Logos und Buchstabe: Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Judentum und Christentum der Antike (review)

136 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 "Josephus spiele" to play out, in which he and another fellow beat the odds, was a last resort. Once again I found myself thinking as I read Professor Gnuse's book that it is no historical crime to write with a more lively style. He has pulled together a tremendous amount ofgood information. He has read the others scholars who have written on this topic, and interacts with them. This makes the book worth while. If it were more interesting to read, more people would read it, because surely the topic is interesting, particularly as the new millennium dawns. This and the customary high price this publisher asks will reduce the general usefulness ofGnuse's study. Stuart Robertson Jewish Studies Purdue University Logos und Buchstabe: Miindlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Judentum und Christentum der Antike, edited by Gerhard Sellin and Franryois Vouga. Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, Vol. 20. Tiibingen: Francke Verlag, 1997. 269 pp. DM 86.00. The topic ofthis collection ofessays is broad enough, and despite the subtitle includes essays not directly related to Judaism and Christianity, so that any unifying theme is difficult to identify. Two persistent points emerge, however. The first is an engagement with deconstructionism and its denigration of authorial intention. The second is an assault on the notion that the oral (Miindlichkeit) is necessarily prior to the written (Schriftlichkeit), and hence has greater claim to authenticity. A description of the articles will show how these themes emerge. The first essay, "Das lebendige Wort und der Tote Buchstabe: Aspekte von Miindlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit in christlicher und jiidischer Theologie," by Gerhard Sellin, argues that to accede to the claim that the meaning and/or interpretation ofa text is unrelated to any authorial intention is to lose any chance that the text will do anything other than confirm conclusions already reached. Dorothea Frede's contribution, "Miindlichkeit und Schriftlichkeii: von Platon zu Plotin," argues that Plato's famous opposition to writing (seventh letter) is at bottom a question of whether Plato's philosophy can be handed on in any form, written or oral. Any suspicion ofwriting is not pursued by Plato's students, as shown by Plotinus, who has no objection in principle to the written word. The upshot is that one can find no genuine tradition that is critical of written material and prefers the oral in ancient philosophy between Plato and Plotinus. The third essay, "Der Dbergang von der Miindlichkeit zur Schriftlichkeit in friihgriechischen Epos," by Wolfgang Kullman, urges that an oral society cannot preserve historical tradition over long periods of time and that as a result epics do not Book Reviews 137 deliver reliable historical information, something of which he thinks someone like Hesiod himself was aware. In "Spuren der Unterscheidung von mundlichem und schriftlichem Wort im alten Testament," Ina Willi-Plein argues that Old Testament references to Torah point to an original oral form, something then repeated at Qumran with the Temple scroll. Thus, on the basis ofJeremiah's dictation to Baruch and the Josianic reform, one can see the oral Torah underlying and preceding its written form. Michael Fishbane proposes, in "Orally Write therefore Aurally Right: An Essay on Midrash," that the written law is an extension of divine speech at Sinai, and that Midrashic exegesis seeks to keep that speech alive for the present generation. Thus the lange of God is the parole ofScripture, and the lange of Scripture is the parole of the Midrashic exegesis. In "Schrift und Mikra," Herbert Marks argues that while Buber accepted the speculation that all Scripture had oral origins and that as a result "original" and "authentic" mean the same thing-only what is original can be authentic, hence only the original oral word can be an authentic word-in such a writing as Deuteronomy, both oral and written are mixed into one another. The Song of Moses in Deut. 32 is written fIrst, then recited to people; in the Law the voice is fIrst, then the written form. This is confIrmed in the case of Jeremiah and Baruch, where writing and reading are bound together, with each seeking to become the other. In an illustrated article ("Der...