A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period. Volume I: From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy (review)

Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 148 Reviews A HISTORY OF ISRAELITE RELIGION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT PERIOD. VOLUME I: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO THE END OF THE MONARCHY. By Rainer Albertz. John Bowden, trans. The Old Testament Library. Pp. xvi + 367. Louisville: Westminster/Jolm Knox, 1994. Cloth, $32.99. Does Rainer Albertz's A History ofIsraelite Religion demonstrate that it is now extremely difficult to undertake a "Theology of the Old Testament "? Certainly this view is held by many German scholars, and it was expressed as part of a paper given by Albertz at the SBL International Meeting in MUnster 1993; that paper addressed the question "Religionsgeschichte Israels statt Theologie des Alten Testaments! PUidoyer fUr eine forschungsgeschichtliche Umorientierung." Volume I of A History ofIsraelite Religion was published in Germany the year before that paper. A quick glance at the contents page reveals two sections which one would expect of any similar work: the first, on the history of Israelite religion before the State (pp. 23-103), and the second, on religious history during the Monarchy (pp. 105-242). Thus although this work appears some twenty or thirty years later than other major studies of religion, superficially it offers a similar developmental approach to R. de Vaux's Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (trans. 1961), for example, or H. Ringgren's Israelite Religion (trans. 1966), or G. Fohrer's History of Israelite Religion (trans. 1972), or F. M. Cross's Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (1973). But the distinguishing features soon become evident. The opening twenty pages state Albertz's own position within the history of research over the last century and so prepare the way for the questions he raised in the SBL paper: those who have read his Personliche Frommigkeit und OJfizielle Religion (Stuttgart, 1978) will soon recognize his familiar and distinctive emphasis. The "religion" of Israel is assessed from a social and cultural perspective and is seen to revolve around two conflicting "foci of identity": the family and clan, which may be designated "popular piety," and the official state cult, which is understood as "official religion". What marks Albertz off from earlier histories of religion is undoubtedly his method. His concern is primarily comparative, sociological, anthropological , and descriptive. Previous histories of religion looked at the institutions of Israel historically and thematically, under headings such as "Priesthood," "Sacrifices," and "Festivals," using a teleological approach, which in their systematic overview and their shared understanding of the "givenness" and coherence of faith are, in fact, little different from that ex- Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 149 Reviews pressed in the theologies of the Old Testament. Albertz is more interested in the reception of these various cultic traditions within different socioreligious groupings, and the overall approach is not to essay any unified whole but rather to expose several conflicting parts. Indeed, rejecting the idea of any "center" within the Old Testament, as is presumed in both Old Testament theologies and in religious histories, Albertz states: ...the history of Israelite religion is not static, so that it can be established notionally and conceptually; rather, there is a dynamic power within the social controversies which emerges among quite different theological notions. (p. 21) Thus Albertz's study is neither a theology nor a history of religion in the traditional sense. He places his enquiry within the vicissitudes of human history, where any "religion" means one belief-system among many. His study is in effect a "sociology of Israel's religious history," for it brings together the different ideological concerns of the various socio-religious groups as they vied for the supremacy of their expression of faith within a particular cultural setting. In Albertz's own words: A "history of Israelite religion" may not be described as a mere history of ideas or of the spirit...it must be presented as a process which embraces all aspects of the historical development. It has to detect and describe the interplay between political and social development on the one hand and the religious and cultic development on the other.... Methodologically, this means that the standpoint from which the historian of religion describes the interplay cannot lie with God or in the claim to some "bird's eye view...