Interpreting the Pentateuch (review)

Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 164 Reviews understanding a symbol of punishment and destruction in those literatures. Loader has provided an original contribution to the study of the Genesis literature and collected a good deal of the material for further work on these traditions in the later literature. John Kampen Payne Theological Seminary Wilberforce, OH 45384 INTERPRETING THE PENTATEUCH. By Sean McEvenue. Old Testament Studies 4. Pp. 194. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990. Paper. This book asks the basic hermeneutical question: Can the Bible really matter; can a biblical text mean anything that we actually care about? The author poses this question from a modem perspective, assuming and accepting what people today know and understand about the world, history, and literary texts. He answers "yes," and this book is meant to tell how. It is an exercise in hermeneutics which takes the Pentateuch as the main example. Among modem thinkers, Bernard Lonergan plays probably the most important, but by no means the only, constructive role in the argument. Historical critical analysis, the author avers, is essential but insufficient for modem interpretation. The grounds for rejecting an historical approach , whether practical, philosophical, or theological, are refuted mainly through a trenchant critique of Gadamer and his influence. Modems read both for original meanings and for faith, and somehow the two must be related. In an argument in part developed previously, the author draws attention to "elemental meanings" which express the "foundational stance" of authors, or the Speaker, in a text. This "stance" consists of "an implied teaching which is affirmed in the style, in the choice of themes, in the omissions, and in the horizons of the Speaker." The recognition of the Speaker's stance is a dialectical, subjective process which starts with the feelings of the reader and leads to questions such as in what realm the text expects meaning, revelation, or salvation to occur and what that meaning is. It also raises the challenge that such meaning presents. In the heart of the book, this literary theory is applied to each of the main constituent sources of the Pentateuch. The Yahwist, for example, seeks God's trace in past events and in large-scale political and cultural Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 165 Reviews realities that influence human lives. For the Elohist Speaker, God is revealed "where the heart is tom in our deepest inter-personal relationships." As a result, readers of the Yahwist are led to "recover their authentic selves by accepting the constraints of historical origins and by fighting evil in the pursuit of prosperity." The Elohist teaches readers to "trust in God's direct care during storms of personal grief." Comparable ideas are developed in chapters on the Priestly narrative writer and the Deuteronomist. The entire discussion is marked by more critical interest and nuance than can be illustrated here. A concluding chapter explains how Lonergan's theological hermeneutics should apply to biblical reading, with a focus on the reader's dialectical handling of Lonergan's operations of research, interpretation, and history on the one hand and doctrines, systematics, and communications (the last counteracts the personalizing tendency of this book) on the other. As a mature treatment of a fundamental problem, this book offers much that illumines, intrigues, and excites. Naturally it is not always possible to agree entirely with the author's literary and historical understanding, but the theme of the book is worth consideration and the undertaking as a whole, which involves all teachers of Scripture, commendable. Robert B. Coote San Francisco Theological Seminary San Anselmo. CA 94960 THE TROUBLE WITH KINGS: THE COMPOSITION OF THE BOOK OF KINGS IN THE DEUTERONOMISTIC HISTORY. By Steven L. McKenzie. Vetus Testamentum Supplements 42. Pp. xii + 186. New York: EJ. Brill, 1991. Cloth, $54.44. This book developed out of the author's doctoral dissertation "The Chronicler's Use of the Deuteronomistic History" which was published in the Harvard Semitic Monograph series in 1985. McKenzie does not claim a great deal of originality in this work, only a new way of linking parts of the Deuteronomistic material together. He reviews past approaches to the Deuteronomistic History (DH): Noth's understanding of the DH as a continuous unit by an...