Battle of the Gods: The God of Israel Versus Marduk of Babylon: A Literary/Theological Interpretation of Jeremiah 50-51 (review)

Hebrew Studies 46 (2005) 413 Reviews • Avishur quotes lināhibı̄nā “those who rob us” as if it is in Isa 17:13 on p. 14, l.9; in fact, it should be Isa 17:14. • It is unclear what Avishur means by “see the following, 4” on p. 16, l.6. Despite the problems mentioned above, this book is an important contribution to the growing literature on biblical and liturgical translations into Jewish languages in general and Judeo-Arabic in particular. Benjamin Hary Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 bhary@emory.edu BATTLE OF THE GODS: THE GOD OF ISRAEL VERSUS MARDUK OF BABYLON: A LITERARY/THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF JEREMIAH 50–51. By Martin Kessler. SSN 42. Pp. x + 259. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003. Cloth, $81.87. ¤ 69,50. This engaging study presents the theologically rich results of the author’s reflection on two chapters in the book of Jeremiah that ordinarily receive little sustained attention from scholars: the oracles against Babylon. Kessler moves well beyond the standard observations that oracles against foreign nations underline God’s universal sovereignty and that the discomfiture of enemies constitutes good news for Israel. Kessler presents detailed discussions of the Hebrew text with special attention to such literary features as inclusio and concentric structures, wordplay, alliteration, concatenation, repetition and variation, alternation of euphony and cacophony, and changes of theme and speaker. His overarching thesis is that these oracles demonstrate an artistic presentation of a “theology of history” (p. 91) depicted in sophisticated rhetorical terms as a contest between YHWH and Marduk. Far from being secondary and derivative, the oracles against Babylon “form the climax of the Jeremian collection” and show that “Babylon was on its way to becom[ing] a metaphor of those opposing YHWH” (p. 142). Throughout his study, Kessler draws adeptly on relevant traditions and literatures of other ancient Near Eastern cultures. Kessler briefly reviews issues in the history of interpretation of Jeremiah, setting the stage for his own reading, which he describes as “primarily synchronic ” in nature (p. 10). Kessler’s discussion of recent scholarship on Jeremiah 50–51 is selective and occasionally polemical. Readers may find insufficient the short paragraphs Kessler supplies on the work of Robert Carroll, William McKane, and Louis Stulman. We hear of Carroll’s skepticism re- Hebrew Studies 46 (2005) 414 Reviews garding the possibility of recovering history from the book of Jeremiah, but we find no serious engagement with Carroll’s ideological-critical understanding of the heavily politicized representations of the prophet and Judah’s future in the biblical text. Kessler mentions McKane’s “rolling corpus” theory but does not consider the complications presented to his own synchronic analysis by McKane’s theory of highly localized, ad hoc diachronic accretions to heterogeneous material. One misses more detailed reference to Louis Stulman’s Order Amid Chaos (The Biblical Seminar 57; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998); Kessler merely quotes the publisher’s blurb from the back cover of that important study. Stulman argues that Jeremiah’s use of Babylon as metaphor overpowers the historical referentiality in Jeremiah 50–51; that the defeat of Babylon functions as a mythologized trope for the “divine denouement of history” (Order Amid Chaos, p. 96); and that the oracles against foreign nations play an important role in a larger rhetorical schema of theological and moral symmetry in Jeremiah, which Stulman reads as dismantling and reconfiguring the symbolic world of sixth century Judah. Stulman’s ideas bear directly on Kessler’s project and deserve closer engagement. In chapter 2, Kessler feints toward genre questions but argues that it is more productive to explore the rhetoric of Jeremiah 50–51 as a collection of literary creations that imitate genres of Israelite literature. Deeming it virtually impossible to inquire after the Sitze im Leben of the oracles of judgment, oracles of promise, calls to flee, calls to battle, declarations of defeat, hymns, and mock laments in this material, Kessler sets as his task an analysis of the literary purposes for which “genre-like elements” were used. His heuristic purpose in distinguishing between genres and imitative “genre-like elements” is not entirely clear; one senses that he may be unduly reactive to the historicist speculations of...