Writing the History of Israel (review)

Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 326 Reviews urges imitatio Dei. The God of the Hebrew Bible says “do not do as I do, do as I say,” that is, “follow my laws,” even though I will not bind myself by them. Chapter 3 is devoted to a survey of the methods used by feminist scholars : literary criticism, cultural studies (which investigates the influence the Bible has had on the cultures of the world throughout the ages), and historical criticism (which studies the validity of the Bible for understanding women’s lives in ancient Israel). The fourth chapter, “Rape, Enslavement, and Marriage: Sexual Violence in the Hebrew Bible,” illustrates a feminist reading of various biblical stories . One example is the story of Zilpah and Bilhah who are used by their owners Leah and Rachel to obtain additional children. This view of the story shocks, but so does the story itself when we first read it. One may also ask about Leah, and also Jacob, both forced into a loveless marriage. The fifth chapter describes the expansion of feminist interests to anticolonialist issues. It surveys those feminist discussions of Ruth, Jezebel, and Rahab which describe them as siding with the colonizers against their own people—Moabite, Phoenician, and Canaanite. For them, the hero is neither Ruth nor Naomi, but Orpah who sticks with her own people and her own god. Why no discussion here of Deborah or Yael who defend their people against the evil oppressors? Or, is it only Israel who colonizes and only Israel whose defense is defense of the colonizer? A major complaint of post-colonial biblical scholars is that the Bible has replaced the native literature and genuine narratives of indigenous peoples. This is indeed a great tragedy, a tremendous loss. I blame (St.) Paul for bringing a collection of unknown Jewish folktales to the Greco-Roman world as if it were the very word of God. Lisbeth S. Fried University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 lizfried@umich.edu WRITING THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL. By Diane Banks. LHBOTS 438. Pp. xi + 248. New York: T & T Clark, 2006. Cloth, $145.00. The guiding premise of this book is that the assumptions and practices of the discipline of Israel’s history have been closely linked to those of historiography in general. After an introduction, the study begins with the nineteenth century, when historiography and biblical historiography were Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 327 Reviews centered in Germany. Julius Wellhausen’s relationship to this tradition is explored . For the mid-twentieth century, Banks reviews the different traditions of historiography present in Germany and the United States, and analyzes Martin Noth and John Bright along these lines. Banks then discusses a number of later twentieth century developments in historiography, such as Annales, Marxist, and postmodern perspectives, and examines the challenges the so-called “minimalists,” especially Thomas L. Thompson, have leveled at traditional understandings of the feasibility of writing Israel’s history. A second premise of the study is that in each period, the audience for Israel’s history “constrained” historians’ work. In particular, Banks argues that the conviction that the Bible contains history has forced historians to move away from “secular, academic historiography” (p. 3), presumably because this type of historiography does not allow for a story of Israel’s past that accommodates a view that reliable information of the past can be found there. The book supports the claim that historians of ancient Israel have mirrored trends in historiography since the nineteenth century. The chapters that discuss trends in historiography for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (chaps. 2, 4, and 6) could be used as stand-alone reviews of historiography in each time period. Likewise, the discussions of Wellhausen, Noth, and Bright are good summaries of the presuppositions and conclusions of each, and explain how these scholars related to the type of historiography being practiced around them. In the case of Wellhausen, his interest in Israel as a nation was in line with nineteenth-century interest in the formation of states. Noth, like his contemporaries, looked for the unique spirit of his subject, finding it in kernels of Israel’s tradition that the Hebrew Bible preserved. Bright, in the American tradition...