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Title: From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel by Frank Moore Cross Jr., P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, Hans-Jurgen Puhle ISBN: 0-8018-5982-4 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 December, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Distinguished Scholar Weighs in Again
Comment: For this book Frank Cross has gathered together a series of
essays which tell the story of what became the Canon for ancient Israel. The original intent, says the author, "was to fill inter-stices (gaps) in my earlier study _Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic_. Though many of the essays have appeared in other scholarly literature, several appear in this book for the first time.
Early Israel was a tribal league developed due to internal pressures such as the blood feud and exteranl pressures such as the highly organized armies of neigh-boring powers. Too there was a certain amount of kinship which was tied togther by religious unity. Cross calls this "kinship-in-law." This is important because covenants were mutual; covenants with one-sided obligation were a later idea. It was this league which produced Hebrew epic.
The beginning of Israelite literature is the transition from poetry to epic (which is defined on page 29). Contrary to the claims of some scholars, Cross maintains that "folk memory" is longer than two generations. Bards, using various formulae, could keep the culture of a people clear although historical fact, as we now know it, was never the main concern. So the culture of ancient Israel was passed from poetry to epic. This can be seen in Song of Deborah and its accompanying narrative passages in Judges. The partitioning of the material as it passed into epic has been divided into the sources J, E, D, and P. Cross focuses upon the Tetrateuch because it escaped any systematic editing by D.
Now as to the matter between text and history, Cross proposes a study of the tribe of Reuben. This culminates in the conclusion that the Apiru were a client class. Personal names found in the Execration texts, New Kingdom texts, and in the Haynes Papyrus show the pattern "client of El" and so forth. Cross believes that the connection between "apiru" and "ibri" should be af-firmed. Though he does not mention it, he has an unlikely ally here in Niels Peter Lemche who affirms the same conclusion in his Anchor Bible Dictionary article.
Thus far I have summarized only the first 70 pages of Cross's book. By the time he is done Cross has progressed to showing the relationship between the stabilization of the text with the canonization of the text in the late/post Qumran period. Those who know the issues of this book will want to consider Cross. A distinguished scholar has weighed in again.
Rating: 4
Summary: Generally Insightful and Accessible, With Some Reservations
Comment: This book is a worthy and very interesting successor to "Canaanite Myth And Hebrew Epic", exploring a number of issues relating to the history of Israel that were not addressed in the earlier work. Essays cover the relation of kinship to covenant, traditional narrative, the dubious fortunes of Reuben, the old gods of the ancient near east, OT descriptions of the tabernacle tent and temple in context, highly technical essays on Hebrew verse, two essays on the post-exilic restoration with an emphasis on the rift between Samaria and Jerusalem, two essays on the fixation and stabilization of the canonical text, and kind of an afterthought essay on pottery sherds and alphabets.
For me, the most interesting articles were the 'olden gods' essay, which places a number of themes present in the Bible firmly in the context of Canaanite mythology, and the the Samaria essay, which brings a lot of insight to the "Samaritan Problem". Just about as compelling are the essays dealing with the canonization of the Biblical texts, which brings the Dead Sea Scrolls and other contemporary evidence in to clarify the conerns and procedures. The most difficult and arcane (and beyond my interest) were the essays dealing with Hebrew verse.
My reservations stem from what seem to me to be omissions in the argument. Cross regularly makes the statement "there is no reason to doubt" one thing or another which is by no means proven, either in this work or any other that I know of, regarding practices and institutions of the "tribal league" and the "empire". He alludes to the existence of tribal leagues and their distinct religious forms from the Bronze Age to the modern era without much discussion of evidence. He also attests that at Ugarit patriarchal and specifically urban forms co-existed. This is interesting and I would like to know more about it. If the tribal and urban practices mingled throughout history, this does not give us "no reason to doubt" the historical accuracy of a Biblical account in which patriarchal religion and politics totally gives way to some national type of religion, nor does it help secure the dating of patriarchal narratives, or the dating of the conversion to Yahwism of Canaanite mythic themes. Cross's assertion of an orally transmitted prose epic seems unlikely, and no evidence is presented here to change my mind.
My reservations do not decrease the value of this book, however. In fact, they increase it, because of the issues raised. Overall, a must read.
Rating: 2
Summary: Edit
Comment: (The following two edits should be applied to my review [prev])
--Paragr. 5, point (1.), parenthetical: "century" should be altered to "millenium" both times [I certainly wrote this review too late at night]
--Paragr. 6, last sentence: "references to ... Greek culture is" should be altered to "references to ... Greek culture are"
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Title: Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel by Frank Moore Cross ISBN: 0674091760 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Neil Asher Silberman, Israel Finkelstein ISBN: 0684869136 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series) by Mark S. Smith ISBN: 080283972X Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Bible with Sources Revealed by Richard E. Friedman ISBN: 0060530693 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: 25 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith ISBN: 0195167686 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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