Saul in Story and Tradition (review)

Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 355 Reviews discerns a connection between Jonathan’s name and his expression of confidence in the divine victory (1 Sam 14:10, p. 361). Tsumura’s commentary, then, is a very welcome addition to a worthy series of modern commentaries on the Book of Samuel. Although his commentary cannot be said to supersede more strictly critical commentaries, of the kind of McCarter’s or Campbell’s, it provides an indispensable complementation of them. We are looking forward to the volume on 2 Samuel. Frank Polak Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv, Israel frankha@post.tau.ac.il SAUL IN STORY AND TRADITION. Edited by Carl S. Ehrlich with Marsha C. White. FAT 47. Pp. viii + 358. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006. Cloth,
84,00. $111.78. King Saul plays a prominent and pivotal role in the history of ancient Israel as presented in the Bible. One would, therefore, expect a book about him to provide some sense of who he was. However, that is the one thing that those who work their way through the papers in this volume will leave without, and that may be precisely the point—that the memory of Israel’s first king has been preserved in ways that make him ultimately unknowable. We can explore how he was understood, both in the Bible and after, but not capture the reality of who he was. And this book does precisely that, examining numerous portrayals of Saul, mostly within the Bible, but also from a wide variety of other works, both ancient and modern, without trying to grasp “the historical Saul.” Six of its chapters are devoted to post-biblical portrayals, ranging in time from Josephus and the Qur}an to Rembrandt and Handel. For the biblical period, there are six chapters on the Deuteronomistic History (i.e., the book of Samuel) and one on the book of Chronicles. Two others explore imagery associated with the ark and with swords. That leaves only two papers, which examine the historical situation during the period in which the Bible places Saul. Even these do not address Saul himself, but rather the circumstances that led to the rise of the Israelite monarchy. As little as the actual Saul figures in this volume, it is not devoid of historical interests. Avraham Faust and Siegfried Kreuzer describe the situation in Benjaminite territory during the early Iron Age as one of population concentration and urbanization. They attribute much of this to the presence of Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 356 Reviews the Philistines. But as important as those developments may have been for Israelite history, they tell us nothing about Saul. Still, there is one presumably historical figure who does come up repeatedly in these studies, even if it is not the one named in the book’s title. Instead , it is David, for whom the authors of several of these papers consider Saul to have served as a foil. In order to accomplish that, Saul’s heroic features must be turned into negatives and his flaws emphasized. That approach is particularly noticeable in the work of the deuteronomistic historian. According to Gregory Mobley, even the depiction of Goliath is intended to evoke and thereby critique Saul in a way that redounds to David’s advantage . The negative portrayal of Saul continues in the book of Chronicles and then the work of later writers, such as Pseudo-Philo and the rabbis, not to mention the more recent compositions of Voltaire and Handel. To be sure, Yairah Amit sees the Deuteronomistic historian’s portrayal as more positive than that of the Chronicler; however, Louis Feldman observes that only Josephus presents Saul positively, magnifying his traits and giving him more space than any other biblical figure. One might speculate that the lack of historical information about Saul made him a kind of blank slate, which could be used to promote any number of agendas. For example, Gary Knoppers suggests that the Chronicler’s treatment reflects political circumstances in post-exilic Yehud. Christophe Nihan goes further, finding traces of both positive and negative attitudes towards the Persian period’s non-institutionalized spirit possession within the various strata of the stories about Saul in the...