Toward a Grammar of Biblical Poetics: Tales of the Prophets (review)

Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 109 Reviews quest for a more adequate (that is, less theological) rationale for the canonical approach. But will post-modem intellectual currents of thought actually enhance the theological usefulness of the canonical approach for the church? Childs himself, by Brett's own admission, has expressed impatience with the intratextual theology of Lindbeck, and one suspects that even after Brett's astute reconstruction there will remain more of a crisis in biblical studies than he is perhaps willing to admit. Samuel E. Balentine Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond Richmond, VA 23227 TOWARD A GRAMMAR OF BIBLICAL POETICS: TALES OF THE PROPHETS. By Herbert Chanan Brichto. Pp. xv + 298. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Cloth, $35.00. The title of this book testifies to its author's modesty: he does not pretend to present a grammar of biblical poetics but limits himself to "a beginning toward one" (p. ix). The "grammatical rules," the criteria and questions which deserve the reader's attention while analyzing the biblical text, are presented in the first part of the book. The usefulness and relevance of these tools are examined in the second part by analyzing prophetic tales (the book of Jonah; the story of the golden calf; the cycles of Elijah and Elisha; and Jeremiah 26), since it is not the recipe which matters but the taste of the pudding. Brichto states as a working hypothesis "that the Hebrew Scriptures, as a whole and in its constitutive units, constitute a unitary design and a single 'authorial voice,' even though the several or many authors who contributed to that voice and design may have lived centuries apart" (p. viii). This unity assumption is expressed repeatedly. Brichto declares that "the clues to any given pericope in Scripture are often to be found in another section in Scripture ..." (p. 62), and also that the halachic material incorporated into the Bible must be taken into consideration in the process of interpretation (p. 246), because it is a mirror to the ideological-spiritual world of the authors and their writings. Brichto, the "unionist," attacks the "separatists," those biblical scholars "for whom literary criticism means source analysis, which has become the keystone for methodologies that have become syn- Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 110 Reviews onymous with 'scientific Bible study'" (p. vii); "biblicists are for the most part philologians in the narrow sense and not well versed in the methods of literary criticism" (p. 36). Brichto's declaration of war pushes at an already open door. He may have fallen asleep many years ago and is unaware that he now works in a very different world from that which he condemns. I dare say this because of the leanness of reading reflected in the footnotes: Brichto ignores completely many works of Bible scholars whose approach is clearly literary, including Israeli scholars who have dedicated entire books and articles-in English and Hebrew-to texts which he analyzes. A partial list of such scholars includes M. Weiss, U. Simon, A. Rofe, and Y. Zakovitch. Furthermore, vetoing one approach in favor of another is a dangerous business. It is true that nineteenth-century biblical scholars looked enthusiastically to the smallest units and ignored the contexts-the whole compositions into which they were incorporated. The assumption of the absolute unity of the biblical corpus, on the other hand, is no less precarious: Brichto himself is aware of the long and gradual process of the Bible's composition. He must, therefore, admit that each literary unit has its own truth and carries its own message. That message becomes blurred when we focus exclusively on the ultimate unity. Brichto ignores a third possibility, the distinction between an original unit and interpolations added to it, which does justice both to the individual unit, the way it was originally written, and to the final version of the composition which also deserves examination and appreciation. The unity assumption has, I believe, only a limited relevance-when it is possible to prove an interrelationship between two literary units when the language, structure, or plot lines in one unit carry an overt or a covert allusion to another one. Furthermore, the meaning of a literary unit which is...