Reading Hosea in Achaemenid Yehud (review)

Hebrew Studies 46 (2005) 419 Reviews Chaoskampf? In this circumstance, the connection to the Chaoskampf is mythopoetic at best, or, perhaps, it is nothing more than influence bereft of intentionality. In summary, The Disarmament of God is an excellent survey of the secondary literature on myth and a daring proposal for the role of chapters 38–39 in the book of Ezekiel, but it is difficult to reconcile Fitzpatrick’s thesis with what we know about the composition of prophetic texts in general and Ezekiel 38–39 in particular. William A. Tooman University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI 53706 wtooman@edgewood.edu READING HOSEA IN ACHAEMENID YEHUD. By James M. Trotter. JSOTSup 328. Pp. 242. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Cloth, $95.00. In this monograph, Trotter explores how the book of Hosea was interpreted in early Achaemenid Yehud, which he defines as 539–516 B.C.E. His interpretive methodology is new historicism, which he describes as a historicized form of reader-response criticism (p. 31). Basing his approach on the work of scholars such as Steven Mailloux (“Misreading as a Historical Act: Cultural Rhetoric, Bible Politics, and Fuller’s 1845 Review of Douglass’s Narrative,” in Readers in History: Nineteenth Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response, ed. James L. Machor. [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993], pp. 3–31), Hans Robert Jauss (Towards an Aesthetic of Reception [Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1982] and Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics [Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1982]), and James Machor, ed. (Readers in History: Nineteenth Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993]), he argues that it is both possible and necessary to “reconstruct the shared patterns of interpretation for a specific historical era” and “to define the reading strategies of particular interpretive communities, and to examine the impact of those strategies on the production and consumption of literary texts” (p. 31, quoting Machor). In his reconstruction of life in Achaemenid Yehud, Trotter draws especially on the work of Dandamaev (A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989) and Hoglund (“The Archaemenid Context,” in Second Temple Studies: 1. Persian Period, ed. P. R. Davies [JSOTSup 117; Hebrew Studies 46 (2005) 420 Reviews Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991], pp. 54–72 and Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah [SBLDS 125; Atlanta: Scholars, 1992]). Trotter places a strong emphasis on the cooperation of local leaders with the Persian authorities, who incorporated into the empire system of government the local authority structures of the peoples they had conquered. As a way of maintaining imperial control, they also restored local cults, and declared themselves worshippers of the local deities. The rebuilding of the temple and the restoration of the Yhwh cult in Jerusalem are examples of mechanisms used by the Achaemenids to maintain control. The local Yehudite leaders were appointed by them, and were loyal to them. In Achaemenid Yehud, the past held a particular importance for the community . Besides accounting for the disaster of 587, the community needed to define itself anew in the wake of the destruction which accompanied the Babylonian invasion. In the transition to Persian rule after the Babylonian demise, the community validated its present structures by an appeal to the traditions of the past. The Yehud community of the Achaemenid period established its links with the past by “a recontextualizeation of the traditions of monarchic Israel to the altered setting of the Persian period community” (p. 44). In this new setting, written texts were produced by the ruling elites, usually in either the palace or temple, in order to validate their particular theological!/!ideological standpoint that the new Israel essentially consisted of those people who identified themselves as “exiles.” Prophetic texts were of particular interest in this period, as Zech 1:4 and Neh 9:30 indicate. They interpreted the past, especially the events of 587, and provided guidance and direction for the future, and were also used to maintain support for the established order. Unlike readers in later communities such as Qumran, who interpreted the prophetic message as if it were spoken directly to their situation, those in the...