The Old Testament: Text and Context (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 284 Reviews historical agents are left floating free, with no anchorage in material reality . This is arguably a legitimate response to the fact that we know little about that material reality, but I wonder if such a response does not to some extent miss the point: our ignorance is after all not complete, and anyway, to describe ideas as if they really did float free of context is, whatever the state of our knowledge, to embrace a positivist position which is more problematic than the more speculative approaches which Goldenberg implicitly rejects. Related to this is Goldenberg's adoption of a canonical, rather than analytic , approach, to the main literary corpora, on the grounds, once again, that analysis has yielded few agreed-upon results, and furthermore, that the literature has always been read as constituting discrete and seamless canons. Given the chronological frame of the book, this is an entirely correct way to approach the Hebrew Bible. But rabbinic literature was not canonical at any point in antiquity, and if the analysis of the documents into sources and strata has proved unconvincing, there may still be some point in keeping the discrete documents more separate than Goldenberg does. This is a book in which specialists will find little that is surprising, novel, or controversial, though its main thesis is entirely convincing. Certainly , it may be recommended without hesitation to non-specialists as a generally reliable, and very engagingly written, introduction to an interesting topic. Selh Schwarlz Jewish Theological Seminary New York, NY 10027 seschwarlz@jlsa.edu THE OLD TESTAMENT: TEXT AND CONTEXT. By Victor H. Matthews and James C. Moyer. Pp. ix + 308. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997. Cloth, $29.95. This exceptionally clear, concise, and informative textbook by Matthews and Moyer is a comprehensive view of the Old Testament world, its people , and its literature from a historical, social, and literary perspective. The book is divided into six chapters, with a series of "study questions" dispersed throughout each chapter. Teachers and students of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible will find this text enjoyable, accessible, and very well-organized for both teaching and study. Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 285 Reviews Chapter I, the "Introduction," introduces the overall schema of the work as well as its main points of focus. In their opening pages, Matthews and Moyer make it clear that the book is written for beginning students. Thus, the basic writing style and design of each chapter of the book is meant to be as "interactive" as possible (p. 1). Rarely does one find a text that is written directly for students. In this respect, Matthews' and Moyer's work is a most welcomed addition to the biblical field of teaching and scholarship. Following the authors' statement of purpose of their book, chapter 1 provides readers with a brief guide on how to use the text, a list of pertinent sources for biblical study, a section on how to evaluate Bible translations , general comments that pertain to archaeology, canon, historical time periods, and the geography and climate of the Ancient Near East. A welcomed part of the text's "Introduction" is a brief outline of the various traditional and more modem methods of biblical interpretation, that is, social-scientific criticism, feminist criticism, reader response, etc. In chapter 2, Matthews and Moyer deal with the premonarchic period of the Old TestamentlHebrew Bible. The chapter focuses on Genesis 1-11 (primeval history), Genesis 12-50 (ancestral narratives), the Exodussettlement period, and the books of Joshua and Judges. Within this chapter, various important terms are highlighted in bold lettering and then clearly and succinctly defmed. Various shaded charts that include such material as a comparison between polytheism and monotheism, the plague sequence pattern, the seven major bodies of law, etc., complemented by pictures of sites, ruins, and cultural artifacts, along with a map of Palestine under Joshua and the Judges, favor the visual learner. With respect to the books of Joshua and Judges, Matthews and Moyer deal with difficult questions pertaining to the conquest account and related theories about it, along with the topic of "the Deuteronomic historian." A literary, cultural, archaeological , analysis of the book of Judges, with attention...