Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of History (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 105 Reviews among the commentaries. These make the book not very user-friendly! Furthermore. avoidance of the "Y" word and use of the term "First Testamen !"· would have shown ecumenical sensitivity. There is more that should have been in the NJBC: more maps (there are six). a section on technical biblical vocabulary. commentaries on the Pseudepigrapha. Also welcome would have been topical articles on inscriptions and their relevance to scripture. the character of the biblical languages. St. Jerome and the Vulgate, Israel and its neighbors, Ugaritic and its influence on the Bible, and so on. My basic criticism is that the next "JBC" needs to be more. In fact there should have been three volumes: one volume on the First Testament, one on the Second Testament, and a volume of topical articles. NJBC would have been less expensive for students and more expansive for clarity's sake. The size imposed on this volume is far closer to procrustean than adequate. David Paul McCarthy University of Wisconsin Madison. WI 53706 ABIDING ASTONISHMENT: PSALMS, MODERNITY, AND THE MAKING OF HISTORY. By Walter Brueggemann. Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation. Pp. 94. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991. Paper, $8.95. A singular achievement of Walter Brueggemann's work is the grace and ease with which he helps his readers see how the Bible speaks to believers today. That is why his books have such an appreciative audience among seminary students. The relationship of the ancient canonical text and modern belief is a central question for them. In this book Brueggemann changes his key slightly. He shows why some modern readers of the Bible do not appreciate historical psalms (Pss 78. 105, 106. and 136) as they should. The author begins by showing how the historical psalms both create and deconstruct the world of meaning for the people of ancient Israel. These psalms invite Israel of every generation to participate in the drama of fidelity to Israel's God. The psalms create a series of images and metaphors Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 106 Reviews that make such participation possible. Also the historical psalms unmask what seduces Israel and endangers the loyalty that it owes to God. According to Brueggemann, some people today cannot enter the world of meaning created by the historical psalms for two reasons. First the modem concern with historiography makes it difficult for some people to appreciate what is at the center of the historical psalms: the miraculous. Concern for objectivity, cause and effect, and the "facts" eliminates the "abiding astonishment" that informed the ancient Israelite experience of wonder in the divine presence. A second problem results from the monopoly that "insiders" have in the interpretation of these texts. Their interpretations ignore the subversive intentionality of the historical psalms. The voice of people on the margins of life needs to be heard so that the psalms can speak to the contemporary situation. In other words, some modem interpreters screen out both awe and marginality from the historical psalms. This impoverishes their reading. This book is part of a series that explores the currents of literary criticism in contemporary biblical scholarship. In this approach to the study of the Bible, questions about origins, authors, intentions, settings, and compositional layers have given way to study of the literary qualities of the Bible. A special concern in literary criticism is the relations between text and reader. Here Brueggemann examines those relationships. He begins with ancient readers, but then shifts to the contemporary situation. As usual, his analysis is careful and studied. The text is less than fifty pages, but it is accompanied by 117 endnotes that take up twenty pages. Brueggemann is right when he asserts that an obsessive concern for the reconstruction of Israel's history can lead to the elimination of awe. Still he needs to recognize that the history of Israel is a legitimate discipline within the field of biblical studies. The mistake is turning the pursuit of historical objectivity into an absolute. Historical questions are just a few of the questions that a reader can ask of the text. Some people may think that they are not the most important questions. Still they are proper ones. Brueggemann...