Untold Stories: The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 314-316 Mark S. Smith. Untold Stories: The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2001. Pp. xix + 252. Photos. This is a book I personally relished reading; but I cannot unreservedly praise. If I recommend it at all, it would be to Ugarit wonks and hard-core biblicists. The subtitle, The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century, defines the range of topics it covers, although at this date it is hard to imagine any century but the 20th to be applicable (Ugarit was discovered in 1928). "Ugaritic Studies" is taken narrowly, the focus remaining largely on the study of alphabetic texts that record the local language, rather than of documents in Akkadian, Hurrian, or Hittite that use a syllabic script. Moreover, the accent rarely moves beyond issues of literature and religion, and so the equally fascinating debate on the history, society, or economy of the region is only sampled. The stories Smith relates are hardly "Untold" (see his explanation on p. 6). Any major survey of Ugarit and its remains is bound to rehearse the relevance of its archives on Bible research. However, in focusing on the lives and personalities of the scholars (and their students) who explored the religious and literary facets of Ugarit, Smith achieves the admirable (and often neglected) task of thickening the contexts in which this research unfolded . Naturally (as he admits) Smith is better informed about the great ancestors who roamed North America, relying partly on their personal correspondence ; but there are also generous pages on several research centers, including those in France (where the field was born), Israel (where its biblical component achieved early focus), as well as Germany and Spain (where it continues to acquire major research tools and outlets). Smith follows his story through four chronological tableaus: through the Second World War; to 1970; until, and then after 1985. Under each, Smith considers more or less seriatim, the tools of the trade, the defining subjects of discussion, and the major research personalities of the period. He also offers reflections on one theme that he deems critical for the period. Smith selects diverse issues regarding Ugaritic and Hebrew religions to feature in each of the four chapters and so achieves a continuity that is missing elsewhere (see pp. 82-100; 197-200; 209-210). The focus is on monotheism —how to define it, when to locate its origins, where to situate its manifestation—as it happens, the subject of a book Smith has published about the same time as ours: The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New York, 2001). Whatever the merits of the larger treatment, in these pages Smith is into calibrating polytheism, at one point finding in Israel a "far more reduced form SMITH, UNTOLD STORIES—SASSON3 1 5 of polytheism" when compared to the pantheons in Ugarit (p. 36). That the breadth and multiplicity of pantheons are heavily affected by the wealth and cosmopolitanism of the city-state is not deemed an issue. Ugarit was the Hong Kong of its days, a port-city catering to a broad and pluralistic clientele. So if we wish to evaluate the density of polytheism in Judah it should be in comparison to the pantheons and theologies of relatively impoverished regions. There is also speculation about the god El and the repertoire of Ugaritic traditions about him that survived in biblical lore (pp. 197-200). Here again, I speculate that we are likely to recover as diverse mythological profiles of El as there are archives from diverse states, mainly because the authority if not also the kinship of individual deities likely depended on the number of prominent deities tended to and fed by a city's temples. Finally, Smith tries to locate the origins of Israel's monotheism (pp. 210-212) in the shifting sociology of allegiances within families due to major political realignments and the effect they had on lineage and patrimony. Since I am dubious about the distinction he draws regarding social units in Ugarit and Israel, I am not inspired by his pronouncements on the...