Beyond Form Criticism: Essays in Old Testament Literary Criticism (review)

Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 154 Reviews ments on the subject in recent years and Farris' insights into these major texts on salvation in the Old Testament, this work deserves the attention of all serious students of biblical theology. Alex Luc Columbia Biblical Seminary Columbia. SC 29230 BEYOND FORM CRITICISM: ESSAYS IN OLD TESTAMENT LITERARY CRITICISM. Paul R. House, ed. Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 2. Pp. xiv + 448. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992. Cloth, $32.50. Editor Paul R. House intends Beyond Form Criticism: Essays in Old Testament Literary Criticism to be a collection representative of "what is best in this exciting and growing discipline" (p. xiv). Sadly, though, whatever the guiding principles that House used in selecting the material for this volume may have been, the result is a book that presents literary criticism of the Hebrew Bible as an enterprise that produces new insights into the fonnal construction of biblical texts while leaving traditional understandings of the substance of those texts unchanged. Since much of what is best in the discipline flows from the opportunity it provides for the development of readings that challenge long held notions of what the Hebrew Bible means, Beyond Form Criticism provides a woefully incomplete and distorted picture of what is going on in the field. The book is composed of an introduction by House entitled "The Rise and Current Status of Literary Criticism of the Old Testament" followed by seven sections, each of which contains at least two essays by other authors. These sections are: "Scripture and Literary Criticism," "Rhetorical Analysis," "Structuralist Analysis," "Fonnalism and Narrative," "Analysis of Hebrew Poetry," "Reader-Response Analysis," and "The Future of Old Testament Literary Criticism." The volume's greatest weakness arises from the exclusion of much important work from sections where it clearly belongs in favor of the inclusion of work that is far less important. Such exclusion takes the dual form of the complete absence of some major authors and the representation of others by work that gives an inaccurate impression of their scholarship. The complete exclusion of major authors is dramatically exemplified by the "Rhetorical Analysis" section. The section consists of two essays, the Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 155 Reviews first of which is James Muilenburg's now classic Society of Biblical Literature Presidential Address, "Form Criticism and Beyond." The second essay, however, is a reading of Psalm 18 by J. Kenneth Kuntz in which a detailed formal analysis of the text yields little or no interpretive payoff. Given that one of Muilenburg's students, Phyllis Trible, has produced essays that have changed the face of Biblical studies forever and that others, such as James Ackerman and Walter Brueggemann, have broken new ground in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, the inclusion of Kuntz's essay as the only example of post-Muilenburg rhetorical criticism is indefensible. The "Structuralist Analysis" section is similarly flawed. Here, the important interpretive work of Hebrew Bible scholar David Jobling is ignored in favor of two methodological essays that do not engage in textual interpretation at all and a reading of Genesis 2-3 by two New Testament scholars (Daniel Patte and Judson F. Parker) whose experimental venture outside their area of expertise does not produce particularly significant results . This section can scarcely be described as representing what is best in structuralist criticism of the Hebrew Bible. In other sections, major scholars are ill served by what House has chosen to include of their work. In the sections on formalism and poetry, House has included two examples of J. Cheryl Exum's work that do not foreground her feminist concerns, thereby denying the reader access to a crucial dimension of Exum's scholarly project. In the same sections, House presents two highly technical pieces of formalist analysis by Adele Berlin that do not show how such analysis leads to interpretive insight in Berlin's longer works. Finally, House's decision to represent David Gunn's work by a programmatic essay in the section on the future of the discipline means that readers of this volume get only the slightest hint of the provocative results that emerge when Gunn actually goes to work on a biblical text. Still, Beyond...