A Historical-Critical Study of the Book of Obadiah (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 326 Reviews and reading" (p. xiii). Under the circumstances, it is ironic that Brueggemann's commentary owes so much to the guild. His exposition of the text, if not his application of it, is standard guild fare although it harks back to the likes of Bright and Skinner in many respects. At any mte, there is little here to vex unduly even the most "ideological" guild member. Brueggemann applies the theological implications of the text with considemble subtlety. While his commentary is largely (and correctly) focused on what the text "meant," in its own situation, Brueggemann argues that the same text has real power to "mean" now. This is, of course, a dangerous path to tread: it is possible that Jeremiah could be turned into the same kind of dogmatic authority against which the book inveighs. Yet Brueggemann handles the subject thoughtfully and with sensitivity. While one may doubt Brueggemann's assertion that his own reading offers a way out of the perceived impasse in Jeremiah studies, this book is a very readable guide to Jeremiah and will appeal to a broad section of the market. Dominic Rudman King's College London London, England dominic.rudman@kcl.ac.uk A HISTORICAL-CRITICAL STUDY OF THE BOOK OF OBADIAH. By Ehud Ben Zvi. BZAW 242. pp. x + 309. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996. Cloth, $112.90. This study of the book of Obadiah emerges quite clearly from recent developments in intellectual history and particularly recent theoretical reflection on the interpretation of texts. Scholars such as Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, and Umberto Eco focused critical attention on "the role of the reader" (Eco's term) in the production of the meaning of texts. Postmodem sensibility, schooled by Jacques Derrida's progmm of deconstruction , has fostered conventions of reading that assume the indeterminacy of texts and revel in textual ambiguities. Interpretive trends deriving severally from New Criticism and Russian Formalism concentrate on the aesthetic structure of the text mther than extm-textual factors influencing its composition . Professor Ben Zvi brings together these developments to form a program of interpretation directed to the ancient book of Obadiah. The heart of Ben Zvi's proposal is to focus critical attention on the original readers of the book. He is quite emphatic that the fIrst audience for Obadiah was a group of readers, not hearers, that the book was written to Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 327 Reviews be read and not spoken to be heard. The importance of this distinction becomes apparent early. Many of the stylistic and structural features of the book which Ben Zvi describes could not be grasped on first hearing nor would some of the thematically important inter-relationships between different sections of the book even exist if, as form-critics suppose, segments of the book were delivered on separate occasions. In fact, the presence in the text of mUltiple devices that operate between segments of the text- "ligatures," step-like development from one section to another, internal cross-references, and coherent thematic development-provide a compelling argument for written composition received for the Irrst time by readers. Ben Zvi's attention to the reader would seem to move him toward the history of interpretation, focusing on the earliest interpreters who have left hints as to their understanding of Obadiah. Focusing on these early stages would put the modern investigator on firm empirical ground. But Ben Zvi seeks to press back behind the earliest attested interpretation-which might come from centuries after the composition of Obadiah-to the first readers , those who received the newly crafted text. This is a far more obscure region, the readers who inhabit it recalcitrantly shadowy and hypothetical. They have left no direct evidence by which to reconstruct their reading practice, no commentaries, correspondence with the author or other interpreters , no journals or publications of their response to Obadiah. To give substance to these necessarily shadowy readers Ben Zvi relies on two strategies. First, at the beginning of his work he cites a number of studies of what might be called the phenomenology of the reading process. The assumption here is that all readers process texts in similar ways and that we may...