The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (review)

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 116 Reviews goes. But already it is in serious need of revision because of its late publication and of extension to cover a wider range of the development of the books of Micah and Isaiah. Steven L. McKenzie Rhodes College Memphis, TN 38112 THE FIRST HISTORIANS: THE HEBREW BIBLE AND HISTORY . By Baruch Halpern. pp. xviii + 285. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. Cloth, $22.95. Halpern states that this book is "an attempt to rationalize an intuition: that historical narrative is not to be handled as are folklore or the elements of dramatization in historical narrative; that the historian's conviction is not formal evidence of concoction; that the ancient author's views of their task must determine the directions from which we approach the texts" (p. xvii). The assumption which informs this whole study is that the way in which we read these texts must be determined by the intentions of the ancient authors. If they believed that they were writing history, then modern interpreters are bound by their intentions and motivations. Halpern is not afraid to put forward bold hypotheses while dismissing opponents as fundamentalists, negative fundamentalists, or Pyrrhonists. The book is argued in such a way as to excite opposition, a fact that he recognizes and seems to court deliberately. This is an unashamedly polemical work which offers no quarter to opponents. He is determined to defend the motives and intentions of Israelite historians against detractors. He takes as his model Martin Noth and his belief that the Deuteronomistic Historian was motivated to write a history of Israel down to the exile. Halpern takes it upon himself to defend the honor of Israelite historians against two influential movements in recent biblical studies. On the one hand he dismisses modern historians who draw upon the social sciences and/or question the priority of the Hebrew Bible or date texts late as negative fundamentalists. Particular ire is reserved for the growth and influence of new literary studies and its practitioners dismissed as Pyrrhonists with the view that "text-centered" interpretation is meaningless interpretation when applied to historical literature. Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 117 Reviews The strength of the book lies in the fact that it addresses the question of how we should read biblical texts, particularly as a response to some of the claims advanced by new literary studies. He ranges far and wide in trying to sustain his basic thesis that ancient Israelite historians were honorable in their intentions. It is a pity, however, that Halpern fails to take the opportunity to open up a dialogue with his opponents. Historians drawing on the social sciences and new literary critics are dismissed with a cavalier swipe in the introduction. He fails to engage with secondary literature and conduct a dialogue in arguing his case. Rather, he dismisses recent historical studies in a very cursory manner on the grounds that such approaches "cannot usher in a revolution in historical certainty"-as if certainty was the goal of the historian. That which is certain in history is usually uninteresting, whereas the fundamental questions of how and why deal in terms of possibilities and probabilities, as he acknowledges. In attacking modem literary studies of the Hebrew Bible, Halpern only refers to the work of Robert Alter in the most cursory manner with reference to one of his early articles. Alter's later influential publications or the work of Clines, Gunn, Polzin, or Fokkelman, among others, are ignored. In effect, he caricatures the positions of his opponents in order to dismiss their arguments. Typical of this is the statement that modem historians have portrayed their Israelite counterpart as "unconstrained by the credence of contemporaries, without loyalty to fact or common knowledge. A writer rather than a historian, an editor, not a scholar..." (p. 27). Halpern is concerned to show that Israelite historians worked with sources and were faithful to them. After a long discussion of various features and details of the Eglon-Ehud narrative, he concludes that narrative economy is a mark of historiographical intention. He recognizes that this feature alone cannot be conclusive but can only be proved by a comparison of the account with its sources. Thus his...