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176 SHOFAR Fa112000 Vol. 19, No.1 Joshua Retold: Synoptic Perspectives, by A. Graeme Auld. Old Testament Studies. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998. 179 pp. $39.95 (c). This volume is a collection ofthirteen essays on the book of Joshua by Professor Auld spanning his career from 1975 to the present. Most of them have been previously published or read at professional meetings. Most have been revised for this volume. The final one is new. After a brief"Orientation" the essays are organized into four sections. The first five come under the heading "Texts" and deal with text-critical issues in Joshua concerning particularly the relationship between the Masoretic text (MT) and the Septuagint(LXX). There are also essays here dealing specifically with the lists of cities in Joshua 20 and 21 and the importance oftextual evidence for determining their literary relationship and development vis-a-vis "parallel" biblical texts, especially the one in 1 Chronicles 6. The next three essays are grouped under "Words" and are studies ofthe place name "Bet Anat" (Josh 15:59 MT), the term kbS, and the words for "tribe." These studies overlap with or follow from the text-critical essays in the previous section as they warn against uncritical acceptance ofthe MT or argue for the discernment ofdistinct literary traditions in word choices of the variant textual witnesses. The third section, entitled "Connections," contains four essays that deal with literary connections between Joshua and other biblical books. Auld here questions consensus views about the dependence of 1 Chronicles 2-7 on Joshua 13-22, suggesting mutual influence, and about the existence of"Deuteronomistic History," the theory that the books ofDeuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings were originally a unit. The fourth section, "Interpretations," contains a single essay on the history of interpretation of the book of Joshua. The book concludes with what is really a fourteenth essay called "Re-orientation," that further updates this history of interpretation, particularly in dialogue with Auld's earlier book, Joshua, Moses and the Land (1980). This essay also offers a kind ofprospectus for the direction that Auld believes further study of Joshua should take. This collection is useful for laying out the trajectory of thought of one of the leading scholars on Joshua. Auld's work has been and remains revisionist in the best sense. He is athis best when reexamining widely accepted conclusions (or assumptions) of scholars, pointing out their weaknesses and turning them on their heads to find out whether they actually stand better "upside down." Thus, as shown by this book, Auld began in his dissertation by calling into question the assumption, commonly held in practice ifnot in theory, that the MT represented a better textual witness than the LXX. He showed that in Joshua at least this was not the case. This work then led him to suggest that taking the LXX seriously provided new answers to literary problems in the book that had long troubled scholars. This, in tum, raised questions for him about the literary relationships between books and canonical units ofthe Bible that scholars often accept as givens. Hence, Auld's book is highly recommended for its provocative nature Book Reviews 177 and its careful treatment of specific texts. It will have to be taken into account in any future work on Joshua. Nevertheless, one may leave Auld's work, as I do, with reservations about some of his own hypotheses. As I suggested, I find his text-critical work compelling. The LXX must certainly be given full consideration as a textual witness. Moreover, Auld's observation that the line between literary and textual stages of development (as distinguished by "higher" and "lower" criticism) is blurred has been confirmed by work outside of Joshua. But Auld's conclusions about the literary relationships among biblical books is on much shakier ground. His questioning of scholarly assumptions about such relationships focuses especially on portions ofJoshua 12-22, which is often seen as a late addendum to the Deuteronomistic history. Hence it would not be surprising to fmd influence from thatmaterial on Chronicles. But the situation is quite different in otherparts ofJoshua and the Former Prophets. I remain especially unconvinced about Auld's...

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