a "tall and smooth-skinned nation" fits the ancient portrayals of the often beardless Nubians far better than it fits the Assyrians.10 Yahweh's quiet, uninvolved, and patient observation from his abode on Mount Zion suggests Isaiah was recommending a Judean response to all this diplomatic activity very similar to that articulated in Isa 14:32: "Do not join the revolt; wait patiently in Jerusalem for Yahweh's resolution of the issue." The oracle or oracles in Isa 19:1-15 are more difficult to date. The reference to internecine warfare pitting Egyptian against Egyptian (19:2), ultimately resulting in Egypt being delivered into the hands of a harsh 9. Ibid., 33 iii 31-34. 10. Note the beardless, curly haired Nubian warriors, in contrast to the bearded warriors of Assyria, Philistia, and Samaria, in Franklin, "Room V," 264—69 Figs, 3— 7. Cf. also the beardless Nubian troops inANEP, 55 figs. 179-80.

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ruler (19:4), fits two different scenarios reasonably well. One could think of Tefhakht's forcible unification of the Delta and his march south, which resulted in Piye's Nubian conquest of Egypt in 734 B.C.E. Or one could think of Bakenranef s foolish attempt to regain control of Memphis, which led to Shabako's Nubian invasion of the Delta in 720.1 am inclined to opt for the later date, since Shabako's control of the Delta was far more complete, and, if we may judge from the traditions preserved in Manetho, his treatment of his Egyptian opponents was far harsher than that of Piye. The prose material in Isa 19:16-25, which is often dated far later than Isaiah of Jerusalem and which may indeed have been updated by later editing and secondary additions, also likely dates to ca. 720 B.C.E. Sargon claims to have opened trade with Egypt, a claim that is usually dated to the period immediately following Sargon's successful suppression of the Hamath rebellion in 720. The years between the suppression of that revolt and the revival of Philistine unrest in 715 appear to have been a brief period when Assyrian-Egyptian relations were relatively positive. Osorkon IV of Tanis even sent a gift of horses to Sargon in 716 or 715. Hence, this was a period in which a peaceful Judah under Ahaz could enjoy and perhaps even participate in the profit from the free flow of trade moving back and forth between Assyria and the Delta region of Egypt. The dating of the closely parallel oracles in Isa 30:1-5 and 31:1-5, along with the related material in 30:6-7 and possibly 28:14-19, is more problematic. Some have read 30:1-5 and 31:1-5 as originally directed against northern Israel, either at the time of the Syro-Ephraimitic war, when an appeal to Egypt is assumed, or at the time of Hoshea's revolt against Shalmaneser V, when the Deuteronomistic Historian reports that Hoshea sent messengers to So, king of Egypt (2 Kgs 17:4). One could also think of the Hamath-Samaria-Philistine revolt of 720 B.C.E., which was supported by Egyptian and Nubian troops, or the events of 715-711, when the Judean court was considering joining a coalition that depended on Egyptian and Nubian support. Nevertheless, while ceding the possibility that Isa 30:1-5 and 31:1-3 may have originally been formulated in one of these earlier historical contexts, the present context and associations of these oracles suggest they were formulated or, at the very least, reused during Hezekiah's revolt against Sennacherib in 705-701. Such reworking of oracles originally directed against Syria and Israel at the time of the Syro-Ephraimitic war to be critiques of Judah or judgments on Sennacherib's Assyria is not uncommon. Isaiah 28:1-6 is an oracle originally directed against the northern kingdom, probably

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from the period of the Syro-Ephraimitic war, but the clear transition at v. 7, "and also these stagger with wine...," suggests, as William Holladay argued years ago,11 that Isaiah has updated this earlier oracle to redirect it against a Judean audience. The personal scoffing attack on Isaiah reflected in w. 9-13 fits a Judean audience far better than a fictive Israelite audience, since, unlike Amos, there is no evidence that Isaiah of Jerusalem ever prophesied in the north before an actual northern audience. Moreover, v. 14 associates these scoffing opponents with the rulers in Jerusalem, not Samaria. According to v. 15, these scoffers relied on a covenant with death, while Isaiah set God's promise to Zion (28:1617) in contrast to that false hope. Yet because the Judean scoffers relied on that false hope they would find their hope swept away in the storm (28:18-20) when Yahweh arose to do his strange work in the environs of Jerusalem (28:21). Their only hope was to cease their scoffing (28:22). The parable about the farmer in w. 23-29 then justified Yahweh's alien work as wise, despite its apparent strangeness. Isaiah 29 also begins with an oracle of harsh judgment on Jerusalem followed by a miraculous deliverance of the city. It continues with a reference reminiscent of 28:7-8 to the drunkenness of Jerusalem's leaders, a drunkenness that has silenced the prophetic word. In response to the false piety that has replaced reliance on the prophetic word, God again threatens to do a marvelous work that will destroy the wisdom of their wise (29:14). The juxtaposition with the immediately following oracle in w. 15-16 suggests that this judgment on the wise is God's response to their attempt to hide their counsel from Yahweh. One should probably associate this motif with the complaint in both 30:1-2 and 31:1 that the ruling authorities have sought support from Egypt without first consulting Yahweh, that is, seeking prophetic oracles to approve their foreign policy.12 Following the Egyptian oracle in 30:1-5, there is another short oracle that mentions the uselessness of sending money to buy Egyptian aid (30:6-7). An oracle that attacks the people for rejecting the prophetic word (30:8-11), and relying instead on oppression and deceit (30:12) or 11. W. L. Holladay, Isaiah, Scroll of a Prophetic Heritage (New York: Pilgrim, 1987), 59. 12. See my "Blindfolding the Prophet: Political Resistance to First Isaiah's Oracles in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Attitudes Toward Oracles," in Oracles et Propheties dans I 'Antiquite, Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg 15-17juin 1995 (ed. J. G. Heintz; Universite des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg; Travaux du Centre de Recherche sur le Proche-Orient et la Grece Antiques 15; Strasbourg: De Boccard, 1997), 135-46.

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horses (30:15-16) then follows w. 6-7. These choices will result in the offenders' object of trust being as useless as a collapsed and thoroughly shattered wall (30:13-14). They will find themselves reduced to a bare remnant, like a mere flag on a hilltop (30:17). This last image is strikingly similar to Isaiah's description of besieged Jerusalem in Isa 1:8, a passage that is generally regarded as reflecting Sennacherib's isolation of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E. The oracle in 31:1-3 continues in w. 4—9 with a threat of Yahweh's judgment on Jerusalem followed by a promise of his deliverance of the city and judgment on Assyria. This continuation again suggests a Judean audience tempted to rely on Egyptian help in a period when Assyria represented the main threat to Jerusalem's security. If these oracles as presently shaped presume an address to Judean officials, it is difficult to assign them to any period earlier than the reign of Hezekiah. There is no evidence that Ahaz was ever tempted, much less succumbed to the temptation, to turn to Egypt for aid against the Assyrians. All available evidence suggests that Ahaz remained a loyal Assyrian vassal throughout his reign. Hezekiah, on the other hand, was clearly tempted to rely on Egyptian help at the time of the Ashdod revolt, as Isaiah's vigorous public objections indicate (Isa 20). On that occasion, however, Isaiah seems to have been successful in dissuading Hezekiah and his court from succumbing to the temptation. In the general revolt against Assyria that broke out after the unexpected death of Sargon in 705 B.C.E., however, Isaiah was less successful. Hezekiah was a major player in the revolt, clearly far more important than the Philistine nobility of Ekron. When they removed their pro-Assyrian ruler Padi, they handed him over to Hezekiah, who kept Padi imprisoned in Jerusalem until the Judean ruler finally submitted to Sennacherib. The Assyrian king claims that the nobility of Ekron called upon the Egyptians and Nubians for help,13 but it is hard to imagine that this took place without Hezekiah's approval or involvement. Sennacherib's attribution of this action solely to Ekron's leaders, whom he executed,14 is probably no more than an attempt to cover up Sennacherib's embarrassment at his inability to impose the same punishment on Hezekiah. While the Deuteronomistic Historian treats Hezekiah as one of the heroes of faith and is reluctant to say anything negative about him, he does allow the Assyrian Rabshakeh to suggest that Hezekiah was relying on Egypt, and that this reliance was primarily for chariots and horsemen (2 Kgs 18:19-24). The Rabshakeh also mentions Hezekiah's possible reliance on Yahweh, a 13. Luckenbill, Annals, 31 ii 73-81. 14. Ibid., 32 iii 8-17.

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reliance more acceptable to the Deuteronomistic Historian's theology, but there is no indication that either charge would have been unbelievable to the Rabshakeh's Judean audience. The propaganda value of his speech depended on its general correspondence to what his audience knew to be true. The Deuteronomistic Historian also preserves the tradition of Merodach-baladan's embassy to Hezekiah (2 Kgs 20:12-19), a state visit that probably dated to the outbreak of the general rebellion against Sennacherib and provided Babylonian encouragement for Hezekiah to open a second front against the Assyrians. The Deuteronomistic Historian admits that Isaiah was upset by Hezekiah's positive reception of the Babylonian mission, which may imply that Hezekiah agreed with their proposal. Isaiah apparently found out about this state visit only by questioning the king after the Babylonian embassy had concluded its negotiations and departed, a fact that suggests Isaiah was deliberately left out of the diplomatic loop. This is analogous to the claim in Isa 30:1-2 and 31:1 that the negotiations with Egypt took place without prior consultation of the prophetic oracle. These oracles against trusting in Egypt and their horses and about the uselessness of sending tribute to buy Egyptian aid fit perfectly in the period of Hezekiah's revolt against Assyria. If this dating is correct, it suggests that Isaiah's view of Israel's and Judah's foreign policy remained remarkably consistent during the whole period of Isaiah's ministry. Isaiah unalterably opposed reliance on treaty relations with Assyria, Egypt, Nubia, Babylonia, Philistia, Aram, or any other nation. Israel's and Judah' s security lay exclusively in their trust in Yahweh and the promises Yahweh had made to the Davidic dynasty and his chosen city Jerusalem. Such trust would enable God's people to promote justice and relieve the suffering of the poor, while the pursuit of international coalitions would lead them to practice deceit and further the oppression of the poor. Whatever the merits or shortcomings of Isaiah's views, there is little evidence that his views changed in any significant way during the whole course of his ministry.

HERODOTUS' HISTORIES 2.141 AND THE DELIVERANCE

OF JERUSALEM: ON PARALLELS, SOURCES, AND HISTORIES OF ANCIENT ISRAEL* Brent A. Strawn

For myself, even an inadequate comparison of the work of Herodotus and the early Hebrew historians has helped.. .to a little more intelligent understanding of the work of the great men of Israel... and, at the same time, has given a better appreciation of the genius exhibited in Herodotus's almost single-handed achievement.1 Herodotus's account is a useful piece in the puzzle and must be recognized as such; however, it must not be shaped by biblical scissors before fitting it into place.2

* It is an honor to dedicate this essay to my friend and colleague, John H. Hayes, and to use this occasion to thank him for his kindness to me. In addition to many interests, we also share the same alma mater. I am delighted to celebrate his unparalleled achievements here and to recognize him as the most famous of Old Testament scholars to take the Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. I am grateful to the following individuals who read and commented on earlier drafts or aspects of this article: Bill T. Arnold, Joel M. LeMon, James K. Mead, and John T. Ma. The origins of the study lie in a seminar in 1996 taught by Katherine Doob Sakenfeld, to whom I am also indebted. A version was later presented to the Tanakh colloquium in Princeton (February 1998), and I thank Bernard M. Levinson and J. J. M. Roberts for their instructive feedback at that time. It is obvious from these dates that the essay by L. L. Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men: Herodotus 2.141 and Sennacherib's Campaign in 701 BCE," in "Like a Bird in a Cage ": The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; ESHM 4; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 119—40, only came to my attention long after my own argument was developed. 1. H. T. Fowler, "Herodotus and the Early Hebrew Historians," JBL 49 (1930): 217. 2. Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 139.

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I. Introduction The search for contexts, antecedents, and parallels for biblical texts has ranged far and wide in biblical scholarship—both chronologically and geographically. In the light of the Western intellectual tradition and the late (and, according to recent judgments, increasingly later) first-millennium provenance of so much of the Hebrew Bible, it should come as no surprise that scholars eventually turned their attention to later and western sources, specifically those in Greek. In historiographical discussions, much credit (or blame, depending on one's perspective) for this development must be given to the pioneering work of John Van Seters.3 His instructive comparison of biblical historiography (if it is that)4 to Greek sources, particularly Herodotus of Halicarnassus (ca. 484—414[?] B.C.E.),5 has been pursued by many scholars since.6 At least one result of this line 3. J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), esp. 8-54. Van Seters' work was quickly seconded by B. O. Long, / Kings: With an Introduction to Historical Literature (FOTL 9; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 15-30. 4. Compare, for example, M. Bauks, "Quelques reflexions pour ou centre 1'apparition d'historiographies bibliques a 1'epoque perse," Transeu 21 (2001): 43-59, with A. R. Millard, "Story, History, and Theology," in Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context (ed. A. R. Millard, J. K. Hoffineier, and D. W. Baker; Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 37-64, both of whom make appeal to Herodotus. See also E. Nicholson, "Story and History in the Old Testament," in Language, Theology, and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr (ed. S. E. Balentine and J. Barton; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 135-50, who develops Barr's earlier contrast between Old Testament "history" and Greek historiography (see J. Barr, "Story and History in Biblical Theology," JR 56 [1976]: 1-17; repr. in idem, The Scope and Authority of the Bible [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980], 1-17). Both Barr and Nicholson prefer the descriptor "story." 5. For the dates, see D. Lateiner in Herodotus: The Histories (ed. D. Lateiner; New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004), xi-xii. There is some debate about the death date; it could be ca. 425 (see J. P. A. Gould, "Herodotus," in OCD, 696). 6. The literature is now rather large. For monographs, note especially (in chronological order): P. Gibert, Verite historique et esprit historien: L 'historien biblique de Gideon face a Herodote: Essai sur leprincipe historiographique (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1990); S. Mandell and D. N. Freedman, The Relationship Between Herodotus' History and Primary History (SFSHJ 60; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993); F. A. J. Nielsen, The Tragedy in History; Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 251; CIS 4; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); J.-W. Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus's Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible (JSOTSup 345; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002); and P. Niskanen, The Human and the Divine in History: Herodotus and the Book of Daniel (JSOTSup 396; London/New York: T. & T. Clark International,

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of research is that the biblical materials (including their putative "sources") are increasingly downdated and located as late as the Hellenistic period.7 Of course, such a position has not gone unchallenged.8 2004). For periodical literature, note especially Wesselius, "Herodotus, vader van de bijbelse geschiedenis?," wACEBT 14 (1995): 9-61; idem, "Analysis, Imitation and Emulation of Classical Texts in the Hebrew Bible," Dutch Studies—Near Eastern Languages and Literatures 2 (1996): 43-68; idem, "Discontinuity, Congruence and the Making of the Hebrew Bible," SJOT 13 (1999): 24-77; idem, "The Language of the Hebrew Bible Contrasted with the Language of the Ben Sira Manuscripts and of the Dead Sea Scrolls," in Sirach, Scrolls, and Sages: Proceedings of a Second International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira, and the Mishnah (ed. T. Muraoka and J. F. Elwolde; STDJ 33; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 338-45; idem, "Collapsing the Narrative Bridge," in Unless some one guide me...: Festschrift forKarelA. Deurloo (ed. J. W. Dyk et al.; ACEBT Supplement Series 2; Maastricht: Shaker, 2001), 247-55; K. Stott, "Herodotus and the Old Testament: A Comparative Reading of the Ascendancy Stories of King Cyrus and David," SJOT16 (2002): 5278. This type of work, which sees Herodotus as an antecedent to and/or influence on the biblical texts on a grand scale (usually with some admission of differences between the two corpora) is related to, but should not be overly identified with, studies that treat Herodotus' accounts of later periods (esp. the Persian Period) that are also reflected in the Bible. See, e.g., H. Fahr, Herodot undAltes Testament (EH 266; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1985), which deals exclusively with Cambyses and Cyrus. Note also the literature relating Herodotus to materials outside of the Deuteronomistic History proper. See, e.g., T. B. Dozeman, "Geography and History in Herodotus and in Ezra-Nehemiah," JBL 122 (2003): 449-66; G. N. Knoppers, "Greek Historiography and the Chronicler's History: A Reexamination," JBL 122 (2003): 627-50; and R. L. Hubbard, Jr., "Leveling the Playing Field: A New Reading of Herodotus and Esther" (unpublished paper; my thanks to Hubbard for sharing this paper with me). 7. See N. P. Lemche, "The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?," mDidMoses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (ed. L. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 317; ESHM 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 287-318 (repr. from SJOT1 [1993]: 163-93). See also idem, "Good and Bad in History: The Greek Connection," in Rethinking the Foundations: Historiography in the Ancient World and in the Bible: Essays in Honor of John Van Seters (ed. S. L. McKenzie, T. Romer, and H. H. Schmid; BZAW 294; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 127-40. Similarly Nielsen, The Tragedy in History, 164. 8. See, e.g., B. Becking, "Is de Hebreeuwse Bijbel een Hellenistisch boek?," NedTT54 (2000): 1-17; H. M. Barstad, "Is the Hebrew Bible a Hellenistic Book? Or: Niels Peter Lemche, Herodotus, and the Persians," Transeu 23 (2002): 130-51; and the essays, both for and against, in Grabbe, ed., Did Moses Speak Attic? Note also the insightful critiques of Nielsen, The Tragedy in History, in the review by D. F. Murray (JTS50 [1999]: 183-87). It is illuminating in this debate to read Fowler's early essay ("Herodotus and the Early Hebrew Historians," 207-17; not cited by Van Seters), which proceeds from very different presuppositions and arrives at drastically different conclusions than Van Seters et al.

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The present study cannot engage, let alone resolve, the many aspects of these important discussions. Its purpose is more modest, though it remains challenging precisely because of those discussions. It is simply this: to explore the relationship between Herodotus' account of Sennacherib's miraculous defeat at Pelusium by means of field mice (Hist. 2.141) and the biblical account of the deliverance of Jerusalem9 by the mrf jfa (2 Kgs 19:35; Isa 37:36; and 2 Chr 32:20).10 The Herodotean text is often cited by scholars as a "parallel" to the biblical account; however, remarkably little discussion has been devoted to analyzing or justifying this comparison or relationship (if it is that). But such analysis is absolutely critical if this oft-cited passage in Herodotus is to have any significant impact on our understanding of the 2 Kings account.11 Moreover, the specific uses to which scholars put Hist. 2.141 vary. Some take the existence of the Herodotean passage to indicate that the biblical material is folkloristic at best;12 others take it as proof that "something" (real? historical? miraculous?) happened to Sennacherib's forces that caused them to withdraw—that is, it permits some to find a "kernel" of 9. The exact locale of the "deliverance" is admittedly confused. Suffice it to say that, despite 2 Kgs 19:8, which places "the king of Assyria" at Libnah, Hezekiah was in Jerusalem (19:14) when he received the oracle of comfort from Isaiah (19:21-34). Further, the large number of slain (2 Kgs 19:35) may pick up on the "great army" before Jerusalem in 2 Kgs 18:17. Questions such as these have often led scholars to differentiate distinct accounts of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah: A (2 Kgs 18:1316) and B; B itself with two versions, Bj (2 Kgs 18:17-19:9a, 36-37) and B2 (2 Kgs 19:9b-35). In a recent summary of the archaeological evidence, Grabbe points out that "the nearest evidence of the Assyrian army is presently at Ramat Rahel, four kilometres from Jerusalem" ("Introduction," in Grabbe, ed., "Like a Bird in a Cage", 20). 10. The three biblical accounts are not identical, but for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to the complex as "2 Kgs 19:35." The larger context, too, ought not to be neglected (2 Kgs 18:13-19:37; Isa 36-37; 2 Chr 32). Again, for simplicity, I will refer to this complex as the "2 Kings" or the "biblical" account. 11. Prior to Grabbe's essay ("Of Mice and Dead Men"), the only article that deals exclusively with the Herodotean and 2 Kings texts is that of W. A. Comaby, "2 Kings xix.35 (Is. xxxvii.36) and Herodotus, ii.141," ExpTim 25 (1913-14): 379-80, which treats the texts from a medical perspective. 12. E.g. B. S. Childs, Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis (SBT 3; London: SCM, 1967), 101 n. 70; J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 349-50; cf. also W. Baumgartner, "Herodots babylonische und assyrische Nachrichten," in idem, Zum Alten Testament undseiner Umwelt (Leiden: Brill, 1959), 282-331 (305-9); C. F. Keil, The Books of the Kings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1872), 458 n. 1; M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, IIKings (AB 11; New York: Doubleday, 1988), 250-51; and J. A. Soggin, An Introduction to the History of Israel and Judah (2d ed.; Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity, 1993), 252.

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historicity in the accounts.13 In the latter view, the Herodotean text provides a kind of independent attestation and/or confirmation of the biblical account (with appropriate qualifications); in the former, it is evidence that 2 Kgs 19:35 is historically unreliable. The present investigation offers a detailed analysis of Hist. 2.141— one of the only places where Herodotus mentions an event also attested in the biblical material and where the possibility of some sort of (direct?) relationship exists—in order to determine if the Herodotean text is truly "parallel" and what that might mean for the interpretation of the biblical account and for the interpretation of the Histories.141 will argue that it is most probable that Hist. 2.141 is not an independent account, but is likely dependent on (a) Judean source(s), and that this has significant bearing on how it ought to be understood and utilized in discussions of the deliverance of Jerusalem. In the final analysis, then, the present study offers both support and critique of the ways Herodotus has been utilized by biblical researchers. II. The Herodotean "Parallel" Although scholars often cite Herodotus' Hist. 2.141 in discussions of Zion's deliverance from Sennacherib's forces, they frequently do not explain how they came to such a conclusion; neither do they credit a critical source that first compared the texts. Since the connection was made already in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, it is possible that all subsequent scholarship is indebted to him. Whatever the case, the comparison 13. See the comments of Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 119-40, and idem, "Reflections on the Discussion," in Grabbe, ed., "Like a Bird in a Cage", 313-14, 321. See also, e.g., J. Bright, A History of Israel (3d ed.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981), 288, 301; J. A. Montgomery and H. S. Gehman, The Books of Kings (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1951), 497-98; J. Gray, / & II Kings (2d ed.; OIL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 694; I. W. Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings: A Contribution to the Debate About the Composition of the Deuteronomistic History (BZAW 172; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 128 and nn. 108-11; F. J. Gon9alves, L 'Expedition de Sennacherib en Palestine dans la litterature hebraique ancienne (Publications de 1'rnstitut orientaliste de Louvain 34; Louvain: Institut orientaliste, 1986), 120-21, cf. 484; and W. R. Gallagher, Sennacherib's Campaign to Judah: New Studies (SHCANE 18; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 245. 14. See S. Sandmel, "Parallelomania," JBL 81 (1962): 1-13, for some pertinent comments on what parallels are, how to identify them, and so forth. Cf. also H. Eilberg-Schwartz, "Beyond Parallel-anoia: Comparative Inquiry and Cultural Interpretation," in idem, The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 87-102.

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has become so axiomatic in scholarship that the Herodotean text is cited everywhere and as if it needed neither support nor justification. But, in light of the differences in opinion on how this parallel ought to be understood and utilized—and in order to see if one of those opinions is better than another—it is necessary to undertake what most scholars have left undone: namely, a detailed analysis of the Herodotean text, because "it is [only] in the detailed study rather than in the abstract statement that there can emerge persuasive bases for judgment."15 A. Herodotus, Histories 2.141 1. After him, then, there became king the priest of Hephaestus, whose name was Sethos. This man held in contempt the warriors among the Egyptians and mistreated them, as having no further need of them; in addition to dishonoring them in other ways, he took their land away from them. (Each man among them had, in the time of the former kings, been assigned twelve choice fields.) 2. Thereafter there came against Egypt a great army (orpccTov n^yccy), and its leader was Sennacherib, king of the Arabians and the Assyrians (Iccvaxapi{3ov fkxaiAEcc 'Apafiicov TE KCU ' Aooupicov); but the warrior Egyptians would not fight him. 3. The priest of Hephaestus was utterly at a loss and went into his great hall to the god's image (irpbs TcoyaX|ja) there and bewailed what was to betide him. And as he made his lament, sleep came upon him, and in his vision there seemed to him that the god (TOV 6ebv) stood over him and bade him be of good heart: "You will suffer nothing untoward if you confront the Arabian host; for I will send you allies." 4. He trusted in this dream, and, taking with him such of the Egyptians as would follow him, he pitched his camp in Pelusium (kv TTr|Aouoico), for that was where the enemy was to invade. There followed him not one of the warriors, but shopkeepers and handworkers and fellows from the market place. 5. But when their enemies came, there spread out against them, at nightfall, field mice (pus dpoupccious), which gnawed their quivers through, and through, too, the bows themselves and the handles of their shields, so that on the next day they fled, defenseless, and many of them fell. 6. So nowadays this king stands there, in stone, in the temple of Hephaestus, and in his hand he holds a mouse (MUV), and he speaks these words through the inscription that is there: "Look on me, all of you, and be pious."16 15. Sandmel, "Parallelomania," 2. 16. The translation is that of D. Grene, Herodotus: The History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 192-93, which I feel to be the best. For the Greek text, see C. Hude, Herodoti: Historiae (3d ed.; 2 vols.; OCT; Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), vol. 1. The versification is from this edition. Another edition of the Greek text (virtually identical to Hude's) with English translation is found in A. D. Godley, Herodotus I: Books IandII(LCL 117; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), 446-49. For other English translations, see G. Rawlinson, The History of

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B. Analysis of the Text As noted above, until quite recently, there has been a lamentable dearth of work done on Herodotus by biblical historians.17 But even with a good deal of recent biblical scholarship devoted to Herodotus, one feels at a disadvantage in the face of an oft-quoted "parallel" like Hist. 2.141, for here is a complicated matter. The problems are compounded by the fact that this story is preserved in a number of ancient sources. Josephus, for example, seems to have conflated the biblical account with Herodotus' version inAnt. 10.15-23.18 Sirach 48:17-22 recounts Hezekiah's struggle against Sennacherib (levvaxnp'M/S'HrtiD) and follows 2 Kgs 19:35 explicitly if somewhat poetically in Sir 48:21: "The Lord struck down (sTrccTa^Ev) the camp of the Assyrians, and his angel (6 cxyyeXos CCUTOU) wiped them out (e^ETpi^ev aujous)."19 The number of the slain is Herodotus (4 vols.; New York: Appleton, 1859), 2:188-89; A. de Selincourt and J. Marincola, Herodotus: The Histories (rev. ed.; London: Penguin, 2003), 153; and Lateiner, Herodotus: The Histories, 126. 17. Studies by historians of or from the perspective of ancient Egypt or the ancient Near East have been more substantial. See, e.g., O. E. Ravn, Herodotus' Description of Babylon (Copenhagen: NYT Nordisk Forlag, 1942); Baumgartner, "Herodots," 282-331; R. Rollinger, Herodots babylonischer Logos: Eine kritische Untersuchung der Glaubwurdigkeitsdiskussion (IBKS 84; Innsbruck: Verlag des Instituts fur Sprachwissenschaft, 1993); P. Hogemann, Das Vorderasien und die Achameniden: Ein Beitrag zur Herodot-Analyse (BTAVOB 98; Wiesbaden: Ludwig Richert, 1992); and A. B. Lloyd, Herodotus: Book II, Introduction and Commentary 1-182 (3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1975-88). 18. For the Greek text and an English translation, see R. Marcus, Josephus. Vol. 6, Jewish Antiquities, Books IX-XI (LCL 326; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 162-71. Josephus cites Berossos the Chaldean in support of this story (Ant. 10.20). See F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Vol. 3, Geschichte von Staedten und Voelkern (Horographie und Ethnographie). Part C, Autoren ueber einzelne Laender Nr. 608a—858 (Erster Band: AegyptenGeten Nr. 608a-708) (Leiden: Brill, 1958), 385 (F.7a); G. P. Verbrugghe and J. M. Wickersham, Berossos andManetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 53 (F8a); and Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:103. The context suggests that Josephus cites Berossos against Herodotus: note 8e and the reference to Sennacherib's (levccxsipiMou) campaign throughout Asia and Egypt (KCCI STI trocar] eTreaTpccTEUoccTO TTJ 'Aaicc Km rfj 'AiyuTtrco). Unfortunately, at the point where Josephus introduces the Berossos citation (Xeycov OUTCOS), the manuscript tradition apparently breaks off, so that what follows (Ant. 10.21-23) returns to the biblical material. The Berossos material is thus lost. See Marcus, Josephus, 166 n. 4,167 n. e.; and Verbrugghe and Wickersham, Berossos andManetho, 53. 19. Due to the poetic structure, two parallel terms are used to describe the destruction. It is of interest that the verbs are those used in LXX 2 Kgs 19:35 and LXX 2 Chr 32:21, respectively; the verb used in LXX Isa 37:36 (dcvaipeco) is not employed.

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preserved in the prayer of Judas in 1 Mace 7:41: "When the messengers from the king spoke blasphemy, your angel went out and struck down (ETTCXTQ^EV) one hundred eighty-five thousand (EKCCTOV 6y6or|KOVTa TTEVTE £iAid6as) of the Assyrians." These references do not take into consideration the versions of the story in Isa 37:36 and 2 Chr 32:21, each of which differ, at least slightly, from 2 Kgs 19:35. The similarities and differences between these accounts are fascinating in their own right and worthy of prolonged analysis. For the purposes of the present study, however, the main question is whether or not Herodotus is discussing the same event as the biblical texts, and, if so, what significance pertains to that. It is clear from even a casual reading that Herodotus' account is radically different from the biblical story. His version tells the story of an Egyptian priest of Hephaestus ('H4>aioTou),2° named Sethon (l£6cov), who became king, and what this rather despotic (at least at first) priestking did upon encountering Sennacherib's advance.21 The not-so casual reader—namely, one who is aware of the issues surrounding Sennacherib's 701 campaign—will also notice further problems. First, there is no Egyptian evidence of a priest by the name of Sethon who later became king. Second, Sennacherib is designated as "king of the Arabians and Assyrians." This is rather odd, especially given the word order, which seems to emphasize the Arabian contingent more than the Assyrian one.22 Third, there is no evidence that Sennacherib ever penetrated south as far as Pelusium or even to Egypt on his 701 campaign.23 Fourth and finally, though this is not the last of the difficulties by any means, the story For the Hebrew text, see P. C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew: A Text Edition of All Extant Hebrew Manuscripts and a Synopsis of All Parallel Hebrew Ben Sira Texts (VTSup 68; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 86-87. Sir 48:21 is broken in the only manuscript that preserves it (MS B): HS2Qn DOITl TIBR njn[...]. 20. Namely, Ptah, whose temple was in Memphis (see Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:90). 21. Lloyd {Herodotus, 3:101) points out that Herodotus' preservation of the name lavaxcxpi^ov is quite close to the Akkadian Sin-ahhe-eriba and thus constitutes evidence that Herodotus' "version is.. .very accurate." He, however, then states that "Sennacherib is the only Assyrian king known to H[erodotus]," which contextualizes his former statement considerably. 22. Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus, 2:188 n. 3. The problem was noted as early as Josephus (Ant. 10.19): "at just this point he [Herodotus] is in error, calling him king of the Arabs instead of king of the Assyrians" (Marcus, Josephus, 166-67). Lateiner, Herodotus: The Histories, 126 smoothes things by indicating that Sennacherib's invasion had "Arab guides." See further K. A. Kitchen, "Egypt, the Levant and Assyria in 701 BC," in Fontes Atque Pontes (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983), 245; and Cogan and Tadmor, II Kings, 250-51. 23. See Kitchen, "Egypt, the Levant and Assyria," 245; and Cogan and Tadmor, II Kings, 250.

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seems clearly etiological—that is, its purpose seems to be to account for the statue that stands in the temple—more specifically, to address why this statue holds a mouse in its hand. This etiological Tendenz also seems to be overlaid by Hellenic motifs such as the monument's inscription, which sounds typical of Greek inscriptions and art. Indeed, upon closer examination, the reader discovers that the inscription and etiology are but the beginning of the religious and cultural traces that Herodotus and/or his source(s) have left on this story (see below). Each of these are weighty objections that caution against a too quick or overly facile identification of Hist. 2.141 as a "parallel" to 2 Kgs 19:35. In fact, it is only if and when these questions are answered that one can address the larger question of whether or not a parallel exists and, if so, what that means. Moreover, these objections must be examined on both the specific and general levels: specifically, the problematics of the details must be worked out on a case-by-case basis; more generally, there are large questions concerning Herodotus' historical methods, his (use of) sources, and the reliability of the latter, if they existed. Perhaps the most significant problem on the first, more specific level is the identification of the priest-king. Herodotus only gives the accusative of the name, though according to C. Sourdille "the accusative Is0cov surely corresponds to a nominative leScos."24 Sourdille believes a connection to the Pharaoh Seti is probable, though she admits that another possibility is Satni, a son of Ramses II, who figures prominently in several Egyptian short-stories.25 A. B. Lloyd, however, has argued that the name Sethon is a corruption of Sebithos on the basis of Manetho's reading Sebichos (le^cos), which is in turn derived from Egyptian Sj-bj-tj-kj.26 The pharaoh at hand, then, must be Shebitqo (ca. 702-690 B.C.E.), the successor of Shabaqo.27 Lloyd's philology makes much more 24. C. Sourdille, Herodote et la religion de I 'Egypte: Comparaison des donnees d'Herodote avec les donnees egyptiennes (Paris: Leroux, 1910), 253 n. 2 (my translation); hence Grene's "Sethos." 25. Sourdille, Herodoteet la religion del'Egypte, 253 n. 2,141n. 1, respectively. 26. I.e., Sj-bj-tj-kj > Sebichos/Ie^ixcos (Manetho) > Sebithos/IE|3i0cos > Sethon/IeScov (Herodotus). The last development assimilates the medial bilabial stop; the second-to-last retains the alveolar stop but omits the guttural (see Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:100). Herodotus demonstrates the same problem with the name Psammetichos, which he preserves as Psammis (ibid.). For the Manetho text (Frag. 66), see W. G. Waddell, Manetho (LCL 350; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 166-67; Verbrugghe and Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho, 147. 27. The names follow the Kushite reconstructions used in L. TQrok, The Kingdom ofKush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization (HO 31; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 131 n. 3. See further there, esp. 169-70, for more on Shebitqo. Chronology follows K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100-650 B.C.)

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sense given the chronology of the 25th Dynasty, since Seti's dates are far too early (Seti I = 1294-1279 B.C.E.; Seti II = 1200-1194 B.C.E.) and since Satni never took the throne.28 Even this does not solve all the problems with Herodotus' dynastic reconstruction, however, since he dates the invasion of Sennacherib after the Ethiopian departure, though it actually took place almost fifty years prior to it.29 Although Herodotus' chronological problems, especially with early Egypt, are well known, Lloyd has accounted for this "misinformation" by arguing that Herodotus' sources "telescoped all the kings of the XXVth Dyn[asty] into one symbolic figure, Sabacos. The latter's successor must, therefore, become non-Ethiopian" in order to account for the dynastic succession.30 Lloyd also notes that the problems of the Third Intermediate Period in Egypt are notoriously complex even to modern scholarship, let alone to ancient historians or ancient Egyptian priests (Herodotus' presumed source).31 Last, and perhaps most important, is the observation that the Egyptians would have wanted to claim such a stunning victory over Assyria for an Egyptian Pharaoh. That this king happens also to be called a priest is probably due, in Lloyd's opinion, to the 25th Dynasty's "reputation for piety.. .and its particular devotion to the shrine of the Memphite Ptah."32 In short, then, despite its problems, it seems probable that the Herodotean text is dealing with the same time period and same campaign as 2 Kgs 19:35. (2d ed.; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1986); and idem, "Egypt, History of (Chronology)," ABD 2:329. 28. Lest one object to circular reasoning at this point, one should note Herodotus' mention of Sabacos/Ia|3aKco? (Shabaqo = ca. 716-702 B.C.E.), Shebitqo's immediate predecessor, in Hist. 2.137-39. But see, for example, Jeremy Goldberg, "Legends of Iny and 'les brumes d'une chronologic qu'il est prudent de savoir flottante,'" JSSEA 26 (1996): 22-41, who suggests that Menkheperre (whom he argues shared power with Shebitqo) should be identified with Sethon; and Detlev Fehling, Herodotus and His "Sources ": Citation, Invention and Narrative Art (trans. J. G. Howie; ARCA 21; Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1989 [German orig. 1971]), 137, who believes Sethon is Taharqo. 29. See Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:99-l00. 30. Ibid., 2:100. That such telescoping took place in Herodotus (or his source[s]) may lend further support to the perspective that telescoping also took place in 2 Kgs 19:9 which calls Taharqo (Tirhaqa) "king of Cush." For another example of telescoping in Herodotus' presentation of Egyptian rulers, see Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 129-34. The classic example of Herodotus' chronological problems with early Egypt is his grossly incorrect dating of the Pyramid kings (4th Dynasty) to the early Iron Age (Hist. 2.127-35). See Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:188-89, for a full discussion. 31. See Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period, passim. 32. Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:100.

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Once the correct pharaoh is identified, many of the other textual oddities can be understood. For example, the epithet "king of the Arabians," which seems so inaccurate, may be due to the fact that as early as "the time of Tiglath-pileser HI (745-727) contingents [for the army] were drawn from all parts of the Assyrian Empire and it is known that Arabian camel-drivers were employed."33 Whether or not such conscripted military service justifies the title "king of the Arabians" remains a question, but one that might be addressed to Herodotus' source(s) as much as to him. Since the same holds true for many of the details surrounding the site of the battle and the etiology of the statue, it is necessary to turn to a discussion of Herodotus' sources. C. Herodotus' Sources The question of Herodotus' sources for the Histories is, not surprisingly, quite complex and has been vigorously debated since ancient times.34 Classicists have long dealt with this problem and the resulting assessments of Herodotus' historical value (as well as that of his sources) have run the gamut of perspectives, from complete skepticism35 to extreme 33. Ibid., 3:101. Cf. Rawlinson's reference to Berossos, who indicated that Arabian kings were sometimes "paramount over Assyria" (The History of Herodotus, 2:188 n. 3; cf. Verbrugghe and Wickersham, Berossos andManetho, 51-52 [F5]). Rawlinson posits that in Herodotus' account the roles may have simply been reversed. 34. See Gould, "Herodotus," 698, and note Thucydides (1.21-22), Aristotle (Gen. an. 3.5) and Plutarch's work, The Malice of Herodotus (see Anthony Bowen, Plutarch: The Malice of Herodotus [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1992]). As representative of the modern discussion, see the extremely skeptical view in Fehling, Herodotus and His "Sources ", and the robust rebuttal by W. K. Pritchett, The Liar School of Herodotus (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1993). See further K. H. Waters, Herodotos the Historian: His Problems, Methods and Originality (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 76-95; Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:77-140; D. Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 59113; E. M. Yamauchi, "Herodotus—Historian or Liar?," in Crossing Boundaries and Linking Horizons: Studies in Honor of Michael C. Astour on His 80th Birthday (ed. G. D. Young, M. W. Chavalas, and R. E. Averbeck; Bethesda: CDL Press, 1997), 599-614; and J. L. Moles, "Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides," in Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (ed. C. Gill and T. P. Wiseman; Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1993), 88-121. For a general treatment of Greco-Roman historiography under the rubrics of information, disinformation, and misinformation, see M. Grant, Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation (London: Routledge, 1995). 35. In addition to Fehling, Herodotus and His "Sources" (in general), and Rollinger, Herodots babylonischer Logos (on Babylon), see O. K. Armayor's work pertaining to Egypt: "Did Herodotus Ever Go to Egypt?," JARCE15 (1978): 59-73;

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confidence.36 Divergent viewpoints have spread to all corners of Herodotus' Histories, including the question of whether or not he actually went to any of the places that he claims to have visited.37 Yet, despite Herodotus' detractors, the skeptical school of Detlev Fehling et al. has not carried the day in Herodotean studies.38 The historical veracity of much of the Histories has, therefore, been admitted, though usually (and rightly) with much qualification.39 The fact that in Book II Herodotus is fairly explicit about his sources puts us in good position to analyze their value (or lack thereof) for historical reconstruction. In general, it seems that Herodotus gained much of his information from oral sources. These, as such, varied widely in the degree of authenticity of the original source, in the kind and the intensity of any bias concerned (individual, political, patriotic, racist) and in the amount of unintentional corruption incurred in transmission from person to person, generation to generation, language to language. They and idem, Herodotus' Autopsy of the Fayoum, Lake Moeris and the Labyrinth of Egypt (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1985). Note also idem, "Did Herodotus Ever Go to the Black Sea?," HSCP 82 (1978): 45-62. 36. See, for example, E. M. Yamauchi, Composition and Corroboration in Classical and Biblical Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966), 16-19, for some positive re-assessments of Herodotus in the twentieth century and for his own, overly optimistic conclusions. 37. For example, Babylon, on which compare Ravn (Herodotus' Description of Babylon, 86) and Yamauchi (Composition and Corroboration, 18) with Rollinger's negative assessment (Herodots babylonischer Logos). For the latter, see R. Drews' review (JNES 56 [1997]: 125-26). 38. It is worth noting that much of the biblical scholarship that has engaged Herodotus has been overly influenced by Fehling, and was either written prior to or takes insufficient account of responses to his work such as that by Pritchett (The Liar School). Nielsen, for example, includes Pritchett in the bibliography but states that it arrived too late to be included in the argument (The Tragedy in History, 42 n. 60), despite the fact that Nielsen's book appeared four years after Pritchett's (admittedly, the speciale on which the book is based was delivered in 1994 [see ibid., 8]). 39. For example, despite the fact that the Themistocles' Decree, discovered in the mid- twentieth century, contradicts Herodotus on the evacuation of Athens under the threat of Xerxes, W. K. Pritchett ("Herodotos and the Themistokles Decree" AJA 66 [1962]: 43-47) argues that "Herodotus has in fact been proven to be correct in so many cases where he had earlier been doubted, that when a late document is found which flatly contradicts him, this document has to be considered a priori suspect." Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 87-88, accounts for the discrepancy by different means: the inscription "may very well not have been visible when... [Herodotus] was there. In general, he was keen to inspect epigraphic evidence (for example, 4.88, 5.77), even if it was in an indecipherable script or tongue." See further below on Herodotus' use of inscriptions.

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Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past also differ in age and especially for oral sources the greater the time elapsed since the events narrated, the larger the number of mediating individuals, and the greater the likelihood of unintentional inaccuracy or deliberate perversion.40

Oral sources have other inherent problems as well, not the least of which are the problems involved in the interview process. That is, there was no doubt a tendency for "Herodotus...to see and hear what evidence he subconsciously wished to find"; still further, "[n]ot only the researcher, but the interviewee or the interpreter may have been affected by a complementary weakness, in wishing to supply the type of answer which would please the inquirer."41 Lloyd has made a similar point by stressing that the "acquisition of all knowledge by otKori is subject to the perils of the leading question."42 Nevertheless, it is to Herodotus' credit that he was "often aware of tendentiousness in the answers of his informants, and not infrequently expresses his doubt, or straight-out disbelief of them.43 Yet, despite this critical capacity, Herodotus is clearly "taken" with Egypt, especially with its antiquity, and often evidences an attempt to stress the superiority or originality of the Egyptians.44 As for the AiyuirToi Aoyoi proper, Herodotus testifies that he received his information from various sources: aKorj ("hearsay") was his primary evidence (see Hist. 2.123), but ctyis ("autopsy") also played a role, as did yvconrj ("opinion") and ioTopir| (literally, "history," but here approximating "investigation" or the like—mostly via oral enquiry).45 Herodotus goes so far as to rank implicitly these various sources and thus sets up a hierarchy of authenticity. "Genuine knowledge, at the top of the scale, is generally a matter of autopsy, or a study of sources with the application of reasoning."46 Next in usefulness is hearing, and eye-witnesses are without doubt the most accurate because sight is better than hearing (cf. Hist. 1.8-9). Lowest on the scale is hearsay without eye-witness support. Beginning with Hist. 2.99 and thereafter, with minor exceptions, Herodotus must rely solely on this latter category:

40. Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 96. 41. Ibid., 89. It goes without saying that Fehling finds such reasoning completely unconvincing (see Herodotus and His "Sources", 134). 42. Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:116; on CXKOTI, see below. 43. Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 90. 44. Cf. ibid., 86. See further Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus, 14752. 45. See Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:81-84; Gould, "Herodotus," 697. 46. Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 90.

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So far it is my eyes (apis re spri), my judgment (yvcopn), and my searching (ioTOpin) that speak these words to you; from this on, it is the accounts of the Egyptians that I will tell to you as I heard them (rjxouov), though there will be, as a supplement to them, what I have seen myself (1% ipfis
But even this admission casts light on Herodotus' method; that is, his critical mind and careful discernment (in short, his airoSexis lOTopiris) is evident even at the point where he is most vulnerable and dependent upon source material.48 In fact, Herodotus often adjudicates among variant accounts of stories or informs his reader what is "probable" or "plausible."49 From Hist. 2.99 onwards, then, Herodotus' primary source was the oral information he received from the priests (pi ipEEs). Here, too, debate rages over the reliability of these persons. K. H. Waters thinks that the so-called "priests" were no better than might be expected. The proportion of the population in ancient Egyptian towns or villages employed by, or in, or connected with, the temples was very considerable, and Herodotos would not be likely to encounter high-ranking dignitaries among them.50

Other scholarly assessments are more positive in the light of Herodotus' self-stated method that typically involved checking a body of information "by investigation, particularly by questioning people who he had good reason to believe knew the truth."51 The priests were these types of people, as Waters himself admits, for their "status would have been taken as guaranteeing the authenticity of the information offered, as the temples were the obvious repositories of knowledge of the past."52 Even 47. Grene, Herodotus, 171. Cf. also Hist. 2.123 (cited below). 48. See Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus, passim, esp. 3-10,50-51 for a discussion of Herodotus' apodexis historic. See also Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:81-84. 49. See, e.g., Hist. 6.121-22; 7.152; Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 90-91; and Gould, "Herodotus," 697. Cf. Hist. 2.123: "As for the stories told by the Egyptians, let whoever finds them credible use them. Throughout the entire history it is my underlying principle that it is what people severally have said to me, and what I have heard, that I must write down" (Grene, Herodotus, 184-85). Even under the category of "hearsay" Herodotus differentiates between Egyptian and non-Egyptian sources (Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:89). 50. Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 79. On the priests as sources of misinformation, see also E. Yamauchi, "Cambyses in Egypt," in "Go to the Land I Will Show You ": Studies in Honor ofDwight W. Young (ed. J. E. Coleson and V. H. Matthews; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 371-92. 51. Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:82. 52. Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 76.

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native writers such as Berossos and Manetho, often thought to be more reliable than Herodotus on important points of Egyptian history, had to rely on the priests.53 Nevertheless, Waters is wise to caution that much of the "Egyptian logos is in indirect discourse.. .not so much for the sake of variety perhaps as to indicate a degree of skepticism in the historian."54 In short, then, the would-be analyst of Hist. 2.141 must tread carefully. The situation is worsened, to be sure, by the fact that it is highly improbable that Herodotus knew the Egyptian language. Though some of the Egyptians may have known some Greek, fluent bilingual speakers were likely few in number, thus making the mediation of an interpreter inescapable from both sides of the communication process.55 Despite these difficulties, there is much in the Egyptian logoi that commends itself. In Lloyd's opinion, the sources behind Hist. 2.99-142 are "almost certainly the Priests of Memphis."56 Though such priests could not possibly have shared our modern conceptions of history and would have been highly prone to theological interpretations, they nevertheless would have had recourse to "folk memory and literary tradition."57 While folk memory may at first appear highly problematic, there are examples of "historical matter enmeshed in folk elements.. .in ancient Egypt" that have survived in written forms "not likely to be far different from that current amongst the people."58 Literary tradition, in turn, could be comprised of propaganda but also biographical pieces and didactic literature.59 All educated Egyptians would have had at least some access to historical data via sources such as these, despite the fact that they were marked by "folk motifs, burlesque fantasies.. .propaganda... [and] gnomic lore."60 This amalgam is quite alien and suspect to modern(ist) historical sensibilities, to be sure, but it seems to reflect accurately what those "on the ground" actually knew of their past history; moreover, it is what Herodotus claims to have faithfully recorded for posterity.61

53. See L. W. King, Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition: The Schweich Lectures 1916 (London: British Academy, 1918), 27 n. 1. 54. Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 79. 55. Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:116. Herodotus mentions interpreters in Egypt (Hist. 2.154) and Persia (Hist. 3.38, 140). 56. Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:90. So also Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 135. 57. Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:95-100. 58. Ibid., 1:102; see 1:102-4, for some examples. 59. Ibid., 1:104-6. 60. Ibid., 1:106. 61. Cf. the citation of Hist. 2.123 above; also Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:106.

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To summarize to this point: it is altogether possible that in Hist. 2.141 Herodotus is recording a popular Egyptian story, though this explanation does not account for all of the story or its aspects. Several of the latter can only be explained by recourse to Herodotus' Tendenzen. D. Herodotus' Tendenzen Herodotus' pro-Egyptian tendency and the pro-Egyptian tendencies of Herodotus' Egyptian sources have already been mentioned. Still other tendencies can be examined, especially Herodotus' inclination to cast his information in Hellenic fashion.62 This pro-Greek tendency is, on the one hand, to be expected in ancient history-writing, but it is often cited as evidence of Herodotus' lack of objectivity, though this charge loses much of its sting the further one enters the arena of postmodern historiography.63 In any event, Herodotus' "Hellenocentricism" is probably most evident in Hist. 2.141 in the temple statue with its inscription: "Look on me, all of you, and be pious" (Es epe TIS opecov EuoEfiris EOTCO). To begin with, there is disagreement over whom the statue depicts. Herodotus is clear in Hist. 2.141.6 that it is of the priest-king, but scholars often take it to be a statue of the god Ptah/Hephaestus, evidence for which may be present in Hist. 2.141.3 .M Elsewhere (Hist. 3.37), Herodotus describes this statue as "very like the Phoenician Pataici" (OoiviKr)ioioi TTaTalKOIOI); he then writes: "I will describe this,65 for those who have not seen it, as the likeness of a dwarf." These Pataici were apparently dwarf figures of any one of the Phoenician gods placed by the Phoenicians on the prows of ships (or on the poops of galleys according to Hesychius and Suidas) for protection. Small dwarf-like statues of Ptah have been 62. E. Liiddeckens, "Herodot," in LA 2:1148: "Als interpretator graecus gibt er interpretationes graecas." Cf. Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 89: "The tendency. . .to see things from a Hellenocentric viewpoint.. .influenced the description (by Herodotos, or his forerunners, or informants) of areas where sound information was scanty or totally lacking." See also Gould, "Herodotus," 697. 63. See Albert Cook, History/Writing: The Theory and Practice of History in Antiquity and in Modern Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), and Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern (2d ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). More directly related to the subject and event under discussion is the essay by P. R. Davies, "This Is What Happens...," in Grabbe, ed., "Like a Bird in a Cage ", 106-18. 64. Viz., the TcoyocAna, "the cult statue in the holy-of-holies" (Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:101). Cf. SouTdil\e,Herodoteet la religion del'Egypte, 141: "cette representation n'etant qu'une forme exceptionnelle du dieu." 65. The antecedent of the demonstrative in Grene' s translation (Herodotus, 227) is somewhat ambiguous. Most translations offer "these" (TOUTOUS), clearly referring to the Pataici.

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unearthed in Egypt, particularly around Memphis.66 These perhaps lend credibility to Herodotus' account, though his description is also reminiscent of iconographical representations of the god Bes. Be that as it may, in Hist. 2.141.6 Herodotus clearly indicates that the statue is of the king (6 fkxaiAeus IOTTIKE EV TCJ ipcp Tou'H(J>aiaTou Xi0ivos) and this seems Hellenocentric in a number of ways. To be sure, Egyptians had numerous statues of humans, especially kings, but these are often found in funerary contexts or imperial cult centers—they are not used in temple contexts with inscriptions like that preserved in Herodotus.67 To have this type of human statue, regardless of its royal subject, in one of the god's temples with this inscription seems more Greek than Egyptian68—barring, that is, the possibility that Herodotus misunderstood the subject of the statue, since divine statuary in anthropomorphic form is regular in Egyptian temple contexts.69 The most obvious Hellenocentric aspect of the statue, however, is clearly the inscription, which is "entirely G[ree]k. No Eg[yptian] statue-inscription would address the beholder in such terms."70 If the statue was of the priest-king Sethon, this too is probably due to Hellenic influence, but in light of Hist. 3.37 and the apparent contradiction between Hist. 2.141.3 and 2.141.6 a final decision is elusive. A strong case for the statue being of the god can be made, however, in light of the intervention itself: the field mice that frustrate Sennacherib's advance. First, it should be noted that it is in the vision/oracle of the god that Sethon receives the news that the deity himself will send "allies" (•npcopous). These allies—the mice—are thus associated with this god. The fact that the temple statue in Hist. 2.141.6 (= that of 2.141.3?) is holding a mouse in its hand seems more at home in a Near Eastern context of divine statuary where the gods are often represented with their 66. Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus, 2:362. 67. See, e.g., W. S. Smith, The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt (2d ed., rev. W. K. Simpson; New Haven: Yale, 1981). 68. Fehling (Herodotus and His "Sources", 137) finds the entire presentation "incredible." On Greek statuary, see J. J. Pollitt, Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 69. See Smith, The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt. Cf. Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 135: "The statement about a statue in the temple of'Hephaestus' is likely to be Herodotus's own for what he thought he saw." 70. Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:105; see, similarly, de Selincourt and Marincola, Herodotus, 642-43 n. 78. Lloyd is relying on F. L. Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis: The Sethon of Herodotus and the Demotic Tales ofKhamuas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1900), 12. Cf. further S. West, "Herodotus' Epigraphical Interests," CQ 35 (1985): 278-305, and Fehling, Herodotus and His "Sources", 133-40, both of which are generally skeptical of Herodotus' inscriptional data.

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animal familiars,71 though both types of divine statuary (with and without animals) are also found in Egypt.72 Yet the specific familiar in this case tips the balance toward suspecting Hellenic bias. The god Apollo, in his manifestation as Apollo Smintheus (literally, "mouse"), is the one who sends plague in the Iliad by raining arrows (see //. I).73 Apollo is often associated with purification and plague and he was widely associated with oracular function at his shrines on the Greek mainland (especially at Delphi) and in Asia Minor.74 All of these considerations lead one to suspect that Herodotus is reinterpreting an Egyptian story that originally (i.e. in his source) referred to an Egyptian pharaoh and an Egyptian god by means of his own thick Greek lens.75 This suspicion receives further confirmation by the lack of correspondence between Egyptian data on Ptah and those found here in Herodotus.76 And yet, complete Hellenic invention or interference is not the whole story. Lloyd, for example, points out that Horus of Letopolis, a god often associated with Memphis (and Apollo!), "had as his sacred animal the shrew-mouse/ichneumon, the animal expressing the role of Horus as conqueror of the forces of chaos. Therefore a triumph of that Horus could be described as a triumph of the shrew-mouse/ichneumon."77 This suggests that Herodotus: (1) might have mistakenly 71. Again, see Smith, The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt; also Henri Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (5th ed.; New Haven: Yale, 1996). 72. Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:105. 73. Godley, Herodotus I, 447 n. 2; Montgomery and Gehman, The Books of Kings, 498. See further Fritz Graf, "Apollo," in OCD, 123, who refers to the god Reshep at Ugarit (see If I hz rsp in KTU1.82 obv. 3). 74. See Graf, "Apollo," 122-23. In the second edition of OCD (1970), H. J. Rose and C. M. Robertson write that Apollo was frequently introduced by Delphic propaganda "into any and every myth which contained] a prophet or a prediction" (p. 82). 75. Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 135, rightly sees the Egyptian origins of the tradition but is mistaken when he writes that "[tjhere are no obviously Graecized features to the story," especially since he later admits to Herodotus' transformation of the story. On the point here, see further P. Stadter, "Herodotus and the North Carolina Oral Narrative Tradition," Histos: The Electronic Journal of Ancient Historiography at the University of Durham 1 (1997): 1-19; online: http://www. dur.ac.uk/Classics/histos/1997/stadter.html, who has demonstrated that retelling over time tends to homogenize source material to the perspective of the retellers. In the case of Hist. 2.141, such a dynamic could have been at work among both the Egyptian priests and Herodotus himself. 76. See Sourdille, Herodote et la religion de I 'Egypte, esp. 141. 77. Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:104; cf. H. T. Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem: The Alliance Between Hebrews and Africans in 701 BC (New York: Soho, 2002), 121,

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attributed the activity of Horus to Ptah; or (2) simply presented this activity of Horus in such a fashion that his Greek readers would instantly recognize their god Apollo. Either option is possible given the inherent problems with the oral sources and Herodotus' own biases. Even so, it seems most likely that Ptah was the original referent given the subject and locale of the story as we have it in Hist. 2.141. Herodotus' has recast the story (perhaps in light of Horus) in terms that would correspond to the Smintheus epithet of Apollo. If so, this impacts the interpretation of the mice event itself: the fact that it is mice that spread out against Sennacherib's army may not be so much due to Herodotus' Egyptian sources, nor to a rationalistic interpretation on his part of an otherwise unexplainable deliverance, so much as further evidence of a Hellenocentric glorification of Apollo.78 This leads directly to the religious interpretation of the event. Despite Herodotus' inquisitiveness and critical mind, he was certainly not above religious (re-)interpretation.79 The existence of such a religious tendency is even more probable in his source material.80 The religio-moralistic elements in Hist. 2.141 can be seen by looking at the story's structure. v. 1 Story of Sethon a Name and description b Despotic/oppressive activities: Mistreatment of warriors c Explanation of b (former land holdings) v. 2 Sethon's Problems a First problem: Sennacherib's advance b Second problem: No Egyptian warriors (due to Ib—c [and perhaps 2a?]) 339 n. 14; Pritchett, The Liar School, 113-16. Fehling (Herodotus and His "Sources ",137 and n. 14) no longer subscribes to a Greek source for the mice motif. 78. For Herodotus' own interests impacting his accounts, see Mandell and Freedman, The Relationship Between Herodotus'History and Primary History, 146; and Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:83-84,140. Lloyd points out that Greek elements may have been present in some of the Egyptian sources (ibid., 1:109). See further ibid., 1:81, for a discussion of hybrid versions in Herodotus. 79. Mandell and Freedman, The Relationship Between Herodotus' History and Primary History, 150: "Herodotus himself may have been and probably was responsible for the religious format of his Xoyoi." 80. For example, Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 80, highlights the fact that Herodotus probably relied on information from the cult-centers of Delphi and Olympia (cf. above on Apollo), both of which "could sometimes pervert the truth to increase the glory of their divine patron—and thus their own revenues." See also Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:116: "Egyptians were quite likely to retail or develop traditions ad maiorem Aegyptiorum gloriam." Recall that the source behind Hist. 2.99—142 is likely the Memphite priesthood (Lloyd, Herodotus, 1:90).

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v. 3 The Divine Exchange a Sethon's "prayer" b Dream vision and oracle w. 4—5 Outcome 4a Sethon's trust and obedience 4b On to Pelusium 4c No Warriors (cf. Ib-c, 2b) 5a The Showdown 5b The Deliverance: Mice —Result of mice's gnawing = No weapons —"and many fell" (TTEOE'IV TroAAous) - Military defeat (and/or plague?)81 v. 6 Etiology for Statue

Lloyd has found evidence in the story for the "triumph of the weak, "a motif used elsewhere in Herodotus.82 Indeed, there are two examples of this motif in Hist. 2.141:(l)the triumph of the Egyptian army, which is comprised of "shopkeepers and handworkers and fellows from the marketplace," over the great "Arabian host"; and (2) the triumph of field mice over that same host. The "triumph of the weak" motif is, in fact, a subset of another, related Herodotean motif also operative in this unit: namely, the "reversal of fortunes." Here, too, Hist. 2.141 preserves two examples: (1) an originally despotic king after "repenting" becomes a hero (bad > "repent" > good);83 and (2) the mighty Sennacherib, "king of the Arabians and Assyrians," and his great host are defeated by lowly field mice (strong > weak)! Reversals such as these are particularly common in Herodotus' presentations of kings and tyrants, which, if not fully stereotypical, are certainly conventional. The locus classicus for this kind of presentation is the so-called "constitutional debate" in Hist. 3.80-88. The historicity of this unit has been questioned, but despite some evidence that it is rooted in historical fact, its historical authenticity need not concern us here.84 What is helpful, instead, is to see how 81. That the mice either symbolize or carried a plague of some sort (bubonic?) is often assumed though with little evidence or support. See especially Cornaby, "2 Kings xix.35," 379-80, and further below, hi and of itself, TTITTTCO, which is often used for falling "in battle" (see BAGD, 659), does not carry overly explicit overtones of plague. See further below. 82. Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:101-2. 83. Note diro8uponai ("to lament bitterly") which occurs in the LXX only at 3 Mace 4:12. The context there indicates that one should not over-interpret the term itself in a religious way: hence, "repent" in quotation marks. Nevertheless, there is a reversal of fortune following the king's lament before the cult statue (TcoyaXpa), which may in turn suggest a change in the king's disposition. 84. On its historicity, see Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 78-79, and E. M. Yamauchi, "Herodotus," ABD 3:180.

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Herodotus frames these types of presentations and how that impacts an assessment of Hist. 2.141. In an important article on this subject, John G. Gammie identified six characteristic defects of tyrants that Herodotus typically utilizes in his description of such.85 The account of Sethon corresponds to two of these: hybris (maltreatment of the warriors) and alteration of traditional customs (land removal) (Hist. 2.141.1). Sennacherib, on the other hand, is not described in sufficient detail to identify conventional tyrannical characteristics. Be that as it may, Herodotus enjoyed demonstrating how tyrants—once identified—often met up with disaster or reversal of fortune, or both. Sethon, given his "repentance" in the temple, is spared this fate. Sennacherib, however, meets with divine punishment, a theme closely linked with the defect of hybris elsewhere in Herodotus. It is probably safe to infer, therefore, that Herodotus perceived Sennacherib as having suffered from tyrannical characteristics—especially hybris. Why Herodotus would chose to use this reversal motif in his representation of both Sethon and Sennacherib is uncertain. Perhaps it is due to his overall purpose in the Histories—the recounting of the GreekPersian war (see Hist. 1.1). Perhaps, that is, Herodotus perceived Sennacherib/Assyria to be a precursor to Persia and Sethon/Egypt as a precursor to Greece.86 In any event, it is clear that the religio-moralistic cast of Hist. 2.141 also bears evidence of Herodotus' own fingerprints, though it remains "perfectly feasible that the moral itself formed an integral part of the tale as told by the Egfyptian] source."87 E. Summary To sum up this analysis of Hist. 2.141: it is clear that Herodotus' account cannot be cited as a parallel to 2 Kgs 19:35 without certain qualifications. His account is clearly marked (and marred) by the pro-Egyptian Tendenzen of his source(s) as well as by his own tendencies, most notably, the Hellenocentric (re-)casting of the story. These critical observations explain why, for example, the priest-king is identified as Sethon (Egyptian), why the deliverance is credited to Hephaestus/Ptah (Egyptian), why the battle took place at Pelusium (Egyptian), why the deliverance is portrayed as the work of field mice (Greek and/or Egyptian?); and why the inscription on the king's (not the god's) statue is Hellenic in tone 85. J. G. Gammie, "Herodotus on Kings and Tyrants: Objective Historiography or Conventional Portraiture?," JNES 45 (1986): 171-95. 86. Cf. a similar argument regarding Herodotus' presentation of Sesostris in Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 133. 87. Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:105.

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(Greek). It may also explain why the story functions etiologically (Greek).88 When these elements are stripped away, however, we are still left with some fascinating details: 1. The story describes an event which took place during a campaign of Sennacherib, sometime around 701. 2. Herodotus is relying on an Egyptian source(s), probably of priestly origin, probably from the temple of Ptah at Memphis. 3. For some reason, the encounter left Sennacherib' s army (called, here, the "Arabians") defeated. 4. This defeat was interpreted as a stunning miracle performed by a god. Despite the many differences described above, these details are sufficiently similar to 2 Kgs 19:35 to warrant that we have attestation of something that is also recorded in similar fashion there.89 In short, Hist. 2.141 does preserve a "parallel" account of the events of 701. It remains to consider whether this parallel is dependent on 2 Kgs 19:35 or vice versa (or some other scenario) and to comment on what such might mean for the broader interpretations of each of these two texts. III. Dependence and Possibilities Space and time preclude an exhaustive discussion of possible (inter)dependence between the various sources for the events of 701 and which way such dependence might flow. It must suffice to repeat that the biblical and Herodotean texts seem to record a similar event (miraculous deliverance) against the same person (Sennacherib) in the same time period (701), and that the two texts have interesting structural similarities. Note, for example, the following outline that could be offered for 2 Kgs 18-19 (set in parallel with the one for Hist. 2.141):

88. As indicated above and substantiated in the secondary literature, several of these details could be ambivalent: Egyptian motifs instead of Greek, Greek motifs instead of Egyptian, or even as hybrid motifs (e.g. the mouse's connections with Apollo and Horus, not to mention Apollo's connections with Horus). The main point is that both Greek and Egyptian influences are at work, greatly complicating a simplistic and straightforward delineation of "the event." 89. Even Fehling agrees that there is a connection between Herodotus and the Bible at this point (Herodotus and His "Sources", 137). Similarly, Wesselius, The Origins of the History of Israel, 93. Aubin points out that given the differences between the accounts, similarities are of great import (The Rescue of Jerusalem, 118).

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Story of Hezekiah 1 Story of Sethon Name and description a. Name and description Good and righteous b. Despotic/oppressive activities activities Explanation/outcome c. Explanation ofb (former land c. 18:6-8 ofb holdings) 18:9—16 Problems with Assyria 2 Sethon's Problems a. 18:9-12 Fall of Samaria b. 18:13 Sennacherib in Judah a. First problem: Sennacherib's advance b. Second problem: No Egyptian c. 18:14-16 Paying tribute warriors (due to Ib-c [and perhaps 2a?]) 18:17-37 Human Exchange 1: Assyria and Hezekiah 3 The Divine Exchange 19:1-7 Divine Exchange 1 a. 19:1 Hezekiah to temple in a. Sethon's "prayer" distress b. 19:2-5 Messengers and their mission c. 19:6-7 Oracle 1 b. Dream vision and oracle 19:8—13 Human Exchange 2: Assyria and Hezekiah a. 19:8 Temporary withdrawal b. 19:9a News of Tirhaka c. 19:9b-13 Message from Sennacherib 19:14-34 Divine Exchange 2 3 The Divine Exchange a. 19:14—19 Prayer in the temple a. Sethon's "prayer" b. 19:20-34 Oracle 2 b. Dream vision and oracle —Nothing bad will happen 19:32-34 19:35 Deliverance/Fulfillment 1 4—5 Outcome a. Fulfillment of 19:32-34 4a. Sethon's trust and obedience 4b. On to Pelusium 4c. No Warriors (cf. Ib-c, 2b) 5a. The Showdown b. Angel of Yahweh strikes camp 5b. The Deliverance: Mice (= plague?) — Result of mice's gnawing = No weapons c. 185,000 dead — "and many fell" (rreoeTv TToAAous) - Military defeat (and/or plague?) 6 Etiology for Statue 19:36-37 Aftermath/Fulfillment 2 a. Sennacherib' s withdrawal (cf. 19:7, 28, 33) b. Sennacherib' s murder (cf. 19:7)

2Kgsl8:l-8 a. 18:1-2 b. 18:3-5

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Obviously, this particular analysis evidences marked similarities between the two accounts. This general comparison would be further refined and illuminated, no doubt, by examining the other versions of the story, both biblical and otherwise.90 And yet, whatever refinements, the structural comparison comprises additional evidence that, despite the fact that scholars have often cited Herodotus uncritically, there is in fact a relationship between Hist. 2.141 and the biblical material. Can more be said on this score? Could one of these accounts depend directly on the other? To begin with, we may entertain four rather straightforward and overly simplistic scenarios: A. Option 1: The Hebrew Bible Influenced Herodotus That Herodotus is directly dependent upon the Hebrew Bible is highly unlikely. As indicated above, Herodotus did not know the languages of the indigenes he visited.91 Furthermore, he never claims to have been to Judah and probably traveled through Palestine (if at all) via the coastline. It is unlikely that he penetrated inland.92 Moreover, while the dating of the final form of the Hebrew Bible or even of the Deuteronomistic History is debatable, many scholars would date the former, at least, to a time much later than Herodotus. Evidence for dependence upon a written Hebrew version now known in the Hebrew Bible is thus virtually nil, especially given the data that Herodotus' version apparently stems from Memphite sources.93 B. Option 2: The Septuagint Influenced Herodotus This too is unlikely. Septuagintal language obviates the Hebrew problem, but the LXX is too late to be the source of Herodotus' story.94 Again, the Egyptian origin of Herodotus' version must be kept in mind. Furthermore, there does not seem to be enough correspondence between the 90. Including the Isaianic and Chronicler's versions as well as the different layers (A, Bu B2) isolated by biblical scholars within the 2 Kings version. For 2 Chr 32, note, for example, S. Japhet, I&II Chronicles (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1993), 989, who points out that prayer is the main element in the Chronicler's version. For the Assyrian accounts, see COS 2.1198:302-303; wAANET, 287-88. 91. Cf. A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits ofHellenization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), for the same point for Greek writers of later dates. 92. See ibid., 73, for the same being true for most Greek writers. 93. But note Mandell and Freedman {The Relationship Between Herodotus' History and Primary History, 175), who posit that Herodotus had access to the Primary History via an Aramaic translation or "targumic form of Primary History in that tongue." I think this quite unlikely. 94. So also, rightly, Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 137, who also points out that the LXX seems to have been read by few outside Jewish circles.

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accounts at the lexical level to suggest direct dependence between Herodotus and a written version related to the LXX. C. Option 3: Herodotus Influenced the Septuagint This is possible since the LXX was translated/composed several centuries after Herodotus' Histories. The exact date for the translation of the Former Prophets is uncertain, but given Josephus's knowledge of the Herodotean text by the first century C.E., it is not completely impossible that translators of the LXX might have shaped their story on the basis of Herodotus. Yet the fact that the two stories are markedly different, especially in referent (Sethon vs. Hezekiah), mode (mice vs. angel), origin (Memphis? vs. Judah?), and locality (Pelusium vs. Jerusalem) precludes direct literary dependence, as does the lack of a notable number of linguistic affinities (see option 2 above). D. Option 4: Herodotus Influenced the Hebrew Bible This relationship also poses problems. Although the dating of the composition and redaction of the Hebrew Bible, and especially the Deuteronomistic History, is highly controverted (see above), at least some scholars would argue that Herodotus is too late to have had a direct literary impact on the Hebrew Bible.95 Of course several of the scholars cited at the beginning of this study would argue the exact opposite: Herodotus could and did have a direct impact on the Hebrew Bible, especially the Deuteronomistic History.96 And yet, the marked differences between the two accounts suggests otherwise—that Herodotus' version did not influence the Hebrew Bible at this point—quite irrespective of the dating question. 95. Relative dating is useful but non-specific; manuscript evidence, while more certain, is hardly definitive. For Herodotus, the main manuscripts are tenth century C.E. and later, though a few papyri are earlier (see Godley, Herodotus I, xvii; Hude, Herodoti, v-xiii). These dates are of mixed usefulness, of course, given ancient data that clearly demonstrates that Histories was known. Indeed, as early as 425 B.C.E. Aristophanes parodied its opening chapters in one of his plays (see Gould, "Herodotus," 696). For slightly later periods, note Aristotle's mention of Herodotus, and, still later, Josephus'. Note also Becking ("Is de Hebreeuwse Bijbel een Hellenistisch boek?," 13-14), who notes that at least some Greek authors writing ca. 300 B.C.E. already presuppose the existence of parts of the Hebrew Bible (Hecateus of Abdera, Demetrius the Chronographer, and Artapanus; for which see OTP 2:843-54; 2:889903; 2:905-18). 96. See above, especially Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel, 95, who is one of the few to actually discuss Hist. 2.141 and the 2 Kings account, though his treatment is less than two pages long.

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These are only four of the most obvious possibilities. What makes each unattractive is that, in addition to being overly simplistic, each considers only direct, literary (that is, written) dependence. But, given the oral nature of Herodotus' sources, not to mention the differences in the respective accounts, oral dependence and various types of interference must be considered.97 Interference has been discussed above via the tendencies at work in Herodotus himself and in his source(s). When these are considered within a primarily oral (not written) scenario of dependence, it suggests the possibility that Herodotus' Egyptian source(s) might have been ultimately dependent upon an oral version of the 2 Kings account or vice versa.98 If so, this dependence would be very primitive indeed, concerned only with the data that: (a) Sennacherib had been repulsed (b) by some unexplainable (and) divine act. Since both versions of the story as they have come down to us are layered with their respective constituencies' religious ideology, how can one decide if the route of influence was from Egypt to Judah or from Judah to Egypt? Absolute certainty, of course, is precluded—as it always is in things historiographic. Nevertheless, the latter possibility is much more likely in light of the full complement of extant data concerning Sennacherib's 701 campaign. That is, apart from the Herodotean tradition, there is no evidence from Assyrian or other sources that Sennacherib ever campaigned as far south as Pelusium." There is ample evidence, however, in both Akkadian and Hebrew sources that Sennacherib did campaign in Judah and even besieged Jerusalem.100 What seems most plausible then, although unprovable, is that Herodotus' source(s) is, in fact, giving attestation of something that happened to Sennacherib as he campaigned against Judah and Jerusalem, This source(s) then "redacted" the story, making 97. Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 137, too quickly eliminates oral scenarios. 98. It is probably more correct to speak of an oral source or oral sources^or the 2 Kings account. 99. See, among others, Cogan and Tadmor, // Kings. They point out that it was Esarhaddon who first attacked Egypt in 674/673 B.C.E. Cf. Lloyd, Herodotus, 2:103: "Probably H[erodotus] and/or his source/s (influenced by the events of 525?) simply assumed that the confrontation between the Assyrians and Eg[yptians], the only two combatants of whom they know, took place at the gateway to the E[gyptian] frontier... Indeed H[erodotus]'s comment TCCUTVTI ycxp eioi cci eofioAai may even reflect such a process of inference." See also Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem, 95-96. 100. This additional evidence is completely ignored by Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel, 95-96, who reads the relationship between Herodotus and 2 Kings in almost polar opposite fashion as that offered here. But it is exactly this additional material that demonstrates that Wesselius ignores it to his own (and his argument's) peril.

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it a triumph for an Egyptian pharaoh and an Egyptian god at an Egyptian locale.101 Herodotus, in turn, later overlaid the account with his own Hellenic biases. Nevertheless, despite these later accretions, the basic similarities between the accounts make it likely that the origin of the Memphite story is a version akin to that found in 2 Kgs 19:35.102 How Herodotus' source(s) came by the Hebrew story is another complicated —and ultimately unanswerable—question. Oral transmission between traders or immigrants from one locale to the other, however, may provide a likely scenario.103 IV. Conclusion In conclusion, Herodotus' Hist. 2.141 does preserve a parallel to 2 Kgs 19:35. Both attest to a stunning reversal of fortune for Sennacherib during his 701 campaign. It is most likely that the Herodotean text is not independent but stems from an Egyptian source(s) that ultimately learned of the story from a Judean "source"104—whether that was formal or informal can no longer be determined. If this conclusion is correct, it has clear and obvious ramifications for the study of the 2 Kings account. In brief, the Herodotean parallel cannot be simplistically used to discredit 2 Kgs 19:35 because, far from being an independent account which reveals another, obviously legendary version of the story, it is ultimately dependent on the biblical account.105 And yet, neither can the Herodotus 101. The roughly 250 years between the 701 defeat and the composition of the Histories provides ample time for the story to have been modified by the Egyptians, whether intentionally or not. See Waters, Herodotos the Historian, 96 (quoted above). Contrast Fehling (Herodotus and His "Sources", 137), who thinks the change in locale is attributable to Herodotus, though his reasoning would apply just as well to an Egyptian redaction. See also Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:100. 102. Cf. Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 128, on Herodotus' correct conveyance of the outlines of Darius' rise even while his details "cannot be confirmed and may in many cases be the result of embellishment." 103. This possibility, developed independently, receives further support in the work of A. Rof<£, "Israelite Belief in Angels in the Pre-exilic Period as Evidenced by Biblical Traditions" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1969), 217 (Hebrew); cited in Cogan and Tadmor, // Kings, 252 and n. 15. Another possibility is that Judeans fleeing to Egypt during the Babylonian threat of the late-seventh/early-sixth century might have taken the story with them. 104. Contra Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 135-37; idem, "Introduction," 38; idem, "Reflections on the Discussion," 313,321. Perhaps one should take note of Fehling (Herodotus and His "Sources ", 137) who curiously disallows an Egyptian source but allows for a Near Eastern one. 105. See nn. 10 and 98 above.

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text be used to "prove" that what took place in the Assyrian camp was an outbreak of plague carried by mice or rats or their fleas. Such interpretations are clearly conflating the biblical and Herodotean material uncritically.106 Perhaps all we can say ultimately is that Hist. 2.141 is another version or an alternative account of something that happened to Sennacherib's forces as they camped outside Jerusalem.107 If so, the two stories represent different-but-related co-optations and national-religious interpretations of a particular event in 701. What exactly happened in that event is irrecoverable. Perhaps the answer is "nothing" and we are dealing, instead, with multiple attestation108 of a popular legend or with 106. Discussion of the 2 Kgs 19:35 account under the rubric of "plague" is ubiquitous. See, e.g., Japhet, / & II Chronicles, 990-91; Gray, / & II Kings, 694; Keil, The Books of the Kings, 457; Montgomery and Gehman, The Books of Kings, 498; Gon^alves, L 'Expedition de Sennacherib, 121; Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:104; A. Laato, "Assyrian Propaganda and the Falsification of History in the Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib," VT45 (1995): 198-226. It appears that many of these interpretations are indirectly dependent upon Cornaby's article ("2 Kings xix.35"). Whatever the case, the plague interpretation conflates 2 Kgs 19:35 and Hist. 2.141 with details from 1 Sam 5:6-6:18 to assert that mice were bearers of the plague. Note rtS2D in 1 Sam 6:4, but that term does not occur in 2 Kgs 19; Isa 37; or 2 Chr 32, though it does occur in Sir 48:21 (see above; could this be the origin of the plague interpretation?). Grabbe has argued that such conflate interpretations are inaccurate ("Of Mice and Dead Men," 135-36,140) and has shown that there is no obvious hint of a plague in Hist. 2.141; see also Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem, 120-22, 143. Rawlinson (The History of Herodotus, 2:188 n. 1) points out that even the "plague does not destroy upwards of 185,000 men in one night." Of course, the Hebrew numbers could be inflated (see Bright, History of Israel, 301 and n. 13; Keil, The Books of the Kings, 458; Cogan and Tadmor, II Kings, 239), but in general the conflation and thus the plague interpretation is not convincing. To strengthen the argument one would need to demonstrate that the phrases "the angel of the LORD struck," the root nD3 + the preposition -D, and/or "dead bodies" (D'HJS) had specific plague connotations. Despite Keil's assertions (The Books of the Kings, 458 n. 1), I have been unable to substantiate any of these points. Note recent variations on the plague theory, namely, that it was caused by fetid water (e.g. B. Z. Luria, "How Hezekiah Planned Sennacherib's Fall," Beth Mikra 32 [1986-87]: 244-52 [Hebrew]; cf. Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem, 122) or "food poisoning or whatever" (K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003], 41). 107. E. Ben Zvi, "Malleability and Its Limits: Sennacherib's Campaign Against Judah as a Case-Study," in Grabbe, ed., "Like a Bird in a Cage ", 73-105, has made the case that when separate groups share perceptions and/or representations of the same thing, it may point to something beyond such perception/representation— namely, something "historical." See Grabbe, "Introduction," 37; idem, "Reflections on the Discussion," 313-14, 316. 108. Note Keil (The Books of the Kings, 458 n. 1), who wisely intimates that if the attestation is dependent it does not necessarily strengthen a case for historicity.

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religious interpretations of something that was originally due to mundane political exigencies—that is, perhaps Sennacherib was recalled to Nineveh due to rebellion in Babylon or the like. Against this explanation, however, is the rather mysterious fact that Jerusalem is left intact as is Hezekiah's kingship.109 Of course, the two options (retreat due to disaster and news from the Babylonian front) are not mutually exclusive.110 The truth may lie somewhere in between. In the final analysis, whatever one might think about what caused Sennacherib's sudden withdrawal, historians must remember that the miraculous as such is not identified by the faithful solely by causation and explanation (or lack thereof) as by timing.111 As for historians who wish to argue that Herodotus influenced the Hebrew Bible, the present study offers evidence to the contrary—and this on the one clear passage attested in both Herodotus and the Hebrew Bible.112 For these historians, the moral of the story is not about miracles and timing, but about the devil who resides in the details.113

109. As rightly pointed out by Grabbe, "Of Mice and Dead Men," 139; idem, "Reflections on the Discussion," 313-14, 321. Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings, 128, observes that Egypt is also left unscathed. 110. Lloyd, Herodotus, 3:102; Bright, History of Israel, 258. 111. In some ways, it is the subsequent impact and interpretation of the retreat that evidence its spectacular nature. See W. H. McNeill, "Infectious Alternatives: The Plague That Saved Jerusalem, 701 B.C.," in The Collected What If? Eminent Historians Imagining What Might Have Been (ed. Robert Cowley; New York: Putnam, 2001), 1-12. Cf. Davies, "This Is What Happens," 117: "History can be detected in the way humans react to it, especially in the way they witness, interpret and remember it." 112. It is striking that Nielsen, in discussing the deliverance of Jerusalem, neglects to mention Hist. 2.141 (The Tragedy in History, 149). Nielsen also offers the following curious remark: "In DtrH, the Assyrian Sennacherib maybe regarded as a parallel to Herodotus' Xerxes" (ibid., n. 131). One wonders why, in light of Hist. 2.141, the Deuteronomistic History's Sennacherib is not "a parallel to" (better identical with) Herodotus' Sennacherib! 113. Several reviewers of the Bible + Herodotus approaches have made similar observations. See, for example, W. Johnstone, Review of Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel, ExpTim 114 (2003): 245; T. S. L. Michael, Review of Mandell and Freedman, The Relationship Between Herodotus' History and Primary History, JBL 114 (1995): 126; and G. N. Knoppers, Review of Nielsen, The Tragedy in History, CBQ 61 (1999): 549.

THE ROYAL ORACLE IN EZEKIEL 37:15-28: EZEKIEL'S REFLECTION ON JOSIAH'S REFORM* Marvin A. Sweeney

Interpreters frequently view the oracle in Ezek 37:15-28 concerning the reunification of Ephraim and Judah under Davidic rule as a relatively late composition. Citing the uncharacteristic use of the term "j^Q, "king," rather than Ezekiel's typical use of WED, "prince," Ezekiel's tendency to place the Davidic monarch under the authority of the priests and the Temple, and the general scenario of the eschatological reunification of the nation, interpreters contend that the oracle must stem from the later years of the prophet's lifetime in Babylonian exile or from vaguely defined later disciples or tradents. Karl-Friedrich Pohlmann, Katheryn Darr, and others point to various later additions in w. 22-28 to Ezekiel's words that ultimately express the ideal of national reunification and restoration under a Davidic monarch.1 Daniel Block, Moshe Greenberg, and others argue that the oracle represents Ezekiel's hope for ideal restoration in the aftermath of Assyrian and Babylonian deportations.2 * A version of this study was read at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Philadelphia, Pa., November 19-22, 2005. 1. K. F. Pohlmann, Der Prophet Hesekiel/Ezechiel, Kapital 20-48 (AID 22,2; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 500-501; K. Darr, "Ezekiel," in NIB 6:1505; H. McKeating, Ezekiel (OTG; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 107-8; L. Allen, Ezekiel 20-48 (WBC 29; Dallas: Word, 1990), 192; K. Carley, The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (NCBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 251; R. Hals, Ezekiel (FOIL 19; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 274; J. Wevers, Ezekiel (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), 196; G. Fohrer, Ezechiel (HAT 13; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1955), 211-12; K. Galling, HezekieKRAT 13; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1936), 129. 2. D. Block, The Book of Ezekiel (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 2:394,412; M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37 (AB 22A; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 759-60; W. Eichrodt, Ezekiel: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 512-14; G. A. Cooke, Ezekiel (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1970),

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Nevertheless, there have been persistent observations that the reunification of Ephraim and Judah under Davidic rule with the Jerusalem Temple at their center reflects the ideals of King Josiah's program of religious reform and national restoration. Indeed, Antti Laato contends that the model of Davidic kingship presented in Ezek 37:15-28 must be linked to the presentation of Davidic kingship in ch. 34 and that its salient features reflect the royal ideology of Josiah's reign.3 Walther Zimmerli is more circumspect in suggesting that the passage has been subjected to later expansion in w. 24b-28, but he argues that Ezekiel would have spoken about the reunification of Israel and Judah as part of his proclamation of salvation since the issue "had acquired a new topicality from the time of Josiah and has also found clear expression in the book of Ezekiel."4 Because scholars are divided in viewing Ezekiel's oracular promise of national reunification under a Davidic monarch as the product of later tradents' reflection on Ezekiel's message, as the prophet's statement of an ideal future, or as the prophet's reflection on the concerns of Josiah's restoration, this study will review and reconsider the issue. Based upon an examination of Ezek 37:15-28 in relation to its current literary context in chs. 33-39, a formal analysis of the passage per se, and a discussion of the literary-historical dimensions of the passage in relation to Ezekiel's birth, expectations for national reunification, and expectations for Davidic restoration, this study argues that 37:15-28 represents Ezekiel's reflection on the significance of Josiah's program of reform and restoration in relation to the later realities of the Babylonian exile. I. The Literary Context of Ezekiel 37:15—28 An examination of Ezek 37:15-28 in relation to its immediate literary context demonstrates that it is a component of a larger block of material in 33:21-39:29, which asserts that YHWH is the author of creation who brings punishment and salvation to resanctify the land. By portraying the resanctification of the land, 33:21-39:29 prepares the reader for the prophet's final vision of the restoration of the Temple at the center of Israel and creation in chs. 40-48. 396-406; J. Herrmann, Ezechiel (KAT 11; Leipzig & Erlangen: A. Deichert, 1924), 237; F. Hitzig, Der Prophet Ezechiel (KHAT 8; Leipzig: Weidmann, 1847), 284-87. 3. A. Laato, Josiah and David Redivivus: The Historical Josiah and the Mesianic Expectations of Exilic and Postexilic Times (ConBOT 33; Stockholm: Alqvist & Wiksell, 1992), 189. 4. W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel 2 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 272; cf. J. Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (Interpretation; Atlanta: John Knox, 1990), 174-77.

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Many interpreters recognize that the material in chs. 33-39 (or chs. 3348) forms a relatively coherent unit of the book concerned with future hope.5 It follows the oracles concerning the nations in chs. 28-32 and prepares the reader for the final Temple vision in chs. 40-48.6 Most literary-structural assessments of these chapters, however, presuppose current chapter divisions and emphasize general thematic concerns without giving adequate attention to the formal literary features that signal the literary structure of this text.7 My own prior work on Ezekiel emphasizes the role of the chronological notices in the book as the key markers of the major units of the book.8 No chronological notice appears in 33:1, which defines Ezekiel's role as watchman in relation to his people. A chronological notice does appear, however, in 33:21, which dates the following material to the tenth day of the fifth month (Av) of the twelfth year of the exile (585 B.C.E.). The next chronological notice in the book appears in 40:1, which introduces the final Temple vision in chs. 40-48. Thus, 33:21-39:29 emerges as the formal unit under consideration. The internal literary structure of 33:21-39:29 falls into two basic subunits. The first is the notice in 33:21-22 concerning the prophet's reception of the news that Jerusalem had fallen and that the hand of YHWH had earlier come upon him, ending his silence and prompting him to speak. The second is a sequence of six sub-units in 33:23-39:29, each introduced by the prophetic word transmission formula, '•bfc'mDl TP1 "1DK1?, "and the word of YHWH was unto me, saying.. ."9 The prophetic 5. E.g. Hals, Ezekiel, 3-4. 6. Cf. J. Levenson, Theology of the Program of Restoration in Ezekiel 40-48 (HSM 10; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976), 161, who portrays Ezek40-48 as the realization of the prophecies of restoration in chs. 33-37. Like many scholars, Levenson distinguishes chs. 38-39 as a proto-apocalyptic unit distinct from chs. 3337 (cf. M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20 [AB 22; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983]). Despite its proto-apocalyptic generic character, chs. 38-39 must still be read as a sub-unit of the larger book. 7. For the methodological principles employed here, see my "Form Criticism," in To Each Its Own Meaning: Biblical Criticisms and Their Application (ed. S. L. McKenzie and S. R. Haynes; rev ed.; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 58-89. 8. See my article, "Ezekiel: Zadokite Priest and Visionary Prophet of the Exile," in SBL Seminar Papers, 2000(SBLSP 39; Atlanta: SBL, 2000): 728-51; reprinted in Form and Intertextuality in the Study of Prophetic and Apocalyptic Literature (FAT 45; Tubingen: MohrSiebeck, 2005), 125^3. For discussion of 33:21-39:29, see my "The Assertion of Divine Power in Ezekiel 33:21-39:29," in Form and Intertextuality, 156-72. 9. For discussion of the prophetic word formula, see S. Meier, Speaking of Speaking: Marking Direct Discourse in the Hebrew Bible (VTSup 46; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 314-19.

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word formula appears in 33:23; 34:1; 35:1; 36:16; 37:15; and 38:1, where it introduces reports of the prophet's oracles in 33:23-33; 34:1-31; 35:1-36:15; 36:16-37:14; 37:15-28; and 38:1-39:29. These reports follow from the initial notice concerning the fall of Jerusalem and the end of Ezekiel's silence in 33:21-22. Each of the six sub-units presents an oracle spoken by YHWH to Ezekiel concerning the significance of the destruction of Jerusalem and the prospects for its restoration. Thus, the first oracular report in 33:2333 employs a disputation speech to assert that YHWH has brought punishment on the land because the people defiled it by failing to observe YHWH's sacred instructions.10 As a result, the people will know YHWH and that a prophet was among them. The second oracular report in 34:131 employs the metaphor of shepherds guiding sheep to outline YHWH's plans to punish Israel's leaders for their failure to provide adequate leadership for the people and to restore Davidic rule over the nation so that Israel will recognize YHWH. The third oracular report in 35:1-36:15 contrasts the downfall of Edom in 35:2-15 with the restoration of the mountains of Israel in 36:1-15 so that the nations will recognize YHWH. The fourth oracular report in 34:16-37:14 employs motifs of blood and idol impurity together with motifs of the resurrection of the dead to symbolize purification in an effort to provide an overview and rationale for the entire process of punishment and restoration outlined in the book of Ezekiel at large and in 33:23—39:29 in particular. Again, the people will recognize YHWH. The fifth oracle report in 37:15—28 emphasizes the reunification of Ephraim and Judah under the rule of a restored Davidic king and the authority of the Jerusalem Temple so that the nations will recognize YHWH. Finally, the sixth oracular report in 38:139:29 emphasizes YHWH's fulfillment of earlier prophecy by defeating Gog from Magog and purifying the land from the dead corpses of the fallen enemy. Once again, both Israel and the nations will recognize YHWH. Overall, 33:21-39:29 is formulated as a disputation speech that contends that YHWH is the author who brings punishment and restoration to resanctify the land. The formal structure of the passage may be outlined as follows:

10. For discussion of the disputational character of this text, see A. Graffy, A Prophet Confronts His People: The Disputation Speech in the Prophets (AnBib 104; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1984), 78-82.

SWEENEY The Royal Oracle in Ezekiel 3 7:15-28 Disputation: YHWH is the Author of Creation Who Brings Punishment and Restoration to Resanctify the Land I. Introduction: Report of Jerusalem's fall and the end of Ezekiel's speechlessness: 12th year, 10th day, 5th month II. Report of oracles spoken by YHWH to Ezekiel concerning the destruction and restoration of Jerusalem A. First oracular report: YHWH brings punishment to the land B. Second oracular report: YHWH will punish Israel's leaders and restore Davidic rule C. Third oracular report: YHWH will punish Edom and restore Israel D. Fourth oracular report: YHWH will resanctify the land of Israel for the sake of the Divine Name E. Fifth oracular report: YHWH will reunify Israel and restore Davidic kingship and the Temple at Israel's center F. Sixth oracular report: YHWH will fulfill earlier prophecy by defeating Gog and purifying the land

243 33:21-39:29 33:21—22 33:23-39:29 33:23-33 34:1-31 35:1-36:15 36:16-37:14 37:15-28

38:1-39:29

II. The Literary Structure of Ezekiel 37:15-28 Having ascertained the placement and general function of Ezek 37:15-28 in relation to the immediate literary context of 33:21-39:29 and the general literary context of the book of Ezekiel as a whole, it is now time to examine the formal literary structure of the oracle in detail in order to ascertain its specific concerns. Such an examination demonstrates that the oracle is fundamentally concerned with the restoration and reunification of the Davidic kingdom of Israel with the Jerusalem Temple as its holy center. Although interpreters frequently contend that such a scenario encapsulates the essential message of Ezekiel,11 we should note that the book as a whole tends to downplay the national or political elements of restoration—specifically, the role of the king—and instead focuses on the central role of the Temple to which the king and nation are subordinate. This has implications for evaluating the overall message of Ezekiel and the perspectives from or means by which that message is derived. As noted above, 37:15-28 is demarcated at the outset by the appearance of the prophetic word formula in v. 15.12 Verses 16-28 contain 11. Cf. Hals, Ezekiel, 274, although he contends that the oracle has been updated repeatedly so that it functions as a summary of most items in Ezekiel's message of hope. 12. Contra C. Barth ("Ezechiel 37 als Einheit," inBeitragezuralttestamentlichen Theologie [ed. H. Dormer et al; Fest. W. Zimmerli; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck &

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YHWH's word to Ezekiel, here formulated as a lengthy instruction speech that calls upon the prophet to engage in a symbolic action concerning the restoration and reunification of Israel and to present two oracles to the people that explain the significance of the action.13 The prophetic word formula in 38:1 demarcates the beginning of the next unit in the sequence and thereby marks 37:28 as the closure of 37:15-28. YHWH's instruction speech to Ezekiel begins in 37:16-17 with YHWH's instructions to engage in a symbolic action that signifies the reunification and restoration of the nation Israel. The speech addresses Ezekiel directly with the pronoun, nriR, "you," and the title, "son of Adam," that is, "human being," which signifies Ezekiel's identity as a priest of the Jerusalem Temple and representative of Adam or humankind before YHWH.14 The instructions proceed in three stages, each of which employs imperative verbs to convey YHWH's expectations. The first instruction in v. 16a employs a combination of the verbs, np, "take," and nrai, "and write," to convey YHWH'S instructions to take a piece of wood and inscribe it with the words, "for Judah and for the sons of Israel together." Such an inscription signifies the two major components in which the Davidic kingship divided following the death of Solomon. The second stage of instruction in v. 16b likewise employs the verbs, np*71, "and take," and ZflPDI, "and write," to convey YHWH's instruction to take a second piece of wood and inscribe it with the words, "for Joseph, the tree of Ephraim, and all the house of Israel together." This inscription does not simply repeat the concerns of the first inscription for the unity of all Israel, but addresses instead the question of the unity of the northern tribes and the role that Joseph, here appositionally specified—perhaps as an addition—as Ephraim, plays at the center of those tribes. In this respect, each piece of wood identifies the two major power centers within the tribes of Israel, that is, the tribe of Judah in the south and the tribes of Joseph or Ephraim in the north. The instructions concerning the two pieces of wood thereby prepare for the third instruction in v. 17, which employs the verb, 3~ip1, "and bring near, join," to signify the joining of Ruprecht, 1977], 39-52), who employs thematic criteria in an attempt to argue for the literary unity of Ezek 37:1-14 and 37:15-28. 13. See K. Friebel, Jeremiah's and Ezekiel's Sign-Acts: Rhetorical Nonverbal Communication (JSOTSup 283; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 21416; W. D. Stacey, Prophetic Drama in the Old Testament (London: Epworth, 1990), 207-8. 14. See C. T. R. Hayward, The Jewish Temple: A Non-Biblical Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1996), who cites various Second Temple period texts from Aristeas, Philo, Jubilees, Josephus, and so on, which illustrate the portrayal of the high priest as Adam before the Garden of Eden.

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the two inscribed pieces and thus the reunification of the two major components of the nation of Israel, centered around Judah and Joseph/ Ephraim. Of course, such a combination signals the reunification of southern Judah and northern Israel, which had been split from the death of Solomon through the lifetime of Ezekiel. Following the instruction to engage in a symbolic action, 37:18-28 then convey the main portion of YHWH'S instruction speech to the prophet to present two oracles from YHWH that will explain to the people the significance of the symbolic action. The instruction to present the first oracle in w. 18-19 begins with a temporal statement in v. 18, introduced by the expression, "IIDR31, "and when," to convey the circumstance that the people will ask for an explanation of the symbolic action in which Ezekiel has just engaged. The temporal statement thereby introduces the first instruction to speak an oracle in v. 19, which outlines YHWH's plans to reunify the nation. The instruction speech per se in v. 19 begins with the imperative verb, "Q"T, "speak (to them)," and continues with a version of the classic prophetic messenger formula, "thus says my lord, G-d," which in turn introduces the oracle itself. The oracle begins with the particle, HDPf, "behold," which introduces YHWH's first person explanation that the pieces of wood inscribed respectively to Joseph/Ephraim and Judah will be joined to form one piece of wood. The full significance of this act is not yet spelled out, which paves the way for the instruction to present the second oracle in vv. 20-28.15 The instruction to present the second oracle in w. 20-28 begins once again with a circumstantial clause in v. 20, which states that the people will see the newly joined, inscribed pieces of wood in the hand of Ezekiel. The instruction to convey YHWH's second oracle then follows in w. 21-28. It begins once again with the imperative verbal expression, ~OTi, "and speak (to them)," followed by the prophetic messenger formula, which introduces the oracle per se. The contents and form of the oracle indicate that it is a oracle of national restoration that includes two basic components: the oracle per se in w. 21aa6-23 and the explication of the oracle in w. 24-28.16 15. Hals (Ezekiel, 272-73) views v. 20 as a somewhat awkward transition or resumption, due to his view that the oracle has been successively updated and reinterpreted. On the contrary, the oracle is designed to present a progressive revelation to the reader which mirrors the process by which the sign-act is presented, its elements successfully brought to the attention of the observer, and then interpreted by the prophet. 16. Contra Stacey (Prophetic Drama, 207-8), who maintains that this is an eschatological vision.

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The basic oracle in vv. 21acc6-23 includes three sub-units, each of which is denned by its subject or primary actor. The first sub-unit in w. 21aa6-22aa comprises four first person statements in which YHWH outlines actions that YHWH will undertake to restore the nations: "I am taking" Israel from among the nations; "I will gather them" from round about; "I will bring them" to their own land; and "I will make them" into a unified nation. The second sub-unit in w. 22afS-23a employs thirdperson verbal statements to convey the impact of YHWH's actions on the nation: "one king" shall be king for all of them; "they shall no longer be two nations"; "they shall no longer be divided into two kingdoms"; and "they shall no longer be defiled" by the abominations/idols, and so on. The third sub-unit hi v. 23b again employs first person statements to summarize the restoration and purification of the nation in its restored relationship with YHWH: "I will deliver them from their transgression"; "I will purify them" so that they will be a people to YHWH; and "I will be their G-d."17 The explication of the basic oracle in 37:24-28 likewise employs a combination of first and third person statements to convey the restoration and reunification of the nation under a Davidic monarch and its relationship with YHWH, but it elaborates on the previous oracle by providing far greater detail in its vision of the reunited and restored nation and by emphasizing the role of the Temple in sanctifying the people at the conclusion. It begins with third person statements, augmented by first person references to YHWH's acts in w. 24-25, which describe the restored nation: "my servant David will be king over them"; "they will walk in my laws and observe my statutes"; "they will dwell upon the land which I gave to Jacob"; "they will dwell upon forever"; and "my servant David will be prince (fc^CE) over them forever." Altogether, this represents a striking combination of northern tradition, focused on the promises of possession of the land to the (northern) patriarch Jacob, and southern tradition, focused on the promises of eternal rule granted to the house of David. First person statements concerning YHWH's covenant and associated acts then follow in v. 26: "I will make a covenant of peace with them"; "an eternal covenant, I will grant them"; "I will multiply them"; and "I will grant them my sanctuary in their midst forever." The summation in w. 27-28 again employs a combination of first and third person statements that convey the restored relationship between YHWH 17. Note that the last two elements, "they shall be my people," and "I shall be their G-d," are the two fundamental elements of the covenant formula; cf. R. Rendtorff, Die "Bundesformel": Eine exegetisch-theologishe Untersuchung (SBS 160; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1995), esp. 40-41, 78.

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and the nation Israel: "my tabernacle will be over them"; "I will be their G-d"; "they will be my people"; "the nations will know that I, YHWH, sanctify Israel when my sanctuary is in their midst forever." The formal structure of this passage may then be portrayed in the following way: Report of YHWH'S Word to Ezekiel: Instruction Speech to Engage in a Symbolic Action Concerning the Restoration and Reunification of the Nation Israel I. Introduction: Prophetic Word Formula II. Word Proper: YHWH's Instruction Speech to Ezekiel A. initial instruction concerning symbolic action: two inscribed pieces of wood j oined together a. inscribe one piece of wood with Judah and Israel b. inscribe a second piece of wood with Joseph and Israel c. join the two pieces of wood B. subsequent instruction concerning explanation of act to people: two oracles concerning significance of act a. first oracle: concerning joining of pieces of wood 1) circumstance: people's request for explanation 2) instruction to speak: restoration oracle concerning j oining of two pieces of wood b. second oracle: concerning significance of act 1) circumstance: two pieces of wood joined 2) instruction to speak: significance of joined wood: nation restored a) instruction formula b) oracle i. messenger formula ii. YHWH's statement aa. restoration oracle i) YHWH'S actions aa) I am taking Israel from among nations bb) I will gather them cc) I will bring them to their own land dd) I will make them into a unified nation ii) results for people aa) one king shall be king for all of them bb) they shall no longer be two nations

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Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past cc) they shall no longer be divided into two kingdoms dd) they shall no longer be defiled iii) summation aa) I will deliver them From their transgression bb) I will purify them as a people to YHWH cc) I will be their G-d bb. explication i) results for nation aa) my servant David will be king over them bb) they will walk in my laws and observe my statutes cc) they will dwell upon the land which I gave to Jacob dd) they will dwell upon it forever ee) my servant David will be prince over them forever ii) YHWH'S actions aa) I will make a covenant of peace with them bb) an eternal covenant, I will grant them cc) I will multiply them dd) I will grant them my sanctuary forever iii) summation aa) my tabernacle will be over them bb) I will be their G-d cc) they will be my people dd) the nations will know that I, YHWH, sanctify Israel

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III. The Literary Function of Ezekiel 37:15-28 Having analyzed the placement of Ezek 37:15-28 in the larger literary context of 33:21-39:29 as well as its formal literary structure and concerns, a number of observations and conclusions follow. First, 37:15-28 seems to be well placed in its context as a component of 33:21-39:29. The larger block of material is clearly designed to prepare the reader for the culminating vision of the Temple's restoration at the center of Israel and creation in chs. 40-48. It does so by focusing on the purification of the land and people as a prelude for the placement of the Temple at its center. Each major sub-unit of 33:21-39:29 takes up this issue in one form or another. Thus, 33:23-33 focuses on the abominations of the people as the basis for the punishment of the land. The sub-unit thereby defines the basic problem of impurity among the people and its effect upon the land that requires resolution before the Temple can be placed at the center. Ezekiel 34:1-31 develops the point made in the prior oracle by pointing to the irresponsibility of Israel's leaders as a key factor in the straying of the people and the desolation of the land. Although the passage is clearly concerned with the restoration of Davidic kingship over the people, the metaphorical portrayal of Israel's leaders as self-interested shepherds who allow the flock to stray evokes images of improper priestly observance: "the fat (D^nn) you eat and the wool you wear; the fatted calf you slaughter; the sheep you do not shepherd" (34:3). This contrasts with pentateuchal tradition, which states that the fat of a sacrificial animal is not to be eaten but removed from the animal and burned (Exod 29:13, 22-25; Lev 4:8-12) and that priests are to dress in linen (Exod 28:43). Ezekiel 35:1-36:15 accuses Edom of having rendered Israel desolate by handing its people over to the sword. Ezekiel 36:1637:14 points to the defilement of the land with blood and its purification as the dead are brought back to life. Ezekiel 37:15-28 charges that the people defiled themselves with abominations and calls for their purification (37:23), which in turn entails the placement of the sanctuary at their center (37:26-28). Finally, chs. 38-39 charges that the land was purged because of the people's abomination, and it calls for the burial and buming of the corpses of Gog's army as a means to purify the land. Insofar as 37:15-28 envisions the defilement and purification of the land and people as well as the placement of the Temple at their center, it clearly functions as an integral component of the larger block in 33:21-39:29. Second, although 37:15-28 serves well as a sub-unit of 33:21-39:29, it does not appear to be designed with this role in mind. Its concern with defilement and purification appears only in v. 23, and it is a relatively minor issue when read in relation to the larger concerns with the

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reunification of the nation, the restoration of unified Davidic kingship, and the placement of the Temple at the center of the people. Indeed, defilement or the prospect of purification does not appear to be a major issue at the outset of the passage or at any point in the portrayal of the symbolic action that represents the reunification of Judah and Joseph/ Ephraim. This is not to say that the issue of defilement and purification is a secondary addition to this text; it is merely an element in the larger concern with the reunification and restoration of the nation under its king and sanctuary. Given the concerns with the defilement and purification of the people and land in 33:21-39:29, such an observation raises questions as to whether or not the oracle was written for its present role in the larger text. Third, although 37:15-28 concludes with a vision of the sanctuary placed at the center of the reunified and restored nation of Israel, the conceptualization of that Temple does not appear designed to address the question of the Temple restored in the aftermath of the Babylonian exile. Instead, the conceptualization of the Temple is explicitly tied to the reunification of the people under Davidic rule and to YHWH's promises made to the patriarch Jacob (37:25). This is particularly striking when one considers the promises of land to the ancestors in the pentateuchal tradition. In the present form of the Pentateuch, the promise of land, nation, and so on, to the ancestors includes all of the principal ancestral figures: Abram/Abraham (Gen 12:7; 15:18-21; 17:4-8); Isaac (Gen 26:2-5); and Jacob(Gen 28:13-15; 35:9-12). Nevertheless, Ezek37:1528 contains no mention of the promise to Abraham or Isaac but focuses specifically on Jacob. This is noteworthy since, of all the ancestors, Jacob is the only one consistently associated with the land and institutions of what would later become the northern kingdom of Israel rather than the southern kingdom of Judah. Indeed, both instances of YHWH'S promise of land and posterity to Jacob take place in relation to the sanctuary at Beth El, which later became the primary sanctuary of the northern kingdom. Such an emphasis is hardly accidental. By focusing on the patriarch Jacob and the promise of land associated with him,18 our oracle deliberately draws upon a primary figure and sanctuary associated with the northern kingdom of Israel in an effort to associate it with promises and a sanctuary associated with the southern kingdom of Judah.19 A 18. For discussion of Jacob' s association with the northern kingdom of Israel, see my study, "Puns, Politics, and Perushim: A Case Study in Teaching the English Hebrew Bible," Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 9, no. 3 (Spring 1991): 103-18. 19. For discussion of Davidic ideology, see M. Weinfeld, "Zion and Jerusalem as Religious and Political Capital: Ideology and Utopia," in The Poet and the Historian:

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Davidic king is explicitly mentioned in our passage, but the sanctuary remains unidentified. When read in relation to the proposed Davidic monarch who would preside over a reunified kingship including Judah and Joseph/Ephraim, one can hardly escape the conclusion that the sanctuary must refer to the Jerusalem Temple. Fourth, although 37:15-28 clearly calls for the reunification of Joseph/ Ephraim and Judah under a Davidic monarch and YHWH's Temple, there is no indication that the Temple has been destroyed or otherwise compromised. Nor is there any indication that the Davidic monarch has been removed from the throne or that the Davidic line has been disrupted. The exile of the people is mentioned in v. 21, but there is no indication that the people's exile must be associated with any phase of the Babylonian exile. This is particularly striking when considered in relation to the primary issues of the reunification of the people, the rule of a Davidic monarch, and the central role of YHWH's sanctuary in the midst of the reunified people and the land. Each of these elements is essential to the program of religious reform and national restoration promoted by King Josiah of Judah in the late seventh century B.C.E.:20 reunification of Israel and Judah in the aftermath of Assyrian collapse during this period, the restoration of Davidic rule over the reunified people, and the establishment of the Jerusalem Temple as the exclusive worship site in the land. As part of this general restoration, texts related to the reform indicate the expectation that Israelites/Judeans exiled from the time of the initial Assyrian invasions would return to the land (e.g. Isa 11:1-16; Jer 30-31; Zeph 3:1-20; cf. Hos 3:1-5; Amos 9:11-15). Such concerns suggest that our passage was written in relation to the ideals of Josiah's reform. Finally, readers must consider the significance of the Josianic interests in Ezek 37:15-28 in relation to the circumstances of EzekiePs birth and lifetime. Ezekiel 1:1 states that Ezekiel began to see visions of G-d in the thirtieth year while in Babylonian exile. Although v. 1 does not define the thirtieth year, the following editorial comment in 1:2 identifies the thirtieth year with the fifth year of King Jehoiachin ben Jehoiakim' s exile. The thirtieth year is therefore identified as 592 B.C.E. The significance of the thirtieth year continues to be debated, but I have argued elsewhere that the thirtieth year must refer to Ezekiel's age at the time his visions began, and that this age corresponds to the year he would have begun active service as a priest in the Jerusalem Temple had he not been exiled Essays in Literary and Historical Biblical Criticism (ed. R. E. Friedman; HSS 26; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), 75-115; cf. J. Levenson, "The Temple and the World," JR 64 (1984): 275-98. 20. For full discussion of Josiah's reform, see my King Josiah of Judah: The Lost Messiah of Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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to Babylonia.21 If this argument is upheld, it is of special importance for understanding EzekieFs interest in issues raised by Josiah's reform, since his birth would have taken place in 622 B.C.E. This would be the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, which both 2 Kgs 22:3 and 2 Chr 34:8 identify as the year that Josiah began the purification and renovation of the Jerusalem Temple. Ezekiel's birth in 622 B.C.E. has implications for understanding Ezekiel the man and the formation of 37:15-28 within the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel would have been born at the outset of Josiah's reform program, and the interests of that reform would have influenced the young Ezekiel as he grew up in the expectation of serving as a priest in the Jerusalem Temple. With Josiah's death in 609 B.C.E.—the year in which Ezekiel would have turned thirteen—and the subsequent decline of Judah, a young Ezekiel—and indeed many in Judah—would have been forced to rethink the principles of the reform which would have shaped his earliest experience, education, and outlook as a prospective Zadokite priest.22 Israel and Judah were not reunited, Davidic kingship was not fully restored to its former role over a united Israel, and the Jerusalem Temple did not yet serve as the holy center of the full nation of Israel. Nevertheless, the ideals of Josiah's reform come to expression in 37:15-28, although they are now read in relation to the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple in the aftermath of Ezekiel's conceptualization of the Babylonian exile and destruction of Jerusalem as the means by which YHWH chose to purge the people, the land of Israel, and creation at large in preparation for the restoration of the Temple as the holy center of all creation. Interpreters may only speculate concerning the process of rethinking earlier conceptualizations of the nation of Israel, Davidic kingship, and the Temple in relation to Josiah's reform and concerning the process by which 37:15-28 may have been written and then reread into a later situation and literary context. Yet the considerations brought forward above suggest that just such a process took place, resulting in the present form of the oracle in 37:15-28 and its placement as part of the larger unit in 33:21-39:29. 21. Sweeney, "Ezekiel: Zadokite Priest," 728-51. 22. Cf. my studies, "The Truth in True and False Prophecy," in Truth: Interdisciplinary Dialogues in a Pluralist Age (ed. C. Helmer and K. De Troyer; Studies in Philosophical Theology 22; Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 9-26, and "Structure and Redaction in Jeremiah 2-6," in Troubling Jeremiah (ed. A. R. P. Diamond et al; JSOTSup 260; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 200-18, which likewise argue that Jeremiah had to rethink postulates of the Josianic reform in the aftermath of the king's death and Judah's decline. Both studies are reprinted in Form and Intertextuality, 78-93 and 94-108 respectively.

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IV. Conclusion In sum, Ezek 37:15-28 presupposes the ideals of King Josiah's program of religious reform and national restoration during the late seventh century B.C.E., which provides the socio-political and religious environment in which the young Ezekiel ben Buzi was born and educated. Although one may only speculate concerning Ezekiel's view during this period, the ideology of Josiah's reform would have informed the education of a young Zadokite priest who was born at the outset of the reform and who was preparing for service in the Jerusalem Temple. Given the placement of 37:15-28 in a context that presupposes the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the Babylonian exile and that anticipates the restoration of the Temple in the aftermath of the exile, it appears that our oracle has come to serve a function different from that which it initially envisioned. Whereas 37:15-28 initially anticipates the reunification of Joseph/Ephraim and Judah under the Davidic king and the Jerusalem Temple as the outcome of Josiah's reform, our oracle now anticipates the reunification and restoration of the nation, Davidic monarchy, and the Jerusalem Temple as an act of YHWH, who employed the Babylonian exile as a means to purify the land and people from defilement in preparation for the establishment of the future Temple at the center of Israel and creation in chs. 40—48. Such a conclusion has implications both for the interpretation of 37:15-28 and for the book of Ezekiel as a whole,23 insofar as such a reconceptualization of the principles of the Josianic reform provides the model for Ezekiel's understanding of the significance of the Babylonian exile and its aftermath.

23. Note, for example, Ezekiel's interest in northern Israel and the unified people or house of Israel throughout the book (see, e.g., Ezek 6-7; 20; 23; 33:1-20; 35:136:15). For discussion of Ephraimite influences on the Zadokite priest Ezekiel, see R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 282-86.

NECESSARY ENEMIES: NEBUCHADNEZZAR, YHWH, AND GOG nsr EZEKIEL 38-39 Julie Galambush

The identity of Gog, the foe from the north in Ezek 38-39, forms a most peculiar sort of interpretive crux. To the extent that consensus may be said to exist, the consensus is that Gog's identity cannot be determined, but remains "forever shrouded in mystery."1 The reason given for this mystery is Gog's status as a transhistorical or semi-mythological figure, a reflex of ancient traditions of the chaos monster or a symbol of the ultimate evil over which God will one day triumph.2 But while most scholars are agreed that Gog does not represent any known or knowable enemy of the sixth century B.C.E., a second consensus acknowledges that in light of the evidence, Gog should be precisely such a known enemy of Judah. The prophet's careful dating of oracles to correspond to historical events, the language linking the Gog oracle with Ezekiel's earlier prophecies against specific, known enemies, and his use of real place names (Lydia, Cush, etc.) for the allies of Gog have for generations led scholars to conclude that a historically identifiable Gog "would be expected" in Ezek 3S-39.3 Moreover, given the conspicuous lack of any Ezekielian oracle 1. K. P. Darr, "Ezekiel," NIB 6:1512. 2. So, among others, D. I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 25-48 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); B. Batto, Slaying the Dragon: Afythmaking in the Biblical Tradition (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 157-62; P. Fitzpatrick, The Disarmament of God: Ezekiel 38-39 in Its Mythic Context (Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 2004), 87; R. E. Clements, Ezekiel (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 170; A. Cody, Ezekiel, with an Excursus on the Old Testament Priesthood (Wilmington, Del: Glazier, 1984), 183-85. 3. See, e.g., W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel: A Commentary on the Prophet Ezekiel (trans. J. Martin; 2 vols.; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983 [German ed. 1969]), 2:304; G. Cooke, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Ezekiel (ICC 21; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936), 408; A. B. Davidson, The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (TGV. A. W. Streane; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1916), 297-99.

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against Babylon, plus the precedent for such an oracle in both Isaiah and Jeremiah, the hands-down winner among historically identifiable candidates is Nebuchadnezzar II, the monarch who had so recently supervised the destruction of YHWH's temple, land, and people. But despite the evidence favoring the identification of Nebuchadnezzar as Gog, most scholars continue to prefer mystery, seeing in Gog a nebulous, transhistorical enemy of YHWH.4 This study will argue that the battle between YHWH and Gog in Ezek 38-39 portrays YHWH's final and theologically necessary victory over Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. In addition, it will briefly consider reasons why many so scholars, while accepting Nebuchadnezzar as the most natural candidate for the role of Gog, nonetheless reject this solution and conclude that Gog's identity is both unknown and unknowable. The case that Gog is a cipher for Nebuchadnezzar rests on several different kinds of evidence, the first of which might be called the "plot" of Ezekiel. Scholars often claim that Gog seems logically superfluous to the plot of the book of Ezekiel.5 Ezekiel follows a clear trajectory from the oracles of doom preceding the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586 B.C.E. (chs. 1-24), to oracles promising restoration to the exiled Judeans, and culminating in the vision of the new temple in chs. 40-48. In chs. 34-37, Ezekiel promises the return of the people from their Babylonian captivity and their eternal safety in the land. The intrusion of yet another enemy in Ezek 38-39, after the people have returned and are living in safety, seems jarringly out of place. This seeming inconsistency, however, exists only if one takes Israel's exile as the book's central problem and their return as its resolution. Gog is superfluous only if the book is primarily concerned with the punishment and restoration of the Judean people. In recent decades, however, scholars have done substantial work articulating the extent to which Ezekiel is not so much concerned with Judah and the Judeans as he is with YHWH, specifically with the divine honor, which has been defiled by the disobedience of the Judean people.6 If the 4. There have been a few exceptions, notably G. H. A. Ewald, Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament (trans. J. F. Smith; Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1880 [German ed. 1868]), 4:181-82, 191-93; J. Boehmer, "Wer ist Gog von Magog? Bin Beitrag zur Auslegung des Buches Ezechiel," ZWT4Q (1897): 321-55; H. McKeatmg,£zefo'e/(OTG; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 121-22. 5. See, e.g., W. Eichrodt, Ezekiel: A Commentary (trans. C. Quin; OTL; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), 519; Cooke, Critical andExegetical Commentary, 406-8. 6. See P. Joyce, Divine Initiative and Human Response in Ezekiel (JSOTSup 51; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989); T. Renz, The Rhetorical Function of the Book of

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central concern of the book of Ezekiel is not the people but their God, then the plot is as follows: YHWH's honor has been compromised (his name denied) by the people's disobedience; therefore YHWH will use Nebuchadnezzar as an agent to punish the people and vindicate YHWH'S holiness (see, e.g., 21:15-16; 23:22-35). Unfortunately, the ensuing destruction of people and temple involves further damage to YHWH's holy name and so, after the people have been punished, YHWH will again act for the sake of his honor, this time by bringing the people back from exile and reconstituting them into a community of obedient worshipers (20:40-44; 36:16-32). This restoration of YHWH's honor culminates in his exaltation as king in the restored and invulnerable temple.7 According to this theocentric reading, the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar/Gog is not superfluous, but essential to the plot, as the point where YHWH vindicates his honor before the nations (39:21-24). Narratives of temple abandonment and restoration followed a known sequence in the ancient Near East.8 A god who, angered at his own people, had allowed foreigners to overrun his temple, first gave satisfactory chastisement to the people, but then returned triumphant. In the exilic situation, the continued dominion of Nebuchadnezzar (or Marduk, his god) would have stood as a clear obstacle to YHWH's re-establishment of his supremacy. Ezekiel, as Susan Niditch points out, employs "an extremely ancient mythic pattern" describing "the victory and enthronement of the deity."9 Although Niditch address Ezekiel's exilic context only in passing, the identity of the power opposing YHWH, and whose Ezekiel (VTSup 76; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 129-32; N. Habel, "The Silence of the Lands: The Ecojustice Implications of Ezekiel's Judgment Oracles," in Ezekiel's Hierarchical World: Wrestling with a Tiered Reality (ed. S. L. Cook and C. L. Patton; SBLSymS 31; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004), 127-40. 7. See, among others, S. Niditch, "Ezekiel 40-48 in a Visionary Context," CBQ 48 (1986): 208-24; J. Levenson, Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40-48 (HSM 10; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1976); J. Galambush, "Ezekiel," in The Oxford One-Volume Commentary of the Bible (ed. J. Muddiman and J. Barton; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 533-62. 8. See L. Fried, "The Land Lay Desolate: Conquest and Restoration in the Ancient Near East," inJudah andtheJudeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and J. Blenkinsopp; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 21-29; A. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light ofMesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings (JSOTSup 115; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992); D. I. Block, "Divine Abandonment: Ezekiel's Adaptation of an Ancient Near Eastern Motif," in The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Perspectives (ed. M. S. Odell and J. T. Strong; SBLSymS 9; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 15-42. 9. Niditch, "Visionary Context," 221.

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defeat would equal the victory preceding YHWH's enthronement, would have been obvious to all: Nebuchadnezzar. The most common objection to the identification of Gog as Nebuchadnezzar is the latter's role as YHWH's ally throughout the rest of the book of Ezekiel.10 No obvious rupture indicates the change from Nebuchadnezzar as YHWH's covenant and military partner to Nebuchadnezzar as YHWH's worst enemy. Such an objection, however, ignores not only the motivation underlying prophetic claims that foreign armies are really agents of YHWH, but also the precedent of earlier prophetic literature (Isa 10:5-19; Jer 25:8-14). The prophetic claim (and, for that matter, similar claims issued on behalf of gods throughout the Near East) that YHWH is using foreign armies as his tool was primarily a defensive rhetorical maneuver. The claim counters the more obvious reading of the political map, in which YHWH and his monarch have just been (or are about to be) badly beaten by another monarch, sponsored by another god. Certainly an observer from Moab or from Egypt (let alone from Babylonia) would have seen the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the exile as a defeat for YHWH, rather than his successful use of the Babylonians as tools. As YHWH himself observes to Ezekiel, the nations are saying that "these are the people of [YHWH], and yet they had to go out of his land" (36:20). YHWH was unable to defend his land, his temple, or his people. Whether in Moab, in Babylon, or in Judah, claims that the people were conquered only because their god wanted it that way, exist, at least in part, as a response to the more obvious reality of the god's (and nation's) defeat. Nebuchadnezzar's "alliance" with YHWH is thus a means of continuing to claim the deity's superiority despite quite strong evidence to the contrary. Such a stratagem, however, necessarily entails the problem of what to do with the foreign monarch once YHWH stops hiding his face and punishing the people. Does YHWH now share sovereignty with the ruler whose armies have sacked his temple? The problem, of course, had already been addressed long before Ezekiel's day. Assyria, the rod of YHWH's anger in the prophecies of Isaiah, is punished for his "haughty pride" as soon as his services become unnecessary (Isa 10:5-19). In Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar is first brought in as YHWH's "servant" to devastate Judah, but then punished for his "iniquity" in "making the land 10. Zimmerli (Ezekiel, 2:304-25) provides a typical example of this approach. After laying out the reasons why a known, historical enemy—in fact, Nebuchadnezzar himself—would be expected at this point in the book, he then rejects this hypothesis on the grounds that such an interpretation is "forbidden" by the fact that Ezekiel never abandons his belief in Nebuchadnezzar as YHWH' s tool. The reasoning is circular, but durable. See also, for example, Block, Book of Ezekiel, 434 n. 36.

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an everlasting waste" (Jer 25:8-14; cf. 50:18). YHWH makes the problem of competition between himself and his "servant" quite clear: "Who is like me? Who can summon me? Who is the shepherd who can stand before me? Therefore hear the plan that the LORD has made against Babylon..." (Jer 50:44-^5). It seems entirely unrealistic that Ezekiel, whose oracles so frequently employ those of Jeremiah as their base, and who was far more focused than Jeremiah on the need to vindicate YHWH's honor, would have allowed Nebuchadnezzar's triumph to go unanswered.11 In the exilic context, any claim of YHWH's superiority that failed to address the far more tangible power of Nebuchadnezzar would have been weak at best. Agent or not, Nebuchadnezzar represented a power with whom YHWH had, sooner or later, to reckon. But if it is the Babylonian monarch whom YHWH must best in combat before restoring his name and regaining his throne, why doesn't Ezekiel just come out and say so? Why "Gog"? Henry McKeating encapsulates the most plausible reason: if the connection between Gog and Nebuchadnezzar were obvious, if it could be definitively proved "by us, now, in the twentieth century, it could have been proved then, in the sixth, with.. .unwelcome results."12 Writing in Babylon, Ezekiel had to disguise the oracle announcing Nebuchadnezzar's demise. "Gog" is thus a subterfuge, a fictitious name intended to shield the writer from reprisals for speaking out against the ruling power.13 The Gog prophecies are an example of what Yairah Amit calls "hidden polemic," polemic in which the subject is not stated explicitly. Such hidden or veiled polemic simultaneously serves the author's need to communicate and a strategic "need for concealment."14 Amit argues that this rhetorical device came into wider usage over the course of the sixth century; the case of Gog would seem to be an example of such veiling. But, as Amit points out, in addition to its obscurity, the veiled polemic must also be sufficiently 11. Ezekiel's pattern of expanding the prophecies of Jeremiah is well documented. See the discussion in Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:46. 12. McKeating, Ezekiel, 122. 13. The name itself may, as is often claimed, invoke the seventh-century Gyges of Lydia. If so, then we see in Ezek 38-39 an early instance of the kind of displacement employed in Daniel, Revelation, and other apocalyptic literature, in which the name of a bygone empire is used as code, allowing the author to talk about the destruction of the regime currently in power. On the question of whether Ezekiel might, like Jeremiah, have devised "Magog" as a coded name for Babylon through the technique of athbash (see Jer 25:26; 51:41), see Boehmer, "Wer ist Gog?" 14. Y. Amit, "The Sixth Century and the Growth of Hidden Polemics," in Lipschits and Blenkinsopp, eds., Judah and the Judeans, 135-51.

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transparent to communicate with at least a select audience. Or, to turn McKeating's observation on its head, if the connection between Gog and Nebuchadnezzar is so well hidden from a modern reader, how can one be sure that it was any more obvious to Ezekiel's contemporaries? One answer lies in Ezekiel's political situation. Ezekiel's contemporaries knew full well that, on the political and military fronts, Nebuchadnezzar was, as he called himself, "the king of kings" and supreme monarch. At the most mundane and practical level, the barrier between YHWH and kingship was Babylon; any claim of YHWH'S kingship strongly implied the removal of the current king. For both theological and political reasons, Ezekiel's readers would have anticipated a description of Nebuchadnezzar's demise prior to a celebration of YHWH'S enthronement. Nor is Ezekiel's description as "hidden" as some consider it to be. On the contrary, Ezekiel depicts Gog using precisely the language that elsewhere he applies to Nebuchadnezzar. A brief survey demonstrates the connections: Ezekiel portrays Nebuchadnezzar as the leader of the "most terrible of nations," a king of kings whom YHWH brings up "from the north" against his foes (26:7; 23:24 LXX). The Babylonian monarch commands a "horde" (^p, 16:40; 23:24, 46, 47; 26:7; 32:3) made up of "many peoples" (Dn3-| D'DU, 26:7; 32:3; cf. 23:24; 26:3), who seize spoil (H, 23:46; 26:5; 29:19) and plunder (^0,26:12; 29:19). Gog is described in identical terms: the enemy from the north (38:6,15; 39:2), commander of a 'Tip consisting of Dm &QU (38:6,9,15,22). Just as YHWH "brought up" Nebuchadnezzar (n^U, 16:40; 23:46; 26:3), so also he will bring up Gog (39:2) against his own people to despoil and plunder (38:12; cf. 39:10). The descriptions of Nebuchadnezzar and Gog are close enough to make the comparison straightforward. As Thomas Renz has observed, "No-one reading the book of Ezekiel (or Jeremiah) could be in any doubt that the Babylonians had been this foe coming from the north to destroy Jerusalem.15 In fact, although Gog is, like Nebuchadnezzar, "brought up" by YHWH to attack the people, before bringing him against the land, YHWH must first "bring [him] back" ("[Timid, 38:4; 39:2). This is not Gog's first campaign against Israel.16 15. Renz, Rhetorical Function, 118-19 n. 149. Remarkably, while seeing clearly that Ezekiel's foe from the north is Babylon, Renz (without explanation) wishes to see a different and unnamed enemy in Ezek 38-39: "The question is not 'Who is the foe from the north?,' but 'Will there be another enemy who can claim to be "the foe from the north"?'" (emphasis added). 16. Cooke (Critical andExegetical Commentary, 408) notes that Babylon would be the most logical nation for YHWH to "bring again," but decides that this would be

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Not only does Ezekiel quote his own descriptions of Nebuchadnezzar in presenting Gog; remarkably, he quotes Jeremiah's as well. In Jer 49:28-32, Jeremiah describes Nebuchadnezzar's attack against Kedar and Hazor: first (v. 28), YHWH calls up the Babylonian, instructing him to attack. Nebuchadnezzar, however, believes the attack is his own idea: "For King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has made a plan against you and formed a purpose (DOT) against you. 'Rise up, advance against a nation at ease, that lives secure,' says the LORD, 'that has no gates or bars, that lives alone. Their camels shall become booty, their herds of cattle a spoil'" (w. 30-31). The portrayal mirrors Ezekiel's depiction of Gog step for step. The enemy is mustered by YHWH (38:3-9), but soon devises his own scheme (DO!) against his victims (38:10-12). Nebuchadnezzar/Gog is attracted by the people's vulnerability: they live in security (PIED1?, Jer 49:31; Ezek 38:8,11), without doors or bars (DTl'TT and ma, Jer 49:31; Ezek 38:8, 11). The attacker will come for spoil and plunder (T3 and VyD, Jer 49:32; Ezek 38:12). Thus, Ezekiel's depiction of Gog's attack seems to be a reworked version of Jeremiah's depiction of Nebuchadnezzar's. Moreover, in Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar's attack is followed immediately "in those days" (Jer 50:4) by YHWH's destruction of the Babylonian and his troops, complete with an earthquake (Jer 50:46; cf. Ezek 38:19-20) and a universal despoiling of the hated despoilers (Jer 50:10; cf. Ezek. 39:10). Any claim that Ezekiel includes "no oracles against the Babylonians" must take into account his clear use of Jeremiah's anti-Babylonian oracles to describe YHWH'S defeat of his worst enemy. Nor does Ezekiel's description require that one see a "change" in YHWH'S relationship with Nebuchadnezzar. Just as the Babylonian monarch was YHWH's tool with which to punish the people, so now he will be the tool by which YHWH glorifies his name. One final verbal clue may link Gog to Nebuchadnezzar. Ezekiel refers to Gog by the title, l?3m "]ED m~\ STta (38:2; 39:1). The phrase is usually translated, "chief prince of Meshech and Tubal," but in fact tvtel is pointed as a construct form: "ruler o/the head of Meshech and Tubal." That is, Gog is not the head of Meshech and Tubal per se, but someone standing in authority over the ruler of Meshech and Tubal. Perhaps it is not surprising that scholars have for the most part shied away from making use of this obscure if potentially quite explicit information. It is difficult enough to come up with a ruler of Meshech and Tubal in the early sixth century, let alone decide who his superior might have been. "a large conclusion to draw from a slight hint," and instead labels the passage "an apocalypse composed after Ezekiel's day."

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Hence scholarly recourse to the seventh-century Gyges of Lydia who, though long dead, and though having never posed any threat whatsoever to Israel, at least had a name that sounded like "Gog," and expanded his west Anatolian territory eastward, in the general direction of Meshech and Tubal. Gyges has always been an unsatisfactory candidate for the role of Gog, but has been widely accepted for want of a more likely (and more grammatically accurate) translation of ^nni "JED 2JR"I №233. Nebuchadnezzar, however, claimed hegemony over "Hume, Piriddu, and Luddu," that is, Cilicia (Hume, immediately to the south of Tubal), Phrygia (Piriddu, another name for Meshech), and Lydia (Luddu), to their west.17 Moreover, upon Nebuchadnezzar's death, first Nerglissar and then Nabonidus undertook expeditions to Hume (Cilicia) to reassert Babylonian control.18 While it is unlikely that Nebuchadnezzar exercised direct control over the region, his claims are partially supported by Herodotus' account of a war in eastern Anatolia (the region of Meshech and Tubal), lasting from 590 to 585. According to Herodotus (1.74), under the leadership of Gyges's grandson Alyattes, the Lydians campaigned eastward into Phrygia (Meshech), engaging in a five-year war with the Medes, who were in control of the region east of the Halys River, roughly biblical Tubal. The conflict ended when, having abandoned the field of battle because of an eclipse, both sides agreed to a settlement mediated by the king of Babylon and his ally, the king of Cilicia.19 Nebuchadnezzar's or his emissary's role in the so-called Treaty of the Battle of the Eclipse either recognized or formalized Babylonian hegemony in the region. The title, "ruler over the head of Meshech and Tubal," would certainly have fit Nebuchadnezzar following the year 585; it might, in fact, have been a very timely way of describing his recent activities in Anatolia. To summarize the argument so far: Ezekiel's terminology argues strongly that Gog is Nebuchadnezzar, the same "foe from the north" who 17. D. J. Wiseman, "Babylonia, 605-539 B. C.," in CAH 3.2:235; J. Betlyon, "Neo-Babylonian Military Operations Other Than War," in Lipschits and Blenkinsopp, eds.,Judah and the Judeans, 263-83. 18. Wiseman, "Babylonia," 242-A4. 19. Herodotus erroneously lists the king of Babylon in 585 as Labynetus, possibly referring to Nebuchadnezzar's representative. The Lydian—Median conflict of 590-585 is generally ignored in discussions of Ezek 38-39. A noteworthy exception is J. L. Myres, "Gog and the Danger from the North in Ezekiel," PEFQS 64 (1932): 213-19. Myres argues that the prophecy responds to the conflict (with Gog/ Gyges standing for Gyges's grandson, Alyattes), but prior to the mediated settlement of 585. Thus, the oracle was motivated by "a moment of panic," in which it appeared that Alyattes would overrun the region.

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has commanded the most terrible of nations throughout the book of Ezekiel. Moreover, the book's plot, in which YHWH must act to vindicate his holiness, would seem to require Nebuchadnezzar's punishment prior to YHWH's exaltation. The only remaining problem bedeviling the firm identification of Gog with the Babylonian monarch would seem to be the awkwardness of having Israel restored twice—once before Gog's attack and a second time following his demise. In Ezek 34-37, the chapters leading up to the Gog narrative, YHWH has described the people's return from exile as a time of peace and prosperity. The security of the land and its inhabitants is emphasized repeatedly: "They shall no more be plunder for the nations, nor shall the animals of the land devour them; they shall live in safety, and no one shall make them afraid" (34:28). Not only will such safety be absolute; it will also be permanent: YHWH will make "an everlasting covenant" of peace (37:26). In fact, however, no sooner has YHWH promised to protect the people "forever" than he invites the evil Gog to come and attack. Gog's victims are explicitly described as the unsuspecting returnees; he comes upon "a land restored from war, a land where people were gathered from many nations on the mountains of Israel, which had long lain waste; [whose] people were brought out from the nations and now are living in safety, all of them" (38:8). In short, Ezek 38-39 seems to contradict the promises of chs. 34-37. This apparent contradiction has at times been considered evidence that chs. 38-39 were a later addition to the book.20 More recently, it tends to be taken as an indication that Gog is not a historical enemy, but a cosmic foe who will appear only "in the latter years," that is, at the end of time.21 The perception that the attack of chs. 38-39 is out of place or contradictory hinges on the assumption that the people "living in safety" in the land of 38:8 represent the fulfillment of the prophecies of chs. 34-37. Certainly, the people of Ezek 38 have been "gathered" from the nations, as promised in 34:13 and 36:24, and seem, at least for the moment, to be living "securely" (38:8), as promised in 34:27. But does 20. W. H. Brownlee, '"Son of Man, Set Your Face,' Ezekiel the Refugee Prophet," HUCA 54 (1983): 83-110, lays out the case that Gog is Babylonia, but rejects the proposal because he does not believe that chs. 38-39 derive from the original prophet. G. Fohrer, in Die Hauptprobleme des Buches Ezechiel (Berlin: Topelmann, 1952), 93-95, on the other hand, not only accepts the chapters as substantially original, but points out that earlier passages (20:33-44; 33:27-29; 34:17-31) seem to allow for the possibility of a future attack against the land. 21. So, e.g., Cody, Ezekiel, 183-85. It is not clear why the arrival of a vicious enemy (however quickly destroyed) at the end of time is any less a violation of YHWH'S promise of "eternal" peace than the invasion of a vicious enemy in Ezekiel's own day.

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the mere occupation of the land constitute the fulfillment of YHWH's earlier promises? It is attractive to see the pre-Gog situation of the people, restored to the land, as the fulfillment of YHWH's previous promises, particularly since Ezekiel provides no oracles in which the people return without the accompanying blessings of peace and security. In fact, however, even if one ignores the problem of Gog's attack, the portrayal of pre-Gog Israel in Ezek 38 fails on many fronts to fulfill YHWH's earlier promises of restoration. The restored people of Ezek 38 have, for example, no Davidic monarch, as they are promised in 34:23-24 and 37:24-25, nor does the land enjoy exceptional fertility, as promised in 34:26-27 and 36:30,35. In fact, these promises are fulfilled only after Gog's destruction, in the vision of restoration of Ezek 40—48. Nor have YHWH's promises of spiritual, moral, and cultic renewal been fulfilled at the time of Gog's attack. Throughout the book of Ezekiel, YHWH has sworn that he would first punish the people, and then restore them in such a way that they would be purified, obedient, and above all, ashamed of their previous behavior. Already in 11:19-20 (and again in 36:26-27), YHWH promises to give the people a new heart and cause them to be obedient. "Then" says YHWH, "you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors" (36:27). Three times, in 16:60-63; 20:40-44; and 36:31-32, YHWH announces that the result of the people's purification will be shame and self-loathing. None of this—neither the transformation nor the shame—is reflected in Ezek 38. On the contrary, it is only following YHWH's defeat of Gog that one sees Israel purified, obedient, and prosperous. Only after Gog's defeat do they feel the shame that was to accompany their restoration (39:26). The pre-Gog Israel of 38:8 is simply not the idyllically restored Israel promised throughout the book of Ezekiel. In addition, an essential task remains to be accomplished before YHWH can recreate Israel and reorder the world: Nebuchadnezzar must die. YHWH's primary goal, after all, is not Israel's welfare but his own exaltation. According to Ezekiel's theocentric perspective, the attack of chs. 38-39 does not contradict Ezekiel's earlier prophecies of Israel's restoration, but fulfills them. In Ezekiel's prophecies of Israel's and Judah's restoration, he consistently links that restoration with the vindication of YHWH's name, that is, his honor. This theme is most fully articulated in ch. 36, in which the deity explains that before the exile, the Israelites had defiled the land through their disobedience. In response, YHWH punished them with exile. But, YHWH says, even in exile his name was profaned because others said "These are the people of [YHWH], and yet they had to go out of his land." The people's exile implied that their

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god had been unable to protect them. "But," says YHWH, "I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came." Accordingly, YHWH will now act again in order to sanctify his name. But which action, specifically, will achieve this sanctification? Part of this sanctification will involve the restoration of Israel, but as YHWH makes quite clear, any benefit to the people is secondary; his goal is to redeem his honor. Although he will display his holiness before the nations by means o/Israel (DID, 36:23), his actions are not undertaken on their behalf. "It is not for your sake that I am about to act, says the Lord GOD; let that be known to you" (36:32; cf. v. 22). In addition to displaying his holiness before the nations, YHWH will cleanse the people themselves. "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God" (36:26-28). The result of YHWH's restoration is that the nations acknowledge his sovereignty: "Then they shall know that I am YHWH" (v. 38). Neither YHWH's primary goal of vindicating his holiness before the nations nor the corollary of creating a cleansed and obedient people is achieved by the mere return of the people to the land. In chs. 34-37, YHWH announces his intent to act on behalf of his name, and in ch. 38 we see the people, gathered from their exile and living securely in the land. Somewhat surprisingly, however, we learn exactly nothing about their moral disposition or their cultic behavior; instead, we are told only that, having been "gathered" back to the land (apparently without the defeat of Nebuchadnezzar), they are now living in "unwalled villages," "all of them living without walls, and having no bars or gates" (38:11). The repetition of the people's vulnerability emphasizes their narrative function: these are sitting ducks; they are in fact bait with which to lure Gog. Why? In order for YHWH to be able to restore his honor and display his holiness before the nations, Gog must attack. Simply having the people back on their land does nothing, either to remove the stigma of their having been deported in the first place or to gain YHWH international recognition. In order to remove the stigma of the exile, YHWH must repel a full-scale attack from Nebuchadnezzar, that is, from Gog. Only a decisive victory over the Babylonians' worst offensive will counter the impression that YHWH had proved incapable of defending his land and people. When YHWH has destroyed Gog, then "the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity... So I hid my face from them and gave them into the hand of their adversaries,

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and they all fell by the sword" (39:23). This, of course, is what YHWH has been claiming throughout the book of Ezekiel, but how many people (or nations) believed it? By YHWH's own admission, the nations had been gloating over the fact that YHWH'S people had been forced to leave YHWH's land. Only with the defeat of Nebuchadnezzar can YHWH prove beyond doubt that Israel went into captivity because of their iniquity rather than because of Babylonian strength or his own weakness. "This," says YHWH, "is the day of which I had spoken" (39:8). The day of which YHWH had spoken is the day of his vindication, the day when, as foretold in 20:40-44, he deals with Israel "for [my] name's sake," manifesting his holiness "in the sight of the nations." It is on "that day" (36:33) that the people will loathe themselves, bearing their shame, but on which YHWH will recreate them, to make a people worthy of his name (11:19-20; 36:26—27; 39:29). And, as it turns out, it is precisely after Gog's destruction and the land's purification, after he has displayed his holiness before the nations, that YHWH will fulfill his promise to pour forth his spirit on a newly created people.22 The day of which YHWH had spoken was not the day of Israel's restoration, but of YHWH's. The dynamic of Ezek 38-39 is one in which the foreign monarch must attack YHWH's people in order for him to accomplish his goal of vindication and recognition. Given the apparent humiliation of YHWH in the exile, Nebuchadnezzar becomes a necessary enemy, whose destruction is essential to the deity's own restoration. In this regard, the plot of Ezek 38-39 closely parallels that of the book of Exodus. In the P sections of Exodus, YHWH states plainly (and repeatedly) that he will harden Pharaoh's heart, thereby preventing him from releasing the Israelites and creating an occasion for YHWH to "gain glory" over Pharaoh (14:4; cf. 7:1-5, inter alia). Only after he has defeated the Pharaoh will the Egyptians "know that [he is] the LORD" (14:4). In Exodus, YHWH must struggle to overcome the stigma of having allowed his people to live in slavery outside his land and under a hostile ruler. Given the possibility that the P authors and the author of Ezekiel were responding to the same theological and political humiliation, the nearly identical functions of Pharaoh and Gog/Nebuchadnezzar are all the more intriguing.23 22. D. I. Block, "Gog and the Pouring Out of the Spirit," VT31 (1987): 257-70, notes that it is only after the defeat of Gog that YHWH accomplishes the promised pouring forth of the spirit. Block, however, sees the pouring out of the spirit as an event that will take place in a distant "end of days." 23. On the connections between Ezekiel and P, see R. L. Kohn, A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, the Exile and the Torah (JSOTSup 358; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002); A. Hurvitz, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship Between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel (CahRB 20; Paris: Gabalda, 1982).

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In summary, the case that Gog is a cipher for Nebuchadnezzar is a strong one. The hypothesis makes use of the verbal connections between the Gog chapters and the rest of Ezekiel, as well as drawing on the Jeremianic portrayals of Nebuchadnezzar quoted in Ezek 38. Further, the identification of Gog as Nebuchadnezzar places the phrase EJN"! ^BD within a known historical context, without resorting to emendation. The destruction of Nebuchadnezzar is pivotal to the book's plot, and counters the commonsense perception that Nebuchadnezzar has, in fact, beaten YHWH. But if Gog is Nebuchadnezzar, and if Ezekiel has, in fact, left enough clues for this identification to be reasonably obvious, why don't modern interpreters make the connection? The identity of Gog has been debated for centuries; different readings have been popular in different periods and no single answer can account for all of them. I would like, however, to point out two factors in the history of interpretation that may have contributed to the misreading of Gog: the belief in divine omnipotence and the development of apocalyptic literature. First and most simply, for a reader who believes in divine omnipotence (and who believes that Ezekiel did so as well), a historical Gog of Ezekiel's time period is unnecessary. If God, that is, Israel's God, is omnipotent, then the claim that Nebuchadnezzar was YHWH's tool, and was allowed to destroy YHWH's temple for YHWH' s own purposes, is virtually self-evident. YHWH was obviously in control all along, and there is no need for him to destroy Nebuchadnezzar or anyone else in order to prove his power or cleanse his name from dishonor. If one affirms the existence of a single, omnipotent God, then the rhetoric of divine selfvindication is superfluous, symbolic at best. Only in a polytheistic context (like Ezekiel's) do the actions of Nebuchadnezzar (or Marduk) have a real effect on the honor and reputation of Israel's God. The theological dynamic underlying the book of Ezekiel, that in order to vindicate his name YHWH must destroy both Israel and then Nebuchadnezzar, becomes less and less meaningful as it is interpreted in a cultural context of monotheism. YHWH's genuine, even urgent, need to defend his honor was lost to scholars for generations, and it is no wonder that only in recent years have we begun to appreciate this aspect of the book. In addition to interpretive problems created by scholarly assumptions of monotheism and divine omnipotence, another set of hurdles is posed by the existence of later apocalyptic literature. The status of Ezekiel as apocalyptic or, more plausibly, proto-apocalyptic literature is widely debated. There is no doubt, however, that Ezekiel, especially the chapters dealing with Israel's (and YHWH's) restoration, served as a model for later apocalyptic writings such as Revelation. The reuse of Ezekiel in

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apocalyptic literature of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, however, definitively recasts the role of Gog into the transhistorical realm. Gog is a villain who will appear at the end of time. The existence of (and belief in) an apocalyptic scenario in which God's decisive intervention will not occur until the literal "last days" of the world, may have affected scholarly reconstructions of EzekiePs vision of events that take place "on that day" (39:11). A specific example of such anachronistic reading is provided by EzekiePs use of the phrase D^D") D^D (38:8), which elsewhere appears only in Josh 23:1. In Joshua, the expression "after many days" clearly refers to a period of less than a generation in the narrative future.24 But while scholars are universally agreed that D^D") D^D refers to a finite and not especially long period of time in Joshua, faced with the identical expression in Ezekiel, they interpret it as designating the fardistant end of time. The overlap between Ezek 38-39 and later, apocalyptic literature has clearly led to anachronistic assumptions that, among other effects, make a transhistorical Gog more appealing than Nebuchadnezzar, the far more pedestrian Gog close at hand. We should know better than to fall into this trap. Even in later, fully apocalyptic texts, the villain is frequently someone like Antiochus IV Epiphanes or Nero—that is, the ruler of an oppressive foreign power. How much more is this likely to be the case with Ezekiel, whose intense engagement with the military and political events of his day is widely acknowledged, and who wrote in a period before the full development of apocalyptic literature? A Gog forever shrouded in mystery has a certain timeless appeal. The Gog who dominated Ezekiel's landscape, however, and whose power had to be countered in order to display the holiness of Israel's God, was Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

24. A related phrase, D^EFI rmnKD (38:8), appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.

ZERUBBABEL, ZECHARIAH 3-4, AND POST-EXILIC HISTORY* Bob Becking

I. The Enigma of Post-Exilic History Zerubbabel is an enigmatic figure. This statement needs clarification, since Zerubbabel is quite often seen as one of the important leaders of the early Second Temple period. His role has been seen as formative for the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem. As a politician, he paved the way for the emerging Judaism.1 This picture of Zerubbabel goes hand in hand with the classical view on the return from exile and the early formative years of Yehud. Standard textbooks on the history of Israel generally discuss the early postexilic period under the headings "return" and "rebuilding." The return allegedly started already in the reign of Cyrus. The rebuilding of the temple for YHWH in Jerusalem is almost unanimously dated in the year 520 B.C.E. In the traditional discourse, these two "events" functioned as * This study has been written before the publication of the excellent monograph by D. V. Edelman, The Origins of the "Second" Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (Bible Word; London: Equinox, 2005). In view of her findings and suggestions, I probably have to review the historical implications of my literary analysis. 1. See, e.g., G. Widengren, "The Persian Period," in Israelite and Judaean History (ed. J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller; London: SCM Press, 1977), 515-23; H. Dormer, Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundziigen (ATD, Erganzungreihe 4/2; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 2:405-16; C. Meyers and E. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1—8 (AB 25B; New York: Doubleday, 1987), xxix-xl; B. Beyer, "Zerubbabel," ABD 6:1084-86; J. Tollington, Tradition and Innovation in Haggai and Zechariah 1-8 (JSOTSup 150; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 131-34; A. Lemaire, "Zorobabal et la Judee a la lumiere de 1'epigraphie (fin du Vie s. av. J.-C.)," RB 103 (1996): 48-57; M. H. Floyd, Minor Prophets Part 2 (FOTL 22; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 303-17.

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the cornerstones of a reconstruction in which Persian power is seen as cooperating with Judean/Jewish leadership: return and reconstruction were authorized by the Persian emperor.2 Recent decades have seen challenges to this reconstruction with no generally accepted new alternative at hand. For example, the classical view on Zerubbabel as an early post-exilic leader is largely based on assumptions about the historicity of the events narrated in Ezra 1-6. Here information is given that he belonged to the first waves of returnees (Ezra 2:2) and that he served as a Persian governor under Darius (Ezra 3:2, 8; 5:2). Recent scholarship, however, has raised three challenges to the traditional claims. First, Joel Weinberg has analyzed the so-called "list of returnees" in Ezra 2 and Neh 7. In his view, Neh 7:7-69 gives the original form of the list. The purpose of this text is not to describe all those returning from Mesopotamia, but to indicate the collectives belonging to the Burger Tempel Gemeinde ("citizen-temple community") until the year 458/57 B.C.E. This community consists of descendants of those returning from Mesopotamia from the edict of Cyrus onward.3 Hence, one cannot draw any historical conclusions on the basis of Ezra 2:2.4 Second, the episodes regarding the building of the temple (Ezra 3-6) are enigmatic. For instance, note the mention of Jeshua and Zerubbabel. They appear in Ezra 3:2 as laying the foundation of the altar for the God of Israel. According to the internal chronology of Ezra, this event took place in the reign of Cyrus. According to the same internal chronology, Jeshua and Zerubbabel were still in charge in Ezra 5:2, where they were initiating the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem. This initiative took place during the reign of Darius, who governed after Cyrus, Ahasuerus, and Artaxerxes. Moreover, it took place after the exchange of letters mentioned in Ezra 4 during the reign of Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes. Within the text-internal chronology there is no problem with these features, except the fact that they suppose either a quick change in rulership at the Persian court or a long life for the two officials mentioned. Problems arise when this text-internal chronology is related to a textexternal chronology. Either Darius mentioned in Ezra 5 must be identical with Darius I Hystaspes (522—486 B.C.E.) or with Darius II Ochus 2. On this discussion, see most recently L. Fried, The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire (Biblical and Judaic Studies 10; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2004). 3. J. P. Weinberg, The Citizen-Temple Community (JSOTSup 151; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 41^3. 4. See also K. L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction (The Biblical Seminar 83; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 294.

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(424^05 B.C.E.). Both possibilities provoke problems. The historical reconstruction yielded by the first identification raises problems for the chronological order of the letters, since in this reconstruction the correspondence in Ezra 5 took place earlier than the exchange of letters referred to in Ezra 4. This seems unlikely in view of the contents of the letters. Ezra 4 stops the building of the temple, while Ezra 5 gives permission to complete the building activities. The second identification supposes that Jeshua and Zerubbabel had lived superhumanly long. Cyrus died in 529 B.C.E. and Darius II Ochus captured the Persian throne in 424 B.C.E.5 These difficulties suggest that one cannot draw inferences about the life of Zerubbabel from the book of Ezra. Third, since the dating of the prophetical activities of Haggai and Zechariah is based on the interpretation of Ezra 3-6, it now seems very unwise to use these books at face value for historical reconstruction of Zerubbabel and his deeds. These challenges give rise to a number of interrelated problems for reconstructing the life of Zerubbabel.6 First, it is, as noticed, not clear whether the Persian king Darius mentioned in the biblical books of Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra refers to Darius I or Darius H Secondly, the (re)construction of the historical events from the early post-exilic period in Judah/Yehud is complicated by the scarcity of evidence. Thirdly, when did the exiles return—and did they return massively? Fourthly, when was the temple rebuilt? Fifthly, is Zerubbabel a historical figure or the product of a fictional mind? In order to make the specific argument in the present study, I operate with the following assumptions, which cannot be defended in detail here: (1) the Persian emperor Darius mentioned in Haggai, Zechariah, and 5. L. L. Grabbe, Ezra-Nehemiah (Readings; London: Routledge, 1998), 125-53; B. Becking, "Ezra on the Move: Trends and Perspectives on the Character and His Book," in Perspectives in the Study of the Old Testament and Early Judaism: A Symposium in Honour of Adam S. van der Woude on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (VTSup 73; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 154-79; Noll, Canaan and Israel, 294; J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 401, 427-31. 6. For a recent survey of the problematic aspects in the history of the Persian period, see L. L. Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Vol. 1, Yehud: A History of the Persian Province ofJudah (LSTS 47; London/New York: T. & T. Clark International, 2004). For an interesting reconstruction slowly parting from the traditional discourse, see R. Albertz, "The Thwarted Restoration," in Yahwism After the Exile: Perspectives on Israelite Religion in the Persian Era (ed. Rainer Albertz and Bob Becking; Studies in Theology and Religion 5; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 1-17.

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Ezra 5 is Darius n Ochus (424-405 B.C.E.); (2) the return from exile, a process that allegedly started in the final decades of the sixth century, went on for more than a century and saw waves of immigrants gradually find their way to the Persian province of Yehud; (3) the evidence for the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem as early as 520 remains questionable. The current state of the questions given above shows that research on the historical Zerubbabel is open for new perspectives. All the evidence available needs to be rediscussed in order to get a clearer and more historically trustworthy picture of the person. This essay lifts up the book of Zechariah as one piece of evidence for such reconstruction. As the following discussion will show, working with the book of Zechariah through a particular type of compositional analysis is required in order to provide the preparatory work for writing the life of Zerubbabel using prophetic literature. n. Zerubbabel and Zechariah Zerubbabel is mentioned four times in the book of Zechariah (4:6,7, 9, 10) and plays a formative role in the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Quite often texts identify him more fully as "Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel." This patronym has given rise to the idea that Zerubbabel was of royal, Davidide, descent. In the book of Haggai, Zerubbabel is referred to as the ITTirP nns, the "governor of Yehud" (Hag 1:1,14; 2:3, 22), indicating that he was an important figure in the Persian administration, or at least seen as such. The first appearance in Zechariah connects Zerubbabel with building activities (Zech 4:6): "The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you." Some scholars have used this datum to argue that the temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt in 520 under the human leadership of Zerubbabel, with Persian authorization but inspired by YHWH.7 This last feature is especially clear in v. 6: "This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.'" One should ask, however, whether it is acceptable from the point of view of historical method to use such a prophetic text in the (re)construction of the past.

7. See recently M. Smith, The Memoirs of God: History, Memory, and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 40-43.

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A. The Importance of Genre It is of great importance to establish the character of the evidence before drawing historical conclusions from it. Since Zech 4 is a literary text, one should begin by establishing its Gattung. Different genres have different historical value. There should be no automatic dichotomy, however, between annalistic reports that purport to give "what really happened" and poetical or prophetical texts that are often taken as only informing about states of mind and as possessing no historical value.8 The book of Zechariah9 contains two parts: Zech 1-8, a collection of night-visions from the Persian period, and "Deutero-Zechariah," a later, probably Hellenistic text. Zechariah 1-8 may originally have been part of a composition that included Hag 1 through Zech 8. "Night-vision" is a sub-genre of oracular prophetic texts. These texts describe in poetic language the encounter with the divine that the prophet had overnight. Their point of departure generally is a real-life feature such as a stone or almond tree that is expanded metaphorically to communicate a message. In many cases, prophetic formulae accompany the night-vision.10 Scholars disagree as to the number of night-visions in Zech 1-8, particularly whether there were seven or eight. The answers to that question are quite often connected with the redaction-historical problem of the development of the book. Klaus Seybold, for example, argues that originally there were seven night-visions:

I II III IV V VI VII

Hebrew Bible 1:8-15 1:18-21 2:1-5 4:l-5 + 10b-14 5:1^ 5:5-11 6:1-8

ET

1:8-15 2:1-4 2:5-9 4:l-6aa+10b-14 5:1^ 5:5-11 6:1-8

Topic Riders Measuring Line Horns and Smiths Lampstand Scroll Woman in the Efa Four Wagons

Fig. 1. The Seven Night-Visions in Zech 1-8 According to Klaus Seybold11

8. See also J. Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study (2d ed.; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1996), 8-46. 9. For an overview of the discussion on Zechariah, see M. J. Boda, Haggai and Zechariah Research: A Bibliographic Survey (Tools for Biblical Study 5; Leiden: Deo, 2003); Collins, Introduction, 401-15. 10. See B. O. Long, "Reports on Visions Among the Prophets," JBL 95 (1976): 353-59; R. Hanhart, Dodekapropheton 7.1: Sacharja 1-8 (BKAT XIV 7/1; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1998), 45-50. 11. K. Seybold, Bilder zum Tempelbau: Die Visionen des Propheten Sacharja (SBS 70; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1974).

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According to Seybold, this originally well-constructed composition was later expanded, for example, by the addition of Zech 3, most probably as an ideological backbone to postexilic priesthood.12 In his view, Zech 4 is the pivotal element in a concentric symmetry of seven, that is, it is the central light in a menorah-composition.13 Other scholars, however, do not construe Zech 3 as a later addition. These scholars argue for a composition of eight night-visions:

I n m IV V VI

vn VIII

ET Hebrew Bible 1:8-15 1:8-15 2:1-4 1:18-21 2:5-9 2:1-5 3:1-10 3:1-10 4:1-14 4:1-14 5:1-4 5:1-4 5:5-11 5:5-11 6:1-8 6:1-8

Topic Riders Measuring Line Horns and Smiths Cleaning Lampstand Scroll Woman in the Efa Four Wagons

Fig. 2. The Eight Night-Visions in Zech 1-8 According to Janet Tollington14 B. Connections Between Zechariah 3 and 4 Important in this discussion is the question of whether Zech 3 can be isolated literarily from its context. The first impression is that Zech 3 differs from its context. Its more concrete language stands apart from the other night-visions.15 The literary pattern of expanding metaphorically a real life feature into a prophetic symbol is also less clearly present. At the level of words and phrases, however, there is a strong case for

12. See also A. van der Woude, Zacharia (de Prediking van het Oude Testament; Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1984), 29-32,61-80; Dormer, Geschichte, 414; M. van Amerongen, "The Literary Unity of Haggai and Zechariah 1—8: A Structural Analysis" (Ph.D. diss., Utrecht University, 2005), 152,172, 250-57, 270-77. 13. So also C. Jeremias, Die Nachtgesichten des Sacharja (FRLANT 117; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993); Meyers and Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8, liii-lx, 178-227. 14. Tollington, Tradition, 78-123; see also W. A. M. Beuken,Haggai-Sacharja 1-8: Studien zur Uberlieferungsgeschichte derfruhnach-exilischen Prophetie (SSN 10; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1967); Hanhart, Dodekapropheton; Floyd, Minor Prophets, 303—410; H. Delkurt, Sacharjas Nachtgesichte: Zur Aufname und Abwandlung prophetischer Traditionen (BZAW 320; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000); T. Pola, "Form and Meaning in Zechariah 3," in Albertz and Becking, Yahwism, 159-60; Collins, Introduction, 404-5. M. Bid (Die Nachtgesichte des Sacharja [BibS(N) 42; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1964]) opts for the authenticity of the material but divides the visions differently in a scheme of seven. 15. So Seybold, Bilder and Jeremias, Nachtgesichten.

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authenticity. The following discussion examines the most intriguing connections observed by various scholars.16 1. Homonyms. There are various words that occur both in Zech 3 and 4, albeit with differences in meaning:

p»

Zech 3 Zech 4 Meaning 3:9 p«n, "the stone" 3:9 nntTpfcr1?!?, "on one single stone" 4:7 nwnn pirnN, "headstone" 4:10 'Tlin ptma, "the stone of tin" Fig. 3. The Noun p« in Zech 3-4

The first and last attestations of pfc are especially problematic.17 For example, in 3:9, Meyers and Meyers take pK as an unmarked noun that does a double duty within the prophetic discourse. The noun could be read within a priestly as well as within a monarchic context. At this point in the prophetic discourse, it is not yet clear whether the priest or the king will be dominant in the era to come.18 This ambivalence opens the lane for a connection between 3:9 and 4:7. The stone in Zech 3:9 then would anticipate the headstone to be laid by a royal figure at the foundation of the new temple. Zechariah 4:10 is also enigmatic.19 The New Dutch Bible translation of 2004 renders ^"DPI pKTlK with "de gegraveerde steen" ("the engraved stone"), suggesting a connection with Zech 3:9: "I will engrave an inscription on it." This suggestion implies, however, a meaning "to engrave" for the Hebrew verb ^"D, which has never been suggested. Some modern translations and a few scholars render the phrase with "plummet." It is, however, very unusual that a governor would go out with the plummet to check the construction of the new temple.20 Hence, the stone in Zech 4:10 remains an enigma. Yet it is safe to assume that the "stone" was connected with the foundation ceremony in some manner. 16. Van Amerongen, "Literary Unity"; M. Butterworth, Structure and the Book of Zechariah (JSOTSup 113; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992); M. C. Love, The Evasive Text: Zechariah 1-8 and the Frustrated Reader (JSOTSup 296; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 105-8. 17. Van der Woude, Zacharia, 75; Meyers and Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8, 204-7; Tollington, Tradition, 44; Delkurt, Sacharjas Nachtgesichte, 191-94. Recently, Pola ("Form," 166) argued that the ] 2K should be construed as a part of the former Davidic diadem. 18. Meyers and Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8, 207. 19. See, e.g., ibid., 253. 20. Van der Woude, Zacharia, 92.

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A second homonym between Zech 3 and 4 is HIDE?:

rime?

Zech 3 Zech 4

3:9 4:2 4:2 4:10

Meaning DTD nine?, "seven eyes" !~Pm] nine, "seven lights on it" mpUlD niOEfl nine, "seven and seven pipes" mrr TV H^N rune?, "the seven are the eyes of YHWH"

Fig. 4. 7%e Afown nm0 in Zech 3-4

These connections suggest that Zech 4:10 serves as a symbolic clarification of 3:9.21 At 3:9, it is still unclear whose eyes are intended. At 4:10, it becomes clear that the process of temple-building will be guided by God, whose eyes will symbolize his involvement.22 The Hebrew word DV is a third homonym: DP

Zech 3 Zech 4

3:9 3:10 4:10

Meaning nn« Dm, "on one day" tflnn Dm, "on that day" m3Dp DVb T3 'D n D, "for who despised the day of the small things?" Fig. 5. The Noun DV in Zech 3-4

This Hebrew noun does not seem to be a very specific compositional indicator. It is almost obvious, however, that Zech 3:9 and 10 are interrelated.23 Both verses refer to an imminent or forthcoming day on which the country will be cleansed from sin and filth.24 Zechariah 4:10, on the other hand, seems to refer to a day on which a royal figure will carry the "stone" to the temple under reconstruction. The laying of the foundationstone will be a small beginning, a sign of hope for days to come. This appears to contradict 3:9-10, verses that announce a final day. On a more conceptual level, however, the two days can be combined. The final goal will only be reached when small steps are taken on the path to the splendid future. 2. Synonyms. Within Zech 3^4, one can also detect some synonyms that are of importance for understanding the textual unit: 21. See also Hanhart, Dodekapropheton, 221. 22. See also Seybold, Bilder, 82-83; van der Woude, Zacharia, 92-93; Delkurt, Sacharjas Nachtgesichte, 210-13. 23. See also Love, Evasive Text, 112-20. 24. See also Pola, Form, 166.

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Zech3 Zech4 Depiction 3:2 "Jerusalem" 3:10 "My house, my precincts" "this house" 4:9 Fig. 6. Synonyms for Temple in Zech 3-4

At the beginning of Zech 3, a dichotomy becomes apparent. Next to the divine realm, the realm of |C3D is present. Zechariah 2 also addressed the importance of Jerusalem as a safe haven. Zechariah 3 and 4 elaborate on this concept by using the literary technique of spatial concentric rings, which, on the one hand, concentrate on the temple as the most sacred space, but on the other, focus on the universe as God's domain. In this way the two night-visions map the world in various realms and construe the stage for a drama. 3. Antonyms and Antitheses. The third category of connections between Zech 3 and 4 consists of a set of antonyms and antitheses. These appear in the context of a chiasm: Zech 3: divine council my house/my precincts

Zech 4: golden lampstand whole earth

The main concern in Zech 3 is the restoration of the community. The filthy clothes of Joshua will be changed into new, pure clothes as a sign that his iniquity is removed. Once the high priest is purified, a start can be made with the restoration in Yehud both socially and religiously. While Zech 3 focuses on the community, Zech 4 broadens the horizon. The focus no longer is on the temple as such, but on the whole earth as a dwelling place for YHWH. Within this mental map, the words for "darkness" and "light," as well as for the divine beings ]DD and m"l appear at the end of oppositional axes and indicate that the whole of Zech 3-4 reflects a forthcoming transformation. Another dimension of this major shift can be seen in the transformation of the DWiJ D^TD, "filthy clothes" (Zech 3:3), into new and clean clothes (3:4-5). According to the angelus interpres, this shift is to be seen as a symbolic carrying away of injustice. This implies that "filthy" is a synonym for "unjust." A final element of antithesis can be seen in the numbers that are present in Zech 3-4. Both chapters show a remarkably high frequency of

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numbers. In Zech 3, the number "one" is dominant—one sprout; one stone; on one day; on that day (3:8, 9, 9,10)—while in Zech 4 the numbers "two" and "seven" occur most frequently. These numbers find significance within the framework of transformation given above. Zechariah 3 focuses on a forthcoming shift that can be depicted with various words: "from old to new"; "from filthy to clean." Within this shift, the number "one" can be interpreted as a device that refers the community to the one important feature that will bring this shift: there is only one "sprout" that is able to direct the community on its way to restoration. Within the new situation of Zech 4, the number "two" would refer to stability, while the number "seven" underscores perfection and completion. 4. An Absent Petuchah. Recent research by members of the "Pericopegroup" has paid attention to non-linguistic signs in ancient manuscripts that might indicate the way in which texts were delimited in ancient times. Of great importance are the Setumah and Petuchah, but also various other indicators that hint at an understanding of the geography of a text at its various levels. A Petuchah is absent before Zech 4:1 in the Hebrew Codex L. This is astonishing, since all other night-visions in Zechariah are introduced by a Petuchah.25 In some ancient manuscripts a major division marker is attested (LXXBQ; SyrB), but in the important manuscript LXXA a marker is absent.26 In her dissertation on delimeters in Haggai-Zech 1-8, Marianne Van Amerongen underestimates the importance of this absence. In her view, Zech 3 is a later addition. Her main argument is based on her observation that Zech 3 shows a regular structure of three canticles of three strophes each, while the other sub-cantos in the composition have an irregular structure.27 Yet, while an irregularly structured sub-canto within a regularly structured context might indicate a later addition, the other way around does not seem likely. Hence, the absence of the Petuchah might also indicate that one should see Zech 3—4 as a literary sub-unit. Together they form the middle part of the concentric structure of seven night-visions:

25. See Love, Evasive Text, 25-26; M. Van Amerongen, "The Structure of Zechariah 4: A Comparison Between the Divisions in the Masoretic Text, Ancient Translations, and Modern Commentaries," in Layout Markers in Biblical Manuscripts and Ugaritic Tablets (ed. M. C. A. Korpel and J. M. Oesch; Pericope 5; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2005), 191-208. 26. For the data see Van Amerongen, "Literary Unity," 154—72; idem, "Structure," 191-208. 27. Van Amerongen, "Literary Unity," 152,172,250-57,270-77; idem, "Structure," 191-208.

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I 11 HI IV v VI Vii

Hebrew Bible 1:8-15 1:18-21 2:1-5 3:1-10 + 4:1-14

1:8-15 2:1-4 2:5-9 3:1-10 + 4:1-14

5:1-4 5:5-11 6:1-8

5:1-4 5:5-11 6:1-8

ET

Topic Riders Measuring Line Horns and Smiths Cleaning and Lampstand Scroll Woman in the Efa Four Wagons

Concentric A B C X

C' Bf A'

Fig. 8. The Seven Night-Visions in Zech 1-8 According to Bob Becking

5. Prophetic Drama. Zechariah 3-4 thus stands as the pivotal element in the composition of the seven night-visions. More specifically, this element falls into the category of a prophetic drama on a forthcoming transformation: Divine Council; Satan; Other Heavenly beings 1 sprout 1 stone 1 day From Darkness To Light

i mi 2 trees; 2 branches; 2 tubes; 2 anointed 7 lamps; 7 tubes; 7 eyes Fig. 9. A Graphic Representation of the Transformation in Zech 3—4

Taken as a whole, Zech 3-4 assumes the presence of a crisis in postexilic Yehud. This crisis is characterized by the filthy clothes of the high priest that will be cleansed. The cleansing, however, is not the end of the crisis. The mention of the "one sprout; one stone; one day" prepares for the "one mi." It is through this divine spirit that the realm of Satan will be overcome. The divine spirit will guide Zerubbabel and lead the Yehudites into prosperity. He will help Zerubbabel in lowering "the great mountain" and making it "a plain," so that the foundation stone of the temple becomes visible. The multiplication of the numbers from "one" over "two" to "seven" may function as a symbolic expression of the forthcoming growth.

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C. Back to History The above survey of the compositional elements of Zech 3—4 reveals a coherent network of signs and a dramatic movement across the two chapters. Another purpose of this survey, however, is to demonstrate that these considerations form the necessary preparatory work for using prophetic texts like Zechariah in history writing. With this work in place, one can inquire into what historical implications can be drawn from this prophetic material. At one level, not many implications can be drawn due to the figurative language of the two chapters. The expression "the two anointed with oil" probably was clear to the first audience, but we can only make an informed guess as to which human characters are meant. Are Zerubbabel and Jeshua implied, or is the oracle referring to future "messianic" figures?28 We do not, however, stand empty handed. First, the text gives the impression that Zerubbabel was a real-time character. While this proposition cannot be proven, the character of the forthcoming transformation— as pictured in Zech 3-4—is such that it might only be conducted by a living and powerful person. Second, the text makes clear that the territory of Persian-period Yehud suffered from at least one crisis. While the character of the crisis cannot be established, it seems connected with the absence of an adequate priestly service. Third, the prophetic drama in Zech 3-4 can function as a piece of evidence in an histoire de mentalite, since it expresses a mental map that was used or could have been used in encountering the crisis of the day. In the end, this analysis affirms that the book of Zechariah cannot provide solid evidence as to whether Zerubbabel acted during the reign of Darius I or Darius II Ochus. Nevertheless, the analysis shows that prophetic texts and even night-visions are not completely without significance for the historian. While such an analysis does not produce cast-iron data on the life of Zerubbabel, research into the historical Zerubbabel would make for a daring but profitable tour around the existing evidence.

28. The identification with Zerubbabel and Jeshua can be found almost unanimously in the older commentaries and in Hanhart, Dodekapropheton, 289-302; Floyd, Minor Prophets, 387; Collins, Introduction, 409. Van der Woude (Zacharia, 95), Meyers and Meyers (Haggai, Zechariah 1-8,275-77), and W. H. Rose (Zemah and Zerubbabel: Messianic Expectations in the Early Postexilic Period [JSOTSup 304; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000], 177-207) interpret the expression as a reference to a forthcoming sprout and a future high priest. Delkurt (Sacharjas Nachtgesichte, 213-20) argues that the imagery refers to Israel and Judah.

EZEKIEL SPINNING THE WHEELS OF HISTORY Alice W. Hunt

A central question embedded in the work of John H. Hayes is how prophetic texts inform our understanding of the history of ancient Israel and how conceptualizations of history inform our interpretations of prophetic texts. On the one hand, prophetic texts offer historical insight into cultural context and discourse, thus aiding in the development of a more complete understanding of the social, religious, political, and cultural milieus for the periods in which they were written and redacted. Prophetic texts may also offer partial contextual insight into the periods about which they were written. On the other hand, prophetic texts can blur boundaries and sometimes confound the development of histories. While assumptions about historical context provide foundations for interpretation of prophetic texts, solipsism often creeps into the writing of histories when the prophetic texts are used to describe an historical context that is then used to analyze the prophetic text. This dilemma is particularly apparent in the relationship between the prophetic text of Ezek 40-48 and the history of ancient Israel. Most often interpreted as the creation of a new temple vision for the prophet Ezekiel or his followers, these chapters are frequently seen as referring to the elevation of the Zadokite priesthood during the reign of Josiah in response to the apostasy of rural, non-Zadokite Levitical priests. According to oft-assumed interpretation, David established the monarchy in part by appointing an obscure priest named Zadok to head the priesthood of the centralized monarchy. Zadok, and subsequently his sons, maintained their power as part of the governing class in the early state, creating a priestly dynasty. Other priestly groups attached themselves to this Zadokite dynasty. The power and influence of the Zadokites waxed and waned, often in relation to the power and nature of the monarchy. The Zadokites remained faithful to YHWH even when other priests faltered. During the reign of Josiah, the Zadokites were restored to their rightful place as the exclusive high priests. It is this context that serves as

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the referent for the citations of pITS ^D found in Ezek 40-48, the only four references to pTTiJ ""DH in the whole of the Hebrew Bible.1 These same Zadokites were among the elite removed to exile after the Babylonian conquest. With the permission and support of Cyrus, Zadokites returned from exile to (re-)establish the proper and appropriate priesthood in Jerusalem. Zadokites maintained significant political power until the Maccabean revolt, at which time the Hasmoneans usurped their priesthood. As I have discussed elsewhere, we know little about Zadokites or a Zadokite dynasty.2 A Zadokite dynasty having its beginnings in the reigns of David and Solomon and continuing until the time of the Hasmoneans would require that its members be descendants of David's Zadok and that these descendants served as priests. Of the 26 SamuelKings references to pllH, 2 Sam 8:17; 15:24-36; 18:19-27; and 1 Kgs 4:2^4 give some lineage information that may assist in the consideration of pTTU ''ID. Second Samuel 8:17 lists Zadok as the son of Ahitub.3 Second Samuel 15:27 and 15:36 list Ahimaaz as Zadok's son. Second Samuel 18:19 and 18:27 likewise note that Ahimaaz was Zadok's son. First Kings 4:2 lists Azariah as the son of Zadok.4 Was Ahimaaz Zadok's 1. Ezek 40:45-46; 43:18-19; 44:6-16; 48:9-11.2 Chr 31:10 makes reference to pllH S ]D. pITH is mentioned fifty-three times. At least twenty-two of the twenty-six occurrences in Samuel-Kings refer to a priest named Zadok. The other four refer to Ahimaaz, son of Zadok (three times) or Jerusha, daughter of Zadok. Chronicles has seventeen references to someone named "Zadok" (of these, eight seem to refer to a priest). Ezra-Nehemiah contains six references to persons named "Zadok," and a "Zadok" is cited in both First Esdras and Second Esdras. In Josephus's work, the name "Zadok" occurs in material about the monarchy, but there is no reference at all to Zadokites. A Hebrew portion of Ben Sira (51:13-30) and documents associated with Khirbet Qumran mention the "sons of Zadok." 2. A. Hunt, Missing Priests: The Zadokites in Tradition and History (LHBOTS 452; London/New York: T. & T. Clark International, 2006). 3. Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of Israel's Priesthood (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), and Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg, / & II Samuel (ed. G. Ernest Wright; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964, provide two examples of the ways scholars have tried to understand the textual and lineage issues of priesthoods in ancient Israel. I conclude that the Aaronite line apparently only came into prominence during the postexilic period and that claiming Zadok became important at some point after that time. 4. Still in this same list, v. 5 names an Azariah as the son of Nathan. Also important in analyzing these lists, numerous scholars note the textual difficulties with these lists and question their value for historical reconstruction. See John Raymond Bartlett, "Zadok and His Successors at Jerusalem," JTS 19 (1968): 1-18 (11); Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials: A Study of the Civil Government Officials of the Israelite Monarchy (ConBOT 5; Lund: Gleerup, 1971); and Donald

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son? Was he a priest? Was Azariah Zadok's son? Was he a priest? Furthermore, if there was a Zadokite dynasty, where does it go from this point? And why is it not mentioned? As far as Samuel-Kings is concerned, the succession of Zadokite priests ends with Zadok's son, Ahimaaz—a short dynasty indeed. Ezra-Nehemiah is no more helpful with traditional understandings of a Zadokite dynasty which assumes Zadokites were the priests taken into exile with the fall of Jerusalem and Zadokites were therefore the priests who returned from exile and restored the temple.5 If, however, we cannot retain the initial presupposition that Zadokite priests were exiled and if we cannot even know which priests went into exile, we must certainly examine more closely the notion that many if not most of the priests returning from exile were Zadokites. What can we conclude from the B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 329. 5. For example, Roland de Vaux clearly assumes a Zadokite lineage for the priests that went into exile as well as those that returned. "Though the biblical texts give no precise information about the origin of the four priestly families which returned, all four of them very probably claimed Sadoqite ancestry... Besides, it was principally the Sadoqite priests who had been deported" (Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions [trans. John McHugh; The Bible Resource Series; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997 (1st English ed. 1961)], 388). Robert B. Coote and David Robert Ord find "the Zadokites of the late Davidic monarchy" as severely diminished, killed or deported by the Babylonians; these same Zadokites "again came into their own" in the Persian period, returning more powerful than before (In the Beginning: Creation and the Priestly History [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991], 34—35). The first and most logical explanation for this assumption is that if Zadokites were the dominant priesthood throughout the united and divided monarchy, they must have been the priests taken into exile as mentioned in various biblical texts related to the exile. 2 Kgs 25:18-21 (Jer 52:24-27) provides a brief list of priests at the time of the exile: the captain of the guard took Seraiah, the chief priest, and Zephaniah, the second priest, and three keepers of the threshold. From the city he took the officer who had been commander of the soldiers, five men who were on the king's council who had been found in the city, the secretary of the commander of the forces who had served the people of the land, and sixty men from among the people of the land who had been found in the city. Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. The king of Babylon put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. Judah was taken out of its land into exile (2 Kgs 25:18-21). But note here that Seraiah, Zephaniah and the three guardians of the threshold were killed by the king of Babylon at Riblah. We have no textual evidence that priests were taken into exile. We certainly have no names of priests taken into exile. We have no primary evidence associating even these two priests, Seraiah and Zaphaniah, with Zadokites (or any particular priestly family for that matter).

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Ezra-Nehemiah material? Discussion centers about whether the lists in Ezra 7:1-5 and Neh 11:10-14 provide lists of high priests ('TlTin ]rnn) and how these lists relate to other lists of priests.6 Given the total number of lists of priests, the absence of references to pnx ^33 is somewhat surprising. We certainly do not see any leaning toward an elevation of a family of Zadokites at this point. Whenever Ezra-Nehemiah was written/ produced, "Zadokites" were not on the tip of the writer's pen. From the work of Chronicler, we can almost certainly conclude there was a figure named Zadok in Israel's collective memory. Of the 17 references topniS '33 (1 Chr 5:34 [6:8, ET]; 5:38 [6:12, ET]; 6:38 [6:53, ET]; 9:11; 12:29 [28, ET]; 15:11; 16:39; 18:16; 24:3,6,31; 27:17; 29:22; 2 Chr 27:1; 31:10), most refer to Zadok by including him in genealogical lists.7 If, as Sara Japhet suggests, the genealogical lists of the Chronicler seek to incorporate Zadok in the Aaronite priesthood legitimated by the lists of Ezra-Nehemiah, we are left to wonder when the concept of pTTU '33 became important.8 There had not necessarily been a Zadokite priesthood prior to this time, during either the monarchic period or the exile. In fact, if there had been a Zadokite priesthood, and certainly if there had been a dominant Zadokite priesthood, that same Zadokite priesthood would be 6. Frank Moore Cross, "A Reconstruction of the Judean Restoration," JBL 94 (1975): 4-19; idem, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic; James VanderKam, "Jewish High Priests of the Persian Period: Is the List Complete?," in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (ed. G. Anderson and S. Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991); idem, From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests after the Exile, Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004; Lester Grabbe, "Josephus and the Reconstruction of the Judean Restoration," JBL 106 (1987): 231-46; idem, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian. Vol. 1, The Persian and Greek Periods (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); idem, "What Was Ezra's Mission?," in Second Temple Studies. Vol. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period (ed. Tamara C. Eskenazi and Kent H. Richards; JSOTSup 175; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 286-99; Robert R. Wilson, "The Old Testament Genealogies in Recent Research," JBL 94 (1975): 169-89; Gary N. Knoppers, "The Relationship of the Priestly Genealogies to the History of the High Priesthood in Jerusalem," in Judea and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (ed. Oded Lipschitz and Joseph Blenkinsopp; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1003), 109-34. 7. Sara Japhet, / & II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1993; Gary N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1-9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2003); idem, "Hierodules, Priests, or Janitors? The Levites in Chronicles and the History of the Israelite Priesthood," ./5L 118 (1999): 49-72; Jacob M. Myers, I Chronicles: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 1965); W. Rudolph, Chronikbucher (HAT 1/21; Tubingen: Mohr, 1955). 8. Japhet, / & II Chronicles, 149-65.

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more apparent in the biblical material. It is not. At some point, and at the earliest in the late Persian period, someone found it necessary to legitimate a group of priests by creating a "house of Zadok." If a traditional understanding of a Zadokite dynasty cannot be maintained, a referent for the four references to plIU ^"2 in Ezek 40-48 (40:45^6; 43:18-19; 44:6-16, and 48:9-11) becomes all the more interesting. Traditional understanding of the Zadokites and their priestly dynasty hinges on interpretations of Ezek 40-48.9 Wellhausen's assumptions and conclusions about these chapters serve as a crucial component in his tripartite synthesis of Israel's history, a synthesis which continues to provide numerous assumptions for biblical scholarship.10 Even though portions of his work have been challenged, the implications of these challenges have not permeated reconstructions of the history of priesthoods in ancient Israel. Neither have the extensive analyses of the provenance of these chapters permeated notions about the history of priesthoods in ancient Israel, particularly as related to the Zadokites. If the presumption of a dominant Zadokite priesthood from the time of David onward is removed, a new referent context should be found for Ezek 40-48. 9. And yet the provenance of the book, and this text in particular, remain elusive. For early interpreters who advocated unity, see S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (2d ed.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1891), and G. B. Gray, A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament (New York: Charles Scribner, 1912). Even as late as 1950, S. Fisch (Ezekiel [Soncino Books of the Bible 7; London: Soncino, 1950], xiv), said there could be no question about the unity of the book of Ezekiel. For early redaction criticism, see G. Holscher (Hesekiel, Der Dichter unddas Buch [BZAW 39; Giessen: Topelmann, 1924]), who attributed over 1000 of the 1273 verses in Ezekiel to later additions. See A. Mein, Ezekiel and the Ethics of Exile (Oxford Theological Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 40-50, for a full discussion. On Ezek 40-48, see, e.g., H. Gese (Der Verfassungsentwurf des Ezechiel [BHT 25; Tubingen: Mohr, 1957], 110-15), who sees 40-48 as part of an "ideological treatise" about the authority of the sons of Zadok; W. Zimmerli (Ezekiel 2: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel Chapters 25-48 [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983], 452), who adopts some of Gese's ideas but questions a full and intentional treatise regarding the "sons of Zadok"; J. G. McConville ("Priests and Levites in Ezekiel: A Crux in the Interpretation of Israel's History," TynBul34 [1983]: 3-32), who raises the issue of the relationship between Ezek 40-48 and P especially as discussed by Wellhausen, Gese, and Zimmerli; and S. Niditch, "Ezekiel 40-48 in a Visionary Context," CBQ 48 (1986): 216-19, who identifies some layering of an Ezekielian "cosmogenic" vision as "a later Zadokite extension of the ordering process tailored to the Zadokite worldview." 10. Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), e.g., 121-27.

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Blenkinsopp, Cook, and Ezekiel 40-48 Two recent efforts, those of Joseph Blenkinsopp and Stephen Cook, each present a plausible referent for Ezek 40-48.n Though this text is not the direct focus of his study, Blenkinsopp finds it helpful for his understanding of the priesthood after the fall of Jerusalem, and offers an explanation for its context. Blenkinsopp argues for a sanctuary of YHWH in or near Mizpah during the period of Neo-Babylonian rule after the fall of Jerusalem.12 He also establishes plausibility for an official sanctuary, probably sanctioned by imperial Babylon, at Bethel.13 These sanctuaries may have been the same, having moved from the area of Mizpah to Bethel. In any case, he argues, the administering clergy at the sanctuary/sanctuaries claimed the name of Aaron.14 Blenkinsopp recognizes that Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History do not mention Aaronite priests, and thus concludes that the Aaronite priesthood arose there later than the pre-exilic period in Israelite history. He further finds no reference in the extant material from the early Persian period referring to Aaronite priests, leaving Aaron and Aaronite priests to P and the Chronicler. Even Ezra-Nehemiah, "which has a great deal to say about priests past and contemporary, is almost completely silent about Aaron and Aaronite priests."15 Blenkinsopp then sets about to create a scenario for the "rise of the Aaronite branch of the priesthood to a position of power in the temple community of Jerusalem" late in the Persian period.16 Although he does 11. J. Blenkinsopp, "The Judaean Priesthood During the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods: A Hypothetical Reconstruction," CBQ 60 (1998): 25-43; S. L. Cook, "Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44 and the History of Israel's Priesthood," ./5L 114 (1995): 193-208. 12. Blenkinsopp, "The Judaean Priesthood," 27. 13. Because traditional scholarship assumed that some kind of sanctuary remained in Jerusalem, complicated textual explanations have been used to identify this Bethel sanctuary in the Hebrew Bible. Thus Blenkinsopp translates the MT of Zech 7:1—3 as, "In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of Yahweh came to Zechariah on the fourth of the ninth month, in Chislev, Sareser, Regemmelech and his men had sent to Bethel to entreat the favor of Yahweh..." as opposed to the NRSV, "In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, which is Chislev. Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-melech and their men, to entreat the favor of the Lord..." Jer 41:5 and Hag 2:14 also read differently with new underlying assumptions. 14. Blenkinsopp, "The Judaean Priesthood" 36. 15. Ibid., 38. The existing references in Ezra—Nehemiah (Ezra 7:1-5; Neh 10:3940; 12:47)—are all commonly thought to date from a later time (see ibid., 38-39). 16. Ibid., 39.

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not speculate on any impetus for the development, he suggests that the Aaronites gradually rose to prominence in Jerusalem through struggle and compromise with the Zadokites, who had functioned as the priesthood in exile and later returned with Ezra to Jerusalem. Ezekiel 40—48, then, is a remnant of Zadokite polemics against an Aaronite "Levitic" priesthood at Bethel, a priesthood that went astray. Blenkinsopp's analysis answers questions about the Ezekiel texts that have been problematic. He gives several reasons why Josiah's reform cannot be the referent for Ezek 40—48 (as Wellhausen argued), including the problem of "the aberrant tendencies" of the dominant priesthood at the official sanctuary and the inconsistency between the idea that Ezekiel was uplifting the dominant priests of Jerusalem in chs. 40-48 while he condemned the Jerusalemite priesthood earlier (7:26; 8:1-18).17 He suggests instead that the referents of the "Zadokite" complaints in chs. 40—48 are the priests performing "unacceptable cultic practice" in Judah, particularly at the sanctuary at Mizpah/Bethel. Also, his hypothesis regarding an official, exilic Aaronite sanctuary at Bethel is tantalizing and certainly plausible. On the other hand, Blenkinsopp' s notion that Ezek 40-48 is a Zadokite response to the rising Aaronites is more problematic. Like many others, he assumes that Zadokites were the dominant priesthood in Jerusalem and certainly in the exile: "Though we cannot be sure that an unbroken Zadokite succession extended from the time of David to the Babylonian exile, we do know that the Zadokite branch of the priesthood represented by the priest Joshua maintained exclusive title to the high priestly office in the Babylonian diaspora."18 As already suggested, there is no warrant to substantiate this assumption. Furthermore, Blenkinsopp does not explain why, if Ezek 40-48 refers to Aaronite priests at Bethel, these chapters discuss Levites instead of Aaronites, nor does he speculate as to who the foreigners established over the sanctuary would be. Cook also offers some helpful new suggestions. He sees Ezek 40-48 as an idealized "restoration program," that is, a blueprint formulated by Zadokites seeking to connect with the community's pre-exilic heritage, albeit one that was never implemented.19 Cook also reverses Wellhausen's idea that Ezekiel served as referent for P by suggesting that the "principal referent" of chs. 40-48, and ch. 44 in particular, "must be identified as a P tradition or a P text."20 Specifically, Cook posits a direct 17. Ibid., 41-42. 18. Ibid., 40-41. 19. Cook, "Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44," 195. 20. Ibid., 196. For Cook, Ezek 44 "refers not to a historical development in Israel's priesthood, but to a story of conflict in the wilderness" (p. 201).

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relationship between the "P story of Koran's rebellion" in Num 16-18 and Ezek 44:6-16, the core of the material in the book of Ezekiel that refers to the sons of Zadok.21 He uses textual, lexical, and syntactical studies to compare the two texts, arguing that the Ezekiel story interprets the Numbers story, and suggests that the authors of Ezek 44 saw the Numbers story as metaphorically "embodying and explaining abuses in the post-settlement Temple." Thus, the Koran rebellion serves as a metaphor for Israel's cultic history, and the interpretation of Num 16-18 was a means to discussing both the nature of holiness and the position of foreigners.22 Several textual connections help make Cook's argument. The addressee of Ezek 44:6-16 is "HD, "the rebellious" (house of Israel), a term which occurs only twice as anoun in the Pentateuch—in Num 17:25 (ET 17:10) and Num 20:10.23 The phrase 03*7^"! provides another connection between the texts, as the messenger formula in Ezek 44:6b begins with this exclamation, D3l7~in, "enough" of Israel's abominations. In the Pentateuch, D3*73"1 is found in Moses's response to Koran's rebellion (Num 16:7).24 Furthermore, Ezek 44:7-8 decries Israel for failing to fulfill the mDCD, "obligations/duties" to YHWH's holy things; in Num 18:4-5, the Levites and Aaronites were to fulfill these rrnQCD, they were to keep charge of the tent and sanctuary, and, in so doing, keep out strangers. Cook's clinching argument comes from the occurrence of the idiom DD1I71K2JD, "they shall bear their iniquities," which, when referring to a Levitical rebellion, is found only in Num 18:23 and this Ezekiel text.25 Cook willingly raises the difficulties with his hypothesis. Chief among them is the fact that a key word, the word for outsider, is different between the texts (~HT in Numbers, "133 in Ezekiel). There also is no mention of idol worship in Num 16-18, while it is a key issue in Ezek 44 (see v. 10). Most important for this study is the difficulty Cook identifies with TP3~nK in 44:7. Cook explains that the "epexegetical" reference of 21. Ibid., 197-201,197 n. 13. Cook credits Fishbane, Milgrom, Gunneweg, and McConville for previously noting this connection. This connection goes further back, even to Gese, Der Verfassungsentwurf des Ezechiel, 66, who noted the relationship between these texts and stated that we are unable to discern which came first. 22. Cook, "Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezek 44," 203. 23. It occurs frequently in Ezekiel—fifteen times. 24. As well as in Num 16:3 and Deut 1:6; 2:3. 25. The phrase not referring to Levites is found frequently elsewhere; see, e.g., Exod 28:38; 34:7; Lev 5:1, 17; 10:17; 17:16; Num 5:31; 14:18; 30:16; Pss 32:5; 85:3; Hos 14:3; Mic 7:18.

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the foreigners profaning the sanctuary (TP3TIN l^n1?) is not easy to interpret as a reference to Koran's rebellion and thus complicates his reading.26 He suggests that TPD could refer to a tent of worship (as found in Judg 18:31; 1 Sam 1:7, 24; 2 Sam 12:20) or to the reconstructed temple, and he tries to demonstrate that this word "seems to specify the Temple" in 1 Kgs 7:12 and thereafter. But the wording in 1 Kgs 7:12 is miT JT3, which is different; the only references to TPD that even have the potential for referring to the house of YHWH are clearly late (1 Chr 28:6; Isa 56:5,7; Jer 23:11; Hag 1:19; Zech 1:16; and perhaps 1 Chr 7:14 and Mai 3:10). It is in fact the reference to TP3 that points to another potential referent for the Ezek 44 text—a referent located within the bookofEzekiel. Another Plausible Referent for Ezekiel 40-48 Blenkinsopp and Cook both offer helpful readings of the Ezek 44 text that have implications for the understanding of Ezek 40-48.1 would like to suggest an additional reading of Ezek 44, one that focuses primarily on the core section of the text that deals with Zadokites, Ezek 44:6-16. In his Ezekiel commentary, Blenkinsopp correctly points out the progression of this text: foreigners, Levites, Zadokites.27 Also, Cook and Blenkinsopp both correctly make an association between this text and the proforeigner rhetoric of Isa 56-66.281 propose, however, that Ezek 44 demonstrates additional innerbiblical interpretation, namely, that its authors were commenting on earlier Ezekielian material found in ch. 23. As with many other Ezekiel texts, Ezek 23 is difficult to interpret and difficult to place in socio-historical contexts. Using the marriage metaphor to describe the relationship of God to the people, it is among the most violent texts in the Hebrew Bible as it portrays rape, pornography, raging anger, threats, abuse of power, lex talionis, and "images of dread, chaos, anarchy, and evil."29 In Ezek 23, the prophet focuses on two sisters, Oholah ("She who has her own tent") and Oholibah ("my tent [is] in her"), referring to the worship centers Samaria and Jerusalem respectively. 26. Cook, "Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44," 198. 27. J. Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (Interpretation; Louisville, Ky.: John Knox, 1990), 217-18. 28. Cook, in fact, sees Ezek 44 as engaging in an ideological discussion with the writers of Isa 56-66 about "normative religious traditions shared in common." Cooks calls such discussions "priestly debates" (Cook, "Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44," 208; cf. Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel, 218). 29. R. J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 61, see also 96.

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These sisters are accused of playing whores in Egypt (v. 3). Oholah lusted after her foreign lovers (w. 5-6); bestowed her favors on these foreigners and defiled herself with idols of everyone for whom she lusted (v. 7); did not give up her whoring; and allowed men to lay with her in her youth when they poured out their lust upon her (v. 8). Her sister, Oholibah, was even more corrupt (v. 11). She also lusted after the foreigners; was defiled; carried her whorings further (v. 14); saw foreign male figures carved on the wall and lusted after them (w. 15-16); sent messengers after them and they came to her and defiled her with their lust; defiled herself with them and then turned from them in disgust (v. 17); carried on her whorings in the open, flaunting her nakedness (v. 18); increased her whorings (v. 19); lusted after the paramours of her youth from Egypt (v. 20); and longed for the lewdness of her youth (v. 21). As a consequence, foreigners will be raised against her from every side (v. 22); YHWH's judgment will be in their hands and she will be judged according to the laws of the foreigners (v. 24); they will mutilate her and sacrifice her children (w. 25, 47); they will sexually exploit and mutilate her (v. 26); YHWH will deliver her into the hands of those she hates and they will treat her in their hate (v. 28). Of particular interest for understanding Ezek 44 is the text in Ezek 23:38-39: Furthermore they have done (this) to me, they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and they have profaned my sabbaths. For when they sacrificed their children to their idols, they came into my sanctuary on the same day to defile it and behold, this is what they did in my house.

In Ezek 44:6-7 we find: And you will say to the rebellious house of Israel, says the Lord YHWH, enough of you—of all your abominations, O house of Israel, in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heat and uncircumcised in flesh, to be in my sanctuary, profaning my temple when you offer my food, the fat and the blood. They have broken my covenant with all your abominations. You have not kept charge of my holy things but have established to keep my charge in my sanctuary for yourself. Thus says the Lord YHWH—any foreigner—of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, uncircumcised in heart and flesh—shall not enter my sanctuary.

I suggest we reflect on Ezek 44 as midrash upon Ezek 23 and Ezek 16. Consider the following parallels: the sanctuary (TP!}) defiled (23:38,39; 44:6-7); sabbath as an issue (23:38; 44:24); idols (23:7, 30, 37, 39; 44:10); concern with foreigners (23:16,23; 44:6-7); covenant (16:61,62; 44.6-7; heart (16:30; 44:67); abominations (23:36-49; 44:7); and blood

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(23:37, 48; 44:7).30 Purity is the central issue. Perhaps the mention of foreigners in Ezek 23 was the impetus for the writers of the Ezek 44 text. Israel had defiled itself first with the Assyrians (23:7) and then with the Babylonians (23:15-18). At some point, Israel is defiled by the admittance of foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, into the sanctuary, which is, in turn, further defiled by the foreigners offering food, fat and blood (44:7).31 The foreigners broke (ITS11!) the covenant by the abominations of the house of Israel (44:8, contra NRSV's "you broke"). Worse yet is the establishment of these foreigners to keep guard/watch/keep charge of the sanctuary.32 By this reading, the transgression prompting the entire "sons of Zadok" section in Ezek 44 is the impurity caused by the admittance of foreigners, not the status or establishment of the priestly line of Zadok. The chief question to be answered, then, in the search for the historical context of Ezek 40-48 is: When were foreigners set over YHWH'S sanctuary? Certainly there could have been a struggle over who should control the temple in the late restoration period, and the rhetoric and concerns of Ezra-Nehemiah immediately come to mind. Concomitant with this evidence is the focus on priestly genealogies in Chronicles. But is the late restoration period the best setting to place this material? Is this the only option? These questions must remain open at this time. In summary, the parallels between Ezek 23 and Ezek 44 offer another plausible reading for the latter text, a reading that discourages the traditional perspective that Ezek 40-^48 is primarily concerned with the supremacy of the centralized Zadokites over the rural Levitical priests during Josiah's reign, with a view toward encouraging further investigations into priesthoods of ancient Israel.

30. Ezek 16 may also be related; see the connections of covenant (16:61, 62; 44:6-7) and heart (16:30: 44:6-7). 31. "O3 has a clear meaning of "foreigner/alien." 32. Why does this say "temple" as in ^DTI? Why sanctuary? ^DTI is used 8 times in chs. 40—48, while CHpD is used 17 times.

Part III

THE PROPHETS IN HISTORICAL TRADITION AND RECEPTION

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RHYME AND REASON: THE HISTORICAL RESUME IN ISRAELITE AND EARLY JEWISH THOUGHT* Carol A. Newsom

The American humorist Mark Twain once remarked that history may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme. Although he expressed the idea cleverly, he is not the first person to have observed the human tendency to look for patterns in history and to reason by means of them. As universal as this tendency may be, it does not find expression in the same way in every culture, nor is the concern to discern such patterning equally intense. But one cannot read the literature of Second Temple Judaism, both canonical and noncanonical, without being struck by the frequency of what one can call "historical resumes," that is, schematic narratives that recount the major events in history, often in ways that highlight the "rhyming" quality of history. While some of the most remarkable examples occur in apocalypses (e.g. the Apocalypse of Weeks and the Animal Apocalypse in 1 Enoch or the Cloud Vision in Syriac Baruch), the phenomenon is much more widespread, occurring in liturgical and prayer texts (e.g. Ps 106; Neh 9), in narrative fiction (Achior's recitation of Israelite history in Judith), and in Jewish Hellenistic historiography (Josephus's speech before the walls of Jerusalem in the Jewish War). Though extremely popular in the Second Temple period, such historical resumes are also found in earlier Israelite literature, in the Deuteronomistic History (e.g. Josh 24; 1 Sam 12) and in prophetic texts (Ezek 20). Although I will not be able to explore the question of the origin of this phenomenon in this study, I think it most likely that it developed in * It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this study to John Hayes, my colleague of more than twenty-five years. His own work on the history of Israel, written in collaboration with Max Miller, is a landmark of twentieth-century biblical historiography. The present essay was originally presented as an address to the IOSOT in 2004 and was subsequently published in Congress Volume: Leiden, 2004 (ed. Andre Lemaire; VTSup 109; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 215-33.1 thank the publishers for their permission to reprint an adapted version of that essay here.

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liturgical contexts, perhaps along the lines of the recitations cited in Deut 6:20-23 and 26:5b-9. My concern here is rather with the baroque variety of the developed phenomenon. Indeed, the extraordinary literary variety of such texts inhibits one from speaking of the historical resume as a genre. Nevertheless, the use of the resume as a principle of composition in such diverse texts suggests that it was an important cultural mode of cognition. And it is that—the historical resume as a mode of cognition— that is my focus. What I mean is simply that narrating history is a way of thinking, a way of constructing usable meaning from events by casting them in narrative or story form. The relationship between narrative and cognition has attracted considerable interest in several fields in recent years. Cognitive science, for instance, has argued that narrative is fundamental to human cognition per se. The brain organizes spatio-temporal phenomena in narrative patterns.1 Through narrative, coherence is produced. But narrative does not merely organize—it also explores and creates. The human mind thinks by projecting one story onto another and blending them in ways that produce new insight—and this is the source of symbolic thinking. Indeed, as cognitive theorist Mark Turner observes, "Narrative imagining—story— is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining."2 Though the insights of cognitive science are directly helpful at points, their focus tends to be on the basic processes of thought themselves. More immediately relevant to my purposes is the lively discussion that has taken place in recent years among theorists of historiography concerning the relationship between narrative and history. Increasingly, the claim is made that narrative plays an essential role, not only in conceptualizing and recounting history but even in the structure of historical events themselves (see, among others, historiographers Louis Mink,3 Hayden White,4 Allen Megill,5 Reinhart Koselleck,6 and philosopher Paul 1. M. Turner, The Literary Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 13-14. 2. Ibid, 4-5. 3. L. Mink, "Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument," in Historical Understanding^. B. Fay, E. Golob, andR. Vann; Cornell, N.Y.: Ithaca University Press, 1987), 182-203. 4. H. White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). 5. A. Megill, '"Grand Narrative' and the Discipline of History," in A New Philosophy of History (ed. F. Ankersmit and H. Kellner; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 151-73.

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Ricoeur7). One might think that, if I am interested in the relationships among narrative, history, and cognition, I should turn to the great historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible, the Deuteronomistic History and the Chronicler's History. But the historical resumes offer certain advantages. Not only are they numerous and varied, but because of their strongly schematized structure, they lay bare certain cognitive features that are present but largely implicit in the longer historical narratives. Moreover, tracing the career of the historical resume in early Judaism may also suggest some limitations to the power of historical cognition that have been overlooked by recent theorists. One other consideration recommends the historical resumes of Israelite and early Jewish literature as an object of interest. These resumes represent the origin of one of the most significant historiographical phenomena in Western culture—that of the "master" or "grand narrative." One of the functions of all historical cognition is to discern some sort of coherence in the events of the past. But the degree and scope of coherence varies. What one calls master narratives articulate the authoritative account of some extended segment of history; the grand narrative offers the authoritative account of history generally.8 These narratives have a special function. As one recent writer observed, A master narrative that we find convincing and persuasive differs from other stories in an important way: it swallows us. It is not a play we can see performed, or a painting we can view, or a city we can visit. A master narrative is a dwelling place that encompasses our ideas about the history of our culture, its possibilities, and our own identity. We are intended to define our lives within it.9

For many centuries it was the Christian theological version of the grand narrative that dominated Western culture. But the intellectual prestige of the grand narrative actually reached its zenith as it began to be secularized in the eighteenth century's focus on universal history (as reflected in Kant, Schiller, Hegel, and others). The concept of the grand narrative of universal history continued to be influential up until the middle of the twentieth century, its last great practitioners being Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. Master and grand narratives have been 6. R. Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (trans. T. S. Tresner; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 7. P. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (3 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984-88). 8. Megill, "Grand Narrative," 152-53. 9. R. Fulford, The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Broadway Books, 1999), 32.

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officially proclaimed dead by postmodernism, of course. But even though few would defend the program on theoretical grounds, there is ample evidence that attempts to discern coherence on a broad scale continues. What, after all, is Samuel Huntington's controversial book, The Clash of Civilizations., if not an attempt to construct a master narrative of East and West and to use it for the purpose of discerning the future. Master narratives may take on new forms, may be slightly less ambitious than the "universal histories" of old, but they are unlikely to disappear, because they answer to a persistent human desire to seek coherence over the largest possible scale. Thus by studying the Jewish master narratives that stand at the source of this tradition, we may be able to perceive some of the features responsible for the extraordinary appeal of this cultural form. Before turning to the historical resumes themselves, one last bit of theoretical scene setting is necessary. Of the various accounts of how narrative coherence is achieved, I find most helpful that of Ricoeur in Time and Narrative, in particular his analysis of narrative structure and its relation to temporality. As Ricoeur observes, narrative involves two types of temporality. There is the chronological temporality of a succession of events, one following the other. This is the episodic dimension of narrative. But this so-called "natural" order to time provides only minimal coherence, the coherence one finds in a simple chronicle. It is only as these events are emplotted, organized "into an intelligible whole," that they become a story. Ricoeur calls this the act of "configuration" of the events. Emplotment, the configuration of the events, allows them to be experienced not simply as a series but to be "grasped together" hi "the unity of one temporal whole." Emplotment "extracts a figure from a succession."10 Although Ricoeur notes that this configuration allows one to translate the plot into one "thought" or "theme," he rightly insists that this is not an atemporal dimension. Rather, emplotment bends time, so that instead of a sense that things could go on forever, "the configuration of the plot imposes the 'sense of an ending'... on the indefinite succession of incidents."11 Moreover, when a story is repeated and well-known, emplotment also allows one to invert the "natural" order of time, so that one can "read the ending in the beginning and the beginning in the ending."12 Thus Ricoeur draws attention to two coordinated but distinct forms of temporality in narrative: the chronological time of the succession of events and the configured time of emplotment. Yet there is one 10. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:66. 11. Ibid., 1:67. 12. Ibid.

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other aspect of temporality that Ricoeur does not investigate, but one that occurs frequently in the historical resumes—and that is the temporality of rhythm, which serves both to enhance the configuration by repeating it but also to undermine its effect of closure by this same repetition. One of the significant features of many historical narratives (and of many traditional fictional narratives, for that matter) is that the audience is generally assumed already to know the material. The events are familiar, and their sequence generally agreed upon. Thus telling the narrative does not serve to convey information. Indeed, much more is known than can be put into any particular version of the story. The cognitive power of narrative is rather to construct and convey significance. To tell the story is to establish certain criteria of relevance: which of the things that everyone knows belong in the story and which things do not? Thus the narrator must first identify the "subject of history." For the historical resumes this is most commonly the people of Israel, but not always. The scope of the story is another element—what will be the relevant beginning point and the relevant ending point? Obviously, this element is closely connected with the emplotment of events—what sort of configuration governs the narration and allows it to be grasped as a temporal whole, so that the end and the beginning are seen as compellingly meaningful or true? The knowledge that the audience possesses of the set of events and details that might be chosen for narration is largely passive knowledge. If the emplotment succeeds in creating coherence, then what is left out will not be noticed by the audience as an omission that threatens the plausibility of the narration. Instead the details not chosen will simply be experienced as not relevant to the story in question. The configured plot thus acts as a filter that clears away the static that could be caused by too much information, even as it organizes the relevant details into a meaningful pattern. Significantly, this means that many stories can be told from the same body of cultural tradition. Different subjects and different emplotments select different events and details. While such stories could be told as rival stories in ideological conflict with one another, it is just as likely that they will be seen as different but equally true stories. This potential for multiple stories to be told from the same body of traditional material is of the greatest importance for cultural change and adaptation, for it allows new knowledge to be derived from that which is already known and familiar. In this brief article, I can only touch on a few representative examples of historical resumes, and I will concentrate on those in the canonical literature. The resumes in 1 Sam 12 and Josh 24 present an instructive contrast in techniques of emplotment. First Samuel 12, Samuel's speech,

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constructs a strongly "rhyming" history, that is, it organizes the relevant history according to three cycles of similarly structured events (the period of the Exodus, the period of the Judges, and the immediate crisis provoked by the aggression of the Ammonite king Nahash). The resume is set under the rubric of the "saving deeds," the mplJJ of Yahweh (12:7), and its focus is specifically on the provision of leadership. This emphasis is reflected in the selection of details, which include an abundance of personal names of various leaders. The cognitive problem to be addressed is how the people should assess the moral significance of their request for a king. The pattern constructed in the resume consists of the following elements: a Situation that leads to Oppression, provoking an Outcry, followed by God's Provision of Leadership, and the Result. But the first two cycles are not entirely parallel. In the Exodus Cycle the people are merely victimized by oppression. In the cycle of the Judges the people's "forgetting Yahweh" is the situation that provokes oppression as punishment, and the outcry includes a recognition of the people's sinfulness. Thus Samuel actually presents the people with two possible historical analogies—to which analogy does the present situation belong, if either? The people apparently see their situation simply as victimization, or so Samuel initially presents it ("and when you saw that Nahash...came against you...," 12:12a). But in fact, the situation is one of sinful failure, as Samuel shows by framing the people's very outcry for help as itself an act of "forgetting Yahweh." "And you said to me, 'No, a king must reign over us'—even though Yahweh your God is your king." The people recognize the aptness of the analogy and confess, "we have added to all our sins the evil of asking for a king for ourselves" (12:19b). The act of historical cognition in 1 Sam 12 emphasizes configuration more than chronology, emplotting the past in ways that emphasize a strong cause and effect relationship between events, and making the past usable as a series of analogies to guide thinking about the present. The forms of historical cognition in Josh 24 offer a contrast. Here, as Joshua seeks to get the people to reaffirm their devotion to Yahweh, he recites the people's history—or rather Joshua quotes Yahweh's recitation of the people's history—beginning with Terah and ending with the audience's present moment in the Promised Land. In this resume there is no pronounced cyclical repetition. Events are not represented as strongly causally connected to one another. Instead, they are presented more episodically, in terms of chronological sequence. "This happened, then that happened, then this happened..." This is not to say that the resume is without configuration, of course. But if one may think of configuration as consisting of both paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements, or, one might

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say, metaphoric and metonymic, then here the metonymic is more evident. The account begins with a pronounced genealogical structure, connecting Terah to Abraham and Nahor, Abraham to Isaac, and Isaac to Esau and Jacob, before continuing with the story of Jacob's children. Similarly, there is geographical metonomy, as the story is primarily emplotted as a journey—from Transeuphrates to Canaan, then to Egypt, then out of Egypt, into the wilderness, to the land of the Amorites, across the Jordan to Jericho, and finally to secure occupation of the land. Though episodic in structure, the events are carefully selected to establish a central theme of divine protection. God multiplies Abraham's offspring, frees the people from Egypt, defeats the Egyptian army, delivers the Amorites into Israel's hands, requires Balaam to bless Israel, and defeats Israel's enemies in Canaan by means of a plague. While journey plots are often episodic and metonymic, the figure of the journey itself has metaphorical force. Journeys often feature transformation of identity, as they tell a story of leaving one place and arriving in another. The crises of the journey provide the knowledge that effects transformation. Thus journey plots invite one to see, as Ricoeur put it, the end in the beginning and the beginning in the end. And so it is here. The story began with a description of the ancestors who lived beyond the Euphrates and worshiped other gods. In light of the story of the journey the people are given a choice—will they serve the God whom they have come to know as deliverer from danger during the journey or will they, in a sense, reverse the journey and serve the gods of their ancestors beyond the Euphrates (or, indeed, will they go too far into a new identity in a new land and serve the gods of the Amorites)? As 1 Sam 12 and Josh 24 illustrate contrasting forms of emplotment, Pss 105 and 106 provide an opportunity to examine the issue of multiple histories. Certainly in the United States, and I suspect in most other countries, heated debates rage over the adequacy of histories that omit all controversial and embarrassing episodes vs. those that highlight just such events that depict the nation at its worst. I freely acknowledge that irresponsibly tendentious history writing occurs, but often the way the debate is framed seems to assume that there is only one history to be told and that the task of the historian is to get it right. But is that the case? The historiographical assumptions reflected in the pairing of Pss 105 and 106 imply a different way of understanding historical cognition. Stylistic differences suggest that these two poems were not intentionally composed as a pair; but they do appear to have been intentionally placed next to one another in the Psalter in a manner that draws attention to their contrast. Psalm 105 recounts the history of Israel from Abraham to the Promised Land as a story of divine providential protection: protection

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from oppression in Canaan, from famine, from oppression in Egypt, from dangers in the wilderness. Psalm 106 retells much of the same period in such a way that it is perceived as a period of almost constant rebellion. It is certainly not the case that one telling is right and the other wrong. Rather, each one tells the truth, but—intentionally—not the whole truth. But how is it possible to read them together—as many readers do— without a sense that the common history has been falsified? Here one sees the vital cognitive role played by the force of internal narrative coherence. Each poem emplots the story differently, a choice that dictates a different selection of the relevant beginning and ending points, and a different configuration of temporality. These choices establish different criteria of relevancy, so that what is left out is not denied so much as it is just not immediately relevant for the process of meaning making. Thus, much like Josh 24, Ps 105 makes use of a journey motif, which begins with Abraham and ends in the Promised Land. Despite certain rhythmic elements, the narrative has a strong linear movement. The natural sense of an ending that a journey story has—arrival at the destination—is enhanced by the way the psalm explicitly frames the story with the theme of fulfillment of a divine promise to Abraham, which marks the beginning (w. 8-11) and the ending (w. 42-45) of the account, giving the story wholeness and completion. The intense closure of the narrative does not invite one to think of how the history might continue after "he gave them the lands of nations.. .that they might keep his laws and observe his teachings" (w. 44-45). The psalm gives no indication of how far the speaker stands chronologically from the events described. Indeed, the psalm's rhetorical purpose is to make this time in some sense the audience's own, to allow them to dwell within the master narrative. This is history in which recollection serves as normative prescription. By contrast, Ps 106 establishes the criteria of relevance for its account of the history through the confession in v. 6 ("We have sinned like our ancestors; we have gone astray, done evil"). In contrast to the linearity of Ps 105, Ps 106 has an intensely repetitious structure. Only one thing happens, over and over: the rebellion of the people against God. The period framed is ostensibly much longer than that of Ps 105, since Ps 106 begins its account in Egypt and concludes with the speakers' present situation in exile and diaspora. But that is somewhat misleading. Those who construct narrative also shape time, slowing it down by narrating many episodes from a short period, speeding it up by choosing few events from a larger period. So here, for some twenty-seven verses, all of the episodes described with specific details occur in the Exodus and Wilderness period. The long centuries from the entry into the land until the

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captivity and dispersion are foreshortened into ten verses of extremely generalized narration, with most of that referring to the period of the Judges. It is as though nothing new can happen, so that the very act of telling history exhausts itself. The rhetorical purpose of the psalm, however, is to recite history in such a way that a future does open. Thus there is no resounding closure, such as one finds in Ps 105. That would be counterproductive. Rather, the recitation concludes by creating the sense of a curiously unfinished story. In w. 44-46, God hears the people's cry of distress in exile and in his hesed makes their captors compassionate toward them. But that is not a satisfying ending. Anyone who knows narrative knows that something more needs to happen to bring the story to a conclusion. By reawakening the sense of being in the midst of an unfinished story, the narrator rekindles hope. For people do see their lives, individually and collectively, as unfolding stories—which is why narrative history is such a powerful tool of social construction. The concluding plea for deliverance in v. 47 also harks back to the first episode, the one at the Sea of Reeds, which is, significantly, the only incident in the resume in which, despite the people's rebellion, God delivered them "for the sake of his name" (v. 8). So at the end, the speaker envisions a parallel future event ("gathering us from among the nations") that would bring successful completion to the story and be an occasion for "praising your holy name" (v. 47). What then does the pairing of these highly selective and sharply contrasting recitations of Israel's history suggest about the nature of historical cognition? Instead of the model of a single unified history that must be narrated in a single way, this material suggests that history sometimes can only be rendered adequately by juxtaposing multiple narratives, each with its own coherence, each with its own truth. To be sure, each rendering must be answerable to agreed upon facts; history can be falsified. But historical cognition is always partial and therefore requires multiple tellings from a variety of perspectives. The historiographical practices of ancient Israel, as exemplified in Pss 105 and 106, complicate the very notion of the "master narrative" and allow one to ask if the postmodern critique has been too simplistic. In an essay on "Master Narratives and the Patterns of History," Robert Fulford describes the consternation attending the celebration in 1992 of the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America and what he describes as the collapse of "the master narrative centered on Christopher Columbus."13 But one need not be forced to choose, as seemed to happen then, between the intolerable ideological closure of a single master narrative and the 13. Fulford, Triumph, 36.

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incoherence of proliferating micronarratives. As the Israelite practice suggests, it is possible to combine the human desire for comprehensive narrative coherence with the reality of history's complexity. In Ezek 20, one encounters perhaps the most bizarre manifestation of the historical resume. This chapter is often referred to as a "revisionist" history of Israel, though this is to understate the nature of its discrepancy from other renditions of Israel's history. It is probably not the case that Ezekiel depends on divergent traditions not otherwise represented in the surviving sources, though that possibility cannot be ruled out entirely. He seems rather to engage in an intentionally inventive recasting of tradition. Not only does he trace Israel's history of apostasy back to an otherwise unattested worship of Egyptian idols (20:8), but even the description of the wilderness period alludes to violations of Sabbaths and other laws (20:13) that appear to belong to EzekiePs imaginative construction rather than to commonly held tradition,14 as does his distinction between the giving of two sets of laws, one that gives life and another, punitive set of "not good laws" that lead to death.15 As with EzekieFs allegorical histories of Israel in chs. 16 and 23, ch. 20 is not so much a venture in revisionism as it is a foray into an intentionally grotesque historiography. I do not wish, however, to take refuge in the distinction made by Block, between "true reconstruction of the past" and Ezekiel's "rhetorical" purposes.16 All of the historical recitations in the biblical text are "rhetorical"; applying that label does not solve the puzzle of Ezekiel. Nor do I wish simply to declare him a bad historian and move on. Since my concern is with historical cognition, what I want to know is what historiographical dilemma leads someone like Ezekiel to construct a historical summary that both he and his audience would recognize as at odds with the received tradition, not just in its emphasis but in many of its facts. What is at stake? Perhaps the answer can be found in a statement by the philosopher of history R. G. Collingwood. He asserted that "every present has a past of its own, and any imaginative reconstruction of the past aims at reconstructing the past of this present."17 One of the functions of history writing is to show how the present emerges out of 14. D. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 633. 15. I do not find persuasive the recent attempt of Scott Walker Hahn and John Seitze Bergsma, "What Laws Were 'Not Good'? A Canonical Approach to the Theological Problem of Ezekiel 20:25-26 "JBL 123 (2004): 201-18, to argue that the "not good" laws refer to Deuteronomy. 16. Block, Ezekiel, 640. 17. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford, 1946), 247, cited in Megill, "Grand Narrative," 163.

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the past. Seen in this perspective, EzekiePs grotesque history is in fact an accusation that a crisis exists in historical understanding itself. The present that he confronts simply cannot, in his view, be explained in light of the existing constructs of history. The radical apostasy of this present requires a history that can do justice to it and serve as an adequate explanatory past for this present. As many commentators have rightly noted, Ezekiel constructs the history of Israel precisely by projecting his accusations about present failures into the past.18 Ezekiel has, as it were, taken the dictum of Collingwood and radically literalized it, inventing the only past that can account for this present. A later, and rather different sense of a crisis in historiography seems to be reflected in the book of Daniel, first in the diaspora stories of Dan 1-6 and subsequently in the apocalypses of Dan 7-12. The radical move that the book of Daniel makes is literally to "change the subject." Every writing of history must determine what the subject of history is to be. In the rest of the Hebrew Bible the subject of history is the relationship between Yahweh and the people of Israel. Daniel 2, in particular, changes the subject of history, and the radicalness of this move can scarcely be overstated. The subject of history for Dan 2 is not the history of Israel but the history of sovereignty, the history of HID ^D. Evidently, the traditional history that organized itself primarily by reference to Yahweh and Israel was perceived as no longer adequate to present realities. Instead, Daniel takes an alien master narrative and inserts Israel into its story. This claim requires some nuancing. Within biblical tradition the common references in historical resumes to the nations and their kings as instruments of punishment for the apostasy of the people had been supplemented in the prophets by other models concerning the relationship between Yahweh and foreign monarchs. Thus one finds in Ezekiel and Jeremiah a depiction of Nebuchadnezzar as the servant of Yahweh, and in Second Isaiah a representation of Cyrus as Yahweh's anointed, not to mention the positive role given to the Persian monarchy in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. The court stories in Dan 1-6 owe much to this tradition concerning Yahweh's business with the foreign rulers. But this tradition does not, properly speaking, have a "world historical" perspective. Such a perspective is, however, supplied by the four-kingdoms schema employed in Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Dan 2. As is now well known, this schema appears to originate in a Persian historiographical tradition, which understood the Persians as heirs to a succession of empires that passed from the Assyrians to the Medes and then to the 18. M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20 (AB 22; Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 383.

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Persians. The schema shows up in later Roman historiography with the Greeks and Romans added to the sequence. But it also developed in a different way as oppositional literature, in which the accession to power of the fifth kingdom is not a description of present reality but a prediction concerning the immanent future, which will transform reality.19 Although it is often speculated that examples of this oppositional schema existed in Persian and Babylonian versions, these are not attested, and the earliest extant version is Dan 2. The four-kingdoms schema in Nebuchadnezzar's dream raises several issues from the perspective of historical cognition. How, for instance, does a descriptive Persian historiographical schema become transformed into a predictive oppositional device? In the Persian version, and even in some of its later uses in Rome, one might question whether the schema even warrants the designation "historiographical." It is more of a chronicle: first this empire rules, then that one, then another one, and so forth. It lacks what Ricoeur calls "configuration." It lacks a plot. What Dan 2 (or its precursor) manages to do is to emplot the schema and so make it into a real story about sovereignty. Where does the plot come from? In Dan 2 the schema is not presented first of all as straight historical narration but as a symbolic dream. The use of symbolic figures becomes increasingly important in the historical resumes of apocalyptic literature. In some cases they may be trivial and not cognitively significant; but that is not the case here. Here the symbols show precisely how the mind works to make new cognitions. Cognitive theorists describe the activity of thought as operating by "blends" in which different image schemas or story lines are brought into a common mental space, where aspects of the various "input" images or plots are used to organize perception of the "target" domain.20 This process is easier to illustrate than to describe in abstract language. The Persian account is organized simply as a continuity schema: kingdom a, kingdom b, kingdom c, and so forth. To turn it into opposition literature one needs to blend the continuity schema with a discontinuity schema. In Dan 2, several intersecting figures and images serve this purpose. The simplest is the numerical figure. The number four is a widespread figure for totality. The cognitive theorists would trace this perception back to our very physical embodiment, as we organize space 19. The classic account is that of J. W. Swain, "The Theory of the Four Monarchies: Opposition History Under the Roman Empire," CP 35 (1940): 1-21. See also D. Flusser, "The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel," Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972): 146-75. 20. See, e.g., Turner, The Literary Mind, 16-25, and Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 16-19.

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in relation to our bodies, which have a front, a back, and two sides. We then project this schema of completeness onto time and events. Thus to organize thinking about kingdoms into a sequence of four suggests completion. After that, whatever happens is discontinuous. Note that Daniel never refers to the eternal kingdom as the fifth kingdom. It is not a part of the sequence as such. The sequence of the metals—gold, silver, bronze, iron—could suggest decline, and such a figure is used by Hesiod in Works and Days to represent decline and renewal of world ages. Here, however, that potential significance is not developed. Indeed, the fourth kingdom appears to be militarily the strongest. More significant is the description of the fourth metal as not simply iron but iron mixed with pottery. Klaus Koch is correct, in my opinion, in seeing this detail as something that the author of Daniel inherits from his sources rather than creates,21 but Daniel certainly makes good use of it. The primary discontinuity image in Dan 2 is the contrast between the statue, which contains all of the metals, and the rock. These are multivalent images. But in diaspora culture the statue of various metals certainly evokes the idol polemics (and so figures the Gentiles), whereas the rock probably alludes to the passage in Second Isaiah that urges the exiles to "look to the rock from which you were hewn" (Isa 51:1). As cognitive theory would analyze it, the images and the thought process at this point are quite similar to what one finds in political cartoons.22 Two images are placed in a frame, and their interaction models the political situation. If one "puts on stage" a rock and a statue, what might happen next? The plot suggests itself at once. The rock can be thrown at the statue, and if the bottom of the statue consists of iron and clay—a figure of simultaneous strength and fragility—then that is just the place at which it will break, bringing the whole down. Thus the rock both displaces and replaces the statue and becomes the symbol of a new sovereignty (continuity) but of a different sort of sovereignty (discontinuity). The mind, of course, blends these images intuitively and virtually unconsciously. What the cognitive theorists demonstrate is that even seemingly obvious images and dead metaphors are in fact powerful instruments for cognition. Here in Dan 2 they facilitate the appropriation and transformation of an alien historiographical schema into a new way of understanding Israel's own world historical significance. 21. K. Koch, Daniel (BKAT 22; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1986), 137-38, 202. 22. See the analysis of political cartoons as blends in Turner, Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science, 120-26.

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The other significant issue raised by the historical resume in Dan 2 concerns the relation of past and future and the power of historical recital to unite them. Daniel 2 represents the earliest example of a Jewish historical resume that functions to predict the future. As is well known, historical resumes in apocalyptic literature make extensive use ofvaticinia ex eventu. The seer is fictively placed at a time before the events in question and is given revelatory knowledge about the future by a dream, a vision, or other means. Although I do not wish to dismiss as irrelevant this fictive setting as part of the text's claim to authority, I am more interested in what the author of the apocalypse is actually doing. Whether self-consciously or simply intuitively, the author of the apocalypse is in fact scrutinizing history for patterns that he can demonstrate as having been operative in the past and by means of which he can predict the future. He does not so much seek the revelation of history as revelation by means of history.23 While the accuracy of apocalyptic predictions is not impressive, they were not wrong to attempt to use history for cognition of the future. It is one of the primary purposes for which one engages in historical understanding. In an article entitled "The Unknown Future and the Art of Prognosis," Koselleck cites Kant's dictum that "recalling the past...occurs only with the intention of making it possible to foresee the future."24 Koselleck himself explicates the conditions as follows. "History does not just run in a unique, diachronic succession but always already contains repetitions.. .in which unique changes and the recurrence of the same or similar (or at least comparable) phenomena occur together... Ideas about the future rest upon a structural repeatability derived from the past."25 Or, as I would put it, what the apocalyptic writers perceived was that the rhyme of history facilitates reasoning about the future. Their use of the historical resume was not a sharp departure from earlier uses, however. The pre-apocalyptic resumes of the Hebrew Bible also project likely futures, though their sense of history as formed by the interacting agencies of Israel and Yahweh prevented them from moving into actual prediction. Yet already with Ezekiel, who locates the engine of history in the concern of Yahweh for his holy name, the historical resume in Ezek 20 moves smoothly from historical retrospection into a prophetic oracle predicting the coming fate of Israel. 23. C. Newsom, "The Past as Revelation: History in Apocalyptic Literature," QR 4 (1984): 40-53. 24. R. Koselleck, "The Unknown Future and the Art of Prognosis," in The Practice of Conceptual History, 133. 25. Ibid., 136-37.

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The examination of history for the presence of patterns capable of predicting the future, however, occurs in striking fashion in the apocalyptic portion of Daniel, with chs. 8 and 11 containing the most subtle and perceptive examples. Here the author develops what can best be called an insight into the ironic structure of human political power. In each chapter the focus narrows and the detail increases. Chapter 8 traces history from the rise of the Medio-Persian kingdom to the time of Antiochus, under the figure of a ram, a he-goat, and their horns. The rhythm of history is clear. As each protagonist appears to reach the pinnacle of its power, it is destroyed. The very height of the power of the Persian ram attracts the aggression of the Greek he-goat (8:5-7). When the he-goat's conspicuous horn (Alexander) is at the peak of its power, it is mysteriously broken (8:8a). And so, when the little horn grows as high as the host of heaven and casts some of the stars to the ground, one can be confident that it "will be broken, not by [human] hands" (8:25b). The most ambitious attempt to discern the rhyme and reason of history, however, is the immensely detailed resume of Ptolemaic and Seleucid history in Dan 11. It is likely that the author actually made use of a Greek source for the construction of the account.26 What is impressive, however, is that without flinching from the messiness of history, the author seeks to discern not only the unique details of history but their embeddedness in what Koselleck calls "structural repeatability." Because it takes so seriously the detail of historical reality and focuses on a comparably limited period of history, the account in Dan 11 is much less schematized than other historical resumes, much less regularly rhythmic; but it is far from a mere chronicle. The author narrates the events so that they display a repetitious pattern, a pattern that discloses something like an inner rule that governs the historical process and that provides the basis for projecting the future. The figure that governs this history is, as Richard Clifford described it almost thirty years ago, that of containment.27 What the author depicts is not precisely a balance of power between the King of the North and the King of the South, for the King of the North is more frequently described as the aggressor, and it is sometimes Rome rather than the King of the South who turns him back and contains him. But as Clifford describes it, the author focuses "not so much on the evil of the [Seleucid and Ptolemaic 26. L. Grabbe, "A Dan(iel) for All Seasons: For Whom Was Daniel Important?," in The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, vol. 1 (ed. J. Collins and P. Flint; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 234. Somewhat more cautious is U. Rappaport, "Apocalyptic Vision and Preservation of Historical Memory," JSJ 33 (1992): 222-23. 27. R. Clifford, "History and Myth in Daniel 10-12," BASOR 220 (1975): 23-26.

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predecessors of Antiochus IV] but on their persistent inability to effect a permanent rule by reason of their containment of each other."28 So long as the King of the North cannot successfully sweep away the King of the South, so long as he cannot capture and hold Egypt, history remains in balance. One can see the force of the pattern on the author's imagination most clearly in certain places where he gives the historical facts a bit of a nudge. In w. 9 and 10, for example, campaigns of Seleucus n and Antiochus in are described in ways that suggest they were attempts to invade Egypt itself, when they were not.29 History will break free of its moorings only when the King of the North does two things: when he sweeps away Egypt and when he challenges a heavenly rather than an earthly kingdom. Thus Antiochus IV's two invasions of Egypt (11:26, 29) and his rage against the holy covenant (ll:30b-39) presage the breaking of the containment. In the prediction, which begins in v. 40, an attack by the King of the South precipitates a retaliatory invasion by the King of the North that "sweeps through like a flood." And this time "not even the land of Egypt will escape." This, in turn, allows the author to predict Antiochus IV's death and the end of history itself. Even though the future did not turn out as predicted, the analysis of Dan 11 remains an impressive attempt to discern within history the patterns that organize the dynamics of power and its structural repetitions. Space does not permit an examination of the historical resume in the extracanonical literature of the Second Temple period, where it has its greatest flourishing, primarily in apocalypses. Although the scope and sophistication of these works is often impressive (as in the great Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch), many of the techniques of composition are the same as those developed in earlier resumes. Yet there are also innovations and new directions. Perhaps the most striking is the attempt to coordinate structures of epochal, historical time with significant patterns of calendrical time through the use of sabbatical and jubilee patterns.30 But one also notes a shift in the scope of history, which tends to become truly universal, extending from creation to eschaton and attending more specifically to the place of Gentiles (e.g. in the Animal Apocalypse in 1 Enoch and the Cloud Vision in Syriac Baruch). The subject of history similarly shows certain changes, especially in the Enochic tradition. 28. Ibid., 24. 29. J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 378-79. 30. K. Koch, "Sabbatstruktur der Geschichte," ZAW 95 (1983): 403-31; D. Dimant, "The Seventy Weeks Chronology (Dan 9,24-27) in the Light of New Qumranic Texts," in The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings (ed. A. S. van der Woude; BETL 106; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1993), 57-76.

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Although the events alluded to are those familiar from the Bible, the subject of history becomes somewhat more abstract. In particular in the Apocalypse of Weeks, Koch has remarked that the protagonists are actually the abstract qualities of righteousness and deceit. So striking is this shift that Koch dubs the author of the Apocalypse of Weeks "the Hegel of antiquity."31 And, similarly, in the Animal Apocalypse, though Israel is not displaced from its pre-eminent place, it is the "plant of righteousness" that is the true subject of history, a subtle reconfiguration that affects the way both primeval history and eschatological events are configured. But perhaps the most significant issue raised by the noncanonical historical resumes is when and why they cease to be written. This issue brings one back to the reflections of Ricoeur on time, narrative, and history. Ricoeur calls historical narratives "allegories of temporality." The impetus to construct historical narratives is the attempt to endow human existence with meaning in the face of "the corrosive power of time."32 Thus, for Ricoeur, historical existence is necessarily tragic in structure. And the writing of history is an act very much like that of the tragic poets, who endeavor through emplotment, through mythos, to resist those situations in which "meaninglessness threatens the meaningful," so that configured time may triumph over merely chronological time.33 Indeed, for Ricoeur, narrative is the only mode adequate to the tragic structure of temporality. For the most part the historical resumes of Israelite literature comport well with Ricoeur's observations on the function of historical narrative. But in the apocalyptic resumes the attempt is made to use the resources of configuration to figure the end of time itself, the end of history, and thus the end of tragedy. The last historical resumes—in 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch—are written in the aftermath of the failed revolt against Rome. After the devastating Bar Kochba revolt, however, they cease to be written altogether. If that were all, it might simply be a case of one form of historical cognition overreaching and thus discrediting itself. But the context suggests something more radical. It is not just the historical resume but the entire enterprise of constructing meaning through narrative history that is rejected by Judaism in the wake of the Bar Kochba revolt. From that time and for many, many centuries Judaism turns its back on the resources of history to resist "the corrosive power of time" 31. Koch, "Sabbatstruktur," 422. 32. H. White, "The Metaphysics of Narrativity: Time and Symbol in Ricoeur's Philosophy of History," in The Content of the Form, 181. 33. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:44.

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and instead turns to ahistorical, and, one might even say, atemporal forms of thought in the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Rabbinic hermeneutics of the various midrashim. Through that act the claim is implicitly made that at least in certain situations tragedy overwhelms even the resources of historical narrative and that other means of cognition not only serve better but perhaps even effect a means of redemption from history. As I have attempted to show, the study of the Israelite and early Jewish historical resumes offers a rich arena in which to explore forms of historical cognition that are not only the historical antecedents of Western historiography but that are in large part similar to patterns of historical thinking that continue to be employed today. Perhaps even more significantly, they offer perspectives from which to examine and critique assumptions in our own historiographical practice and to illumine the limits of the enterprise of historical cognition itself.

THE AMBIGUOUS ROLE OF MOSES AS PROPHET David L. Petersen

Both the book of Deuteronomy and literature to either side of it include texts that have led some scholars to think that there was a tradition of Mosaic-style prophecy in ancient Israel. For example, some scholars (e.g. Kraus) have developed the notion of Moses as a covenant mediator and then maintained that other Israelite prophets, probably acting in the ritual ambit, continued this type of work.1 Other scholars (e.g. Wilson) have suggested that there was an understanding of Mosaic prophecy specific to the northern kingdom, an Ephraimite tradition.2 That understanding of Mosaic prophecy, as present in Deuteronomy and Hosea, was passed on over time and moved to the southern kingdom after the fall of Israel, where it appeared in the book of Jeremiah. Hence, many scholars have maintained that Moses was a model for prophets in ancient Israel. But was he? Was there a long-standing tradition of a prophet like Moses? In this study, I shall answer "probably not." In so doing, I will consider four topics: (1) Moses as Prophet in Deuteronomy, (2) Moses as Prophet in the Deuteronomistic History, (3) Moses as Prophet in Prophetic Literature, and (4) Moses as Singular Figure. I. Moses as Prophet in Deuteronomy At two points, the book of Deuteronomy bears on this topic: 18:15-22 and 34:10-12. To many readers, Deut 18:15-22 appears to establish Moses as a paradigm for prophecy. The first thing, however, that should be said about Deut 18 is that it does not state explicitly that Moses was a prophet. Verse 15 simply reads, "A prophet from among your own people—like me—the LORD your God will raise up for you. Him you 1. H. J. Kraus, Worship in A ncient Israel (Richmond: JohnKnox, 1966), 102-12. 2. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 135-252 (157-66).

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shall obey." Most interpreters have presumed that the comparative phrase, "like me," modifies the object, prophet. Hence, they translate v. 15 with the following sense, "the LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me..." But there are other options. The text could mean that the prophet whom Yahweh will raise up will be like Moses in authority, that is, someone whom the people are to obey. Here the emphasis would fall as much on the last part of the verse as the first: "Him you shall obey just as you were supposed to heed me." Or, as a third possibility, v. 15 might be heard this way: "a prophet from among your own people—like I am from among your own people." Here the emphasis is on the prophet as one who comes from within the community. He will not be an outsider, such as Balaam was.3 (This condition—coming from within the community—was also at issue with the royal office in Deut 17:154). In sum, Deut 18:15 offers no unequivocal claim that Moses was thought to be a prophet. This verse, and the similar formulation in v. 18, may well mean that the prophet to come will be like Moses to the extent that the people are to obey him—as they were supposed to obey Moses-or to the extent that the prophet is one of them—as was Moses. I think the latter is the more likely option. Deuteronomy 18:18 emphasizes another aspect of the prophet whom the deity will raise up: Yahweh will put his words in the mouth of the prophet. Yet, even though such a prophet might have God's words placed in his mouth, the text does not imply that Moses himself was a prophet. In this regard, it is interesting that Moses is understood to put words in Aaron's mouth (Exod 4:15), but we never hear about the deity placing his words in Moses' mouth.5 Both Deut 18:15 and 18:18 have been further construed to mean that Moses was the first in a line of prophets. As Joseph Blenkinsopp has insisted, however, to allude to a succession of prophets beginning with Moses means that one must enlarge the notion of prophet to include, at a 3. I understand the syntax of Deut 18:15 to be object, partitive phrase (with hendiadys), comparative phrase, verb, indirect object, subject. It seems unlikely that the comparative phrase modifies the object, since it is separated from the object by the partitive phrase. Deut 13:2 speaks of prophets arising from "among you," but they are not necessarily kin, that is, from among your own people, as is the case in Deut 18. I am indebted to Brent A. Strawn for his insights on the syntax of this verse. 4. This similarity was noted by K. Zobel, Prophetic und Deuteronomium: Die Rezeptionprophetischer Theologie durch das Deuteronomium (BZAW199; Berlin: deGruyter, 1992), 198. 5. Cf. Exod 19:6, which reports the deity saying to Moses: "These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites."

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minimum, Joshua, and many of the judges.6 And it is difficult, indeed, especially given Joshua's portrayal in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua, to construe him to be a "prophet like Moses." To be sure, Joshua is depicted as similar to Moses in a number of important ways, but never as recipient of direct words from the deity. Joshua had "the book of the Torah" placed in his mouth (Josh 1:8) but not the deity's words. Joshua was empowered by a spirit, but it was the spirit of wisdom (Deut 34:9), not a prophetic spirit. One might, of course, argue that Joshua's having the book of the Torah placed in his mouth is essentially equivalent to having God's words placed in his mouth. And if this is the case, then Deut 18 might serve as a text empowering Joshua as Moses' successor. Joshua, like Aaron before him, was authorized by divine words given to him by Moses. This line of argument, however, need not involve the claim that Joshua was the first in a line of successors to Moses. Had the Deuteronomistic History been interested in charting a line of prophets from Moses onward, it could easily have appelled Joshua as a prophet. The conclusion that Deut 18:18 does not suggest a line of successors to Moses is further bolstered by looking back to Deut 18:16. In this verse, 123N *?DD, a frequent phrase in Deuteronomy, introduces a comparative clause explaining a prior case in which Yahweh had raised up someone. This use of "12JN ^DD appears in a similar manner elsewhere in the book, namely, to allude to previous and comparable activity of Yahweh (e.g. Deut 1:3, 30,41; 4:34). So one should translate v. 16, "just as when you asked Yahweh your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly. .." The clause clearly identifies Moses as an answer to the request of the people. The people wanted an individual to stand between them and the deity at Horeb. Moses was the answer; he functioned as a boundary figure. There is nothing in the Sinai pericope, however, that identifies Moses as a prophet. The role label WD3 is not present in the Sinai pericope. Nor is there any reference to having the deity place words in Moses' mouth. He is an intercessor or go-between, but not a prophet of the sort defined in Deut 18:18. The comparative clause emphasizes that Moses was chosen or raised up from among the people, just as will be the prophet referred to in v. 15. 6. Cf. J. Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 12; C. Seitz, "Mose als Prophet," BZ 34 (1990): 239; Zobel, Prophetic undDeuteronomium, 200; and, most recently, I. Fischer, Gotteskunderinnen: Zu einer geschlechterfairen Deutung des Phanomens der Prophetic under der Prophetinnen in der Hebrdischen Bibel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002), 55—63, all of who think there was a perception of such a lineage.

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Deuteronomy 18:17 then continues the allusion to Horeb. The deity confirms that what the people have said is apt; they need someone to prevent them from being killed (cf. Exod 20:19). That speech of Yahweh at Horeb apparently continues in w. 18-22, or at least through v. 18.7 There is no syntactic break between w. 17 and 18, which might suggest the speech at Horeb has ended and that we have returned to "new" Deuteronomic legislation. Thus, unlike in v. 15, where Moses is talking to the people, in v. 18 Yahweh is still talking to Moses about the people. This reading helps explain the apparent repetition of v. 15 in v. 18. Deuteronomy 18:18 is to be viewed as offering a warrant for v. 15.8 Other ways of understanding v. 18 in its context are possible, yet none of them indicates a line of prophetic successors to Moses. One might 7. Wilson (Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 163) aptly recognizes that the dialogue here is "disjointed." 8. Scholars treat the coherence of this pericope in very different ways. H. Barstad ("The Understanding of the Prophets in Deuteronomy," SJOTS [1984]: 243-46) divides the text into w. 9-14,15-19,20-22, each of which is unrelated to the other. R. D. Nelson (Deuteronomy [OTL; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2002], 234) characterizes it as a retrospective dialogue, with w. 16-18 alluding to Horeb. He does not, however, indicate how v. 19 is (or is not) related to v. 18. W. H. Schmidt ("Das Prophetengesetz Dm 18,9-22 im Kontext erzahlender Literatur," in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature: Festschrift for C. H. W. Brekelmans [ed. M. Vervenne and J. Lust; BETL 133; Leuven: Peeters, 1997], 55-69) thinks the prescription concerning prophets is made up of two basic parts: 18:9-15 and 18:1622. He deems the later section, which he thinks divides into w. 16-18,19-20,2122, to be literarily dependent upon the book of Jeremiah in four specific ways: reference to putting words in the prophet's mouth, commanding the prophet to speak what the deity commands, the motif of death for a prophet who speaks something other than the deity's words, and criterion of waiting to see if the word comes true. One should note that T. Veijola ("Wahrheit und Intoleranz nach Deuteronomium 13," ZTK 92 [ 1995]: 287-314) has made a comparable argument regarding Deut 13, namely, that it has been influenced by the book of Jeremiah. Subsequently, E. Otto (" 'Das Deuteronomium kront die Arbeit der Propheten': Gesetzt und Prophetie im Deuteronomium," in Ich bewirke das Heil und erschaffe das Unheil [Jesaja 45,7] [ed. F. Diedrich and B. Willmes; FB 88; Wurzburg: Echter, 1998], 277-309) published a study making essentially the same claim, namely, that Deut 18 has been influenced by Jeremianic traditions, whereas M. Kockert ("Zum literargeschichtlichen Ort des Prophetengesetzes Dm 18 zwischen Jeremiabuch und Dm 13," in Liebe und Gebote: Studien zum Deuteronomium [ed. R. Kratz and H. Spieckermann; FRLANT 190; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000], 80-100) thinks that Jer 1 probably influenced Deuteronomy but that Deuteronomy influenced other portions of the book of Jeremiah. For a brief review of the discussion, see C. Maier, Jeremia als Lehrer der Tora: Soziale Gebote des Deuteronomiums in Fortschreibung des Jeremiabuches (FRLANT 196; G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 150-52.

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argue, for example, that v. 18 is an addition that focuses on the requirement that the prophet be a native Israelite and that it reflects a deuteronomistic effort to link the book of Jeremiah with Deuteronomy. If one follows this redaction-critical approach, w. 16-17 provide the reprise from Horeb, w. 19-22 focus on the requirement that the prophet speak in the name of Yahweh, and v. 18 is extraneous to both of these textual units. In any case, when compared with much prophetic literature, Deut 18 is a relatively late text. It does not necessarily reflect a tradition about prophecy that would have informed prophetic activity prior to the time that Deuteronomy was promulgated. In this regard, Walther Zimmerli pointed to the significant difference between the so-called classical prophets and this image of a prophet in some way like Moses.9 Lothar Perlitt has made a similar point, arguing that Deut 18 offers "a very independent notion of a prophet."10 The picture created in these verses is idiosyncratic, offering a construct about Moses but not attesting a prophetic tradition. Moreover, Hans Barstad was almost certainly on the right track when he concluded that these verses offer "an anti-prophetic thrust."11 Deuteronomy 18:19, to the extent that it refers to one individual, is manifestly concerned with Joshua and not with a prophet. The words that Joshua possesses are the words that God, through Moses, has given to him. But the words are the words of Torah, not new prophetic oracles. Barstad writes: "The author of Deuteronomy is hostile to prophecy, as far as all present and future prophets are concerned. In earlier times, however, prophets were acceptable, but after Deuteronomy was given to Moses on Mt. Horeb there was no longer any need for further revelations."12 For Barstad, Joshua, rather than a prophet, is the paradigm of post-Mosaic intermediation. In sum, Deut 18, the primary text in discussions about a tradition of prophets like Moses, presents a very murky statement about Moses and prophecy that does not clearly allude to a tradition about a succession of Mosaic prophets. The chapter does not speak overtly about Moses as a prophet, and v. 18 does not necessarily refer to anyone other than Joshua, if, in fact, it does refer to Joshua. One other text in the book of Deuteronomy concerns Moses and prophecy. Deuteronomy 34:10-12 has often been cited as a classic example of the notion that Moses was a paradigmatic prophet. Deuteronomy 34, 9. W. Zimmerli, "Der 'Prophet' im Pentateuch," Studien zum Pentateuch: Walter Kornfeldzum 60. Geburtstag(ed. G. Braulik; Freiburg: Herder, 1977), 197-211. 10. L. Perlitt, "Mose als Prophet," EvT 31 (1971): 588-608: ein sehr eigenstandiges Prophetenideal. 11. Barstad, "The Understanding of Prophets in Deuteronomy," 246. 12. Ibid., 247.

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however, adumbrates a notion quite different from that presumed in Deut 18. The difference is so vast that Perlitt characterizes Deut 34 as a significant contradiction to Deut 18.13 In similar fashion, Zimmerli attributed Deut 34 to the hand of someone other than the individual who wrote Deut 18.H Further, Deut 34, unlike Deut 18, seems more clearly to suggest that the author thought of Moses as a prophet. Deuteronomy 34:10-12 appear to be a paean out of place. Moses is already dead, Joshua has been enfranchised, and the people's response to him has already been described in v. 9. And then, the text returns to Moses: "Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face" (34:10). This odd claim has occasioned something of a scholarly consensus that w. 10-12 are a late addition to the book.15 Deuteronomy 34 seems to imply that Moses was a prophet. The initial verse in this late coda to the book of Deuteronomy, however, presents problems. First, the singularity of Moses, also attested in Num 12:6-8, is affirmed here. He is fundamentally unlike (other) prophets. Second, Yahweh knew or communicated to Moses in a distinctive way ("face to face"), which is comparable to the "mouth to mouth" diction in Num 12:8. Identical language appears in Exod 33:11: "The LORD used to speak to Moses face to face." In this verse, as in Num 12, there is a priestly element, since Moses' "conversations" with Yahweh take place at the tent, the forerunner of the temple. Third, no one was "like Moses." Here, Deut 34 challenges the expectation that may have been established by Deut 18. The same verb (Dip), along with the comparative 3, appears in both chs. 18 and 34. What one might, however, have expected to happen on the basis of Deut 18 has, according to Deut 34, not transpired. There has been no succession of prophets like Moses. Prophets there may have been, but they were not cast in a distinctive Mosaic mold.

13. Perlitt, "Mose als Prophet," 596. 14. Zimmerli, "Der 'Prophet' im Pentateuch," 202-6. 15. See P. Stoellger, "Deuteronomium34 ohnePriesterschrift,"Z4 W105 (1993): 46-48. He maintains that w. 11-12 are, themselves, addenda to v. 10. T. Romer and M. Brettler ("Deuteronomy 34 and the Case for a Persian Hexateuch," JBL 119 [2000]: 401-19) maintain that w. 4b and 10-12 belong to the latest compositional stage of Deut 34. These verses distinguish between Moses and Joshua. In so doing, they stand in opposition to other verses (34:1,4a, 5-6, 7-9) and argue on behalf of construing Deuteronomy as part of a Pentateuch and not a Hexateuch. Cf. F. Garcia Lopez, "Deut 34, Dtr. History and the Pentateuch," in Studies in Deuteronomy in Honour ofC. J. Labuschagne on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. F. Garcia Martinez et al.; VTSup 53; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 58-59.

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Deuteronomy 34 goes on to articulate another way in which Moses was distinctive: he worked signs and wonders. One might think that this is an odd way to describe prophetic activity. Yet that very vocabulary is associated in Deuteronomy with a prophet who might arise (Dip) in Israel (Deut 13:2): "If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear (Dip) among you and promise you omens or portents, and the omens or the portents declared by them take place..." This text suggests that an Israelite prophet might be involved with signs and wonders. Nonetheless, Deut 34 defines the paradigm for such omens and portents in a special way, namely, as the miracles associated with the plague traditions and the wilderness wanderings. Without exception, Deuteronomic texts involving signs and wonders portray Yahweh, not Moses, as the one who performed those portents. Hence, the author of Deut 34:11-12 has turned Moses into a demigod, attributing to him acts that elsewhere only Yahweh has accomplished. It is no surprise, then, that for the writer of Deut 34:10-12, Moses was "unequaled" in his ability to act in so wondrous a fashion. Whether as known by the deity face to face or as a performer of wonders, Moses had no competitors or imitators, either before him or after him. From the perspective of this epilogue to the book of Deuteronomy, there was no succession of Mosaic prophets. In sum, the language in Deut 34 about Moses as prophet does not reflect a tradition of Mosaic prophets. Rather, this discourse is better understood as an ideological construct, according to which prophets and their words are subordinated to the figure of Moses.16 In a text in which Moses is most clearly construed as a prophet, he is also distinguished decisively from other prophets. n. Moses as Prophet in the Deuteronomistic History So, if the role of Moses as prophet is ambiguous in the book of Deuteronomy itself, what might one say about the Deuteronomistic History? I would begin by referring to the work of Martin Noth. He, of course, worried about traditions associated with Moses, but, interestingly, not in the essay devoted to the Deuteronomistic History, but rather in his study 16. In commenting on Deut 8:15, J. Tigay (Deuteronomy: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation [The JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1996], 175) observes that Moses is not significant qua prophet in the Pentateuch: "The Torah never directly calls Moses a prophet. Even 34:10, which says that there was never again a prophet like Moses, does not directly say that he was a prophet. Instead, the Torah calls Moses 'the Lord's minister' (v. 5; Num 12:7-8) and 'man of God' (33:1)."

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of pentateuchal traditions. There, he observed, "Outside of, and independent of the Pentateuchal narrative, Moses's name is mentioned with striking infrequency in the O.T."17 Perlitt makes a more pointed claim: "It is not often the case that Moses is characterized as a prophet."181 would add that such a characterization occurs with striking infrequency in the Deuteronomistic History. Where does Moses appear in the Deuteronomistic History? By far the preponderance of occurrences is in the book of Joshua. As one reads through the almost fifty places in which Moses is named, there is no evidence of Moses acting in the role of prophet. Moses is clearly "the servant of the LORD" (e.g. Josh 1:1), but hardly the sort of servant to whom the Deuteronomistic Historian refers when describing prophets as "his servants the prophets" (e.g. 2 Kgs 21:10). Rather, according to the book of Joshua, Moses is quintessentially the one who has presented Israel with the book of the Torah. Apart from Joshua, the name of Moses appears only sixteen times throughout Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Of those sixteen texts, there are three that might be germane to our study: Judg 1:20; 1 Kgs 8:53, and 56. Each of those texts refers to something that Moses said in the past, which has now come to fruition. Put another way, the rhetoric is similar to that of the prophecy-fulfillment scheme that we will examine in a moment. In none of these three texts, however, do we hear the stereotypical vocabulary used elsewhere of prophets. In Judg 1:20, we read: "Hebron was given to Caleb, as Moses had said." Does this text understand Moses to be a prophet? It is unlikely. Instead, Judg 1:20 reflects the allocation of the land, as reported in Josh 14:5, "The Israelites did as the LORD commanded Moses: they allotted the land." Moses did not prophecy that the land would be allocated. He himself allocated the land (so, e.g., Josh 13:24). In 1 Kgs 8:53, part of a prayer almost certainly composed by the Deuteronomist, Solomon reports, regarding the people of Israel, "For you have separated them from among all the peoples of the earth, to be your heritage, just as you promised through Moses, your servant, when you brought our ancestors out of Egypt, O Lord GOD." Here, of course, the evidence is a bit more interesting, since Moses is deemed to be a servant, language used elsewhere in Kings as part of the prophecy-fulfillment scheme. Then, later in that chapter, we hear that same descriptor. Solomon comments, "Blessed be the LORD, who has given rest to his people 17. M. Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 156. 18. Perlitt, "Mose als Prophet," 590.

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Israel according to all that he promised; not one word has failed of all his good promise which he spoke through his servant Moses" (1 Kgs 8:56). Fortunately, these texts have been the subject of recent study. Graeme Auld has assessed the way in which Moses appears in Kings, with particular attention to the manner in which that presentation differs in Chronicles.19 Of the ten instances in which Moses' name appears in Kings, he is associated with Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah. He is uniformly featured as one who has provided Torah or commandments, not as someone who proclaims God's word, and not as someone who predicts the future, as do "his servants the prophets." No text features Moses as a prophet, a claim that Auld himself does not make, but which his analysis would seem to allow. Auld's analysis of Moses in Chronicles would permit a similar judgment, namely, that here too Moses is not presented as a prophet. Instead, in Chronicles, Moses has become a source for judgments about the world of temple and ritual, not just Deuteronomic Torah. In neither biblical history, however, does Moses appear as a prophet. If the name is not all that frequent, is there any other way that a case might be made on behalf of Moses functioning as a prophet in the Deuteronomistic History? Robert Polzin attempts to adapt the predictionfulfillment scheme, which von Rad had identified, to the entire Deuteronomistic History. Von Rad focused on those instances in the books of Kings in which the historian reports the prognostication of a prophet and its subsequent coming to fruition.20 For example, Ahijah the Shilonite predicts the end of the lineage of Jeroboam (1 Kgs 14:10) and then that word is enacted "according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by his servant Ahijah the Shilonite" (1 Kgs 15:29). On occasion, the pattern involves reference simply to "his servants the prophets." For example, "my servants the prophets" were understood to have warned the northern kingdom (2 Kgs 17:13), and Israel was destroyed "as he had foretold through all his servants the prophets" (2 Kgs 17:22). Polzin, appealing to this particular pattern, thinks that it works on a far broader scale. He writes: "Deuteronomy, in that it is almost totally a number of Mosaic speeches, functions as an expression of the prophetic word of God, and Joshua-2 Kings mainly recounts events that constitute its exactly observed fulfillment."21 19. A. G. Auld, Kings Without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible's Kings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), 128-32. 20. G. von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 208-9. 21. R. Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomistic History Part One: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges (Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 19.

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I can only respond to Polzin's proposal by suggesting that the jump to reading Deuteronomy as Moses' prediction and the rest of the Deuteronomistic History as the fulfillment is so different from the classic prophecyfulfillment pattern that it does not warrant viewing Moses as a prophet, that is, one of those who, according to Deut 18, makes discrete predictions that may or may not come true. Moses is a powerful voice in Deuteronomy, but that voice, particularly when one moves beyond the book of Joshua, becomes surprisingly quiet, and is rarely one with prophetic timbre. The flip side of this coin—Moses as prophet in the Deuteronomistic History—involves the issue of how prophets are construed in that document. Ronald Clements discusses this topic in his recent article, "Jeremiah 1-25 and the Deuteronomistic History." Clements adumbrated basic features of the prophets' message according to the Deuteronomist. It is striking that Moses as prophet does not figure in this section of his article. According to Clements, the Deuteronomistic History knew prophets as those who warned Israel of God's anger. To be sure, Moses, in Deuteronomy, certainly warns Israel of Yahweh's ire, but this language does not appear in those places in the book of Deuteronomy where Moses is (ambiguously) associated with things prophetic.22 In sum, Moses is a surprisingly unimportant figure in the Deuteronomistic History, once one moves beyond the book of Joshua. And when Moses does appear, he is not a prophet. III. Moses as Prophet in Prophetic Literature If Moses is not a prophet in the Deuteronomistic History, does he function as such in the latter prophets? Surely, if there were a significant tradition of Moses as prophet, we would expect to find him playing a role in individual prophetic books. Here too Noth gave a preliminary judgment: It is noteworthy that in the whole of pre-exilic prophecy, the name of Moses is mentioned with certainty only in a single passage, in Jer 15:1. Here Moses and Samuel are designated as great intercessors for their people, so that indeed reference is made to these historical figures in only a very general way... And even in later prophecy, Moses is mentioned only one more time, namely in Isa 63:11, 12 in connection with a retrospective view of God's act of guidance in history, specifically the miracle at the Reed Sea.23 22. R. E. Clements, "Jeremiah 1-25 and the Deuteronomistic History," in Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson (ed. A. G. Auld; JSOTSup 152; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 95. 23. Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, 157 n. 450.

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For some reason, Noth relegated Mai 4:4 to a note and, as far as I can tell, overlooked Mic 6:4. When we examine these four texts, there is little warrant for thinking that a tradition about Moses as prophet was important in any of them. Jeremiah 15:1, however, calls for discussion. The Masoretic text reads, "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn to this people." Many interpreters have presumed this text to imply that Moses and Samuel are here understood as intercessors, who in mis case would not be successful. Such might be the case. Were it so, one should immediately point out that serving as an intercessor is not essentially a prophetic role, as Samuel Balentine demonstrated over twenty years ago.24 There is, however, another way to interpret this text, one inspired by Codex Alexandrinus. There, Jer 15:1 appears in the following form, "Though Moses, Samuel, and Aaron stood before me..." Aaron now appears on the scene. That threesome calls to mind another triumvirate attested in the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel 14:14 reads, "Even if Noah, Dan'el, and Job, these three were in it, they would save only their own lives by their righteousness." Such could be the function of Moses, Samuel, and Aaron in Jer 15:1: they are not present as either intercessors or prophets, but rather as noteworthy religious heroes of Israel's past.25 So, when one examines those prophetic texts that name Moses, we find him as intercessor or religious hero in Jer 15, as religious leader in Isa 63, as provider of Torah in Mai 4, and as religious leader again in Mic 6—though this time along with Miriam and Aaron. In no case is he a characterized as enacting a basic prophetic role. The search for the Mosaic needle in the prophetic haystack needs, however, to canvas more texts than simply those in which his name appears. There can be little doubt that Hos 12:13 refers to Moses: "By a prophet the LORD brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded." The first line surely refers to Moses, but the second line is ambiguous. Do these two lines refer to Moses alone, or do they allude to two individuals, namely, Moses and Joshua? I am not sure how to answer that question. But it does seem clear that the notion of Moses or Joshua as prophet here is different from the so-called Mosaic prophet in Deut 18. Some scholars have elected another tack, namely, maintaining that there is a Mosaic quality to certain prophetic literature. The arguments have focused on the three major prophetic books: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and

24. S. Balentine, "The Prophet as Intercessor: A Reassessment,"^! 103 (1984): 161-73. 25. Ibid.

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Ezekiel.26 The following studies are indicative: O'Kane on Isaiah, Seitz on Jeremiah, and Levenson, McKeating, and Kohn on Ezekiel.27 My general responses to these proposals are two-fold. First, I doubt that the Mosaic character of these books is as strong as has been suggested. For example, putative points of comparison or parallels such as the claim that Moses' experience of God on Sinai parallels Ezekiel's vision of destruction in Ezek 9-11 (so McKeating), or the claim that the writing of Jeremiah's book parallels the inscription of Mosaic Torah (so Seitz), are simply not convincing.28 Second, even if there are some connections between the figure of Moses and one or another of these books, I would offer several propositions concerning those similarities. First, it would appear that those responsible for the composition of these three books, namely, individuals working in the early Persian period, may have introduced elements into these books that link the prophet or his work to that of Moses. Second, these "Mosaic" elements do not appear integral to the work of the prophet in question. Here I would differ from the positions of Clements and Seitz, who have argued that Jeremiah is depicted as a prophet like Moses, both of whom function as covenant mediators. When, in Deut 34, Moses is assumed to be a prophet, he is not characterized as a mediator. Instead, he is viewed as a wonderworker. Third, such editorial work by those who created the prophetic books is, in some measure, ironic. What 26. One might argue that each of these books has been influenced by a deuteronomistic hand, but each was probably affected by a different hand. Cf. R. Kugler, "The Deuteronomists and the Latter Prophets," in Those Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (ed. L. Schearing and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 127-44. 27. M. O'Kane, "Isaiah: A Prophet in the Footsteps of Moses," JSOT69 (1996): 29-51; C. Seitz, "The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah," ZA W 101 (1989): 3-27; J. Levenson, Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40-48 (HSM 10; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976), 37-49; H. McKeating, "Ezekiel the 'Prophet Like Moses,' "JSOT61 (1994): 97-109; R. Kohn, "A Prophet Like Moses: Rethinking Ezekiel's Relationship to the Torah," ZAW 114 (2002): 236-54. Less typical is L. Alonso Schokel ("Jeremias como anti-Moises," in De la Torah au Messie: Etudes d'exegese et d'hermeneutique bibliques offertes a Henri Gazelles pour ses 25 annees d'enseignement a I'lnstitut Catholique de Paris [Octobre 1979] [ed. M. Carrez, J. Dore, and P. Grelot; Paris: Desclee, 1981], 24554), who argues that Jeremiah, though influenced by the figure of Moses, is cast in opposition to Moses, since, among other things, Jeremiah goes from Israel to Egypt. 28. See C. Sharp, Prophecy and Ideology in Jeremiah: Strugglesfor Authority in Deutero-Jeremianic Prose (OTS; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2003), 147-55, who cautions against arguments on behalf of a Mosaic prophet.

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was originally designed by a Deuteronomic redactor (viz. the author of Deut 34) to limit the authority of prophets has become a way of linking various prophets with Moses. Over time, the figure of Moses qua prophet came to have greater significance in prophetic literature than had earlier been the case. IV. Moses as Singular Figure It is beyond the scope of this study to offer a set of hypotheses about the character of Moses in the Hebrew Bible.29 It does seem clear that the perceptions of Moses changed over time. Still, it seems appropriate to reflect briefly about the following question: If not as a prophet, how is Moses presented in the Hebrew Bible? S. Dean McBride has recently argued that the Pentateuch is grounded on three fundamental affirmations, one of which underscores Moses as the primary agent through whom God communicates with Israel. In making this argument, McBride writes: Neither in his investiture nor in the political encounters that follow is Moses referred to as Yahweh's "prophet [ndbi3]." That will be Aaron's inaugural role, as spokesman for Moses. Apparently from the outset, Moses himself is co-opted into a higher rank of divine service, to be a corporeal extension of Yahweh's discriminating will. He will personify plenary "God [3elohim]" to both Pharaoh and the Israelites (Exod 4:1516; 7:1-2). Somewhat later, when he is fully tenured as Israel's leader, Moses will be identified as Yahweh's prime "servant [cebed]" (Exod 14:31; cf. Num 12:6—8; Josh 1:2), a role that all Israelites will eventually share (Lev 25:42, 55). A rare, metaphysical honorific is associated with Moses only at the end of his career, when he is entitled a spiritually engrossed "man of the gods [}is hffelohimY (Deut 33:1; cf. Josh 14:6; Ps 90 [heading]; Sir44:23b-45:2).30

When seen in this way, Moses is clearly not a model for any role within ancient Israelite society. He was neither paradigmatic prophet, priest, nor ruler. Rather, he was deemed to be the proverbial "cult founder," of which there can be only one.

29. For a helpful overview, see G. Coats, Moses: Heroic Man, Man of God (JSOTSup 57; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988). 30. S. McBride, "The God Who Creates and Governs: Pentateuchal Foundations of Biblical Theology," in The Forgotten God: Perspectives on Biblical Theology: Essays in Honor ofPaulJ. Achtemeier on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (ed. A. Das and F. Matera; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 19-20.

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I have suggested that the book of Deuteronomy offers mixed messages about Moses as prophet. Deuteronomy 18 offers no unequivocal evidence of Moses as the first in a line of prophets, in part because it is not at all clear that Deut 18:15 presents Moses as a prophet. Deuteronomy 18:16 deems Moses to have been an intercessor between the people and Yahweh. According to v. 18, a later prophet, possibly Joshua or Jeremiah, will be an individual who possesses Yahweh's words. If Joshua, those words are written in the book of Torah, which is in Joshua's mouth. If Jeremiah, those words are placed in his mouth by the deity. Neither case is similar to Moses, for whom such overtly buccal imagery is foreign. And as for Deut 34, this deuteronomistic or post-deuteronomistic construct was probably designed to diminish the authority of the D'WDJ and to enhance the authority of Torah. This distinction—between an ideological construct and a tradition—helps explain the relative unimportance of Moses as prophet within the Hebrew Bible. Only after most of the prophetic literature had been composed did someone actually claim that Moses had been a prophet. And that claim was made in order to suggest that no other prophets were similar to the titanic figure of Moses, the promulgator of Torah.

THE PLACE OF ISRAELITE PROPHECY IN HUMAN HISTORY Martin J. Buss

Roughly speaking, one can distinguish between microhistory and macrohistory. Most efforts in what is called "historical criticism" have been devoted to microhistory. John Hayes has contributed mightily to this aspect, such as by exploring the connections between Israelite prophets and their immediate context. Yet linking the past with the present implies a long-range view even when it is not explicitly stated, and thus there has also been some interest in the macrohistorical dimension of ancient Israel and the prophets. A macrohistorical perspective has significance not only for the sake of curiosity but especially for the sake of dealing with questions of meaning, and a scholarly look at macrohistory places such implications on the table and subjects them to critical examination. Furthermore, macrohistorical interests can complement and sometimes affect microhistorical efforts, just as the reverse is true. In honor of John Hayes' interest in both Israelite prophecy and his macrohistorical concern for the history of interpretation, the present essay surveys opinions in regard to the macrohistorical position of Israelite prophecy. It begins with 1875, by which time a major scholarly revolution had taken place within the relatively industrialized portions of Europe. This revolution focused largely on microhistory, but it was not independent of larger visions that overthrew more traditional perspectives. These macrohistorical visions generally recognized that Israelite prophecy was not a unique phenomenon, but that some aspects of it belonged with a certain stage of social history. Opinions about what aspects of society brought on prophecy and related phenomena, where and when similar phenomena arose, and how internal and external factors influenced the development of these phenomena, varied.

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Kuenen Abraham Kuenen, a leading figure in biblical studies with expertise in the general history of religions, explicitly discussed the "place" of Israelite prophets in the "religious development" of humanity.1 His provocative thesis was this: "Ethical monotheism is [the prophets'] creation."2 Much of Kuenen's analysis of the prophets was devoted to showing that their important contribution lay not in predictions, especially not in accurate predictions. Instead, their contribution lay in developing a "belief in one, holy, and righteous God."3 In making this judgment, Kuenen presupposed a view that the religious path of humanity led from some form of polytheism to monotheism. This view had been suggested to David Hume and to others by the discovery of small-scale religions that were not monotheistic.4 Furthermore, microhistorical analyses had shown that the presence of a clear monotheism in Israel prior to the great prophets was doubtful. Kuenen's link of monotheism with ethics was, of course, grounded in the very evident ethical concerns of the prophets. To be sure, in a critique of Kuenen's view, it must be pointed out that there are many kinds of monotheism. For instance, gods and spirits have often been treated as aspects, emanations, or underlings of a comprehensive deity or divine reality. (Hartmann, to be discussed below, called this "henotheism.") At the most, then, the prophets developed a special kind of monotheism. Furthermore, there are many kinds of ethics. Thus it would be problematic to say that the prophets were "more" ethical than others. At some level, Kuenen probably supposed that ethical monotheism arose as the consequence of an inner drive toward progress (then widely assumed), but he pointed to some specific factors that favored its emergence. Important among these factors was love poetry, for, not unreasonably, he had dated the Song of Songs and Ps 45 to a time before the eighth century.5 These songs showed him that the prophetic message had a popular background that highlighted love, which he associated with monotheistic devotion. 1. A. Kuenen, The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel (London: Longmans, Green &Co., 1877), 549-93. 2. Ibid., 585. 3. Ibid. 4. R. Pettazzoni, Essays on the History of Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1954), 2. 5. A. Kuenen, The Religion of Israel to the Fall of the Jewish State (3 vols; London: Williams & Norgate, 1874), 1:372-73.

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A few years later, in a well-known study, Kuenen discussed the relation between "national" and "universal" religions. A differentiation between these two types had arisen among historians of religion, usually with the idea that universal religions represent a higher form. Kuenen pointed out that the major universal religions grew out of well-developed national religions that continued to have their own lives. He accordingly reached this conclusion: "That which is destined to penetrate and inspire every nationality...must have been tested and matured in the life of a people."6 In particular, he noted that the Israelite prophets represented a transition from national to universal religion. The prophets affirmed a strong link between YHWH and Israel, but then- message also had elements of universalism. A precipitating cause for this latter aspect lay in the fact that Israel came into contact with the larger world from the eighth century on.7 Assessments by Nonbiblical Specialists After 1875 In the same year in which Kuenen discussed the relation between national and universal religions (1882), Eduard von Hartmann described an evolutionary process that moved from henotheistic "naturalism," with a focus on the world around us, to "supernaturalism," with a sharp critique of actual existence. According to Hartmann, supernaturalism could appear either in the form of abstract monism—the belief that there is a single true reality (such as in India)—or in some form of monotheism. Within the sphere of the latter option, the Israelite prophets championed primitive monotheism, and Christianity, with "tritheistic henotheism," furnished a "realistic redemption religion." (He represented as a concluding synthesis his own "concrete monism," according to which there is one Spirit concretized variously in individual persons.8) Also at this time, a number of studies pointed to the connection between universality and individuality. For instance, James Clarke noted the phenomenon that "catholic" (internationally open) religions were each taught by a "prophet" or "inspired soul," that is, by an individual.9 As examples, he referred to Moses and the prophets, the Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Jesus, and Mohammed, all of whom had a strong moral emphasis.10 6. A. Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religions (New York: Scribner's, 1882), 9. 7. See ibid, 246, 113, 119, and 129. 8. E. von Hartmann, Das religiose Bewusstsein der Menschheit im Stufengang seiner Entwickelung (Berlin: Duncker, 1882). 9. J. Clarke, Ten Great Religions (2 vols; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1883), 2:29. 10. Ibid., 2:31.

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Others linked social with individual developments so that they were seen as integrally connected. George Galloway said that at the tribal, prenational state, "self-consciousness is relatively undeveloped, and the spiritual life does not definitely contrast itself with or oppose itself to the natural world" and human "desires do not rise above the sensuous."11 Subsequently, "the development of self-consciousness through a higher social organization makes it possible for the individual to become a determining factor in the advance of religion" on the basis of "inner experience."12 For instance, Israelite prophets rejected "sensuous and impure conceptions" of God.13 In terms of the timing of this development, Galloway remarked that "it is curious and significant" that during the period from the eighth to the sixth century B.C.E., "a wave of religious influence seemed to pass over people widely separated in space," with important figures in Israel, China, and Greece, and somewhat earlier in Persia.14 George Foot Moore expressed a very similar point of view. As successor to "local and natural religions," he described a "new kind of religion," which is "not... satisfied with the good things of this life" but seeks a more radical "salvation." These "address themselves to the individual, and are therefore, logically ways of salvation for all."15 They began in the period from the eighth to fifth centuries—the age of the "Hebrew prophets," among others—during which there was "a maximum in the tides of religion."16 Cautions about evolutionary schemes, however, were raised from the turn of the century on. For instance, Morris Jastrow made the point that religions long predating the turn of the era may also have been propelled by important individual figures, although their role is now unknown or obscure, and that later religions developed along more or less popular (not sophisticated) lines, so that a contrast between individual-based and collective religions should not be overdrawn.17 Furthermore, a reaction against the idea of progress set in during the first half of the twentieth century in the non-Marxist West. Accordingly, nontemporal 11. 1904), 12. 13. 14. 15. 1 :viii. 16. 17.

G. Galloway, Studies on the Philosophy of Religion (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 124-25. Ibid., 140. G. Galloway, The Philosophy of Religion (New York: Scribner's, 1914), 135. Ibid., 133-34. G. F. Moore, History of Religions (2 vols.; New York: Scribner's, 1913-19): Ibid., viii-ix. M. Jastrow, The Study of Religion (London: Scott, 1901), 90.

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visions—often called "phenomenological"—came to predominate in the general study of religion. Max Weber presented both a phenomenological and a macrohistorical view of prophecy in posthumously published essays. Along the former line, he denned a "prophet" as "the bearer of a purely personal charisma, who proclaims a religious teaching or a divine command on the strength of his mission."18 Israelite prophets constituted for him a notable example of this category.19 Weber's macrohistorical perspective dealt with "religious rejection of the world." He said that in a large number of cases "prophetic and salvation religions lived not only in an acute, but in a continuing, tension with their world and its orders... This tension increased in sharpness to the degree that their ethics was in principle rational and oriented toward inner religious values as means of salvation." He characterized "rationality" as that which has been "sublimated through knowledge." In particular, he held that ritualism was transformed by prophets into a religiousness that stresses attitude.20 Weber's outlook was not necessarily rational, in a cold sense of that word, but he repeatedly spoke of religious leaders, including prophets, as "intellectuals." Within their orientations, he distinguished between an active prophetic orientation, according to which human beings are tools of God, and a more passive, mystical orientation, according to which they "have" God or are vessels of God.21 Yet even the active orientation of Israelite prophets stood in contrast with political realism because of their "utopian world indifference."22 Without referring to previous discussions and without offering an explanation, Rudolf Otto outlined what he described as independent parallel developments in the history of religion. As he saw it, Greece, Israel, Persia, India, and China witnessed during a small number of centuries an ethicization and spiritualization of religion, either rational or mystical.23 The topic of macrohistory was broached again by Karl Jaspers in 1949. He was aware that the contemporaneity of major figures had already been noted by other scholars, such as by Lasaulx in 1856, but he 18. M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (2 vols.; Tubingen: Mohr, 1999 [original version 1913]), 2:177. 19. M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsdtzezur Religionssoziologie (3 vols.; Tubingen: Mohr, 1920), 3:309. 20. Ibid., 1:541-^2. 21. Ibid., 1:257, 538. 22. Ibid., 3:342. 23. R. Otto, Vischnu-Narayana (Jena: Diederichs, 1923 [original version 1917]), 23-29.

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wished to place this phenomenon into a comprehensive philosophical perspective. He held that humanity has a single "origin" and a single "goal," although the realization of the goal is not itself historical. The origin of humanity lies in an unconscious present. The goal is a concord of souls, in which they view one another in love and with unlimited understanding.24 The turning point from origin to goal occurred in cultural developments surrounding 500 B.C.E., which, he believed, constituted the "axis of world history." Specifically, in an extensive area from China to Greece (including Israel, with its prophets), human beings became deeply conscious of reality as a whole, of themselves, and of their limits. Aware of the terribleness of their world and of their own powerlessness, they sought liberation and redemption, experiencing unconditionality in the depth of their own selfhood and in transcendence.25 Jaspers pointed out that this "spiritualization" was associated with a sociological development, which included the rise of small states and cities and extensive warfare and communications and which soon led to the rise of empires.26 Recognizing a catastrophe, human beings sought to respond positively. Yet the new perspective was also bent on destroying older culture.27 Jaspers indicated that the social side contributed, at least, to the mental side of the axial age, but the relationships between these two sides remained underexplored. Instead, most of Jasper's study was devoted to the examination of cultures before and after the crucial age in support of the view that this age indeed constituted an axis. The notion of an axis was countered by Arnold Toynbee, whose work is of interest here even though it dealt with Hebrew prophecy only to a limited extent. In the seventh volume of his major study of history (modifying his earlier position somewhat), Toynbee argued that spiritual and secular values are opposed to each other. Spiritual advance can therefore take place only during civilizational catastrophes, which constitute interregna between successive civilizations.28 In history, there have been rhythmic alternations between spiritual and secular emphases. This process has moved by steps from local to more or less universal complexes, but it did not proceed contemporaneously in all parts of the world. There is, then, no single axis. 24. K. Jaspers, Vom Ursprung undZiel der Geschichte (Munich: Piper, 1949), 17-18. 25. Ibid., 20. 26. Ibid., 23-24. 27. Ibid., 24. 28. A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History (7 vols.; London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 7:425.

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In a more limited analysis, Eric Voegelin focused primarily on the Near East and Greece, with briefer attention to China and references to India. He held that, after antecedents in Egypt, Israel, especially in its prophets, embodied a "leap in being.. .through the discovery of transcendent being as the source of order in man and society." This leap involved a tension with ordinary social structures, so that for Voegelin "history is the Exodus from civilization."29 In Greece, a similar process gave more attention to the individual.30 Voegelin rejected the idea of an "epoch," but he held that one aspect of the "epochal" process just described was the formation of ecumenes (or empires), both in the West and in China. In all of this, Voegelin saw a movement toward differentiation.31 Thomas Altizer—famous for his proclamation of the death (not: nonreality) of God—emphasized the internal aspect of the historical movement. He argued that prophetic eschatology and the mysticism of India both proceeded from a religious negation of the claims and values of "reality."32 In the case of the prophets, this was due to "a heightened apprehension of deity," one side of which is the "mysterium tremendum" that had been famously described by Otto.33 Altizer held that the "tremendum" continues to the present day in "the experience of nothingness."34 He concluded that, just as the Mahayana Buddhist comes to recognize Nirvana in the ordinary world, so "the Christian must come to know the Nothing as the hither side of God."35 Gerald Heard emphasized that human beings have both an inward and an outward look and saw an alternation between the prominence of the two, both of which he valued.36 Of the five human ages he described, the second was "heroic"—outward directed—while the third, beginning in the first millennium B.C.E., had an inward focus. This inward focus could be either ascetic, such as in India, or self-accusing, such as in Hebrew prophecy.37 The succeeding "modern" age turned again toward a one-sidedly outward orientation. Currently, he judged, "the West...is

29. E. Voegelin, Order and History (4 vols.; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956-74), 1:123, 133. 30. Ibid., 2:169. 31. Ibid., 4:312. 32. T. J. J. Altizer, Oriental Mysticism and Biblical Eschatology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), 68. 33. Otto, Vischnu-Ndrayana, 49, 78. 34. Altizer, Oriental Mysticism, 174. 35. Ibid., 199. 36. G. Heard, The Five Ages of Man (New York: Julian, 1963), 39. 37. Ibid., 42.

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learning that economic and scientific advance without equal psychological advance must be disastrous."38 Referring only to Weber and Voegelin among the interpreters mentioned so far, Robert Bellah provided a brief, but oft-cited, sociological view of religious evolution.39 In his discussion of religions that began after ca. 1000 B.C.E., he said that, with a universalist tendency, they sought salvation or enlightenment beyond ordinary existence. This search presupposed a deep sense of selfhood, although, in his opinion, Buddhism seems to furnish an exception to this because of its denial of a substantial self.40 Bellah connected this new stage with the emergence of partial literacy and "the differentiation of a religious elite."41 By speaking of "differentiation," he hinted at the phenomenon, which had often been discussed before then, that a division of labor tends to increase with the growth of a society. The differentiation, he said, "brought about.. .a new possibility of conflict and change onto the social scene," although religions often continued to legitimate and reinforce "the existing social order."42 The so-called "axial age" became the focus of a loosely connected group of historians, who collaborated to produce an issue of the journal Daedalus. Benjamin Schwartz described that period as being marked by "a strain toward transcendence."43 For instance, ethical ideas in Judea, Greece, and China had "a pathos of negation and constraint vis-a-vis the focus of human pride and passion."44 In his essay on China, Schwartz noted that the traditional "Book of Poetry" contained sharp complaints about the ruling nobles.45 Romila Thapar furnished an especially detailed account of social and political conditions in the space and time of the Buddha.46 Thapar argued that traditional village-type communities were in the process of being superseded by a system of complex classes, with large estates, hired laborers, and wealthy traders. Within their own 38. Ibid., 57. 39. R. Bellah, "Religious Evolutions," American Sociological Review 29 (1964): 358-74. 40. Ibid., 367 with n. 34. 41. Ibid., 368. 42. Ibid. 43. B. I. Schwartz, "The Age of Transcendence," Daedalus 104, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 3. 44. Ibid., 5. 45. B. I. Schwartz, "Transcendence in Ancient China," Daedalus 104, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 60. 46. R. Thapar, "Ethics, Religion, and Social Protest in the First Millennium B.C. in Northern India," Daedalus 104, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 119-32.

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organizations, ascetic sects—including Buddhism—rejected much of the class structure and practiced a high degree of egalitarianism. Monasteries, however, did not reflect the populace as such but were centers of learning, which soon became literate. Although Thapar did not refer to the Israelite prophets as parallels, it is apparent that both in India and in Israel unhappiness with social stratification was present among the religious elite; sociological and personal/reflective dimensions were, then, not mutually exclusive. A biological assessment of prophecy was made in an often rightly criticized but rather popular work by Julian Jaynes. He knew from experience and from reports of others that human beings—especially often, schizophrenics—can hear a disembodied "voice" and that such hearing can be brought about by stimulating a certain part of the right temporal lobe of the brain.47 Jaynes hypothesized that the two sides of the brain were at one time less closely connected than they are now. To judge, however, from the growth of the brain in children, it is more likely that, if there was indeed a change, the two sides have become somewhat more rather than less specialized in human history. Furthermore, in the Homeric literature, which Jaynes cited as a parallel to prophetic literature, deities appear not as voices but as visible figures. His own experience of hearing a voice indicates that it is not just an ancient phenomenon.48 Critique aside, Jaynes held, rightly or wrongly, that prophetic consciousness represented an old stage of human consciousness beyond which Ecclesiastes has advanced.49 In the same year (1976), William Tremmel provided a better psychological account. He pointed out that human beings live not only in the actual world but, through their imaginative consciousness, in a world they desire or fear. They are continuously aware that things are not as they like. Awareness of self includes, on the negative side, a dissatisfaction with the self. "The human condition," then, is "the condition of estrangement."50 Tremmel noted that this estrangement became acute during the "kairotic episode," between 800 and 500 B.C.E., in Iran, Palestine, India, and China. A growth in consciousness can in part explain this development.

47. J. Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), 86, 88, 96, 108. 48. Ibid., 86. 49. Ibid., 296. 50. W. C. Tremmel, Religion: What Is It? (New York: Holt, Reingard & Winston, 1976), 33-34.

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Sociological assessments of the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. reached a high point, at least in terms of fullness of discussion, in a collective work edited by S. N. Eisenstadt.51 Approaches employed in the work were highly varied. Some of them, such as the one offered by Weber, applied empathy (Versteheri) and thus presented to a large extent internal views. Others looked primarily for external factors. Contributors to this work were not committed to the notion that there was indeed an "axial" age. Rather, they were asked to address developments during the period in question as well as, in one contribution, to describe the emergence of Islam. Eisenstadt himself, in introducing each major part of the collective work, spoke of a "breakthrough" in the axial age. Specifically, he pointed out that characteristic of many visions during this period was "a basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders."52 He described the transcendental order as "moral or metaphysical"; carriers of this vision were "a new type of elite," which he could call "intellectuals."53 Yet one can wonder whether this description exaggerates the transition. Moral and metaphysical (or quasi-metaphysical) orientations have always been present in human life, and, among these, the moral ones at least stand inherently in some tension with actuality. Critical orientations were then not created but, rather, sharpened by an elite which, through role specialization, could devote its mental and emotional energy to them. In fact, in the volume under discussion, Cho-Yun Hsu described an "important breakthrough" in China already about 1000 B.C.E. with the idea of a supreme being concerned with morality.54 Mark Elvin's contribution followed a similar line in discussing the first millennium B.C.E. for China.55 Of course, a major question is why many of the perspectives that emerged during the first millennium B.C.E. were sharply critical of actual existence. Explanations that were offered by contributors to this volume referred to four major considerations, each of which involved both internal and external aspects. One consideration presented was that reflexivity (self-consciousness or "second-order thinking," i.e., thinking about 51. S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (Albany: State University of New York Press), 1986. 52. S. N. Eisenstadt, "The Axial Age Breakthroughs—Their Characteristics and Origins," in Eisenstadt, ed., Axial Age Civilizations, 1. 53. Ibid., 3,4, 22. 54. Cho-Yun Hsu, "Historical Conditions of the Emergence and Crystallization of the Confucian System," in Eisenstadt, ed., Axial Age Civilizations, 307-10. 55. M. Elvin, "Was There a Transcendental Breakthrough in China?," in Eisenstadt, ed., Axial Age Civilizations, 325-59.

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thinking) increased, and reflexivity inherently includes self-criticism.56 Although this represents an internal dimension, it was affected by organizational and in this sense external factors. These included role specialization, which gives thinkers time to think, and literacy, either as a facilitator of professional thought57 or as a means of communicating such thought.58 Another consideration was that traditional tribal organizations were breaking down and social stratification was becoming acute. This process was aided by the use of iron, which was a significant technological advance for agriculture and war.59 In response to this condition, a number of the emerging orientations opposed social inequalities within their own religious organizations, which largely ignored castes and allowed for decisions based on community discussion,60 and to some extent acted counter to inequalities in the larger society.61 A concern for widows, orphans, and other destitutes presupposed a breakdown of connections beyond the nuclear family,62 and also assumed, apparently, an internal orientation of concern. Confucius' own unsettled social position can illustrate an ambiguous situation, which combined external and internal aspects: partial marginality and reflectivity.63 A third consideration was that elites competed with each other.64 Members of the moral, spiritual, or intellectual elite could compete with 56. P. Machinist, "On Self-Consciousness in Mesopotamia," in Eisenstadt, ed., Axial Age Civilizations, 184; Y. Elkana, "The Emergence of Second-Order Thinking in Classical Greece," in ibid., 63; Elvin, "Was There a Transcendental Breakthrough in China?," 332. 57. Elkana, "The Emergence of Second-Order Thinking in Classical Greece," 45. 58. H. Tadmor, "Monarchy and the Elite in Assyria and Babylonia: The Question of Royal Accountability," in Eisenstadt, ed., Axial Age Civilizations, 209; M. Stone, "Eschatology, Remythologization, and Cosmic Aporia," in ibid., 242; S. N. Eisenstadt, "The Axial Age Breakthrough in China and India," in ibid., 297; S. J. Tambiah, "The Reflexive and Institutional Achievements of Early Buddhism," in ibid., 456. 59. H. Kulke, "The Historical Background of India's Axial Age," in Eisenstadt, ed., Axial Age Civilizations, 385. 60. Tambiah, "The Reflexive and Institutional Achievements of Early Buddhism," 468. 61. Elvin discussed Confucian theory, which stressed education and a nobility of character rather than of birth. Elvin, "Was There a Transcendental Breakthrough in China?," 332. 62. H. Kippenberg, "The Role of Christianity in the Depolitization of the Roman Empire," in Eisenstadt, ed., Axial Age Civilizations, 279. 63. Hsu, "Historical Conditions of the Emergence and Crystallization of the Confucian System," 312. 64. Eisenstadt, "The Axial Age Breakthroughs," 4.

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political and commercial leaders, as well as with each other. This competition could take place both for internal (reflective, moral) reasons and as expression of an external power play.65 Finally, a consideration that explains the geographical locations of these developments lay in the observation (not completely novel) that they occurred in the "interstices between great kingdoms."66 That is, the emerging viewpoints were in close contact with powerful cultures, but not an integral part of them.67 Interactions with (semi)nomads were suggested as significant as well.68 It would be interesting to know how a reasonably orthodox Marxist history of religions would treat the place of Hebrew prophecy in human history, but I have been unable to find such a history. Marx and Engels themselves did not address this issue, although they dealt with early Christianity in an appreciative way. Certainly, Hebrew prophecy does not fit the Marxist ideal of revolution from below and may represent a human sensitivity that contradicts a materialist conception of life. At the same time, it should be noted that prophetic sensitivity is contrary also to the principle of self-interest on which capitalist theory and much of microhistorical scholarship has been built. Indeed, the religions originating at that time constitute a puzzle for both Marxist and capitalist orientations, which are "modern." Assessments by Biblical Scholars After Kuenen, only a small number of Hebrew Bible specialists endeavored to assess the place of Hebrew prophecy in human history. When W. Robertson Smith described the prophets' "place in history," he was referring to local history.69 The attempts at a large-scale perspective that did take place interacted, of course, with visions that had been presented by general historians of religion. They also often lagged behind. Publishing simultaneously with Kuenen, Bernhard Duhm believed that Micah and Amos raised religion from the sphere of "nature" to that of 65. C. Meier, "The Emergence of an Autonomous Intelligence Among the Greeks," in Eisenstadt, ed., Axial Age Civilizations, 79. 66. Ibid., 81 (emphasis added). 67. Ibid., and Eisenstadt, "The Axial Age Breakthrough in China and India," 303. 68. Hsu, "Historical Conditions of the Emergence and Crystallization of the Confucian System," 311; Kulke, "The Historical Background of India's Axial Age," 390-91; cf. Eisenstadt, "The Axial Age Breakthrough in China and India," 303. 69. W. R. Smith, The Prophets of Israel and Their Place in History to the Close of the Eighth Century (New York: Appelton), 1882.

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"ethics."70 In doing so, he presupposed the view, held by Kant and Hegel, that early human notions were oriented toward "nature," including the given social order, and thus not toward the freedom of "reason" or "spirit." Subjective individuality was highlighted, not only by Duhm, but perhaps even more strongly by Julius Wellhausen. He did not limit its importance to one stage of history, but held that the "life element of the prophets is the storm of world history, which blows away the ordered arrangements of human beings." Specifically, the prophets "speak from a spirit that judges all and is judged by no one," and thus not by any established order. True revelation, he held, comes to "the individual"; it lives in the prophet's "divine/human I." A paradoxical synthesis then arises: "the subjective in the highest sense, removed from all ordinances... is the truly objective."71 Hermann Gunkel did present an evolutionary perspective in regard to individuality. Holding that it is "a law" of human development that an emphasis on social bonds is succeeded by relatively greater individualism, he noted that individual figures played a significant role in India and early Greece during a time contemporaneous with the great Israelite prophets. These "listened alone to the voice of God in their breast," rather than to established authority, and provided a basis for valuing individuals. To be sure, Gunkel balanced this emphasis with a kind of socialism.72 In relation to other religions, he recognized both comparability and peculiarity.73 Others were more reserved toward a macrohistorical view. Ernst Sellin acknowledged the prominence of a history-of-religions approach in his time but argued that comparison shows the absolute uniqueness of Hebrew prophecy.74 W. F. Lofthouse exhibited ambivalence. He acknowledged that "from the sixth century onward, a new leaven was working in the world"; this statement implied a degree of comparability. He judged, nevertheless, that "no serious attempt has ever been made to show anything comparable.. .with the profound religious insight" of the three great prophets of the exile, the Psalter, and the book of Job.75 W. O. E. 70. B. Duhm, Die Théologie derPropheten (Bonn: Marcus), 103. 71. J. Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels (Berlin: Reimer, 1878), 1:413-14. 72. H. Gunkel, "Individualismus und Sozialismus im Alten Testament," RGG 3:493-97. 73. See M. J. Buss, Biblical Form Criticism in Its Context (JSOTSup 274; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 211. 74. E. Sellin, Der alttestamentliche Prophetismus (Leipzig: Deichert, 1912), 197, 220-50. 75. W. F. Lofthouse, Israel After the Exile (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), 61.

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Oesterley and Theodore H. Robinson envisioned a movement in religious history toward monotheism but did not refer to developments that were simultaneous with Israel.76 Rejecting comparability sharply, Martin Noth asserted that "in the very center of the history of 'Israel' there are phenomena for which there is no possibility for comparison."77 A different outlook was represented by Stanley A. Cook, who had a background in the general history of religions. He observed that "the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. marks a distinct landmark when ethics, psychology, and philosophy begin to be prominent, along with a new consciousness—in Israel—of the Divine Reality."78 He also considered the possibility that the biblical development can shed light upon processes that were taking place elsewhere. Brief references to the fact that major changes, partly comparable to the prophets, took place near the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. were thereafter made by the following: Charles Francis Whitley, dealing with the exilic prophets;79 D. Winton Thomas, regarding the sixth century as a "creative epoch in the history of Israel," with an interest in individual responsibility and "the first explicit formulation of a unique ethical monotheism";80 Robert H. Pfeiffer, seeing a "revolutionary step" hi the sixth century;81 Charles F. Pfeiffer, stating that "between 600 and 400 B.C. [the era covered by him] the world received much of its present religious and philosophical inheritance";82 and Georg Fohrer, mentioning parallels in Greece, India, and China between 800 and 500 B.C.E. and holding that in Israel the prophets led the way.83 Their studies, however, did not pursue in detail the implications that might arise on the basis of recognizing such parallels. A detailed comparison of prophecy has been offered only by H. H. Rowley, who had spent time in China. His treatment of Chinese, especially Confucian, ideas and processes was opposed to those who "think 76. W. O. E. Oesterley and T. H. Robinson, Hebrew Religion (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1930). 77. M. Noth, Geschichte Israels (Gôttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1950), 3. 78. S. A. Cook, The "Truth " of the Bible (Cambridge: Heffer, 1938), 231. 79. C. F. Whitley, The Exilic Age (London: Longmans & Green, 1957), 8,26-29, 152. 80. D. W. Thomas, "The Sixth Century BC: A Creative Epoch in the History of Israel," Journal of Semitic Studies 6 (1961): 45-46. 81. R. H. Pfeiffer, Religion in the Old Testament: The History of a Spiritual Triumph (New York: Harper, 1961), 10. 82. C. F. Pfeiffer, Exile and Return (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1962), 7. 83. G. Fohrer, Geschichte der israelitischen Religion (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968), 294-95.

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of the prophets of Israel as quite unique in the history of religions."84 Rowley did not, however, attempt a large-scale view, and it is not clear how his comparisons illuminated either the Israelite or the Chinese phenomena. For instance, his data showed that at least some human beings have a sense of justice that prompts them to oppose overweening power even at some danger to themselves, but this theoretical point was not stated as such. A fairly explicit rejection of theory appeared in Peter Ackroyd's work on the sixth century. After acknowledging that this century "was an epoch in which a variety of important events took place.. .throughout the world," he went on to say that only direct "interconnections" between phenomena should be considered.85 In other words, only microhistory should be pursued. Still, from the 1960s on, the use of comparative data entered extensively into studies of biblical prophecy, although they largely ignored the major religions. The data that were considered were drawn primarily from oral cultures or from oral traditions within cultures that also employed writing. These data indeed showed that the place of prophecy in human history is not restricted to a narrow period. The relevant studies cannot be surveyed here, but it should be mentioned that one of the oldest—by J. Lindblom, who stood in a Scandinavian tradition with a broad outlook —was semicomprehensive. It covered shamanism, the Near East (including Islam), Iran, Greece, and Europe up to its time, and declared that "prophetic phenomena...are to be found everywhere in the religious world"; India and China were not mentioned as locations, however.86 My own macrohistorical observations (in part indebted to the fact that I was born in China) appeared in a number of studies from 1967 on. I will list here only their topics: receptivity (apparently not limited to any particular time), role differentiation (in a broad sense evolutionary), self-transcendence as an aspect of selfhood (to some extent affected by social development), social criticism (reacting to conditions), and (to a lesser extent) literacy.87 Furthermore, I have wondered in what way the 84. H. H. Rowley, Prophecy and Religion in Ancient China and Israel (London: University of London, 1956), 2. 85. P. R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968), 7,9. 86. J. Lindblom, Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1962), 1-46. 87. M. J. Buss, "The Meaning of History," in Theology as History (ed. J. Robinson and J. Cobb; New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 135-54; idem, The Prophetic Word ofHosea (Berlin: Tôpelmann, 1969); idem, "Prophecy in Ancient Israel," IDBSup 694-96; idem, "An Anthropological Perspective on Prophetic Call Narratives," Semeia 21 (1981): 9-30; idem, "Selfhood and Biblical Eschatology," ZA W 100, no. 4, Supplement (1988): 214-22; idem, "Hosea as a Canonical Problem: With

340

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

participation of Israelite prophecy in a patriarchal society has affected its very structure, not only specific attitudes toward women.88 This question—implied in many feminist analyses—remains a very open one.89 On the whole, then, larger perspectives were of little interest to Protestant scholars. This fact undoubtedly reflects the one-sidedly particularist philosophy within which Protestantism arose—Gunkel being one of the few Protestants who modified it.90 To be sure, John Hayes, our honorée, has been open to a comprehensive view, as his concern with the history of interpretation implies. During the past two decades, significant macrohistorical studies have been contributed by two Jewish writers and a Roman Catholic. Indeed, Judaism has been less rather than more particularist than classical Protestantism has been, for it has usually acknowledged God's presence with all people. Catholic tradition has been rather open, as well, and has influenced my perspective. One of the Jewish contributors, Baruch Halpern, observed that "Israel's is not the only culture in which consciousness of the disparity between metaphor and the reality it represents emerged during the Axial Period."91 He referred to Buddhism, Taoism, and Greek thought as furnishing parallels. Israelite prophecy, he held, eventuated in an only partially radical "synthetic monotheism," one that accepts plurality.92 Joseph Blenkinsopp, Catholic, described Israelite prophets as "dissident intellectuals" of the axial period. "Intellectuals (not necessarily the same as academics)," he said, have a social function as "creators of symbols and models by which society understands itself and sustains its Attention to the Song of Songs," in Prophets and Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker (éd. S. B. Reid; JSOTSup 229; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 79-92; idem, Biblical Form Criticism; idem, "Toward Form Criticism as an Explication of Human Life: Divine Speech as a Form of Self-Transcendence," in The Changing Face of Form Criticismfor the Twenty-First Century (éd. M. Sweeney and E. Ben Zvi; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 312-25; idem, "Role and Selfhood in Hebrew Prophecy," in Psychology and the Bible (4 vols.; éd. J. Ellens and W. Rollins; Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004), 2:277-94. 88. Implicitly in Buss, The Prophetic Word offfosea, 140, and explicitly in idem, "Hosea as a Canonical Problem," 87-88. 89. See, e.g., A. Brenner, éd., A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets (FCB 8; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). 90. Buss, Biblical Form Criticism, 86-417. 91. B. Halpern, '"Brisker Piper Than Poetry': The Development of Israelite Monotheism," in Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 103. 92. Ibid., 106.

BUSS The Place of Israelite Prophecy in Human History

341

sense of identity and morale."93 True, one can wonder whether "intellectual" is the appropriate designation. "Inspired leaders" may be a better term. In other predominantly oral societies, leaders have also spoken in poetic form.94 In fact, poets have long been thought of as inspired, so that a contrast between prophet and poet is somewhat artificial. For instance, as Blenkinsopp pointed out, the poet Hesiod "claimed divine inspiration in denouncing unjust rulers."95 Stephen Geller, Jewish, presented an important theoretical study. He held that "a profound shift in human sensibility and consciousness" took place in Israel as elsewhere in the axial age and that the shift included a new reflexivity.96 In terms of a social context, he pointed out again that empires supported individuality by loosening traditional bonds, and that major steps were taken in "fringe" situations near, but not in, elaborate societies.97 The final study to be mentioned was by Robert Gnuse, who teaches at a Catholic university.98 Although not Catholic himself, he may have absorbed a religiously open orientation in part from Catholic sources. His work did not deal with prophecy as such but with the rise of monotheism, which he connected closely with the prophetic movement. For the context of this rise, he referred to the so-called axial age and to its social pattern.99 Conclusion Three theoretical implications of the present overview are worth being restated briefly. First, Israelite prophecy is not altogether unique. Second, some (not all) aspects of Israelite prophecy belong to a certain stage of social history and must be interpreted in those terms, even if the precise details of their setting cannot be determined. Third, for an appropriate understanding of prophecy, one should consider both internal and external factors. Much remains to be done. 93. J. Blenkinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 144. 94. Cf. H. M. Chadwick and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature (3 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932^0), 1:340-41, and L. L. Grabbe, Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity), 96. 95. Blenkinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet, 144. 96. S. A. Geller, Sacred Enigmas (London: Routledge, 1996), 177, 179. 97. Ibid., 183-84. 98. R. Gnuse, No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel (JSOTSup 241 ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). 99. Ibid., 132^6.

A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JOHN H. HAYES John H. Hayes as Author Books 1979 1981 1982

1986 1987 1988 1988

1988

Introduction to Old Testament Study. Nashville: Abingdon. Repr. London: SCM Press, 1982. Books of the Bible: A Survey of the Old and New Testaments. Nashville: Graded Press. 3d ed. 1998. (With Carl R. Holladay) Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner's Handbook. Atlanta: John Knox. London: SCM Press. Rev. ed. 1987. Korean translation 1988. (With J. Maxwell Miller) A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. Philadelphia: Westminster. London: SCM Press. Korean translation 1998. (With Stuart A. Irvine) Isaiah, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon. Amos, the Eighth-Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon. (With Paul K. Hooker) A New Chronology for the Kings of Israel and Judah and Its Implication for Biblical History and Literature. Atlanta: John Knox. Korean translation 1991. (With Sara R. Mandell) The Jewish People in Classical Antiquity: From Alexander to BarKochba. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox.

Articles 1967 1968 1973

1975 1975 1975 1977

"Prophetism at Mari and Old Testament Parallels." AThR 49:397-409. "The Usage of Oracles Against Foreign Nations in Ancient Israel." JBL 87:81-92. "The History of the Form-Critical Study of Prophecy." Pages 60-99 in vol. 1 ofSBL Seminar Papers, 1973. Edited by G. W. MacRae. SBLSP. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press. "The Patriarchal Age—Middle or Late Bronze?" Trinity University Studies in Religion 10:11-21. "The Twelve-Tribe Israelite Amphictyony—An Appraisal. " Trinity University Studies in Religion 10:22-36. "Saul, the Unsung Hero of Israelite History." Trinity University Studies in Religion 10:37-47. "The History of the Study of Israelite and Judaean History." Pages 1-69 in Israelite and Judaean History. Edited by J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller. London: SCM Press. Philadelphia: Westminster. Reprinted on pages 7-42 in Israel's Past in Present Research: Essays on Ancient Israelite Historiography. Edited by V. P. Long. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999.

A Select Bibliography of John H. Hayes 1982 1987 1991 1995

1995 1998 1999

2000

2001

2001

2001

343

"Wellhausen as a Historian of Israel." Semeia 25:37-60. "Historical Reconstruction, Textual Emendation, and Biblical Translation: Some Examples from the RSV." Per 14:5-9. (With J. Kuan) "The Final Years of Samaria (730-720 EC)." Bib 72:15381. "A History of Interpretation." Pages 23-52 in Mercer Commentary on the Bible. Edited by W. E. Mills and R. F. Wilson. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press. "Amos's Oracles Against the Nations." RevExp 92:153-67. "Interpreting the Prophets." Pan-Pacific Journal of Theology 1:1-9. "Prophecy and Prophets, Hebrew Bible" (and eighty-one other signed articles). In Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation. Edited by J. H. Hays. 2 vols. Nashville: Abingdon. "Judea: History." Pages 447-55 in Encyclopedia of The Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam. New York: Oxford University Press. "The Beginning of the Regnal Year in Israel and Judah." Pages in 92-95 in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor ofJ. Maxwell Miller. Edited by J. A. Dearman and M. P. Graham. JSOTSup 343. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. (With Paul K. Hooker) "The Year of Josiah's Death: 609 or 610 B.C.E.?" Pages 96-103 in Dearman and Graham, eds. The Land That I Will Show You. "The Historical Setting of The Dead Sea Scrolls." Calliope: Exploring World History 12, no. 4:24-27.

John H. Hayes as Editor 1977-82 Journal of Biblical Literature 1971 -83 Trinity University Monograph Series hi Religion 1977 Old Testament Form Criticism. Trinity University Monograph Series in Religion 2. San Antonio: Trinity University Press. 1977 (With J. Maxwell Miller) Israelite andJudaean History. London: SCM Press. Philadelphia: Westminster. 1999 Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation. 2 vols. Nashville: Abingdon. 2004 Hebrew Bible: History of Interpretation. Nashville: Abingdon. 2004 Methods of Biblical Interpretation. Nashville: Abingdon. 2004 New Testament: History of Interpretation. Nashville: Abingdon.

Dissertations Directed by John H. Hayes 1978

1981

Y. Gitay. "Rhetorical Analysis of Isaiah 40-48." Published as Prophecy and Persuasion: A Study of Isaiah 40-48. Forum Linguistica Biblica 14. Bonn: Linguistica Biblica, 1981. J. A Dearman. "Property Rights hi the Eighth-Century Prophets." Published as Property Rights in the Eighth-Century Prophets: The Conflict and Its Background. SBLDS 106. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988.

344

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past 1983

1988

1988

1988

1989 1989 1990 1991

1991

1992

1992 1993 1994

1998 1998 2000

M. P. Graham. "The Utilization of 1 and 2 Chronicles in the Reconstruction of Israelite History in the Nineteenth Century." Published under the same title. SBLDS 116. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. R. C. Bailey. "A Critical Investigation of 2 Samuel 10-12 and Its Implications for the So-Called Throne Succession Narrative." Published as David in Love and War: The Pursuit of Power in 2 Samuel 10-12. JSOTSup 75. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990. R. K. Duke. "A Rhetorical Analysis of the Books of Chronicles: The Persuasive Appeal of the Chronicler." Published as The Persuasive Appeal of the Chronicler: A Rhetorical Analysis. JSOTSup 88. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990. D. G. Schley. "The Tradition and History of Biblical Shiloh." Published as Shiloh: A Biblical City in Tradition and History. JSOTSup 63. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989. S. A. Irvine. "Isaiah, Ahaz, and the Syro-Ephraimitic Crisis." Published under the same title. SBLDS 123. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. E. B. Whaley. "Samaria and the Samaritans in Josephus's Antiquities 1-11." J. H. Chong. "The Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:1-43) and the Hoshea-Pekah Conflict." J. Galambush. "Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City as Yahweh's Wife." Published under the same title. SBLDS 130. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. C. S. Shaw. "The Speeches of Micah: A Rhetorical-Historical Analysis." Published under the same title. JSOTSup 145. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993. W. P. Brown. "Structure, Role, and Ideology of the Hebrew and Greek Texts of Genesis 1:1-2:3." Published under the same title. SBLDS 132. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993. L. S. Schearing. "Models, Monarchs and Misconceptions: Athaliah and Joash of Judah." P. K. Hooker. "The Kingdom of Hezekiah: Judah in the Geo-Political Context of the Late Eighth Century B.C.E." J. K. Kuan. "Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Israelite/Judean-TyrianDamascene Political and Commercial Syrian-Palestine Relations in the Ninth-Eighth Centuries B.C.E." Published as Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Syria-Palestine. Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 1995. Bible and Literature Series 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. K. Hutchens. "Though Yahweh Was There: The Land in the Book of Ezekiel." D. Mbuwayesango. "The Defense of Zion and the House of David: Isaiah 36-39 Within the Context of Isaiah 1-39." C. Mandolfo. "The Dialogue between Experience and Faith: The Didactic Voice in Psalms of Lament." Published as God in the Dock: Dialogic Tension in the Psalms of Lament. JSOTSup 357. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002.

A Select Bibliography of John H. Hayes 2000 2001 2002 2003 2003

2004

2005

345

S. J. Melcher. "Sexual Intercourse, Land, and Inheritance: A Sociological Context for Leviticus 18." J. Melnyck. "The Four Kingdoms in Daniel 2 and 7." P. P. Trudinger. "The Psalms of the Tamid Service." Published under the same title. VTSup 98. Leiden: Brill, 2003. A. Fritchel. "Women and Magic in the Old Testament." B. E. Kelle. "Hosea 2: Metaphor and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective." Published under the same title. Academia Biblica 20. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2005. M. Bishop Moore. "Philosophy and Practice in Writing a History of Israel." Published under the same title. LHBOTS 435. New York: T. & T. Clark International, 2006. S. E. Haddox. "Metaphor and Masculinity in Hosea."

INDEXES INDEX OF REFERENCES HEBREW BIBLE/ OLD TESTAMENT Genesis 42 11:10 187,250 12:7 15:18-21 250 250 17:4-8 179 18:11 196 18:12 250 26:2-5 140 27:15 140 27:42 139 28:10-22 250 28:13-15 140 28:19 140 29:16-18 32:9-12 140 142 32:28 142 33:6-12 142 34:30 250 35:9-12 35:12 187 187 38:9 42 41:1 41:2 161 141 41:14-36 41:18 161 141 41:32 140 42:13 140 42:15 162 48:19 193 49:3 162 49:22 197 49:23-24 Exodus 3:17

149

4:15-16 4:15 7:1-5 7:1-2 14:4 14:31 19:1-3 19:6 20:14 20:19 21:10-11 27:3 28:38 28:43 29:13 29:22-25 32 32:4 33:3 33:11 34:7 38:3 40:2 40:17

323 312 265 323 265 323 52 312 192 314 185 152 287 249 249 249 139 47 149 316 287 152 52 52

Leviticus 4:8-12 5:1 5:17 10:17 15:16 17:16 20:10 21:7 25:42 25:55

249 287 287 287 187 287 191, 192 28 323 323

Numbers 5:31 7 12:6-8 12:7-8 12:8 14:18 16-18 16:3 16:7 17:10 ET 17:25 18:4-5 20:10 30:16 33:8 Deuteronomy 1:3 1:6 1:30 1:41 2:3 4:34 5:18 6:10-11 6:20-23 8:7-10 9:3 11:10-12 13 13:2 17:15 18

18:9-15

287 152 316,323 317 316 287 287 287 287 287 287 287 287 287 52

313 287 313 313 287 313 192 149 294 149 144 149 314 312,317 312 312-16, 320, 321, 324 314

Index of References 18:9-14 18:15-22 18:15-19 18:15 18:16-22 18:16-18 18:16-17 18:16 18:17 18:18-22 18:18 18:19-22 18:19-20 18:19 18:20-22 18:21-22 21:17 26:5b-9 33:1 34 34:1 34:4a 34:4b 34:5-6 34:5 34:7-9 34:9 34:10-12

34:10 34:11-12

Joshua 1:1 1:2 1:8 7:19 13:24 14:5 14:6 18:22 23:1 24

314 311 314 311-14, 324 314 314 315 313,324 314 314 5,312-15, 324 315 314 314,315 314 314 193 294 323 315-17, 322-24 316 316 316 316 317 316 313,316 311,31517 316,317 316,317

318 323 313 98 318 318 323 128 267 293, 297300

Judges 1:20 1:22 14 14:6 16:1-3 18:31

318 128 194 107 107 288

Ruth 3:16

142

1 Samuel 1:7 1:24 2:4 3:20 4:9 5:6-6:18 6:4 8:13 10:5-13 12 12:7 12:12a 12:19b 15:17

288 288 197 148 188 237 237 194 60 293, 29799 298 298 298 140

2 Samuel 1:17-27 3:10 7:12 7:18-28 8:17 10:4 12:20 15:24-36 15:27 15:36 16 16:22 17:11 18:19-27 18:19 18:27 22:35 23:1

197 148 187 140 281 182 288 281 281 281 182 182 148 281 281 281 197 199

347

24:2

148

1 Kings 1 1:4 1:18 1:28-29 3:7 4:2-^ 4:2 4:5 5:26 6:1 7:12 8:53 8:56 9:13 11:3 12 12:16-21 12:20 12:21 13 14:10 15:18-19 15:29 20 20:32 20:34 22

182 182 182 47 140 281 281 281 163 52 288 318 318,319 162 183 139 128 128 128 123, 129 319 169 319 145 163 163 60

2 Kings 3:9-20 4:18-25 14:23-29 15 15:1 15:8-10 15:19-20 15:24 15:27 16:1-20 16:7-9 17:4 17:4a 17:4b 17:5

145 60 44 145 121 146 176 45 176 204 169 176,206 161 159 159

348

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

2 Kings (cont.) 159 17:6 44 17:13-15 109,319 17:13 45,319 17:22 17:24-28 130 17:28 130 24 18-20 231 18-19 232 18:1-8 232 18:1-2 18:3-19:37 213 232 18:3-5 232 18:6-8 232 18:9-16 232 18:9-12 159 18:9 159 18:10-11 18:13-19:37 55 18:13-16 213 204, 232 18:13 232 18:14-16 232 18:17-37 18:17-19:9a 213 18:17 213 18:19-24 208 19 237 232 19:1-7 19:1 232 232 19:2-5 232 19:6-7 232 19:8-13 19:8 213,232 19:9 219 19:9a 232 232 19:9l>-13 19:9b-35 213 19:14-34 232 232 19:14-19 19:14 213 19:20-24 232 19:21-34 213 19:32-34 232 19:35 213,214, 216-19, 230-32, 236, 237

19:36-37 20:1 20:12-19 21:3 21:10-16 21:10 21:13 22:3 23 23:15 23:19 23:26 24:3 25:18-21

213 111 209 45 45 318 45 252 128 134 128 45 45 282

1 Chronicles 5:34 5:38 6:8 ET 6: 12 ET 6:38 6:53 ET 7:14 9:11 12:28 ET 12:29 15:11 16:39 18:16 24:3 24:6 24:31 27:17 28:6 29:22

283 283 283 283 283 283 288 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 288 283

2 Chronicles 3:2 4:8 13:19 25:14-16 27:1 28:18 31:10 32 32:20

52 152 128 123 283 204 281,283 213, 233, 237 213

32:21 34:8 36:22

216,217 252 55

Ezra 1-6 1:1 2 2:2 2:28 3-6 3:2 3:8 4 5 5:2 7:1-5

269 55 269 269 128 269, 270 269 269 269, 270 269. 270 269 283, 285

Nehemiah 1 7:7-69 7:69 9 10:39-40 11:10-14 11:31 12:47

269 269 152 293 285 283 128 285

Job 8:11 24:15

161 192

Psalms 11:2 18:35 32:5 45 46:9 73:27 78:51 85:3 90 105 105:8-11 105:8 105:42^5 105:44-46

197 197 287 326 197 184 193 287 323 299-301 300 301 300 301

Index of References 105:44-^5 105:47 106 106:6 127:3-5

300 301 293, 299301 300 198

Proverbs 6:32 30:20

192 191, 194

Song of Songs 1:2 2:3 2:4 4:11 4:16 5:1

194 194 194 194 194 194

Isaiah 1:1 1:7-9 1:8 1:9 1:10 1:18 2:1 6:1 6:5 6:7 6:9 7-12 7-11 7:1 7:18 8:12 9:11 10:5-19 10:20-21 10:24-26 11:1-16 11:11 11:15-16 12 13:6 13:22 14:1

56,61 26 208 99 99 62 61, 122 54,56 60 61 60 61 66 61 201 145 205 257 128 201 251 201 201 98 42 42 128

14:28-32 14:28 14:29 14:32 18 19-20 19:1-15 19:2 19:4 19:16-25 20 20:1 20:3-5 21:15 23:5 26:19 28:1-6 28:7-8 28:7 28:9-13 28:14-19 28:14 28:15 28:16-17 28:18-20 28:21 28:22 29 29:14 29:15-16 29:22 30:1-7 30:1-5 30:1-2 30:6-7 30:8-11 30:12 30:13-14 30:15-16 30:17 31:1-5 31:1-3 31:1 31:4-9 32:14

204 54,56 204 205 201 201 205 205 206 206 201,203, 204, 208 54, 56, 61 204 197 201 47 206 207 207 207 206 207 207 207 207 207 207 207 207 207 128 201 206, 207 207, 209 206-208 207 207 208 208 208 206 201, 206, 208 207, 209 208 159

349 36-39 36-37 37 37:36 39:6 40-66 40-55 45:7 45:13 46:3 48:1 51:1 51:17 51:22 56-66 56:5 56:7 57:3 58:1 63 63:11 63:12

24, 54, 56 55,213 237 213,216, 217 111 53, 54, 56 121 125 169 128 127 305 153 153 288 288 288 192 128 321 320 320

Jeremiah 1:2 1:3 1:6 2 2:4 2:20 3:1-13 4:12 4:29 5:7 5:20 7:16 9:1 9:lb 10:16 10:25 13:20-27 13:27 15 15:1 16:5 17:1

54 54 60 167 128 167 167 192 197 192 128 144 192 192 128 128 167 167 321 320, 321 157 117

350

Jeremiah (cont.) 110,146 23:9-40 192 23:10 65, 288 23:11 54 25:3 257, 258 25:8-14 258 25:26 49 26 26:7-34 145 26:7 65 65 26:16 110 27-28 65 27:16 146 28 54 28:1 42 28:3 115 28:8-9 42 28:11 192 29:23 251 30-31 128 30:7 128 30:10 128 30:18 128 31:7 128 31:11 54 32:1 128 33:26 49 36 111 36:4 111 36:6 111 36:8 111 36:10 111 36:11 49 37^3 111 37:2 145 37:11-15 41:5 285 111 43:1 128 46:27-28 31 48:32 49:28-32 260 260 49:28 260 49:30-31 49:31 260 49:32 260 50:4 260 260 50:10

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past 50:18 50:44-45 50:46 51:19 51:41 52 52:24-27

258 258 260 128 258 56 282

Lamentations 1:17 128 128 2:2-3 Ezekiel 1-24 1 1:1 1:2 2:4 6-7 7:26 8:1-18 9-11 11:19-20 11:25 13 13:6 13:7 13:8 13:9 13:19 14:14 16

16:1^3 16:5 16:9 16:13 16:16-22 16:18 16:22 16:23-3 la 16:23-29 16:23 16:30-34 16:30 16:31

255 27 54,251 251 60 253 286 286 322 263, 265 111 110 109 109 109 109 109 321 24, 169, 289, 290, 302 167, 168 169 169 168 167 168 168, 169 168 167 169 171 289, 290 168, 170

16:31a 16:31b 16:31b-34 16:32 16:33-34 16:33 16:34 16:36 16:37 16:40 16:41 16:43 16:60-63 16:61 16:62 20 20:8 20:13 20:33-^4 20:40-44

21:15-16 21:34 22:28 23 23:1-35 23:3 23:5-6 23:7 23:8 23:11 23:14 23:15-18 23:15-16 23:16 23:17 23:18 23:19 23:20 23:21 23:22-35 23:22 23:23

168 171 168, 169, 172, 173 172 168, 172 170 169, 170, 172 169 169 259 168 168 263 289, 290 289, 290 253, 293, 302, 306 302 302 262 256, 263, 265 256 109 109 253, 28890, 302 168 289 289 289, 290 289 289 289 290 289 289 289 289 289 289 289 256 289 289

Index of References 23:24 23:25 23:26 23:28 23:30 23:36 23:37 23:38-39 23:38 23:39 23:46 23:47 23:48 26:1 26:3 26:5 26:7 26:12 28-32 29:17 29:19 30:20 31:1 32:1 32:3 32:17 33-48 33-39 33-37 33:1-20 33:1 33:21-39:29

259, 289 289 289 289 289 289 289, 290 289 289 289 259 259, 289 290 54 259 259 259 259 241 54 259 54 54 54 259 54 241 240, 241 241 253 241 240, 241, 243, 249, 250, 252 241^3 33:21-22 54, 241 33:21 33:23-39:29 241^3 242, 243, 33:23-33 249 242 33:23 262 33:27-29 255, 262, 34-37 264 240 34 242, 243, 34:1-31 249 242 34:1

34:3 34:13 34:16-37:14 34:17-31 34:23-24 34:26-27 34:27 34:28 35:1-36:15

249 262 242 262 263 263 262 262 242, 243, 249, 253 242 35:1 242 35:2-15 36 263 242 36:1-15 36:16-37:14 242, 243, 249 36:16-32 256 242 36:16 36:20 257 36:22 264 264 36:23 36:24 262 264 36:26-28 263, 265 36:26-27 36:27 263 263 36:30 263 36:31-32 264 36:32 265 36:33 263 36:35 264 36:38 244 37:1-14 37:15-28 239, 240, 242-44, 247, 24953 242, 243, 37:15 247 243, 247 37:16-28 244, 247 37:16-17 247 37:16a 244 37:16b 244, 247 37:17 245, 247 37:18-28 245, 247 37:18-19 245, 247 37:18 247 37:19

351

37:20-28 37:20 37:21-28 37:21 37:21a 37:21a-22a 37:21a-23 37:21a-28 37:21b 37:22-28 37:22a 37:22a-23a 37:22b 37:23 37:23a 37:23b 37:24-28 37:24-25 37:24a 37:24b 37:24b-28 37:25 37:25a 37:25b 37:26-28 37:26 37:26a 37:26b 37:27-28 37:27a 37:27b 37:28 38-39

38

38:1-39:29 38:1 38:2 38:3-9 38:4

245, 247 245, 247 245, 247 251 247 246, 247 245-47 247 247 239 247 246, 247 247, 248 249 248 246, 248 245, 246, 248 246, 248, 263 248 248 240 250 248 248 249 246, 248, 262 248 248 246, 248 248 248 244, 248 241, 249, 254, 255, 258, 259, 261-63, 265, 267 262-64, 266 242, 243 242, 244 260 260 259

352

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

Ezekiel (cont.) 259 38:6 260, 262, 38:8 263, 267 259 38:9 260 38:10-12 260, 264 38:11 259, 260 38:12 259 38:15 260 38:19-20 259 38:22 260 39:1 259 39:2 265 39:8 259, 260 39:10 267 39:11 39:21-24 256 265 39:23 263 39:26 265 39:29 53, 54, 56, 40-48 240, 241, 249, 253, 255, 263, 280, 281, 284-86, 288, 290 54 40-43 54, 241 40:1 281,284 40:45-^6 281,284 43:18-19 44 286-90 281,284, 44:6-16 287, 288 44:6-7 289, 290 287 44:6b 287 44:7-8 44:7 287, 289, 290 290 44:8 287, 289 44:10 44:24 289 289 44:67 281,284 48:9-11 Daniel 1-6

303

2 7-12 8 8:5-7 8:8a 8:25b 11 11:9 11:10 11:26 11:29 ll:30b-39 11:40

Hosea 1-3 1 1:1 1:2 1:7 2

2:4 2:5 2:6-7 2:7 2:8 2:9 2:10 2:11-12 2:11 2:12 2:14 2:15 2:18 2:19 3

3:1-5 3:1 4-14 4 4:1-11:11 4:5-9

303-6 303 307 307 307 307 307 308 308 308 308 308 308

177, 188, 189, 191 183 61 40 197 167, 184, 186-88, 194 184 184 184 184 184 184, 188 167, 184 184 184 188 184 167 167 167 42, 187, 188 251 40 189, 190 167 46 177

4:10-14 4:10 4:10b-ll 4:11 4:12 4:12b 4:14 4:15 4:18 5:1 5:3 5:4 5:10 6:2 6:4 6:9 6:10 7 7:1 7:3 7:4 7:5 7:6 7:7 7:8 7:9 7:15-16 7:16 8 8:4-10 8:4-6 8:4 8:5-6 8:5 8:6 8:7-8a 8:8a 8:9 8:10 9:l-7a 9:1-6 9:1 9:2 9:10

167 190 192 190, 191 190, 191 192 28 190, 191 190, 191 177 190, 191 190, 191 177, 205 47 47 177 190, 191 192, 194 192 177 192, 194, 195 177 194 177, 194, 195 195 195 199 177, 199 47 165 159 47, 177 164 47 47 162 162 162 177 42 167 190, 191 42 52

353

Index of References 9:13 9:13a 9:15 9:16 10:1-8 10:5-6a 10:5 10:14 10:15 10:15a 10:15b 11:1 12 12:1-14:9 12:1 12:3 12:4 12:9 12:10 12:12 12:13 12:15 12:15b 13 13:1-14:3 13:1-14:1 13:1-3 13:1-2 13:1

13:lb 13:2-14:1 13:2 13:3 13:4 13:4b 13:7 13:8a 13:9 13:10-11 13:10a 13:12 13:14 13:15-14:1 13:15

159 159 177 162 164 164 47, 159 159 159 159 159 52 73 46 163 163 193 194 47,52 194 321 163 163, 164 158, 160 46 163, 164 47 47 47, 163, 164 163, 164 163 47, 164, 165 47 47,52 47 165 165 160 47 47 160 47 159 160, 163,

13:15a

13:15b 14:1-9 14:1 14:3 14:4 14:4b 14:6 14:9

Amos 1-2 1 1:1-2 1:1

1:2-2:16 1:2

1:3-9:15 1:3-6:14 1:3-2:16 1:3-2:3 1:9-12 1:9-10 1:9 1:11-12 2:4-5

2:4

2:4b

166 4, 159, 161-63, 165 160 46 47, 160, 163-65 287 47 47 47 47, 162

91 144 99 26,45,61, 88, 90, 92, 95,99,121, 123, 133, 134, 144 99 42, 88, 95, 122, 144, 148 99 100 96, 100, 138 107, 114, 116 134 96 163 96 4,91,96, 100, 103, 106, 107, 112,119, 120, 130, 133, 134 106, 109, 112 107, 108

2:6-16 2:6-7 2:6 2:9-1 1 2:9 2:10-12 2:10 2:11 3-^ 3 3:1-^:4 3:1-8 3:1-2 3:1 3:lb 3:2

3:3-8 3:4 3:7 3:8 3:9 3:12 3:13 3:14 3:14b 3:15 4 4:1-3 4:1 4:2 4:4

4:6-12 4:6-11 4:13 5:1-17 5:1-2 5:1 5:2 5:4-5 5:4

115,125, 133, 150 92 135, 136 136 106, 136 134 133 136 100 125 100 100 100, 133, 150 100, 135 134, 135 130, 141, 148 111 123 110,111 100 125 125 125, 137 93, 125 134 92 141 96 92, 100, 125 111 93, 120, 125 99 138 97, 1 14, 125 100 142 100 142 125 115,120

354

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

Amos (cont.) 93, 120, 5:5 134, 144, 146 115,120, 5:6 134 97, 1 14, 5:8-9 125 125 5:8 93 5:10-13 99 5:18 123 5:20 120 5:21-25 150 5:25 121, 126 5:26 146 5:27 125, 157 6 99, 125, 6:1 133-35 92, 152, 6:4-6 157 152, 157 6:6 146 6:7 125 6:8 91, 125, 7-9 132, 133, 137, 139, 141, 150 125, 142, 7 144, 145, 149 100, 101 7:1-9:15 7:1-9:4 99 138 7:1-8:3 137, 141, 7:1^6 150 101, 132, 7:1-3 141 141 7:1 7:2 116,125, 132, 134, 138, 141 141 7:3 101, 132, 7:4-6 141 116

7:5 7:6 7:7-10 7:7-9 7:7 7:8-9 7:8

7:8b 7:8c 7:9-10 7:9

7:10-17

7:10-14 7:10-12 7:10

7:10b 7:10c 7:11 7:llb 7:12-17 7:12-13 7:12 7:13

7:14-15 7:14

1/11

7:4

7:15

116,138, 141 141 125 92, 101, 137, 143 143 143 134, 14445 138 138, 139 92 91,92,99, 101, 121, 123, 134, 138, 139, 144, 146 42,50,91, 93, 94, 101, 122, 123, 124, 125, 137, 138, 144, 146, 150 95 136 92, 93, 99, 101,119, 121, 136, 138, 144, 145 139 146 101 145 146 132 94, 134, 137, 146 93, 139, 147^9 94 94, 122, 132, 146 94, 134

7:16-17 7:16 7:17 8-9 8 8:1-3 8:1-2 8:3 8:4-14 8:4-6 8:5 8:7 8:10 8:11 8:13-14 8:14 9-11 9 9:1-10 9:1-4 9:1 9:lb 9:5-6

9:7-8ab 9:7-8 9:7

9:7a 9:7b 9:8

9:8a 9:8b 9:8c 9:8c-15 9:9-10 9:9 9:11-15

96 139 139 149 123, 148 101, 147 137 126, 148 101 92 126 125 126 110,111 147 120, 121, 125 140 127, 148 149 101, 126 148, 149 149 97,114, 125 149 133, 136, 148 130, 136, 149, 150 135, 136 136 96,119, 125, 127, 149 136, 149 101, 127, 136 117,149 96 96, 149 149 97, 1 14, 117,119, 120, 131, 140, 149, 150,251

Index of References 9:11

9:12 9:13 9:14 9:15

97,117, 126, 127, 149 129, 149 111 97, 149 97

Jonah 1:2

31

Micah 1:1 1:9 5:7 5:8 6 6:1-8 6:3 6:4 6:16 7:18

122 73 128 128 321 73 62 321 45 287

Zechariah 1-8

1:1-6 1:1 1:2-6 1:4-5 1:7-8:23 1:7-6:15 1:7 1:8-1 5 ET 1:8-15

1:16 1:18-21 2:1-5 2: 1-4 ET

2:5-9 ET Nahum

2:8 3:13

31 188

Zephaniah 3:1-20

251

Haggai 1:1 1:14 1:15 l:15a l:15b-2:9 1:19 2:1 2:3 2:6-9 2:10-19 2:10 2:14 2:20-23 2:20 2:22 4:6

40,49,271 271 40 49 49 288 40 271 52 49 40 285 49,52 40 271 271

3-4 3 3:1-10 ET 3:1-10 3:2 3:3 3:4-5 3:8 3:9-10 3:9

3:10 4 4:1-14 ET 4:1-14 4:l-6aET 4:1-5 4:2 4:6 4:7 4:9

355 4:10

40,48-51, 53, 54, 272, 277, 278 51 40,53 53 44 51,53 51 40 272, 273, 278 272, 273, 278 288 272, 273, 278 272, 273, 278 272, 273, 278 272, 273, 278 268, 27579 274-77 273, 278 273, 278 276 276 276 277 275 274, 275, 277 275-77 272, 27477 273, 278 273, 278 272 272 275 271 271, 274 271,276

271,274, 275 4:10b-14 272 4:10b-14ET 272 5:1^ ET 273,278 5:1-4 272,273, 278 5:5-11 ET 272,273, 278 5:5-11 272,273, 278 6: 1-8 ET 272,273, 278 6:1-8 272,273, 278 7:1-14 51 7:1-3 65,285 7:1 40 7:8-13 53 8 272 8:13-17 53 9-14 53 9:10 197 14:5 26, 122 14:20 152 Malachi 3:5 3:10 4 4:4

192 288 321 321

APOCRYPHA 1 Maccabees 7:41 217 Ben Sira/Sirach 44:23b-^5:2 323 48:17-22 216 48:21 216,237 51:13-30 281

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA

3 Maccabees 4:12 229

356

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

NEW TESTAMENT Luke 4:24

132

2.99 2.123 2.127-35 2.137-39 2.141

JOSEPHUS

Antiquities 1.39^1 9.283-87 10.15-23 10.19 10.20

24 159 216 217 216

2.141.2 2.141.3

CLASSICAL Aristotle De generatione anamalium 3.5 220 Demosthenes On the Crown 246 70 Herodotus Histories 1.1 1.8-9 1.74 2.99-142

2.141.1

230 222 261 224, 228

2.141.4-5 2.141.6

2.154 3.37 3.38 3.140 4.88 5.77 6.121-22 7.152

222-24 222-24

219 219 210,21316,218, 224, 225, 227, 228, 230,231, 233, 234, 236-38 228, 230,

232 228, 232 225, 226, 229, 232 229, 232 225, 226, 229, 232 224 226 224 224 221 221 223 223

Homer Iliad

1

227

Philo Questions and Answers on Genesis 4.15 179 Thucydides 1.21-22

220

OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES Babylonian Chronicle l.i.28 159

KTU 1.82obv. 3

227

Manetho Text 66 218 Nimrod Inscription ofSargon II Frag. D Col.IV:32 159 SÀ.ZI.GA Incantations No. 3, line 20 198 No. 18, lines y-4' 198

INDEX OF AUTHORS Ackroyd,P. R. 101,123,339 Adler,E. 167,168 Ahlstrôm, G. 21,32 Albertz,R. 270 Albright, W.F. 35 Allen, L. 239 Altizer, T. J. J. 331 Amerongen, M. van 273, 274, 277 Amiran, R. 153 Amit, Y. 258 Andersen, F. I. 86, 104,108-10, 114, 116,118,126,135-38,148, 149,161, 192, 199 Anderson, J. C. 181 Armayor,O. K. 220,221 Aubin, H. T. 227,231,235,237 Auld,A. G. 116,123,319 Bach, R. 150 Baker, D. W. 63 Balentine, S. 321 Barr,J. 211 Barstad, H. 34, 59, 60, 66, 68, 93, 112,212,314,315 Earth, C. 243,244 Bartlett, J. R. 281 Barton, J. 62, 78, 92, 106, 272 Batto,B. 254 Bauks,M. 211 Baumann, G. 170, 172 Baumgartner, W. 156, 157, 213, 216 Becking, B. 212,234,270 Beeby,H.D. 199 Beentjes, P. C. 217 Bellah,R. 332 Ben Zvi, E. 25, 26, 44-46, 51, 55, 56, 86,90,105,112,124,131,237 Berg,W. 98

Bergsma, J. S. 302 Berlin, A. 45 Betylon, J. 261 Beuken, W. A. M. 49,273 Beyer, B. 268 Bie,M. 120,273 Biggs, R. D. 190,192, 198 Bird,?. 183,184,190,192 Bitzer, L. 78 Black, C. 76 Blenkinsopp, J. 59, 69,128, 240, 285, 286,288,313,341 Bloch,M. 27 Bloch-Smith, E. 32 Block, D. 239, 254, 256,257, 265, 302 Boadt, L. 81 Boda, M. 49, 50, 272 Boehmer, J. 255,258 Bons, E. 109 Borowski, O. 153, 157 Bowen, A. 220 Brandes, S. 179, 180, 187,193 Breisach, E. 225 Brenner, A. 340 Brettler, M. Z. 45,105, 107, 111, 316 Bright,!. 11,29,214,237,238 Brod,H. 178 Brown, J. P. 69 Brownlee, W. H. 172,262 Brueggemann, W. 138-40, 142, 150 Bryan, D. 157 Bûcher, C. 178,190 Budde,K. 48 Buss, M. 58, 185, 337, 339, 340 Butter-worth, M. 274 Carey, C. 71,74

358

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

Carley, K. W. 170,172, 239 Carrigan, T. 179 Carroll, R. P. 65,68,110,178 Carroll R., M. D. 86,87 Chadwick, H. M. 341 Chadwick, N. K. 341 Chance,!. K. 183 Chapman, C. R. 174, 181, 185, 191, 197 Childs, B. S. 87, 213 Clarke,!. 327 Clements, R. E. 65,254, 320 Clifford, R. 307,308 Clines, D. !. A. 29,181 Coats, G. 323 Cody, A. 254,262 Cogan,M. 107,213,217,235-37 Coggins, R. !. 108 Cohen, M. A. 67 Collingwood, R. G. 302 Collins, !. 270, 272, 273,279, 308 Cornell, B. 179 Cook, A. 225 Cook,H.!. 176 Cook, S.A. 338 Cook, S.L. 285-88 Cooke, G. A. 169, 172,239, 254, 255, 259 Cooper, L. E. 171 Coote, R. B. 21, 134, 150,194,282 Corbett, E. 77 Cornaby,W.A. 213,229,237 Cornwall, A. 179,187 Crenshaw, !. L. 98, 112 Cross, P.M. 198,281,283 Dalman, D. G. H. 157 Darr,K. 239,254 Davidson, A. B. 172,254 Davies, G. I. 163 Davies, P. R. 20, 117, 121, 225, 238 Davis, B. 157 Day,!. 177 Day, P. L. 167, 169,170, 173 Deist, F. E. 28 Delaney, C. 187

Delkurt,H. 273-75,279 Dempsey, C. !. 171 Dever,W. G. 12,30 Dimant, D. 308 Dobson,!.F. 72-74,80 Donner, H. 268,273 Dothan, T. 153, 156 Dozeman, T. B. 212 Drews, R. 221 Driver, G. R. 193 Driver, S. R. 111,284 Duhm, B. 58,337 Edelman, D. V. 33, 129,268 Eichrodt, W. 169, 170, 172,239, 255 Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 181,193,214 Eisenstadt, S. N. 334-36 Elkana,Y. 335 Elvin,M. 334,335 Ericson, !. M. 77 Ewald,G. H.A. 19,255 Fahr,H. 212 Fehling,D. 219,220,226,228,231, 236 Finkelstein, I. 13,15,118 Finley,M. I. 25 Fisch, S. 284 Fischer, I. 313 Fishbane, M. 109 Fitzmyer, !. A. 169,197 Fitzpatrick, P. 254 Floyd, M. H. 49,124,131,268, 273, 279 Flusser, D. 304 Fohrer,G. 239,262,338 Foucault, M. 178 Fowler, H. T. 210,212 Fox,M. 76 Frame, G. 202 Frankfort, H. 227 Franklin, N. 203,205 Freedman, D. N. 86, 104, 108-10, 114,116,118,126,135-38, 148,149, 162, 192,199,211, 228, 233

Index of Authors Friebel,K. 244 Fried, L. 256,269 Frye, N. 60 Fulford,R. 295,301 Gal,Z. 153 Galambush, J. 168,170, 172,175, 184,186,256 Gallagher, W. R. 214 Galling, K. 239 Galloway, G. 328 Galloway, L. 179 Gammie, J. G. 230 Garcia Lopez, F. 109,316 Gehman, H. S. 214, 227, 237 Geller, S. A. 341 Gerstenberger, E. 163 Gese, H. 284,287 Gesenius, W. 157 Gibert,P. 211 Gilmore, D. D. 180, 186-88 Ginsberg, H. L. 192 Gitay,Y. 59-62,75-78,80,81 Glatzer,N.N. 64 Gnuse,R. 341 Godley,A.D. 215,227,234 Goldberg,!. 219 Gonçalves, F. J. 214,237 Gordon,?. 196 Gossai, H. 67 Gottwald, N. K. 12,31,32,36 Gould, J. P. A. 211,220, 222, 223, 225,234 Grabbe,L. L. 33,63,210,213,214, 219,224,226,227,230,233, 235-38, 270, 283, 307, 341 Graf, F. 227 Graffy,A. 242 Grant, M. 220 Gray,G. B. 284 Gray,J. 214,237 Greenberg, M. 171, 172, 239,241, 303 Grene,D. 215,223,225 Griffith, F. L. 226 Gunkel,H. 64,337

359

Habel,N. 256 Hahn, S. W. 302 Halpern, B. 340 Hals,R. M. 171,239,241,243,245 Hanhart,R. 272,273,275,279 Harper, W. R. 89, 97, 143, 160 Hartmann, E. von 327 Hayes, J. H. 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12,17-19, 26,28,30,57-61,64,65,67, 86,92,103,105,106,109,113, 114,117-19,121,122,125-27, 143-46, 158,164-66,175, 176, 213 Hayward, C. T. R. 244 Heard, G. 331,332 Heaton,E. W. 62 Hendriks, H, J. 185,191 Herder, J. G. 65 Herrmann, J. 240 Hertzberg, H. W. 281 Heschel, A. 65 Hitzig,F. 240 Hoffher,H.A. 196,198 Hogemann, P. 216 Holladay, J. Jr. 67 Holladay, W. L. 157,207 Holscher,G. 64,284 Hooker, P. K. 18, 26, 30, 176 Horst, F. 98,160 Houston, W 103 Hsu, C.-Y. 334-36 Hubbard,D.A. 148 Hubbard, R. L. Jr. 212 Hude,C. 215,234 Huffmon, H. B. 66, 68, 124 Hunt, A. 281 Hurowitz, A. 256 Hurvitz, A. 265 Hutton,R. 60 Irvine, S.A. 18,26,30,58,61,62, 158, 162,164 Jacoby,F. 216 Japhet, S. 233,237,283 Jasper, D. 70,80

360

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

Jaspers, K. 330 Jastrow, M. 328 Jaynes, J. 333 Jeremias, C. 273 Jeremias, J. 87, 101, 104, 132, 137, 139, 140,142, 145, 148, 150, 160,163,164 Johnson, A. R. 65 Johnstone, W. 238 Jones, B. 58 Joyce, P. 255 Kahn, D. 202 Kamionkowski, S. T. 172 Kapelrud, A. S. 67 Keaney, J. J. 73 Keefe,A. 28 Keil, C. F. 213, 237 Kelle, B. E. 28, 58, 76, 78, 165, 167, 177 Kennedy, G. 58, 60, 69-71, 76, 77, 79 King, P. J. 28,152, 153, 157, 224 Kinnier-Wilson, J. V. 202 Kippenberg, H. 335 Kitchen, K. A. 217-19,237 Kittel,R. 19 Knoppers,G. 118,212,238,283 Koch, K. 89, 98, 305, 308, 309 Kockert,M. 314 Koehler, L. 156,157 Kohn,R. L. 265,322 Koselleck,R. 295,306 Kraus,H.J. 311 Kuan, J. K. 158,164, 165, 175, 176 Kuenen, A. 326,327 Kugler,R. 322 Kulke,H. 335,336 Laato,A. 237,240 Landy, F. 178, 191, 192, 199 Lateiner, D. 211, 220,222, 223 Leach, E. 105 Lee,J. 179 Leith,M.J. W. 178 Lemaire, A. 268 Lemche,N. P. 212

Levenson,J. 241,251,256,322 Levin, C. 45, 123 Levy,J. 157 Limburg, J. 138 Lindblom, J. 339 Lindisfarne, N. 179,186, 187 Liss,H. 54 Lloyd, A. B. 216-20, 222-30, 235-38 Lofthouse, W. F. 337 Lohfink,N. 49 Loizos, P. 180 Long,B. O. 211,272 Long, V. P. 15,28,33 Longman III, T. 15,28,33 Love, M. C. 274, 275, 277 Luckenbill, D. D. 204, 205, 208 Lûddeckens, E. 225 Luria, B. Z. 237 Machinist, P. 335 Macintosh, A. A. 80, 161, 162, 175, 192, 195, 199 Maier, C. 314 Mandell, S. 17,211,228,233 Marcus, R. 216,217 Margalit,B. 157 Marincola, J. 216,226 Mason, R. 49 Matthews, V. H. 33,34 Mays, J. L. 96, 98, 101, 114, 116, 126, 127, 160, 164,177, 192, 195,199 Mazar,A. 118 McBride, S. 323 McCaffrey, K. 189 McConville, J. G. 284 McKeating, H. 239, 255, 258, 322 McLaughlin, J. L. 152 McNeill, W. H. 238 McNutt,P.M. 28 Megill,A. 294,295 Meier, C. 336 Meier, S. 241 Mein,A. 284 Melugin, R. F. 86, 92, 100, 110 Mendenhall, G. E. 13

Index of Authors Mettinger, T. N. D. 281 Meyers, C. 268,273,274 Meyers, E. 268,273,274 Michael, T. S. L. 238 Millard,A. 15,211 Miller, O.P. 180 Miller,!. 72,73 Miller, J. M. 3, 9,10, 12, 18-20, 158, 175,176,213 Milman,H.H. 19 Milns,R. D. 70,73 Mink, L. 294 Moles, J. L. 220 Moller,K. 116 Momigliano, A. 24, 233 Montgomery, H. 69, 71-74, 78-80 Montgomery, J. A. 214,227,237 Moor, J. C. de 60 Moore, G. F. 328 Moore, M. B. 33, 34 Moore, S. D. 181 Moran,W. L. 169,175 Mowinckel, S. 61,65 Muilenberg, J. 76 Murray, D. F. 212 Myers, J. M. 283 Myres, J. L. 261 Nelson, R. D. 314 Newsom,C. A. 293,306 Nicholson, E. 211 Niditch, S. 256,284 Nielsen, F. A. J. 211,212,221,238 Niskanen, P. 211 Nissinen, M. 63, 66, 75 Noll,K.L. 32,269,270 Noth,M. 11,318,320,338 Notley, R. S. 202 Nwoaru, E. 195 O'Connell,R. 138,141 O'Connor, M. 143 O'Kane,M. 322 Oesterley, E. 19 Oesterley, W. O. E. 338 Olbrechts-Tytecha, L. 80

361

Olbricht,T. 79 Ord,D. R. 282 Otto,E. 314,331 Otto, R. 329 Overholt, T. W. 57, 64-66, 112 Parpola, S. 66, 169, 185, 187, 189, 191,198 Paul, S. M. 86, 87, 104-8, 114-16, 118,120,122,126,127,135, 139-43, 146, 150, 191, 195, 196 Pearson, L. 71,73,78,79 Perelman, C. 80 Perlitt,L. 315,316,318 Petersen, D. 49, 50, 59, 63-65, 67, 68 Pettazzoni, R. 326 Pfeiffer, R. H. 338 Pickard-Cambridge, A. W. 70 Plumptre, E. H. 186 Pohlmann, K. F. 239 Pola,T. 273-75 Polley, M. 139, 150 Pollitt,J.J. 226 Polzin,R. 319 Pope,M. H. 157 Porter, S. E. 79 Priest, J. 163 Pritchett, W. K. 220,221,228 Provan, I. 15, 28, 33, 214, 238 Rad,G. von 319 Rainey, A. S. 202 Rappaport, U. 307 Ravn,O. E. 216,221 Rawlinson, G. 215-17,220,226,237 Redford,D.B. 282 Reid,R. 71,74 Rendtorff,R. 246 Renz,T. 255,259 Ricoeur,P. 295,296,309 Ringgren, H. 66 Roberts, J. J. M. 26,201,207 Robertson, C. M. 227 Robertson, D. 65 Robinson, T. H. 19, 160, 338

362

Israel's Prophets and Israel's Past

Rofe,A. 236 Rollinger,R. 216,221 Romer,T. 316 Rose,H.J. 227 Rose,W.H. 279 Rosenbaum, S. N. 103 Ross, J. F. 67, 194 Rottzoll, D. U. 87 Rowley, H. H. 339 Rudolph, W. 191,195, 199, 283 Sanderson, J. E. 29 Sandmel, S. 214,215 Scham, S. 34 Schmidt, W. H. 96,314 Schmitt, J. J. 190 Schwartz, B. I. 332 Sélincourt, A. de 216, 226 Seger,J. D. 153 Seitz,C. 313,322 Sellin,E. 337 Seow, C. L. 196 Seybold,K. 272,273,275 Sharp, C. 322 Shaw, C. 58,60 Shields, M. 171 Shrofel,K. 167,170 Silberman, N. A. 15 Smith, M. 271 Smith, S.H. 193 Smith, W.R. 336 Smith, W. S. 226, 227 Soggin, J. A. 19,213 Sourdille,C. 218,225,227 Stacey,W. D. 244,245 Stadter, P. 227 Stager, L. E. 13,28 Steiner,R. C. 120,121 Steinmann, A. E. 107 Stienstra,N. 170 Stoellger,P. 316 Stone, K. 181,182,186 Stone, L. 24 Stone, M. 335 Stott,K. 212 Strachey, E. 58

Strathern, M. 178,180 Streete,G.C. 171,172 Stuart, D. 160, 163 Swain, J. W. 304 Sweeney, M. A. 114, 115, 118,192, 199,239,241,250-52 Sykes, S. 50,52 Tadmor,H. 195,213,217,235-37, 335 Tambiah, S. J. 335 Thapar,R. 332 Thomas, D. W. 338 Thompson, J. A. 169 Thompson, T. L. 12,16, 33 Tigay,J.H. 107,317 Tollington, J. E. 49, 268, 274 Tôrôk, L. 218 Torrey, C. 116 Toynbee, A. J. 330 Tremmel,W. C. 333 Tucker, G. M. 88, 90,94, 95 Tuell, S. S. 50, 54 Turner, M. 294,304,305 Utzschneider, H. 139 VanSeters,J. 12,211 Vatz,R. 79 Vaux, R. de 282 Veijola,T. 314 Verbrugghe, G. P. 216,218,220 Voegelin, E. 331 Waard,J. de 100 Waddell,W.G. 218 Waltke,B.K. 143 Washington, H. C. 181,196 Watanabe, K. 169, 185, 187,189, 191,198 Waters, K. H. 220-25, 228, 229, 236 Watson, D. 79,80 Watson, W. G. E. 107 Weber, M. 65,329 Weems,R. J. 178,188,288 Weinberg, J. P. 269

Index of Authors Weinfeld,M. 250,251 Weiser, A. 91 Wellhausen, J. 19, 160, 163, 337 Wesselius, J.-W. 211,212,231,234, 235 West, S. 226 Westermann, C. 66,141 Wevers,J.W. 170,239 White, H. 294,309 Whitelam, K. W. 20,21 Whitley,C. F. 338 Wickersham, J. M. 216,218,220 Widengren, G. 268 Williamson, H. G. M. 137, 138 Wilson, R. R. 65, 68, 94, 110,253, 283,311,314 Winckler,H. 58 Wiseman, D. J. 261 Wolff, H. W. 87, 91, 96, 100, 104, 106,108,111,114,116,122, 125, 127, 134, 137, 138,140, 143, 144,146, 160, 161,163, 164,192, 199

363

Wood, J. 139, 140, 142 Worthington, I. 79,80 Woude, A. S. van der 273-75,279 Wurthwein,H. 139 Yamauchi, E. M. 220, 221,223, 229 Yee,G. 29,182,188 Yunis,H. 71,78,79,81 Zimmerli, W. 169,170,240,254, 257,258,284,315,316 Zimmern, H. 58 Zobel,K. 312,313