The Deuteronomistic History Hypothesis: A Reassessment (review)

Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 174 Reviews legal and religious document, and by reappraising the biblical past its cultural productions are from within the Jewish tradition. If Maimonides viewed the Mishnah as halakhah and not philosophy, it is difficult to fault him for not seeing Aristotelian polity in the Mishneh Torah. The author's imaginative essay on Judaisms made in the USA does not fully appreciate the growing impact of personal and familial mores on the corporate life of American Jewry. Further, it is difficult to see how Mayer's descent into Shoah revisionism and Maier's work on Historikerstreit, which speaks out against a ruptured German historiography (i.e., German efforts to confront the darkest aspects of Nazi Germany's monstrous role in the Shoah are more about polishing up German patriotism than pursuing historical truth) do not concern the faith and value system of Jews. Agreed, contemporary events "do not settle questions of faith because faith is not something that the here and now dictates" (p. 164), but they do fashion how we view the shape of faith and the dynamics of faith. Finally, there are typographical errors on pp. 71 and 152 and, a consistent irritant, no source index nor full disclosure of where chapters or chunks of chapters originally appeared. Flaws aside, Neusner is generally successful, in large measure because there isn't much written on "medium and message" and virtually none from the rabbinic viewpoint. He makes the most of what he's got, and that's enough. Zev Garber Los Angeles Valley College Van Nuys. CA 9}40} THE DEUTERONOMISTIC HISTORY HYPOTHESIS: A REASSESSMENT. By Mark A. O'Brien. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 92. Pp. xiii + 319. Freiburg: Universitatsverlag; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989. Cloth. A revised form of a 1987 doctoral thesis directed by Anthony F. Campbell, this treatment sets out from the assumption that Campbell's reconstructed "Prophetic Record" (OJ Prophets and Kings: A Late NinthCentury Document (1 Samuel} - 2 Kings }O) [CBQMS 17; Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 1986)) indeed underlies the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH). Campbell's hypothesis has received a relatively warm Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 175 Reviews reception among reviewers, and the appearance of O'Brien's monograph may represent the beginnings of a new school in this area. Campbell's "Prophetic Record" is in fact a variation on a thesis concerning an edition of Kings under Hezekiah. In post-war literature, this idea was first defended with any vigor by Helga Weippert, who has consolidated her initial treatment in a series of specific studies "Die 'deuteronomistischen ' Beurteilungen der Konige von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Konigsbiicher," Biblica 53 [1972] pp. 301-339; "Die Atiologie des Nordreiches und seines Konigshauses (I Reg 11,29-40)," ZA W 95 [1983], pp. 344-75; "Ahab el campeador? Redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu 1 Kon 22," Biblica 69 [1988], pp. 457479 ; and more generally, "Das deuteronomistische Geschichtswerk: sein Ziel und Ende in der neueren Forschung," ThRu N.F. 50 [1985] pp. 21349 ). A number of other scholars have subscribed, though varying on particulars , to this idea of an edition of Kings or DtrH ending at the account of Hezekiah's reign: I. W. Provan, (Hezekiah and the Books ofKings [BZAW 172; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988]) and J. B. Peckham (The Composition of the Deuteronomistic History [HSM 35; Atlanta: Scholars, 1985]), for very different reasons, hypothesize an edition ending with Hezekiah (for Provan, written under Josiah) followed by a single exilic update. Closer to Weippert is A. Lemaire ("Vers l'histoire de la redaction des livres des Rois," ZAW 98 [1986] pp. 221-236) where Hezekian, Josianic, and exilic editions are posited; but Lemaire also defends the idea of pre-Hezekian editions, and thus represents a sort of compromise between Weippert and Campbell. O'Brien's reconstruction, like Campbell's, represents something of a compromise itself-on the one hand, DtrH has early sources (like the "Prophetic Record"); on the other, DtrH was first written as a Deuteronomistic History under Josiah, not Hezekiah, and underwent exilic re-editing (like the Dtrl and Dtr2 of F. M. Cross and his school). The task O'Brien sets himself is commensurately one of isolating the text of...