"Why Ask My Name?" Anonymity and Identity in Biblical Narrative (review)

THE JEWISH QUARTERLYREVIEW,XCII,Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 2001)205-209 ADELEREINHARTZ,"Why Ask My Name?" Anonymity and Identity in Biblical Narrative. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 226. Almost every day one comes across a new book which deals in some novel way with an ongoing debatein biblical studies. Almost as frequently one comes across a new book which rediscovers an importantidea whose initial discovery by a 19th-centuryprofessorand,still earlier,by a medieval rabbihas been forgotten. Quite infrequentlydoes one have the privilege to read, review and recommenda book which adds to the agenda of biblical studies a totally new and vitally importantsubject. Adele Reinhartz'sWhy Ask My Name? is arareandmagnificentexample of this thirdkindof book. Reinhartzdemonstratesbeyond a shadow of doubt the vital importanceof anonymous charactersin biblical narrative.Moreover, she puts to rest the idea fostered by feminist scholars of the 19th century1and the 20th centuries2 and adumbratedby a number of 14th-16th century manuscripts,3 1So already Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The Woman'sBible (New York, 1891), p. 73; quoted in Janice Nunally Cox, Foremothers: Womenof the Bible (New York, 1981), p. 11. 2See, for example, Cullen Murphy, "Women and the Bible," The Atlantic Monthly,August 1993, p. 39; and see the extensive discussion and bibliography in Reinhartz, WhyAskMyName?, pp. 9-11; contrastReinhartz,pp. 188-191. 3Especially intriguing is the 9th-centuryCE Syriac manuscriptlisting 36 of the namesgiven by the Second-TempleeraBook of Jubileesto women who appearnameless in HebrewScripture.This Syriac text, which can be found in R. H. Charles,The Ethiopic Versionof the Hebrew Book of Jubilees (Oxford, 1895), p. 183, testifies to the concern of Christiansin the Middle Ages with the perceptions that (1) Hebrew Scripture'sapparenteffacing of the identityspecifically of womenhadto be remedied; and (2) this problemcould be remediedby use of dataavailablein the Book of Jubilees . Equallyintriguingis the list of 38 namesof biblical womenfromEve to Nizbeth, the motherof David, found on p. 24 of the frontmatterof the so-called FarhiBible writtenin Spain in 1383. This latterlist, which was publishedin Solomon David Sasoon , Ohel David: Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrewand SamaritanManuscripts in the Sasoon Library,London(Oxford, 1932), 1:6-7, utilizes HebrewScripture,rabbinic sources, the Book of Jubilees and some additionalsources. It should be noted thatthis is the list which TalIlan, "Biblical Women'sNames in the ApocryphalTraditions ,"Journalfor the Studyof the Pseudepigrapha 11 (1993) 3-67 calls "Harkavy," referringto A. A. Harkavy, "Memoirs from My Journey to Jerusalem and in the Landsof the East,"Ha-Pisgah 1 (1895) 58 (in Hebrew).This list attemptsto account for the discrepancybetween rabbinictradition(GenR 23.3), according to which the wife of Noah was Naamah,andthe Book of Jubilees, Chapter4, accordingto which 206 THE JEWISH QUARTERLYREVIEW and still earlier by the Babylonian Talmud4 and the literature of the Second Temple,5 according to which the anonymity of most women in Hebrew Scripture reflects the deliberate attempt of male writers to obliterate them (pp. 5-6, 190). the wife of Noah was Emzara(i.e., motherof progeny). The FarhiBible list suggests thatthe apparentcontradictioncan be resolved by the assumptionthatperhapsNoah had two wives. In the same vein, the 16th-centurychronicle by Samuel Algazi, Toledot Adam (edited with a foreword and afterwardby A. M. Haberman,Jerusalem, 1944) suggests that Terah'sfirst wife, i.e., Edna, who was supplied by Jubilees 11:14, died. Terah'ssecond marriage,invented by Algazi or an unnamedsource on which he relied in orderto resolve the discrepancybetween the motherof Abraham supplied by Jubilees and the one supplied by the Babylonian Talmud, was to Amthalai, the daughterof Karnebo,the motherof Abrahamsuppliedby bBB 91a. A 15th- or 16th-centurymanuscriptin the Bavarian State Libraryat Munich (Munich Heb. MS 391, an anonymous commentaryon Isaiah and the Minor Prophets) ends with a list of the namesof 14biblical women fromEve, wife of Adam,throughSamchantanaphu ,the wife of Ham.The nonbiblical names in this list all derive fromthe Book of Jubilees. Ilan (pp. 48-49) refersto this list as Perles,i.e., J. Perles,Beitrage zur Geschichte der hebraischen und aramaischen Studien (Munich, 1884), p. 90, n. 1. All of these lists, which are concerned only with the naming of women, demonstrateclearly that some Jewish scholars in the l4th-16th centuries were...