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B I B L E

R E V I E W

V O L U M E

X V I I

N U M B E R

) U

N E

2 0 0

Readers Reply
The Triumph o f Legalism Over Love
W a s Bathsheba Behind It?
A Mere Braggart?

Columnist
Ronald S. Hendel
O f Doubt, Gadflies and Minimalists

1 0 Jots & Tittles

Blake at the Met
N o Laughing Matter
Pop G o e s the Bible
C o u r t Rescues Motto
The Bible in the News

46

Rible Rooks
An American Bible:
A History of the Good Book
in the United States,
1777-1880
by Paul Gutjahr

48

Rooks in Rrief
Resources for Students of the Bible

55
56

Authors
Gallery
The G o o d Shepherd

The Favored One

RONALD

F.

HOCK

I L L U S T R A T I O N S
S E L E C T E D
AND
D E S C R I B E D
BY

D A V I D R.
CARTL1DGE
Mary, the m o t h e r of J e s u s , dominates
Christian piety and practice m o r e than any
other w o m a n . Yet the New Testament tells
u s surprisingly litde about her. T o
understand h o w Mary achieved her
p r o m i n e n c e a m o n g the faithful, w e must
look to the earliest extrabiblical text about
herand to the beautiful art it inspired.

26
Genesis as Rashomon
PAMELA TAMARKIN
REIS
The Bible begins with two accounts of
Creationthe work, scholars believe, of two
authors. But, like the film Rashomon, the
opening chapters of Genesis may be the
work o f a single author w h o records his tale
from multiple viewpoints.

34

Why Deborahs
Different
O N T H E COVER: Mary kneels before h e r
sleeping b a b e , in S a n d r o Botticelli's p a i n t i n g
Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child
( 1 4 8 1 ) . B e h i n d J e s u s flowers a c a m e l l i a b u s h
with its l u s h yet short-lived b l o s s o m s , long a
symbol o f life's brevity. T h e r o c k y wall a t
right m a y r e p r e s e n t t h e c a v e in w h i c h J e s u s ,
according to e x t r a b i b l i c a l t r a d i t i o n , w a s b o m
T h e i n s c r i p t i o n o n the gilt f r a m e b o r r o w s
two lines f r o m the Latin p r a y e r Ave M a r i a :
"Hail, Mary, full o f g r a c e ... M o t h e r
of G o d , p r a y for u s n o w . " In " T h e
Favored O n e , " p. 1 2 , R o n a l d F. H o c k
explains h o w M a r y c a m e to b e h a i l e d
as the M o t h e r o f Goda s t o r y h i n t e d
at in the Bible b u t only e x p l o r e d
fully in o n e o f the earliest
Christian g o s p e l s to be
excluded from the N e w
T e s t a m e n t Photo by the
National Galleries of Scotland.

DANIEL

1.

BLOCK

In the popular mind, Deborah w a s a

devout w o m a n w h o led the ancient
Israelites to military victory. But the
portrait of her in the Book of J u d g e s
s h o w s her role to have been n o t
primarily militaristic but prophetic.

41

Its Elementary
J O H N
AND

S T R U G N E L L

HANAN

E S H E L

Psalms 9 and 10 seem to be in

reverse order. Exploring why
leads to s o m e surprising
insights into the history
ol the alphabet.

READERS REPLY
BR

A Prude Approves
I am as much of a prude as anyone, but I
don't think you print "dirty" pictures.
Keep printing 'em!
Klcinie Fieberg
Wilmette, Illinois

Yet Another Acronym

After receiving the first issue of BR, 1 realized that your magazine sets out to
undermine and discredit the Bible. I've
decided to spare myself the aggravation
of reading your irreverent and obviously
uninspired drivel, and not to subscribe
after all. 1 suggest you change the name
of your publication to, say, "The pagan
view of the Bible" or maybe change the
abbreviation from BR to BS.
E. Davidson
Las Vegas, Nevada

HOMOSEXUALITY
The Triumph of Legalism
Over Love
Regarding your plan to publish different
perspectives on the subject of homosexuality (Readers Reply, February 2001, p. 4),
be prepared to fasten your seat belts. I
know of no other subject that can generate more heat (and hopefully some light)
than this one.
I am a heterosexual Presbyterian elder
who has led several adult education
classes on this topic over the past 20
years. Included in these classes have been
Bible study, current psychological understandings, the conservative viewpoint and

presentations by gays. These classes were

driven by the proposal to bar the ordination of practicing homosexuals, which
sadly has now been included in the
Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of
Order. Currently there are movements
under way to formally bar same-sex
unions. A majority of my denomination
seems to favor legalism over love.
The message 1 hear over and over from
Christian homosexuals is simply this: I am
a gay person who never chose my sexual
orientation but am satisfied with who I
am. I seek no special treatment but only
to be treated equally with others and be
accepted. 1 want to have the same intimate
loving relationships as heterosexuals,
except that my passions are with members
of the same sex. 1 believe that a committed
monogamous relationship, as opposed to
a promiscuous one, is not hurtful to me

BIBIF R E V I E W * |UNE

2001

or others and is acceptable to G o d especially since He created me as I am.

1 have accepted that there are statements in the Bible that speak against
homosexuality; however, many, if not all,
pertain to sexual promiscuity, including
the proscription against heterosexuals
performing homosexual acts. 1 also
believe that God in His wisdom speaks to
us in our own time and that virtually all
Christians, whether conservative or liberal, no longer accept certain biblical passages as valid in the context of what we
today know scientifically or accept culturally. For example, many do not accept
that God created the world as described
in the Bible, that adulterers and gays
should be put to death and that women
should be silent in church and be subordinate. We now consider slavery immoral,
and many accept divorce as preferable to
an irreparably bad marriage. Few of us
are willing to sell all we have and give the
money to the poor as directed by Jesus.
I predict that BR will receive many letters incompatible with the core message
of the New Testament; that message, I
believe, is the radical refocusing on God's
love and grace for all of His children as
embodied in the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Richard K. Sprenkle
Pittsford, N e w Y k
o r

Interpreting the Biblical Ban

The Jewish scriptural prohibition against
homosexuality appears in the context of
laws concerning cultic rites performed by
seven specifically named nations whose
religious worship rites we were being
instructed not to emulate in our worship
of God (Leviticus 18:3,22, 20:13,23;

hi '111 'K

Hershel Shanks

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Deuteronomy 23:18). Therefore the wording is "to lay with a man as with a woman,"
something a true homosexual man does
not do. The sin is about a homy heterosexual man using another man for sex,
which occurred in ancient religious worship among some of those very same
nations that our ancestors were warned
against emulating. To translate that prohibition, therefore, as applying to any homosexual relationship is to exit the realm of
divine ordination and enter instead the
realm of subjective, mortal homophobia.
The ancient rabbis must have had some
sense of this problem when they ruled two
thousand years ago that any homosexual
sexual activity short of anal intercourse is
not included in the biblical prohibition
(Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 54a-56a;
Sotah 26b; Niddah 13a; Maimonides, Perush
L'Mishnayot on Sanhcdrin 54a). Why did
they bother to offer that qualification if it
was so clear to them that homosexuality
was forbidden? Also, lesbianism, according to Jewish law, was never prohibited;
Maimonideswho personally abhorred
such behaviorruled that "it is neither a
biblical nor a rabbinic prohibition" {Perush
L'Mishnayot on Sanhedrin 54a).
Rabbi G c r s h o n Winkler
Cuba, N e w M e x i c o

Why Take Leviticus Seriously?

There's nothing like the mention of homosexuality to bring out the hypocrites in
Readers Reply (February 2001)! The proscription against it is in Leviticus, which
calls for a death sentence. A few verses
before, however, death is imposed for
cursing one's father or mother. The term
"hypocrite" is fitting, since it is obvious
that those people [who oppose homosexuality based on the BibleEd.] have not
read all of Leviticus. If they did, they would
realize that its proscriptions go far beyond
the rational. Not only are we forbidden to
crossbreed catde, but we may not wear
clothes of linen and wool together.
Leviticus is the work of an ignorant,
superstitious author whose prescribed
cure for leprosy, for example, is plain
witchery (Leviticus 14:33-57).
I'm amazed that those anti-gay zealots
don't take the evangelist John to task,
since his references to "the disciple whom
Jesus loved" who "leaned on his bosom at
supper" are of such significance as to be
mentioned seven times. While this doesn't
necessarily imply that Jesus is gay, it
seems to emphasize his understanding
and tolerance of a disciple who was.
Stuart C

Burdick

North Bend, Oregon

BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2 0 0 1

R E P L Y

READERS

DAVID IN GENESIS
Genesis Criticizes David
The article by Gary Rcndsburg ("Reading
David in Genesis," February 2001) ascribing the authorship of the narratives in
Genesis to someone in the court of King
David is surely interesting but seems to
be fatally flawed. Genesis is permeated
with references to events not only occurring during the times of David and
Solomon but also during those of others,
including Ahab, Elijah, Elisha, Amaziah
and Jehoash, as well as during the days
of the Judges who preceded these monarchs, including Samson and Jephthah.
The fact that Genesis alludes to protagonists who come after the division of the
monarchy is a strong argument against
any ascription of its authorship to a contemporary of King David.
For example, in the Joseph narrative the
Torah says: "And he [Joseph] carried mas'ot
[portions] from his presence to them and
mas'eyt [the portion] of Benjamin was five
times more than the mas'ot of all the rest"
(Genesis 43:34).

REPLY

The word mas'eyt characteristically

denotes an offering to God or to a king
(2 Samuel 11:8; Ezekiel 20:40; Psalm 141:2;
2 Chronicles 24:6,9), so that its use in
this verse shows that Joseph is honoring
his brothers as rulers in their own right.
The word mas'eyt also appears in the
narrative in which David deceives Uriah,
the husband of Bathsheba: "And David
said to Uriah: Go down to your house and
wash your feet. And Uriah left the king's
house and after him followed mas'eyt [a
portion] from the king" (2 Samuel 11:8).
When Joseph gives Benjamin an extra
portion before setting a trap for him and
potentially condemning him to lifelong
slavery on a trumped-up charge o f theft,
he acts in contrast to the way that David
gives Uriah a portion before arranging for
him to be k i l l e d on the battlefield.
David conspires vvithjoab to have
Uriah k i l l e d : "And in the morning David
w T o t e a note to Joab and sent it by Uriah's
hand, and he wrote in the note saying:
Place Uriah in front of the fierce battle
and withdraw behind him so that he
shall be struck and die" (2 Samuel 11:15).
continues on page 52

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RONALD S. HENDEL
\

Of Doubt, Gadflies and Minimalists

The minimalists are right to question what we know about the time when the Bible
was composed, but they are wrong in their conclusions.

The gentle philosopher Socrates casts a towering shadow over Western thought. He
accounted himself the least knowledgeable
of menone of his most famous sayings
states. "All I know i s that I know nothing."'
But his awareness of his ignorance made
him the wisest of men. In the early dialogues
of his disciple Plato, Socrates is shown wandering about Athens interrogating men who
seemed to have substantial knowledge of
ethics, religion, justice or philosophy. He
asks questions designed to point out the
rickety foundations of these men's supposed
knowledge, imploring them to think of
firmer foundations for such knowledge. In
some cases Socrates's interlocutors walk
away in disgust from these hard questions.
In the end, the city sentences Socrates to
death for being such a pest, a "gadfly" stinging a lazy horse, in Socrates's own metaphor.
Socrates showed how doubt can be marshaled against poorly constructed ideas and
arguments, revealing unexamined assumptions at their root. His goal was to establish
firm and well-warranted knowledge about
important topics that could withstand close
questioning. He used doubt as a corrosive
agent to burn away sloppy thinking, leaving clear and well-examined thinking to provide a better foundation for genuine knowledge. With his methodology, Socrates paved
the path of modern inquiry in the sciences
and humanities.
Since the Western rediscovery of Greek
thought during the Renaissance, Socratic
doubt has been a basic part of scientific
methodology. To put forth a solid thesis,
one must combine data, analysis and welltested theories into a model that can

withstand the criticisms and queries

put to it. If there are competing
models, the one that best withstands the Socratic questions
wins, at least until other and
better models are available
Well-placed doubt is a key
toolperhaps the key
toolin scientific and historical inquiry.
These
musings
on
Socratic method bring me to
the current dispute among
scholars of the Hebrew Bible
between the "minimalists"
and the rest of us. The minimalists are absolutely correct
I
to use doubt as a tool against
I
entrenched positions in biblical studies. This is what good
scholars are supposed to do-to
question received ideas and to
uncover valid reasons for scholarly conclusions. In this respect, the minimalists arc
not destructive, nihilistic or even postmodern, as their critics sometimes allege.
Alter raising the crucial question of "what
do we know?" the minimalists go on to build
their own models. This is also what scholars are supposed to do.
Several of the minimalistsnotably Niels
Peter Lemchc and Thomas Thompson, both
at the University of Copenhagenconclude
that the Hebrew Bible was primarily a creation of the Greek Age (in particular, the
fourth to second century B.C.E.).
How does this minimalist model hold
up to Socratic doubt? When one looks at
Hebrew texts clearly composed in the Greek
8
BIBII REVIEW |UNE 2001

Agelike Ben Sira, Jubilees, the

Dead Sea Scroll known as the
Damascus Document and
othersthey show a stage
of the Hebrew language
that is clearly later
than that shown in
most of the books of
the Hebrew Bible. In
contrast, when one
looks at Hebrew inscriptions from earlier times,
f say the ninth to sixth
century B.C.E., one finds
the same stages of the
Hebrew language as in
most of the biblical books.
What conclusions should
one draw Irom these questions? That the minimalists
are right to raise the Socratic
question of what we know, and
that they are wrong to conclude that
their late-dated model fits the facts.
Doubt is a useful and necessary tool in
historical inquiry. Alter applying judicious
doubt, a revised standard modelthat much
of the Hebrew Bible was written during the
period of the Hebrew monarchy and shortly
thereafter (ninth to sixth century B.C.E.)
works far better than the minimalist model
that the Hebrew Bible was written during
the Greek Age. Doubt is a great remedy for
pretentious theory-building of any type. It
can get one in troublejust ask Socrates
but it's still the best tool we have in scholarship. It keeps us alert, so that we don't
rest on our accepted opinions, like a lazy
horse. We need gadflies, even if they sting.

W H O

M O V E D

Actual Temple Site?

I t is 600 f e e t south
of Fort Antonio.

Double colonnades,
as r e p o r t e d by
eyewitness Josephus,
connected t h e
Temple precinct with
Fort Antonia.

T H E

"... the arguments

regarding the size of the Fortress
Antonio,
hased on Josephus and other evidence we have about
Ronton military encampments,
must be addressed. Martin's diesis
is so bold, so utterly non-conventional,
and so potentially
upsetting
that it should not be Ignored

T E M P L E ?

Wailing Wall
'";
Where Paul stood
to lecture t h e
Jews in A c t s 21.

Prof. J a m e s Tabor. D c p l . o f R e l i g i o u s

Roman Temple
!

Studies

U n i v e r s i t y o f N o r t h C a r o l i n a at C h a r l o t t e

Praetorium

am.

Just Released!

THE TEMPLES THAT E

JRUSALEM
FORGOT by Dr. Ernest E Martin

It is well known that Herod the Great vastly modified the

geography of the Temple and city of Jerusalem. But have
scholars been looking for the Temple in the wrong place?
This detailed volume explores a growing accumulation of
historical and archaeological evidence that the Jerusalem
Temples were not. in fact, situated on the traditional 'Temple
Mount,' but instead over the Gihon Spring just to the south.
Over a five year period. Dr. Martin worked with noted
Israeli archaeologist Dr. Benjamin Mazar in extensive
excavations at the
He here proposes that
the walls of the 'Temple enclosure' standing today are in fact
the walls of the massive Roman Fortress Antonia, the only
structure in 1st century Jerusalem designed to garrison a
five-thousand-strong Roman Legion.
486pp + Bibliography $24.95

Haram esh-Sharif.

Exit waters f r o m
the Sihon Spring

Bridge o f t h e Red
H e i f e r t h a t leads t o
the Mount of Olives.

Southeast corner is a 4 0 - s t o r y building in elevation. Traditional

Site where James, t h e b r o t h e r of Jesus, was hurled to his death.

TbtSlarufBc1hkh.nl

jesus k the Forgotten City

JesUS & the Forgotten Gty

The Star that Astonished the World

Dr. Ernest E Martin
For the first time in 5 0 years, the respected Griffith
Observatory altered its annual planetarium show to include
this compelling case for a 2-3 B.C. birth date of Christ.
Matches biblical clues to historical records and astronomical
data. "Prof. Martin presents a reasoned argument... deserves
to be considered seriously." - Prof. F.F. Bruce. "Very
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The

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The World

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280 pp + Bibliography

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The Gold of Exodus

The Discovery of the True Mt. Sinoi

JJJJ*
qhb

seiktioh

Howard
Blum
Eminent biblical scholars at Harvard and the University of
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Peninsula at all, but in northwestern Saudi Arabia. This is the
true tale of two adventurers who daringly sneak into Saudi
Arabia. "The visible evidence... is remarkable and
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transforms this into the ultimate adventure story." - Joseph
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360 pp + Bibliography $25.00 Now just $17.50!
Award-winning Documentary Sinai Video $24.95

Biblical Literacy.

Restoring the Original Bible

Dr. Ernest E

Martin

Details the process and personalities of both Old and New

Testament canonization, including the surprising identity of
the New Testament "editors." Tracing just how the Bible
came to be in its present 66-book form, the author reveals
how and why the books were m y s t e r i o u s l y r e p o s i t i o n e d
from their o r i g i n a l manuscript order in the 4th century.
Newly expanded and revised 3rd edition!
450 pp + Bibliography $23.95

The Jewish New Testament Commentary

Order both Jewish New Testament hardcover
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"Most timely is the appearance
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"Absolutely
publications

one of the most unique of

of the New
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Pastor. First Baptist C h u r c h .

Dallas

Seminary

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By revealing the Hebraic roots and the 1st century Jewish
"mindset" behind many New Testament sayings, teachings,
and parables. Jerusalem-based JNT-translator Dr. David Stem
gives fresh insight on the New Testament in light of the culture
from which it originated.
925 pp Hardcover $39.95

Dr. Richard A. Batey

Just a short walk up the hill from Nazareth stood Sepphoris, the
"ornament of all Galilee" according to Josephus. A showcase of
Greco-Roman architecture and the bustling capital of Herod
Antipas, Sepphoris was the 'big city - bright lights' of Galilee.
The discoveries at Sepphoris place Jesus in a radically
different environment from stereotype tradition, overlaying a
fresh dimension of cosmopolitan culture to the 'rustic' image
of both Jesus and Galilee. Palaces... colonnades... villas...
fountains... the forum and theater reveal a far more
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major rethinking of the portrait of a strictly rural Jesus.
225 pp + Bibliography & Notes $24.95

925 pp Softcover

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The Doctrine of the Trinity

Christianity's Self-inflicted Wouno
Sir Anthony Buzzard & Charles F. Hunting
This detailed work freshly challenges the idea that Biblical
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community until three hundred years after the ministry of
Jesus. The authors trace how a new. triune concept of God
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document how it came to be imposed on the original faith.
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365 pp Softcover $24.95

101 Bible Secrets that Christians Do Not Know

Dr. Ernest E Martin
Contains surprising facts from scripture that will leave you
asking, "Why haven't we been told this before?" 101 cases of
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Biblical fact are the hallmark of this fascinating potpourri of
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220 pp + Bibliography $18.95

The Jewish New Testament

Dr. David H. Stem

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JOTS&T1TTLES

BLAKE AND THE BIBLE. Two biblical

scenes from the art of William Blake:
"The Parable of the Wise and Foolish
Virgins" (left) and "Nebuchadnezzar."

Blake at the Met

William Blake (1757-1827), one of England's
greatest poets, was also one of the most
striking artists of his day. An exhibit of
181 works at the Metropolitan Museum in
New York, on view until June 24, concentrates on Blake the visual artist. The exhibit
features Blake's work in various mediadrawings, paintings and printsand includes
selections from all of his illuminated books,
including The Songs of Innocence and of
Experience (which contains his celebrated
poem, "The Tyger"). Biblical and religious
themes permeated Blake's work; the exhibit
contains scores of examples, including a

color print of the Babylonian ruler

Nebuchadnezzar and a watercolor of "The
Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins,"
an illustration of Matthew 25:1-13.

Pop Goes the Bible

Ever since Ezra read aloud to the assembly of Israelites and Saint Paul wrote his
epistles to scattered Christians, people have
been searching for ways to make the Bible
understandable to as wide an audience as
possible. Four volumes in the Complete
Idiot's Guide series (to Biblical Mysteries,
Understanding Judaism, the Life of Jesus
and the Bible) are some of the latest attempts
to achieve this goal.

The Complete Idiot's guides, published

by the MacmiHan imprint Acorn Books, are
well written and researched. Biblical
Mysteries is written by archaeologist Donald
P. Ryan of Pacific Lutheran University;
Understanding Judaism is written by rabbi
and author Benjamin Blcch; The Life of
Christ is by Presbyterian minister William
Grimbol and The Bible by the director of
Moody Press, Jim Bell, and author Stan
Campbell.
The volumes delve into
subjects ranging from the
search for Noah's Ark and
the authenticity of the
Shroud of Turin to Jewish mysticism and the
role of women during
the time of Christ.
Understandingjudaism
provides a history of
the faith, analysis of
biblical passages and the whys and
hows of observing Jewish holidays. In The
Life of Christ, Grimbol traces the story of

No Laughing Matter
Cartoonist Johnny Hart, creator of the comic
strip "B.C.," was the focus of controversy
over his Easter Sunday installment. The strip
showed a menorah, a candelabrum symbolic ofJudaism, being extinguished candle
by candle and replaced in the last frame by
a cross and an empty tomb. Hart says his
intent was to honor Jews and Christians,
who both celebrated important holidays at
the same time in April.
Some Jews and Jewish organizations, most
notably the New York-based Anti-Defamation
League (ADL), were offended. ADL director
Abraham Foxman found the strip a painful
reminder of an earlier era when Jews were
blamed and persecuted for Jesus' death.
Foxman said the strip implies that
"Christianity now supersedes Judaism as
the 'true' faith."
"The God of Judaism and the God of
Christianity is the same," said Hart in
response to the criticism. He added that
he chose the menorah for his strip because

MMfl
days
7
seven

7 stars
loaves
churches

7 seals

seven feasts
Verify I say unto thee,
today you will be with
Me in paradise.

"Woman, behold thy sonl

. . . Behold thy Mother!

M
TOTWTHIIF

who Kim

M J i

Jather,
into thy Rands
I commend
my spirit.

its seven candles coincided with J e s u s '

seven utterances on the cross. "I regret if
some people misunderstood the strip, and
it hurt their feelings. I abhor the so-called
10
BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2 0 0 1

'Replacement Theology,'" Hart said.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, did not
find Hart's explanation adequate. 'That is

THE BIBLE
IN THE

Jesus from prophecies of the messiah in

the Hebrew Bible through Jesus' death and
resurrection in the Gospels.
Two caveats for this otherwise excellent
series: Some readers may find the authors
interject their opinions too liberally
throughout. Other sides are always presented, but we are rarely left wondering
on which side the writer stands. In addition the text is frequendy interspersed with
boxes topped by drawings or cartoon figures whose role is to guide the reader and
provide information that doesn't fit direcdy
into the narrative. Too often these cartoon
helpers are a distraction. In Understanding Judaism, for example, the
jj
term schmoozing
(Yiddish for
"shooting the breeze") is illustrated with a man on the
telephone reciting, among
other things, Mark Twain
and Scottish proverbs. The
series also includes Understanding Catholicism, Angels and
Awakening Your Spirituality.

not the way you pay tribute to two great

religions on Easter Sunday," he told the
Associated Press. "You don't pay tribute
by extinguishing one of them."
"B.C." is carried in 1,300 papers and
The Guinness Book of World Records lists
Hart as the most widely syndicated
American comic-strip artist. Richard S.
Newcombe, head of Creators Syndicate,
the organization that distributes "B.C.,"
told BR that very few newspapers, the
Bergen County (New Jersey) Record
and the Bangor (Maine) Daily News
among them, declined to run the controversial strip.
Hart, who describes himself as a believing Christian, has been criticized in the
past for including theological topics in
his strip, but Newcombe noted that this
was the first time technology played a
role in the debate: The comic was posted
on the Internet and a campaign was
mounted against it days before the strip
was to appear.

Court Rescues Motto

"With God All Things Are Possible" is still
the Ohio state motto. In March, the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed a
decision made last fall by a panel of three
judges from the same court who had declared
the motto unconstitutional for violating the
First Amendment's separation of church and
state (see Jots & Tittles, October 2000).
The appeals court ruled that the saying is
no different from "In God We Trust," the official motto of the United States since 1956.
"The motto involves no coercion," wrote Judge
David A. Nelson for the majority. He
added that it "does not assert a preference for one religious denomination or sect over another."
Other states mention
God in their mottoes, but
the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) of Ohio and
Cleveland Heights Presbyterian
minister Matthew Peterson, who
filed the original court case, note that
Ohio's is the sole motto derived from a biblical quotation (Matthew 19:25-26 and Mark
10:27). Arizona has "God Enriches," South
Dakota has "Under God, the People Rule,"
and Florida has "In God We Trust." The
plaintiffs are considering an appeal to the
United States Supreme Court.
The Ohio statehouse isn't the only one
where the battle over the separation of
church and state is being played out.
Governor Ronnie Musgrove of Mississippi
signed a law in late March mandating the
display of the words "In God We Trust" in
public school classrooms, cafeterias and
auditoriums; the ACLU is expected to file
a lawsuit against the state law. Proposed
laws similar to Mississippi's were recently
rejected in Maryland and Virginia. Last year
11 states, including Indiana, Colorado, Oklahoma, Florida and Kentucky, considered
legislation requiring schools and other public buildings to display the Ten Commandments. In response several lawsuits have
been filed by free speech advocates, who
cite a 1980 Supreme Court decision forbidding placement of the commandments
in public schools.
11
BIBLE REVIEW JUNE 2001

COMPILED BY L E O N A R D G R E E N S P O O N

elling Bibles is big business, but a survey

of recent newspaper reports shows that
the Bible is also pretty good for business.
Looking for economic inspiration? Turn
to the Bible. That's what an international
group of corporate venture capitalists did.
They took their name, AntFactory, from
Proverbs 6:6: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard"
[Jerusalem Post, January 28,2001), paying
heed to the little insect's proverbial industry.
The Bible can be useful in other businessrelated ways as well: "Parents keen to
breed entrepreneurs should look to the
Bible when deciding on a name," advises
The Times of London (March 10, 2001). An
analysis of nominees for the Entrepreneur
of the Year 2001 award "shows that John,
David, and Peter are the most popular
names. For women, Ann is the most common contenderSt. Ann was the mother
of the Virgin Mary."
Concerned about Jesus' statement that
a camel can go through the eye of a needle with less difficulty than a rich person
can get into heaven (Matthew 19:24)? "It
seems to have become easier for a camel
to slip through the eye of a needle," writes
the New York Times in a report about
socially conscious investing (January 24,
1998). And a Pittsburgh businessman
reminds us that it is the love of money, and
not money per se, that is identified in 1
Timothy 6:10 as the root of all evil: "We are
to love our brother," the businessman says,
"and use money" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
October 1, 2000).
Widespread consumerism led an Israeli
entrepreneur to employ broad humor in an
intentional scriptural misquotation: "It is part
of our culture: They shall beat their swords
into Sony PlayStations. It is right there in the
Bible" (New York Times, April 16, 2000).
Similarly, an estate planner deliberately misquoted Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount
(Matthew 7:7): "Give and it will be given to
you" (Minneapolis Star Tribune, December
24, 2000).
Greenspoon holds the Klutznick Chair in Jewish
Civilization at Creighton University, in Omaha,
Nebraska.

H O W

MARY

BECAME
THE
OF

M O T H E R
G O D

ive million Christian pilgrims travel each year to the grotto of

RONALD

F.

HOCK

Lourdes in southwestern France, where the Virgin Mary is said

to have appeared to a peasant girl in 1 8 5 8 . The map of Rome is spotted with churches dedicated to the Queen of Heaven and Mother of God.
T h e liturgical calendars of the Catholic and Orthodox churches devote

ILLUSTRATIONS

SELECTED

AND

BY

DESCRIBED

DAVID

R.

CARTLIDGE

more feast days to Mary than to any other saint.

Clearly, no woman has had more influence on Christian faith and
practice than Mary, the mother of J e s u s . Yet it would be, extremely difficult to explain her tremendous role throughout history solely on the
basis of what is said about her in the New Testament.
To learn how Mary came to fulfill this role, we must look outside the
Bible. On the following pages, Ronald F. Hock of the University of Southern
California explores the earliest Christian text to describe Mary's life in
detailthe Infancy Gospel of J a m e s . Although excluded from the Bible,
this account has had enormous influence on later traditions.
Few B R readers will have read the Infancy Gospel of J a m e s , but many
of the stories and detailsincluding the names of Mary's parents, Anna
and Joachimwill nevertheless seem strangely familiar, in part because
artists from Giotto to Rossetti have been inspired by this apocryphal text.
David R Cartlidge, Beeson Professor Emeritus of Maryville College, selected
the accompanying illustrations, which draw on the Infancy Gospel ofJames.
In the photo captions, Cartlidge points out the apocryphal e l e m e n t s
found in each. Finally, on page 2 2 , Vasiliki Limberis of Temple University
explains how a bitter battle between a bishop and an empress led to the
church's official recognition of Mary as mother of God.Ed.
13
BIBLE REVIEW IUNE 2001

THE ESSENCE OF MARY-her purity,

learning and compassionis captured by
Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden in
this early-14th-century metal point
drawing. Neither the canonical gospels
nor the extrabiblical Infancy Gospel of
James offers a physical description of
Mary, but this has not hindered artists
since the earliest days of Christianity.
Photo by Reunion des Musees Nationaux/
Art Resource, N.Y.

MARY

ho were Mary's parents? Where

did she spend her childhood?
W a s it a happy one? How did she
occupy herself as an adult? Why was she,
above all other women, selected to be the
mother of God? And what did Mary think
about the extraordinary role she was called
on to play?
A careful reading of the New Testament leaves us
with more questions about Jesus' mother than answers.
For Mary is a relatively minor character in the Gospelsmentioned only a couple dozen times, often unnamed
and usually silent. How did this unassuming figure
come to be the most important woman in the Christian
church?
As we shall see, it is in the early Christian texts
known as the New Testament apocrypha that Mary is
transformed into an important, fully developed characterone worthy of being called the mother of the
Son of God.* This image of Mary would come to dominate later Christian piety.
1

Although the New Testament says surprisingly little about Mary, it nevertheless reveals a subde shift in
focus on Mary from the earliest writingsthe letters
of Pauluntil the time of Matthew and Luke. The
earliest biblical reference to Mary appears in Paul's
letter to the Galatians, written in the mid-50s of the
first century A.D.: "But when the fullness of time had
come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, b o m under
the law, in order to redeem those who were under the
law, so that we might receive adoption as children"
(Galatians 4:4).

Marys Mother and Father

At about the time this ivory plaque was carved, Bishop
Serenus of Marseilles determined that sacred pictures
were bad for Christians because religious images were
essentially a pagan idea. In 599-600 C.E., Pope Gregory
the Great wrote Serenus a famous pair of cease-anddesist letters. Gregory said, in effect, that images were
the best way for the unlettered to learn "the way."
Images were "the gospel on the walls."
Until the invention of the printing press, the faithful
heard the stories in sermons and liturgical readings,
but it was the images surrounding them that stamped
in their minds and hearts the reality of Jesus, Mary and
Joseph. As a result, the church has passed on not only
textual versions of the Christian faith's founding stories
but picture versions as well. And the latter may have
had the greater influence on belief and practice.

This prosaic and passing reference to "a woman"

indicates that interest in Mary had not yet taken
root. Paul offers no suggestion of a miraculous birth.
He is far more concerned with Jesus' death and resurrection than his infancy.
Mar)' appears briefly but silently in the earliest New
Testament gospel, the Gospel of Mark, written about
70 AD. This gospel includes no birth account; it begins
with Jesus as an adult. Mary is mentioned only twicefirst when she and the family visit Capernaum after
hearing that Jesus has lost his mind. The crowd informs
Jesus, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are
outside, asking for you." Scanning the crowd, Jesus
responds: " W h o are my mother and my brothers?
Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does
the will of God is my brother and sister and mother"
(Mark 3 : 3 1 - 3 5 ) . Later, when J e s u s preaches in his
hometown of Nazareth, a dubious crowd asks: "Where

The story of Mary has thus been handed down by

the picture version of the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of
James. The images are prolific: We have more than 85
different depictions derived from the gospel. All of the
scenes shown on the following pages are impossible
without the text version of the Gospel of James, which
provides our earliest reference to Mary's parents, Anna
and Joachim. But the persistence of the stories must be
credited to the "Gospel of James on the Walls."
Our survey of this visual gospel begins with Mary's
mother, who is depicted in the ivory plaque (upper left),

*On these early Christian texts, see David R Cartlidge, "The Christian
Apocrypha: Preserved in Art," BR. J u n e 1997.
14

BIBLE REVIEW* |UNE 2001

MARY

dating to about 600 C.E., now in the State Hermitage

Museum in St Petersburg. A heavenly messenger
approaches Anna (seated at left) in her garden as she
weeps and prays for a child. According to the Infancy
Gospel of James, the angel informs Anna: "The Lord God
has heard your prayer. You will conceive and give birth,
and your child will be talked about all over the world"
(James 4:2). The angel's promise is fulfilled: Nine
months later, Anna gives birth to Mary, mother of Jesus.
The birds in the trees on this plaque probably refer
to the gospel's previous chapter, in which Anna
compares herself unfavorably to the birds: "Poor me!
What am I like? I am not like the birds of the sky,
because even the birds of the sky reproduce in your
presence, O Lord" (James 3:3-4).
After receiving the joyous news from the angel, Anna
"rushes out" of the city gate and "throws her arms

around [Joachim's] neck," as she tells him that they

will have a child. "Now I know that the Lord God has
blessed me gready," Anna exclaims. "I, once childless,
am now pregnant" (James 4:8,9).
The Italian artist Giotto included his rendition
(above) of "Anna and Joachim Meeting at the Golden
Gate" (c. 1305) in a series of 12 frescoes depicting the
life of the Virgin painted on the walls of the Arena
Chapel, in Padua. Giotto identifies the city gate as the
Golden Gate, a gateway in the eastern wall of
Jerusalem that leads directly onto the platform where
the ancient Temple stood. This detail derives from the
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a sixth- or seventh-century
spin-off of the Gospel of James that would have been
familiar to Giotto. The woman in black at center is an
enigma; some have suggested that she prefigures the
sorrow of the Crucifixion.

15
BIBLE REVIEW JUNE 2 0 0 1

M A R Y

did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has
been given to him?... Is not this the carpenter, the son
of Mary?" (Mark 6:1-3). For Mark, Mary represents
Jesus' humble origins.

scene a little longer in Matthew's Gospel than she does

in Mark's, but here, too, she remains silent, and her
role in our first account of Jesus' birth is passive.*
The Gospel of Matthew relates:

The opening verse of Mark's Gospel offers a different take on Jesus' parentage, however: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God"
(Mark 1:1). By placing the title "Son of God" at the
start of his narrative, Mark may well have prompted
Christians to begin to ask a new question: Just how
did Jesus come to be the Son of God?

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in

this way When his mother Mary had been
engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together,
she was found to be with child from the Holy SpiriL
Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and
unwilling to expose her to public disgrace,
planned to dismiss [divorce] her quiedy. But just

By extending the gospel story back in time to the

birth of Jesus to Mary, the Gospels of Matthew (written c. 8 0 A.D.) and Luke (c. 9 0 A.D.) begin to provide answers to this question. Mary remains on the

* F o r m o r e on the conflicting gospel a c c o u n t s of J e s u s ' birth,

see " W h e r e W a s J e s u s Born?"a debate between Steve M a s o n
a n d J e r o m e M u r p h y - O ' C o n n o r in B R , F e b r u a r y 2 0 0 0 .

The Infancy of Mary

"Is it a boy or a girl?" Anna, like any new
mother, asks her midwife when Mary is born
(James 5:5-7). Daring to about 1550, this
illumination (near right) from a prayer book
in Dublin's Chester Beatty Library captures
the bipolar i i \ of sacred births: They are
earthly (note the 16th-century bourgeois
domestic setting, the delightful cat, the
discarded slippers beside the rumpled bed)
and at the same time more than earthly
(thus, the angels).
The water jug in the foreground may be a
vestige of earlier depictions of the birth of
Mary, which often depicted midwives bathing
the infant. (Many early images of Jesus' nativity also show the bathing of the infant)
There is no textcanonical or noncanonical
describing this event, but it was customary
in Roman times to include the bath in
scenes of a great person's birth. We have
pictures, for example, of Alexander the
Great's first bath, and that of certain deities,
such as Dionysus.
When Mary was only six months old, Anna
put her on the ground "to see if she could
stand." Mary "walked seven steps and went to
her mother's arms" (James 6:1-2). Dating to
about 1320, the mosaic (far right) from the
Kariye Museum in Istanbul, highlights a
central element of an encomium (a text that
praises) narrative such as the Infancy Gospel
of James: the precocity of the central figure.
Mary takes her first steps much earlier than
do most infants. At the same time, the image
emphasizes the normality of the family: A
child's first steps are a cherished remembrance in any home.
The scene is common in eastern chinch art
but not western. Sometimes a maidservant
assists the child, as shown here; sometimes
an angel. Mary generally looks older than her
six months.

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M A R Y

when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the

Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
"Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary
as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from
the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are
to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from
their sins" ... When Joseph awoke from sleep, he
did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he
took her as his wife, but had no marital relations
with her until she had borne a son; and he named
him Jesus.

the Jews? For we have observed his star at its rising, and
have come to pay him homage" (Matthew 2:2). Terrified
by this apparent threat to his throne, King Herod orders
the massacre of all infants two years of age and younger.
The king's plans are foiled, however, when J o s e p h
receives a warning from an angel in a dream. "Then
Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night,
and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death
of Herod" (Matthew 2:14-15).
Joseph, not Mary, plays the leading parental role
in this birth account. He receives the angelic visitors;
he directs all the family's moves. Ever silent, Mary is
clearly his subordinate.*

Matthew 1:18-25
Soon after, wise men from the East arrive in Jerusalem,
asking: "Where is the child who has been born king of

In Luke's Gospel, however, Mary begins to think

and act for herself. She even speaks:
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by
God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin
engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the
house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And
he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one!
The Lord is with you."
But she was much perplexed by his words and
pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The
angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you
have found favor with God. And now, you will
conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you
will name him Jesus..."
Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since
I am a virgin?"
The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come
upon you, and the power of the Most High will
overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will
be holy; he will be called Son of God... For nothing
will be impossible with God."
Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the
Lord; let it be with me according to your word."
Then the angel departed from her.
Luke 1:26-38
Luke offers our earliest explanation of why Mary
was chosen to mother Jesus: She had "found favor
with God." Following the annunciation, Mary sets out
to visit her elderly relative Elizabeth, then pregnant
with John the Baptist, who immediately acknowledges
that something extraordinary has happened to Mary.
Elizabeth cries out, "Why has this happened to me,
that the mother of my Lord comes to me?" (Luke 1:43).
After Mary returns home, the emperor Augustus
calls for a worldwide census, and Joseph and Mary
must travel to Bethlehem to be counted. J e s u s is
*To be sure, Mary's designation as a virgin, parthenos (Matthew
1 : 2 3 , citing Isaiah 7 : 1 4 ; L u k e 1 : 2 7 ) , contributed to h e r c h a r a c terization. But see J. Edward Barrett, "Can Scholars Take the Virgin
Birth Seriously?" BR, October 1 9 8 8 ; and J a m e s E. C r o u c h , " H o w
Early Christians Viewed the Birth of J e s u s , " BR, October 1991.

17
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MARY

born en route: "And she gave birth to her firstborn son

and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in
a manger, because there was no place for them in the
inn" (Luke 2:7). Following the birth, the family journeys to Jerusalem to make sacrifices.

Temple, he is rebuffed because he has not "produced

an Israelite child" (James 1:5). Deeply troubled,Joachim
banishes himself to the wilderness to pray. Anna is
mocked by her maid Juthine, who insists that God has
made the elderly woman sterile. Alone in her garden,
Anna prays: "O God of my ancestors, bless me and hear
my prayer, just as you blessed our mother Sarah and
gave her a son" (James 2:9)a reference to Sarah's pregnancy with Isaac at age 90 (Genesis 17-21). Throughout
these opening chapters, Anna is likened to some of the
most praiseworthy of Old Testament women.

The Gospel of John mentions Mary several times,

although never by name. Instead, she is simply called
"the mother of J e s u s . " Although the Fourth Gospel
includes no birth account, Mary appears briefly at the
wedding in Cana ( J o h n 2:1-11), travels with Jesus to
Capernaum ( J o h n 2:12) and is widely known as Jesus'
mother (John 6:42). Finally, she stands at the foot of
the cross, where Jesus asks his beloved disciple to take
care of her: "When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his
mother, Woman, here is your son.' Then he said to the
disciple, 'Here is your mother.' And from that hour the
disciple took her into his own home" (John 19:25-27).

Anna and Joachim's prayers are answered. They

are informed separately by angels that Anna will
bear a child. When the happy couple is reunited outside the city gate, Anna embraces Joachim, exclaiming: "Now I know that the Lord God has blessed me
greatly" (James 4:9).
Anna vows to dedicate her child to God: "As the
Lord God lives," Anna promises, "whether I give birth
to a boy or a girl, I'll offer it as a gift to the Lord my
God, and it will serve him its whole life" (James 4:2).
Anna's words echo those of yet another Old Testament
mother, Hannah, who promises her son Samuel to the
Temple (1 Samuel 2:11,28). In nine months Anna gives
birth to a girl, "and she offered her breast to the infant
and gave her the name Mary" (James 5:9).

Taken together, these gospel passages only begin

to probe J e s u s ' origins and parenthood. They suggest that Mary was favored by God, but they fail to
reveal why. Only when we turn to the New Testament
apocrypha do we find an explanation.
Written between the second and sixth centuries AD.,
the Christian apocrypha include gospels, episdes, apocalypses and acts of various apostles that were excluded
from the canon. A subgenre of apocryphal gospels
known as "infancy gospels" focuses on Jesus' earliest
years. What may well be the earliest of the infancy
gospelsthe Infancy G o s p e l of J a m e s (Latin,
Protevangelium Jacobi)extends
the gospel account
back in time to include the birth and life of Mary up
to the time Jesus is born.

As is typical of encomia, the Infancy Gospel of James

emphasizes the purity of Mary's earliest years:
Day by day the infant grew stronger. When she was
six months old, her mother put her on the ground
to see if she could stand. She walked seven steps
and went to her mother's arms. Then her mother
picked her up and said, "As the Lord my God lives,
you will never walk on this ground again until I
take you into the temple of the Lord."

Dating to the early second century A.D., the gospel

claims (falsely, as we shall see) to be written by James,
an apparent reference to the brother of J e s u s (see
Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3; Galatians 1:19).* The gospel
follows the standard format for Greek texts known as
encomia, which ancient students of rhetoric (and apparently our gospel writer) once studied in their writing
textbooks, called Progymnasmata. Encomia (singular
encomium; from the Greek for "praise") aim to demonstrate the praiseworthiness of their subjects. The Infancy
Gospel of James attempts to prove that Mary is qualified to be the mother of God.

And so she turned her bedroom into a sanctuary

and did not permit anything profane or unclean
to pass the child's lips. She sent for the undefiled
daughters of the Hebrews, and they kept [Mary]
amused.
James 6:1-5
When the precocious and pure little girl turns three,
Joachim and Anna fulfill their vow to God by taking
their daughter to the Temple in Jerusalem. The priests
welcome Mary, who is loved not only by all the people but also, apparently, by heaven, for she is fed "like
a dove, receiving her food from the hand of a heavenly messenger" (James 8:2).

The first five chapters of the Infancy Gospel establish Mary's nationality, homeland, ancestry and parentageall typical opening topics of encomia. The story,
the gospel's opening verse relates, is based on "the
records of the twelve tribes of Israel" (James 1 : 1 ) .
2

Mary's tale begins with her parents, Joachim and

Anna, a wealthy and prominent Jewish couple whose
only plight is childlessness, for which they are scorned.
When Joachim attempts to present a sacrifice at the

At age twelve, about to become a woman, Mary

poses a threat to the Temple's purity. "What should
we do with her so she won't pollute the sanctuary of
the Lord our God?" the priests ask God (James 8:4).
An angel instructs the priests to s u m m o n all the
widowers of Judea to the Temple. "[Mary] will become

* F o r m o r e o n J e s u s ' family, see Richard J . B a u c k h a m , "All in

the Family," BR, April 2 0 0 0 .

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MARY

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In the Temple
Anna and Joachim present their three-year-old daughter to the Temple's high priest, in the lower register of
this illumination from an Ethiopian manuscript. The priest, according to the Infancy Gospel of James,
immediately acknowledges Mary's greatness: "The Lord God has exalted your name among all generations.
In you the Lord will disclose his redemption to the people of Israel during the last days" (James 7:9). In the
upper register, Mary, now ensconced in the Temple, is fed "like a dove, receiving her food from the hand of
a heavenly messenger" (James 8:2). Mary, this scene suggests, is so pure she does not eat earthly food.
Though neither event is recorded in the New Testament, they nevertheless appear as illustrations in this
gospel manuscript, which is a 17th-century replica, made for the emperor of Ethiopia, of a lavish 15thcentury book.

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Prelude to the Annunciation

Dante Gabriel Rossel i i s painting of an Annunciation
about to take place"Girlhood of Mary, Virgin" (1849)
combines elements from the Infancy Gospel of James
with Rossetti's romantic imagination. Mary (at right)
sits with Anna, who watches over her daughter's needlework. The painting brings together several themes found
in the apocryphal gospel: Mary is working on the curtain
for the Temple (Janus 10, 12:1-2) when she is distracted
(note her lifted gaze and arrested hands) by a premonition of a divine intrusion. The petite angel (lower left)
rests his hands on a pile of books, which emphasizes
both the theme of Mary's conceiving by the Word (James

11:5) as well as her devotion to learning. Anna and the

worker in the vineyard seem oblivious to the miracle
occurring before them. Only Mary and the angel appear
expectantan emotion not usually represented in art. In
this way Rossct i i bridges the girlhood of Mary to the
moment when she becomes the Mother of the Messiah.
The "Girlhood" was Rossetti's first painting as a
member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (note the
intitials PRB under the signature, lower left), a group
of 19th-century British artists who attempted to infuse
what they considered the lost spirituality of the Middle
Ages into their work.
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BIBLE REVIEW | U N E 2001

M A R Y

the wife of the one to whom the Lord God shows a

sign" (James 8:8).
Hearing the news, Josephcharacterized here as a
widower"threw down his carpenter's ax," grabbed
his staff and set out for the Temple. At the gathering,
a dove flies out of Joseph's staff and perches on his
head. Not surprisingly, the high priest interprets this
as a divine sign and gives Mary to Joseph. But the carpenter now has second thoughts: "I already have sons
and I'm an old man; she's only a young woman. I'm
afraid I'll become the butt of jokes among the people
of Israel" (James 9:8). The priests warn Joseph about
resisting the will of God, however, and Joseph prudendy decides to accept Marybut only as his ward,
not his wife.
The Joseph of the Infancy Gospel is very different
from the Joseph of the canonical accounts. There he
is assumed to be of marriageable age and is in fact
engaged to Mary (Matthew 1:18,20,24; Luke 1:27, 2:5)
and eventually marries her (Matthew 1:24). Here,
Joseph is an old man, embarrassed to be receiving a
young woman from the Temple into his house. He
never treats Mary as anything more than a person
requiring his protection. When he brings her home,
he immediately sets out to build houses, trusting that
God will protect her. His absence, as well as his age,
serves to quell any doubts about whether he might
have been intimate with Mary.
Furthermore, in the canonical gospels, Jesus is simply Mary's firstborn child; he has younger siblings born
to Joseph and Mary (Matthew 13:55-56; Mark 6:3). But
in the Infancy Gospel, Jesus is Mary's only child; his
brothers are Joseph's children by an earlier marriage.
Mary thus remains a virgin her whole life.
Having established the purity of Mary's upbringing,
the Infancy Gospel of James turns to the next topic typically found in encomia: adult pursuits, which, for a
woman, include spinning and weaving. Thus, while
Joseph is away, Mary, now age 16, keeps busy spinning
purple and scarlet threads for a new Temple curtain.
One day when Maty takes a break from her work and
goes out to fill her water jar, she is hailed by a male voice:
"Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. Blessed
are you among women" (James 11:2). Terrified, Mary
rushes home. As she resumes her spinning, an angel
appears and announces that she will bear God's son:
"Do not be afraid, Mary. You see, you have found
favor in the sight of the Lord of all. You will
conceive by means of his word."

Joseph Wins Mary

The widowers (left) of Judea wait as the high priest (right)
prays for divine guidance in choosing Mary's future
husband, in this detail from the rose window in the
northern transept of England's Lincoln Cathedral. When a
dove emerges from Joseph's staff and sits on his head, the
priest insists that Joseph is the one. But Joseph is reluctant
to accept Mary. "I'm an old man," he complains to the
priest. "She's only a young woman. I'm afraid I'll become
the butt of jokes among the people of Israel" (James 9:8).
In this 13th-century stained-glass window, the dove
rests not simply on Joseph's staff, but on a flower that
has blossomed from the staff. The flowering staffan
addition apparently inspired by Aaron's flowering rod in
Numbers 17:1-8is also found in the Gospel of the
Nativity of Mary, a fifth-century apocryphal gospel based
on the Infancy Gospel of James. In art, Joseph's flowering
staff comes to replace the dove motif altogether.

But as she listened, Mary was doubtful and said,

"If I actually conceive by the Lord, the living God,
will I also give birth the way women usually do?"

holy, a son of the Most High. And you will name

him Jesusthe name means 'he will save his people
from their sins.'"

And the messenger of the Lord replied, "No,

Mary, because the power of God will overshadow
you. Therefore the child to be born will be called

And Mary said, "Here I am, the Lord's slave before

him. I pray that all you have told me comes true."

BIBLE REVIEW JUNE 2 0 0 1

James 11:5-9

M A R Y

The Battle Over Mary

VASILIKI

LIMBERIS

In 431 A.D., bishops gathered at the

Council of Ephesus officially recognized
Mary as the Mother of God, in Greek
Theotokos, or God-bearer. Subsequendy,
Christians throughout the empire were
prompted to honor Mary with feast days,
prayers and artmuch of which drew on
stories from the Infancy Gospel of James.
But the council might never have been
held if it weren't for a personal vendetta
that the emperor's sister Pulcheria held
against the bishop of her hometown,
Constantinople.
As emperor, Theodosius II ( 4 0 2 4 5 0 ) considered himself head of the
Christian church. But his sister
Pulcheria's zeal for her faith made her
a constant presence in ecclesiastical
affairs. Pulcheria (who is depicted in
the early-fifth-century bust, opposite)
had her portrait hung above the altar
in Constantinople's Great Church; her
robe covered the altar during the
divine liturgy. She actively sought out
relics of saints and presided when
they were brought into the city.

As a young woman, Pulcheria took a

vow of perpetual virginity and modeled
her life after Mary's. Her daily routine
gave the palace the air of a Christian
monastery, which indeed was unprecedented for a Roman empress. Pulcheria
celebrated Mary as Theotokos and, following earlier traditions of divine selection, she adopted the same title; she
called herself the Mother of God.
In 4 2 8 , Theodosius named the
Syrian monk Nestorius bishop of
Constantinople. Nestorius had already
gained fame as a great preacher. As
bishop, he set out to eradicate all heresies. He attacked Arians, Novations,
Borborians and Manicheans. And he
opposed the use of Theotokos as a title
for Mary. In Nestorius's view, no human
creature could give birth to the Godhead.
He wrote: "How can someone be the
mother of a nature completely other
than her own? For if she be called
'mother' by them, he is of human
nature not divine ... In his nature and
essence the Son is the Essence and
nature of God the Father, but in flesh
his nature is human from Mary."
1

After this annunciation scene, the narrative follows

rather closely, if more briefly, the Lukan version of Mary's
visit with Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-56). Unlike in the gospel,
however, in the Infancy Gospel of James, Elizabeth is
just the first of many characters who will acknowledge
that something miraculous has happened to Mary.

Nestorius refused to permit Pulcheria

and her entourage of virgins to come to
vespers or to wakes, charging that when
women were out at night it inevitably
lead to "promiscuity with men." He
accused Pulcheria of having illicit sexual
relations with at least seven lovers. He
would not accede to her demand that
she be remembered in prayers as the
"bride of Christ" since she had been
"corrupted by men." He removed her
image from above the altar and effaced
it, and he refused to use her robe as an
altar cover. When Pulcheria attempted
to receive communion at the altar on
Easter, Nestorius barred the royal doors
and exclaimed that no woman could
enter. She responded by proclaiming
that she was no common woman; she
had given birth to God. Nestorius countered by charging that she had given
birth to the devil.
2

Apparendy, Nestorius was not aware

how much power the emperor's sister
wielded.
Pulcheria was enraged. She took the
bishop's attacks on the Theotokos as a
personal affront.

soothes Joseph, "because the child in her is the Holy

Spirit's doing" ( J a m e s 1 4 : 5 ) . Henceforth, J o s e p h
will protect Mary.
Mary is soon put on trial again. A visitor to their
home notices that she is pregnant and informs the
high priest. Summoned before the priest, Mary once
again asserts her self-control: "As the Lord God lives,
I stand innocent before him. Believe me, I've not had
sex with any man" (James 15:13).

The next ten chapters, the largest section of the

Infancy Gospel, enumerate Mary's virtuous deeds.
Virtuewhich is typically the most important topic
of an encomiumis understood to refer to the four
cardinal virtues: justice, self-control, wisdom and
courage. Thus, when Mary is six months pregnant,
J o s e p h returns h o m e , angry at Mary for getting
pregnant and angry at himself for not protecting her.
He accuses her of having been seduced, but she courageously asserts that she has maintained self-control:
"I am innocent. 1 haven't had sex with any man"
( J a m e s 1 3 : 8 ) . J o s e p h decides to "divorce her quietly" (James 14:4),* until an angel appears to him in
a dream: "Do not be afraid of this girl," the angel

Incredulous, the high priest orders Joseph to return

Mary to the Temple, but when Joseph bursts into tears,
he allows them to prove their innocence by undergoing a "drink test," in which Joseph and Mary are given
water to drink and then sent out to the wilderness. If
they return unharmed, this will be accepted as proof
of their virtue.** Both pass the test, and the high priest
publicly exonerates them: "If the Lord God has not
exposed your sin, then neither do I condemn you"
(James 16:7). Mary and Joseph return home "celebrating
and praising the God of Israel" (James 16:8).
* * T h e a u t h o r of the text s e e m s to have in mind s o m e t h i n g like
the ritual of the water of bitterness for unfaithful wives, outlined
in N u m b e r s 5 : 1 1 - 3 1 , a l t h o u g h the p r o c e d u r e s h e r e a r e r a t h e r
different, in particular the application of the test to a m a n .

J o s e p h ' s decision is inappropriate in the context of the Infancy

Gospel, where Mary isjoseph's ward and not his wife. Apparendy,
the author borrowed the phrase from Matthew 1:19 without taking
into consideration the changed circumstances of his own narrative.
11

BIBLE R E V I E W * |UNE 2001

MARY

At the same time, Bishop Cyril of

Alexandria, having heard about Nestorius's
views of the Theotokos, began to send
admonishing letters to the bishop, but to
no avail. Cyril alerted Pope Celestine, who
condemned Nestorius in 430. Theodosius,
however, remained a staunch supporter of
his bishop.
Realizing that evetything depended
on the emperor, both sides tried to
persuade Theodosius. Pulcheria pressured her brother and rallied public support. Nestorius urged the
emperor to arrange a church
council to establish the orthodoxy of his position. Theodosius
invited bishops from throughout
the empire to meet in Ephesus in
June of 431 A.D.
Nestorius lost the fight.
The Council of Ephesus
deemed the tide Theotokos
orthodox. But Nestorius
was still bishop.
Under Pulcheria's
sway, the citizens of
Constantinople packed
the Great Church. They

began chanting for Nestorius's deposition, and they acclaimed Pulcheria as a

champion of orthodoxy and as their
guide in religious affairs.
Under this public pressure,
Theodosius succumbed to Pulcheria's
demands and had Cyril's decree deposing Nestorius read in the Great Church.
Nestorius was sent back to his
monastery in Antioch.
.

In the last decades of her life,

Pulcheria crowned her lifelong
devotion to the Theotokos by
erecting three churches dedicated
to Mary in Constantinople. Here
the private devotions that she
had practiced as a girl became
institutionalized in public reli"% gious ceremonies. Through
w -'
Pulcheria's efforts, the
lsswk\ Theotokos came to
dwell permanently
in the city, in the
form of relics associ; ated with Mary.
Pulcheria's sister-inlaw returned from
the Hob/ Land with a
;

At this point, the Infancy Gospel of J a m e s begins

to parallel the birth accounts in Matthew and Luke,
but with many additions, omissions and changes from
the canonical stories. According to the Infancy Gospel,
Caesar Augustus has ordered that everyone in Judea
(not the whole world, as Luke 2:1 has it) be enrolled
in a census. As in the Gospel of Luke, Joseph heads
for Bethlehem with Mary. But unlike in the canonical
account, he is also accompanied by his sons from an
earlier marriage and he is not sure how to register
Mary: "I'll enroll my sons, but what am I going to do
with this girl? How will I enroll her? As my wife? I'm
ashamed to do that. As my daughter? The people of
Israel know she's not my daughter" ( J a m e s 17:2-3).
But before J o s e p h can decide, Mary cries out for
assistance: "Joseph, help me down from the donkey
the child inside me is about to be b o m " (James 17:10).
Joseph guides Mary into a nearby cave for privacy, stations his sons outside to guard her and heads out in
search of a midwife.

portrait of Mary, said to have been painted

by St. Luke. Later, Mary's shroud and
cincture were brought to Constantinople.
7

Pulcheria's claim that she herself was

the Theotokos was, however, the greatest
factor in encouraging the veneration of
Mary within the church. For the people,
an empress could only claim the identity
of a creature greater than herself, and
that could only be a divine being, not a
humble maid of first-century Palestine. If
Pulcheria claimed she was Mary, then
Mary must be divine and worthy of
great devotion.
Vasiliki Lhnberis is professor of religion at
Temple Universify and author of Divine
Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Creation
of Christian Constantinople (New York:
Routledge, 1994).
'Nestorius, Corpus Marianum Patristicum, A. Campos,
ed. (Burgos: Edidones Aldecoa, 1976), voL 4:1,2956,2980.
Barhadbeshabba, Patrologia orientalis (PO) 9, Francois
Nau, trans. (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1913), p. 528.
2

Barhadbeshabba, p. 565.

"^Nestorius, Bazaar ofHeradeides, G. Drivers and L Hodgson,

eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), p. 103.
5

Barhadbeshabba, pp. 565-566.

Lettre a Cosme, PO 13, p. 279.

O n Luke' s portrait of Mary, see Mikeal Parsons, "Who

Wrote the Gospel of Luke?" BR, April 2001.
7

the birth. The vision equates Jesus' birth to his death,

which is marked by darkness and earthquake.
The suspension is only temporary. Joseph soon finds
a midwife and they return to Mary. As they approach,
a dark cloud withdraws from the cave; from inside
emanates a light so intense "that their eyes could not
bear to look" ( J a m e s 19:15). "And a little later, that
light receded until an infant became visible; he took the
breast of his mother Mary" (James 19:16). The midwife,
who would typically aid in the birth and nurse the child,
has nothing to do. Her uselessness simply emphasizes
Mary's exceptional qualifications as a mother.
Recognizing that she has witnessed a miracle, the
midwife pronounces the central confession of the
gospel: "A virgin has given birth" (James 19:18). Outside
the cave, the midwife relates this marvel to a woman
named Salome, who remains dubious. "Unless I insert
my finger and examine her," Salome swears, "I will
never believe that a virgin has given birth" ( J a m e s
19:19). But Salome's bold gynecological exam only
causes her hand to burst into flame. She screams: "I'll
be damned because of my transgression and my disbelief; 1 have put the living God on trial. Look! My
hand is disappearing! It's being consumed by flames"

W h i l e J o s e p h is away, J e s u s is b o r n . At that
moment, Joseph has a vision of time stopping: Rolling
clouds pause, birds are suspended in midair, Joseph
himself stops mid-stride; all of nature takes notice of
23

BIBLE RFVIEW JUNE 2001

MARY

Annunciation
"Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with
you": The annunciation to Mary opens
with the same speech in the Gospel of
Luke 1: 28 (the only canonical gospel to
relate the event) and the Infancy Gospel of
James 11:2. In Luke, the setting is not
specified; in James, the annunciation
takes place in two stages at two sites: The
angel first approaches Mary beside a well,
but she runs away frightened. The angel
then appears in Joseph's home, where
Mary is spinning wool for the Temple
curtain. James has apparently merged two
earlier traditions about the site of the
annunciation.
Images of Mary beside the well, such as
this 12th-century mosaic from the Church
of San Marco in Venice, are fairly rare; the
annunciation in the house (not shown
here) is far more common. In eastern
church art, Mary is generally shown at
home spinning wool; in western art, she is
often reading a book, perhaps because of
the greater influence in the West of the
Pseudo-Gospel of Matthew, which
emphasizes Mary's learning.

Here, the text turns to Elizabeth and her husband,

Zechariah, the parents of J o h n the Baptist, who also
respond with courage to the threat to their son posed
by Herod. The Infancy Gospel underlines Mary's bravery by placing the equally brave acts of Elizabeth and
Zechariah immediately after hers.

( J a m e s 2 0 : 3 - 4 ) . She is healed, however, when she

reaches out to touch the infant Jesus. Salome, like
Joseph and the high priest before her, is converted
from doubt to belief.
After the birth ofJesus, Joseph plans to continue his
journey to Bethlehem, but his trip (and the narrative) is
interrupted by the arrival of the magi from the East As
in the Gospel of Matthew, the magi, after meeting with
Herod, follow a star to Bethlehem, although here the star
stops above the cave rather than the home of Matthew's
Gospel. At this point, however, the Matthean account is
left behind. When Herod orders the massacre of the
innocents, it is not Joseph who leads the family to safety.
Indeed, Joseph is not mentioned again in the Infancy
Gospel. Mary must save Jesus herself: "When Mary heard
that the infants were being killed, she was frightened
and took her child, wrapped him in strips of cloth, and
put him in a feeding trough used by cattle" (James 22:34). Mary's actions are borrowed from Luke 2:7, but here
they appear in a completely different context, one that
emphasizes Mary's courage.

The final chapter of the Infancy Gospel does not

continue the narrative but provides information about
the author, date and place of writing:
Now I, James, am the one who wrote this account
at the time when an uproar arose in Jerusalem at
the death of Herod. I took myself to the wilderness
until the uproar in Jerusalem died down. There I
praised the Lord God, who gave me the wisdom
to write this account. Grace will be with all those
who fear the Lord. Amen.
James 25:1-4
Since Herod died in 4 B.C., the Infancy Gospel of
James purports to be a nearly contemporaneous account
of the events it narratesperhaps written by Jesus' own
brother. If true, this gospel would be the earliest Christian
writing we have. Unfortunately, these claims do not
stand up to scrutiny. For this Infancy Gospel is clearly
dependent on Matthew and Luke, which were not written until 80 to 90 A D . Since Jesus' brother James died
in 62 A D . , he could not have been the author.

At this point, Mary and Jesus also disappear from

the narrative, even though the gospel continues for more
than two chapters. Many readers have been perplexed
at their absence, but the encomium structure provides
an explanation. In encomia, the narration of the subject's virtuous deeds is followed by a comparison of the
subject's actions with the virtuous actions of others.

24
hi HI I R E V I E W * |UNE 2001

MARY

In the end, we are left with an anonymous narrative

written sometime after the Gospels of Matthew and
Luke. It would have taken some time for the canonical accounts to become known and authoritative
perhaps 25 or 3 0 years. It is possible that the gospel

was written by the mid-second century and that the

Christian apologist Justin Martyr borrowed from it the
detail ofJesus' birth in a cave (Dialogue 78.5). This suggests a date between 125 and 140 A.D.
Consequently, the Infancy Gospel can be placed on
a trajectory whose starting point is the opening verse of
Mark, which described Jesus as the Son of God and
turned Christians' attention to the beginning of Jesus'
life. By the third century, Christian writers were making more frequent references to the Infancy Gospel.
Origen (c. 185-254), for example, refers to the brothers
of Jesus as sons of Joseph by a previous marriage Clement
of Alexandria (c. 150-212) speaks of the midwife who
attended Mary and proclaimed her to be a virgin.
5

It was not until 4 3 1 A.D., when Mary was officially recognized as the mother of God (in Greek, the
Theotokos) at the Council of Ephesus, that the Infancy
Gospel of J a m e s began to exert tremendous influence on Christian art and piety (see sidebar, p. 2 2 ) .
As Christians throughout the empire began to honor
Mary, the account of Mary's life in the Infancy Gospel
became the basis of festivals in her honor, such as
those celebrating her birth on September 8 and her
presentation in the Temple on November 2L During
both festivals portions of the Infancy Gospel were read
uturgically. In addition, many churches were dedicated
to Mary, and the painters and mosaicists hired to decorate them turned to the Infancy Gospel of James for
appropriate subjects. The Infancy Gospel of J a m e s
came to shape the dominant image of Mary.
6

At the beginning of the Infancy Gospel, an angel

promises Mary's mother Anna: "Your child will be talked
about all over the world" (James 4 : 1 ) . The promise is
mlfilled. The detailed and praiseworthy biography in
the Infancy Gospel ofJames has prepared Mary for her
central role in Christian faith and piety.
(3

The Nativity
The most famous (infamous?) scene from the
Infancy Gospel of JamesSalome's test of Mary's
virginityappears in the bottom half of this ivory
inlay, which decorates the elaborate cathedra, or
chair, of the sixth-century Byzantine bishop
Maximianus. Doubting that a virgin could give
birth, Salome 'inserted her finger into Mary." She
then cried out, "I'll be damned because of my
transgression and my disbelief... My hand is
disappearing! It's being consumed by flames"
(James 20:2-4). In the ivory, Salome displays her
withered hand before the Virgin.

For further reading on Mary, see Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Mary. Glimpses
of the Mother of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999); and Jaroslav
Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1996).
1

Citations follow Ronald F. Hock, The Infancy Gospels of James and

Thomas, The Scholars Bible 2 (Sonoma, CA Polebridge Press, 1995).
2

That the Gospel of James depends on Matthew and Luke, and not the
other way around, is easily demonstrated. For example, Joseph's decision to dismiss or divorce Mary quiedy (James 14:4) recalls a nearly identical remark in Matthew's account (Matthew 1 : 1 9 ) , but in James it
makes little sense since marriage is never contemplated. It does fit the
situation in Matthew, however, suggesting that Matthew is the source.
Furthermore, this gospel answers a question that only arises when both
the Matthean and Lukan birth accounts are known. Matthew contains
Herod's murder of the infants (Matthew 2:16-18), but does not mention
the birth of John. Luke mentions both the births of Jesus and John
(Luke 1:57,2:7), but does not include the murder of the infants. But reading both canonical gospels, a question arises: How did John escape Herod's
soldiers? The Infancy Gospel of James answers this question, revealing
that the author knew of the two canonical birth stories.
5

The scene is extremely uncommon in art, perhaps

because it was considered in bad taste. Salome herself does not disappear from church art, however,
which emphasizes her repentance and conversion by
including her as one of the midwives who bathe
infant Jesus in nativity scenes.
The top half of the ivory also draws on the
Infancy Gospel of James. Many art historians
identify the cramped, rocky interior space as the
cave where Jesus is born (James 18-20). The star
in the sky is likely not the beacon that the magi
followed but the bright light Joseph sees emanating from the cave after the birth (James 19:13-16).
The ox and the ass, virtually omnipresent in
nativity scenes, are borrowed from the Gospel of
Pseudo-Matthew 16.

Josephus, Antiquities 2.200.

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.16.93. Origen, Commentarium in

evangelium Matthaei 10:17.
5

Vasiliki Limberis, Divine Heiress." The Virgin Mary and the Creation of
Christian Constantinople (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 47-61.
6

1911

K e e p R e a d i n g : Find related articles o n o u r W'eb site:

www.biblereview.org

25
BIBLE REVIEW JUNE 2 0 0 1

XMML

>e Creation
as 10
d by Ma
iM.ELA

TAMARKIN

REIS

ver since Rashomon took the grand prize at

the Venice Film Festival 5 0 years ago, the
movie by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa
has been the subject of extensive critical analysis. Based loosely on two early-20th-century
short stories, one of which was itself a retelling of
several tenth-century Japanese narratives, the film
relates the story of an encounter in the woods from
the varying perspectives of four participants: a
woodcutter, a patrician, the patrician's
beautiful wife and a bandit. As each
narrator speaks, his or her version
of events is depicted on screen. The
woodcutter's account is simple and unsophisticated; the bandit's is jumpy and jittery,
the patrician's is dignified and the damsel's
is hysterical. Depending on the version, the
film viewer witnesses a scenario that involves
either a murder or a suicide, preceded by
a rape or a seduction. The four storiesboth
overlapping and contradictoryleave the
viewer hard-pressed to sort out the truth
about what happened in the woods.
1

Rashomon was instantly recognized as a

complete departure from contemporary conventions of cinematography and narrative
technique. Critics deliberated the philosophical and moral implications of
the film. But director
Kurosawa, impatient with
what he considered overanalysis, wanted his movie to be regarded
merely as a good mystery story.
2

No matter how annoyed he may have

been with the dissection of his film, however, Kurosawa probably should have
considered himself lucky: at least he did
not have to contend with advocates of the
documentary hypothesis of biblical scholarship. If critics had applied the criteria of
the documentary hypothesis to Rashomon,
it is likely that the film would have been

ascribed not to one director, Akira

Kurosawa, but to at least four different
directors, each with a different artistic
style. Moreover, Kurosawa's reliance
on earlier stories, some written centuries ago, might have led some source
critics to conclude that Rashomon was
not an original work of art at all but
merely a compilation, and that Kurosawa
was at best the editor, or, to use the preferred academic term, the
^
redactor, of these
popular fictions.
|
The documentary hypothesis propounded by Bible scholars teaches that the five
books traditionally attributed to Moses are a
patchwork, gathered from the writings of four
principal authors or schools of authorscalled J ,
E, P and Dwhose work was stitched together
by a final redactor, known as R. The J source is
identified by its use of "YHWH" (German, JHWH;
vocalized as "Yahweh" and often rendered in
English translations as "Lord"), which Jews consider to be the sacred, unpronounceable, personal name of God, used throughout the Hebrew
Bible to signify the one God of the covenant and
the universe. The E source is so named because it
refers to God as "Elohim"a generic term used to
refer to pagan gods as well as to the God of Israel.
P is concerned with priestly matters such as laws,
dates and genealogies, and D is thought to be responsible for the core of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Advocates of the documentary hypothesis see
different hands at work in the very first chapters of
Scripture, where we find two apparently conflicting
accounts of the origins of life: Genesis l : l - 2 : 4 a ,
which details the seven days of Creation, beginning
with light and concluding with animals, human
beings and the Sabbath; and Genesis 2:4b-24, in
which God first makes Adam and then forms
the animals and a woman as company for the

GENESIS

AS

PRECEDING PAGES: A dynamic, purposeful God

extends his arm across the heavens toward the languid
Adam in Michelangelo's famed fresco, painted in 1511
on the ceiling of the Vatican's Si si i nc Chapel. Author
Pamela Tamarkin Reis suggests that two differing
perspectives underlie the two distinctive accounts of the
Creation in the Book of Genesis. The first, more
optimistic account (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) is depicted from
the point of view of a magnanimous God who bestows
ample blessings upon his works, whereas the second
(Genesis 2:4b-24), written from Adam's perspective,
reveals human egotism and negativity.
Although biblical source critics have long attributed
the two Creation narratives to different authors, Reis
arguesusing the example of Japanese director Akira
Kurosawa's classic 1950 film Rashomonthat one
talented author may have crafted both stories, intentionally adopting two divergent voices to deliver a nuanced
account of the world's beginnings. Photo by Scala/Art
Resource, N.Y.
m a n (see box, pp. 3 0 - 3 1 ) . According to the documentary hypothesis, chapter one of the Book of Genesis
derives from P and offers the Creation account as an
explanation for later Sabbath regulations,* whereas
the second chapter, supposedly written centuries
earlier, is ascribed to J .
But Kurosawa's film suggests another way of reading Genesis 1 and 2. Might not the two Creation stories represent an integrated, intelligible and cohesive
work of one master's artthis despite their repetitions,
contradictions and changes in vocabulary and style?
Might not the two accounts be the work of a single
author presenting the same event from two very
different points of view: God's and man's?
3

*See Victor Hurowitz, "PUnderstanding the Priestly Source,"

B R June 1996.

RASHOMON

Genesis L the first account, opens with God creating

heaven and earth. We learn immediately of the power
of God, who can create with a word. W h e n God
says, "Let there be light," there is light (Genesis 1:3).
We also learn of the deity's unselfishness: He creates
human beings, male and female, in his own image
and grants them earthly dominion (Genesis 1:26).
God is magnanimous; his first words to the man and
woman are a blessing: "God (Elohim) blessed them,
and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and
fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and
over every living thing that moves upon the earth'"
(Genesis 1:28). His second speech offers them sustenance: "See, I have given you every plant-yielding seed
that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree
with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food"
(Genesis 1:29). Finally, God is positive; everything he
creates he deems to be "good" or 'Very good." God, in
Genesis 1, never utters a discouraging word. Nothing
"LET THE EARTH BRING FORTH every kind of living
creature ..." Newly formed beasts look on in astonishment as animals emerge from the very soil upon
which a potent Creator strides. Raphael, who painted
this scene from the first Creation story in the Loggia
of the Vatican in about 1517, envisions a God who is
pleased with the results of his creation and deems it
all "good." Human beings, however, are nowhere in
evidence; among the living beings in God's sequence
of Creation, they are last The second Creation narrative, in contrast, places the man first and central
among God's living creatures. Everything that God
makes in this account is described only in terms of
its relationship to man.

GENESIS

AS

NOT EXACTLY A GARDEN OF DELIGHTS. Adam dourly

assigns names to all kinds of fantastic creatures, not
one of which looks like him. In this 12th-century fresco
in the San Pietro Abbey near Ferentillo, Italy, the man's
skeptical gaze seems to convey his unspoken wish for a
suitable counterpart, which he doesn't get until he parts
with a rib. Adam accepts God's gift of womanbut
grudgingly, for the man's self-importance renders him
incapable of real gratitude. His limited and pessimistic
perspective also imbues the rest of the second Creation
narrative (Genesis 2:4b-24), which focuses not at all on
the glories of God's Creation but instead on the deficiencies of the Garden of Eden. And God himself is
not cast as a benevolent ruler of blessing but as a
punishing dictator.

is lacking, nothing is "not good." The words "no" and

"not" simply do not appear.
This, then, is the Creation according to God, the
Creator. It concludes with the summary statement of
Genesis 2:4a: "These are the generations of the heaven
and of the earth when they were created."
Man's very different perspective on Creation immediately follows. It begins in the second half of Genesis
2:4 with the words "In the day that the Lord God
(YHWH Elohim) made earth and heaven ... the Lord
God formed man from the dust of the earth" (Genesis
2:4b,7). Man is God's final creation in Genesis 1; here

RASHOMON

he is first. The orderly progression of God's a c c o u n t in which the less highly evolved species precede the
more highly evolved animals, and where sea creatures
precede the beasts that dwell on landhas been abandoned. Pride of place is given to man, while the Creator
is criticized. In man's view, he was formed first and,
due to the Lord God's error, alone.
Man's perspective is initially revealed in the very
first verse of his account, when the Lord God "makes"
earth and heaven. The Hebrew verb t e a , "create"
used seven times in the first Creation storydoes not
appear in man's account, nor is it ever used in the
Hebrew Bible to characterize an act of any entity other
than God. Only God creates. Man apparently cannot even imagine the process by which God engenders and so does not use this distinctive word to
describe the world's inception. In G e n e s i s 2:4b4:26, the Lord God makes, forms, builds, plants, takes,
puts, commands, walks and sendsall acts conceivable and capable of accomplishment by man. The
Hebrew verb "to create" will not appear again until
Genesis 5 (the generations of Adam), when the narrator, having finished man's etiology, takes up once
more the perspective of chapter one.
And what, according to man's perspective in Genesis 2,
does the Lord God make? "Earth and heaven." This

BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2001

The Creation According to God

When God began to create heaven and
earththe earth being unformed and
void, with darkness over the surface of
the deep and a wind from God sweeping
over the waterGod said, "Let there be
light"; and there was light. God saw that
the light was good, and God separated
the light from the darkness. God called
the light Day, and the darkness He called
Night. And there was evening and there
was morning, a first day.
God said, "Let there be an expanse in
the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water. God made the
expanse, and it separated the water
which was below the expanse from the
water which was above the expanse. And
it was so. God called the expanse Sky.

And there was evening and there was

morning, a second day.
And God said, "Let the water below
the sky be gathered into one area, that
the dry land may appear." And it was so.
God called the dry land Earth, and the
gathering of waters He called Seas. And
God saw that it was good. And God said,
"Let the earth sprout vegetarion: seedbearing plants, fruit trees of every kind
on earth that bear fruit with the seed in
it." And it was so. The earth brought
forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of
every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw
that it was good. And there was evening
and there was morning, a third day.
And God said, "Let there be lights in

phrase, too, signals a shift in point of view. The phrase

"heaven(s) and earth" occurs three times in God's
account (Genesis 1:1, 2:1, 2:4a), and each time the
word "heaven(s)" precedes "earth." In Genesis 2:4b,
however, "earth" is given priority. Man is more concerned with his own dwelling place than with the cosmos. His version of the story is literally "down to earth";
it excludes the celestial. Genesis 2:4b-4:26 offers a
homespun etiology of earthly matters describing how
the animals got their names, how death and evil entered
a 'Very good" world, why man has to labor for a living, why woman has to labor in childbirth, why the
snake has no legs and so on.

the expanse of the sky to separate day

from night; they shall serve as signs for
the set timesthe days and the years; and
they shall serve as lights in the expanse of
the sky to shine upon the earth." And it
was so. God made the two great lights, the
greater light to dominate the day and the
lesser light to dominate the night, and the
stars. And God set them in the expanse of
the sky to shine upon the earth, to dominate the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw
that it was good. And there was evening
and there was morning, a fourth day.
And God said, "Let the waters bring
forth swarms of living creatures, and
birds that fly above the earth across the
expanse of the sky." God created the

no herb of the field had yet sprung upfor the Lord

God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there
was no one to till the ground" (Genesis 2:4b-5). In his
overweening self-importance, man sees himself as essential to the Lord God: he is required to till the earth. Man,
however, seems hardly to need the Lord God. For
even though the Lord God has not yet created rain,
Eden is nevertheless well watered: "A stream would rise
from the earth"seemingly without any help from God
"and water the whole face of the ground" (Genesis 2:6).
Man need not depend upon the Lord God for rain.
Man's materialism and acquisitiveness are highlighted in Genesis 2:11-12, where we learn that there
is gold in the "land of Havilah" and that "the gold of
that land is good." The only things seen as "good" in
man's version of Creation are food (Genesis 2:9) and
goldmore specifically, gold found in a land not his

The optimism of God's account is missing. Instead,

from the very start of man's version we find negativity,
a focus on what does not yet exist: at the time of man's
creation, "no plant of the field was yet in the earth and

The Creation According to Man

In the day that the Lord God made
earth and heavenwhen no plant of the
field was yet in the earth and no herb
of the field had yet sprung upfor the
Lord God had not caused it to rain
upon the earth, and there was no one to
till the ground, but a stream would rise
from the earth and water the whole face
of the groundthe Lord God formed
man from the dust of the earth. He blew
into his nostrils the breath of life, and
man became a living being.

The Lord God planted a garden in

Eden, in the east, and placed there the
man whom He had formed. And from the
ground the Lord God caused to grow every
tree that was pleasing to the sight and good
for food, with the tree of life in the middle
of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of
good and evil.

whole land of Havilah, where the gold is.

(The gold of that land is good; bdellium
is there, and lapis lazuli.) The name of
the second river is Gihon, the one that
winds through the whole land of Cush.
The name of the third river is Tigris, the
one that flows east of Asshur. And the
fourth river is the Euphrates.

A river issues from Eden to water the

garden, and it then divides and becomes
four branches. The name of the first is
Pishon, the one that winds through the

The Lord God took the man and

placed him in the garden of Eden, to till
it and tend it. And the Lord God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of

30
BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2001

great sea monsters, and all the living

creatures of every kind that creep, which
the waters brought forth in swarms, and
all the winged birds of every kind. And
God saw that it was good. God blessed
them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply,
fill the waters in the seas, and let the
birds increase on the earth." And there
was evening and there was morning, a
fifth day.
And God said, "Let the earth bring
forth every kind of living creature: cattle,
creeping things, and wild beasts of every
kind." And it was so. God made wild
beasts of every kind and cattle of every
kind, and all kinds of creeping things of
the earth. And God saw that it was good.
And God said, "Let us make man in our

image, after our likeness. They shall rule

the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the
cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth." And God
created man in His image, in the image of
God He created him; male and female He
created them. God blessed them, and God
said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea and over
the birds of the air and over every Uving
thing that moves upon the earth."
And God said, "See, I have given you
every plant-yielding seed that is upon the
face of all the earth, and every tree with
seed in its fruit; you shall have them for
food. And to all the animals on land, to
all the birds of the sky, and to everything

that creeps on earth, in which there is

the breath of life, [I give] all the green
plants for food." And it was so. And God
saw all that He had made, and found it
very good. And there was evening and
there was morning, the sixth day.
The heaven and earth were finished,
and all their array. On the seventh day
God finished the work that He had been
doing, and He ceased on the seventh
day from all the work that He had done.
And God blessed the seventh day and
declared it holy, because on it God
ceased from all the work of creation
that He had done. These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth
when they were created.
(Genesis l:\-2Aa)

own. If the reader had been unsure about whose viewpoint dominates the second Creation narrative, the
uncertainty is now dispelled. In whose value system
is gold good? Certainly not in God's. After all, what
would God buy with gold? And from whom? Man is
a corporeal being and must eat, and so his positive
assessment of food is natural and predictable. But his
estimation of foreign gold bodes ill for the future peace
of humanity.

evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it
you shall die'" (Genesis 2:16-17). The inclusive dietary
"all" of Genesis 1:29 ("I have given you every plantyielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and
every tree with seed in its fruit") remains, but it is
immediately qualified by a stern threat. Benevolence
has become oppression. God sees himself as a source
of blessing and abundance; man sees God as a fearsome dictator who deals in death.

All direct speech in the Hebrew Bible is revealing,

and a character's first address bears extta freight. It
is significant, therefore, that God's first speeches to
man, in Genesis L convey a blessing and a gift, whereas
in the second Creation narrative, the Lord God's first
words are an order: "And the Lord God commanded
the man, 'You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and

The Lord God's next utterance to man in the second Creation account concerns something that is "not
good": "It is not good that the man should be alone"
(Genesis 2 : 1 8 ) . The universal goodness of the first
chapter has disappeared. In this version of events,
man perceives a deficit the Lord God's earth is not
complete and sufficient, for man is a social being
and needs a mate.

every tree of the garden; but of the tree

of the knowledge of good and evil you
shall not eat; for in the day that you eat
of it you shall die."
The Lord God said, "It is not good
that the man should be alone; I will
make a fitting helper for him." And the
Lord God formed out of the earth all the
wild beasts and all the birds of the sky,
and brought them to the man to see
what he would call them; and whatever
the man called each living creature, that

would be its name. And the man gave

names to all cattle, and to the birds of
the air, and to every animal of the field;
but for the man there was not found a
helper as his counterpart. So the Lord
God cast a deep sleep upon the man;
and, while he slept He took one of his
ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot.
And the Lord God fashioned the rib that
He had taken from the man into a
woman; and He brought her to the man.
Then the man said,
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BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2 0 0 1

This time!
Bone of my bone
And flesh of my flesh.
This will be called woman,
Because from man she was taken, this.
Hence a man leaves his father and
mother and clings to his wife, so that
they become one flesh.
(Genesis 2Ab-24)
(Translation

based

on

the

Translation of the Holy Scriptures

Tanakh:

New

[Philadelphia/New

York: J e w i s h Publication Society].)

GENESIS

AS

RASHOMON

According to this second Creation account, the Lord

God forms all the animals species by species and trots
them out before the man to be named. Man competendy
names the beasts, although the Lord God, from the
human point of view, fails again and again to provide a
suitable mate: "The man gave names to all catde, and
to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field;
but for the man there was not found a helper as his counterpart" (Genesis 2:20). Unsuccessful with countless candidates, the Lord Godfinallybuilds a woman from man's
rib. Man loves himself so much, the author amusingly

implies, that he cannot help but be charmed by bone

of his bone and flesh of his flesh. So moved is the first
man in the world that he utters his first words (I translate literally): "This time! Bone of my bone and flesh of
my flesh. This will be called woman, because from
man she was taken, this" (Genesis 2:23).
Man does accept the Lord God's handiwork as his
matebut not with open arms. "This time!" he exclaims,
as if to state condescendingly, "Finally, Lord God, you
got it right!" After taking this poke at the deity, man
assigns the generic name "woman" to this new creature. Although he acknowledges that this one is of the
same substance as he, man nevertheless seems to regard
her with disdain. Man identifies her by using the demonstrative pronoun "this." Most translations leave out one
or two of the demonstrative pronouns and obscure the
supercilious articulation with the warmer, more polite
word "she." The author, however, intends to emphasize man's patronizing attitude toward woman, this
second comer, by the repeated use of the disparaging
pronoun that is frequendy used in the Hebrew Bible
to distance and malign* With the insistent repetition
of the alienating pronoun, we see that man endorses
woman, but only at arm's length. In the Hebrew original, the denigrating "this" is the first, the last and precisely the middle word of his speech. Given the repetition and careful placement of the pronoun, it is difficult
to imagine that its chilling effect was not calculated.
The literary styles of the two Creation accounts also
differ markedly. In Genesis L, God moves in stately
periods to create a world. Like the procession and recession of waves pounding against the shore, the echoing
phrases of chapter one separate the acts of creation
and establish a rhythm. Each "and God said" draws us
up to a new creative act; each recurring phrase"and
it was so," "and God saw that it was good," "and there
was evening and there was morning"recedes from it.
The ebb and flow of the narrative confer a decorous,
unhurried and deliberate ceremoniousness. The construction job of creation is not messy; it is orderly. But
the metrical resonance and cyclic intervals with which
the narrator renders God's activity in the first Creation

* T o give b u t t w o e x a m p l e s : In an effort t o m i n i m i z e the diff e r e n c e b e t w e e n his t w o d a u g h t e r s , L a b a n , s p e a k i n g to the

deceived J a c o b , d i m i n i s h e s b o t h L e a h a n d Rachel by referring
to t h e m only a s "this." "Fulfill the w e e k of this, a n d w e will give
y o u this also" ( G e n e s i s 2 9 : 2 7 ; e m p h a s i s a d d e d ) . P h a r a o h ' s serv a n t s , referring c o n t e m p t u o u s l y to M o s e s , a s k P h a r a o h , " H o w
long will this be a s n a r e to u s ? " ( E x o d u s 1 0 : 7 ) .

IMAGE AND LIKENESS. In the first account of

Creation, humans are created in the dignity and glory
of God's image. In this mid-121h-t entury sculpture,
which adorns an arched entrance of the cathedral in
( hart res. France, an inert, half-formed figure of a
man slumps in the lap of the gentle, loving God
featured in Genesis L
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BIBLE REVIEW JUNE 2 0 0 1

GENESIS

AS

RASHOMON

An even more striking difference between the two

versions of the Creation storyand the one that has so
exercised the source criticsis the deity's name change
from the generic term "Elohim" in Genesis 1 to the
sacred, personal "YHWH Elohim" (Lord G o d ) of
Genesis 2. To source critics, the shift can only mean
a change in authorship. But the transition also makes
perfect literary sense: the name of the deity changes
in chapter two because here God is no longer depicted
as the transcendent Creator of everything and every
p e r s o n , pagan a n d Israelite a l i k e . Rather, h e i s
shown by the use of his intimate name to be in an
immanent relationship with the man who will be
the ancestor of all humanity.

THE BORED BOURGEOISIE. Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

depicted Adam and Eve as a disaffected middle-class
couple seated listlessty at a table; the man has turned an
indifferent shoulder toward his wife, his face in shadow.
She inclines her head, as if asking a question. Among
the dark and muted tones of this painting only the
apples that the woman offers to her estranged husband
are brightly colored.
For Adam, as for Chagall, the Creation is a mundane event and Eden a place of discontent Adam was
unimpressed with the partner that God had created for
him. Twice he expresses his disdain for her with the
disparaging pronoun "this."

account end at Genesis 2 : 4 b , where the narrator

commences man's mundane and somewhat discontinuous version of events (for example, the Lord God
places man in the garden in Genesis 2:8 and again
in Genesis 2:15).

Source critics who posit different authors for the

two Creation accounts detract from the richness and
wit of the narrative. The narrow and negative nature
of man's worldview becomes apparent only when we
are first given a broader and more approving view of
the universe. By considering the disagreements and comparing the distinct viewpoints presented in each chapter, readers of Genesis gain their initial insight into the

The dramatic stylistic divergence of the two chapters does not escape the discriminating eyes of the
source critics who conclude that the change in style
reflects a change in authorship. I suggest, however,
that the author of Genesis, like film director Kurosawa,
deliberately varies his narrative style in order to illustrate the capabilities and limitations of different characters. God's expression is august; man's is ordinary.

continues on page 55
HI]

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34
BIBLE R E V I E W * |UNf. 2001

DANIEL

I.

BLOCK

ome see her as an ancient Israelite Joan of

Arc, a devout maid who led her people to
victory against a hated national foe. Others
picture her as the prototype of the modern
militant feminist, who challenged the forces
of an oppressive patriarchy as she delivered Israel from the Canaanites. Most readers simply admire Deborah as the only
woman in the series of local chieftainsusually
translated "judges" (in Hebrew, sopetim)who protected Israel during the turbulent days before the
establishment of the Israelite monarchy.
1

But is this how the biblical author saw Deborah?

When we try to put aside our modern biases
and read Deborah's story afresh, we find that the
image of Deborah in the mind of the ancient
authors was very different. She functioned primarily as Yahweh's representative.
3

Deborah first appeared on the scene in chapter 4 of the Book of Judges. Having recendy entered
the land of Canaan, the Israelites struggled to maintain their hold on the central highlands. The
Canaanites, led by King Jabin of Hazor, proved
to be a stubborn foe with superior
military technology, including
iron chariots. Facing constant harassment from
the Canaanites, the
Israelites cried out to
Yahweh their God to
rescue them from this
enemy (Judges 4 : 3 ) .
Enter Deborah.
W h i l e Deborah was
"holding court" under a palm
tree in the territory of Ephraim,
Yahweh commanded her
to engage Barak, a military leader from the
n o r t h e r n tribe of
Naphtali, and to have
him marshal 1 0 , 0 0 0
troops and challenge
the C a n a a n i t e s to a battle.
D e b o r a h approached Barak
with Yahweh's directive: "The Lord
the God of Israel commands you, 'Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten t h o u s a n d
f r o m t h e tribe of N a p h t a l i a n d the tribe of
Zebulun. I will draw out Sisera, the general of

35
BIBLE

REVIEW |UNE

2001

DEBORAH

PRECEDING PAGES: Although she bears neither arms

nor armor and does not engage in combat, Deborah the
Prophetess (left) confidently directs an attack on the
chariot of the Canaanite general Sisera, a thrust that also
topples the Canaanite king, Jabin (far right). This scene
from the Morgan Crusader Bible (produced in France in
about 1250) illustrates author Daniel Block's contention
that the Book of Judges does not depict Deborah primarily as a military leader, despite her presence on the
battlefield. Reviewing the portrayals in Judges of Israelite
leaders before the beginning of the monarchy, Block finds
that Deborah is pointedly not called a 'deliverer," or military savior. In the accompanying article, Block explores
Deborah's primary role as an intermediary who conveys
God's commands to the Israelites.

(heqxm) a deliverer (mosia') ("Yahweh raised up a

deliverer for the Israelites, who delivered them, Othniel
son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother," Judges 3:9);
6 . a d e s c r i p t i o n of the way d e l i v e r a n c e was
achieved ("[Othniel] went out to war, and Yahweh
gave King Cushan-rishathaim of Aram into his hand,"
Judges 3:10);
7. and, finally, a concluding note on how long
the peace lasted ("So the land had rest forty years,"
Judges 3:11).
The account of Deborah in Judges 4 follows the
paradigm established by the sketchy story of Othniel,
with one significant exception. Deborah's story reads:
1. "The Israelites again did what was evil in the
sight of Yahweh, after Ehud died."

J a b i n ' s army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with

his chariots and his troops. 1 will give him into your
hand'" (Judges 4:6-7). Once Deborah reassured Barak
that she would accompany him, Barak agreed, and his
army attacked the Canaanites in the Jezreel Valley. Their
victory was total: "All of the army of Sisera fell by the
sword" (Judges 4:16). Sisera alone remained alive, having fled on foot. The only remaining issue was whether
Barak would succeed in capturing the Canaanite general. In a surprising twist, it was not Barak but Jael
(pronounced Ya-ef), the wife of one of Jabin's allies,
who slew Sisera.

2. "So Yahweh sold them into the hand of Kingjabin

of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of
his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim."
3. "[Kingjabin] had nine hundred chariots of iron,
and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years."
4. "Then the Israelites cried out to Yahweh for help."
At that time Deborah, a prophetess and wife of
Lappidoth, was judging Israel. She would sit under a
palm tree, known as the palm of Deborah, between
Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and
the Israelites came up to her for judgment.

The question is: What role did Deborah play in this

story? In what way did she help bring about the success of the Israelites?

5. [missing]
6. "She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam
from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, 'Yahweh,
the God of Israel, commands you, Go, take position
at Mount Tabor ...' So Barak went down from Mount
Tabor with ten thousand warriors."

The Bible never identifies Deborah as a warrior or

deliverer (savior); rather, it calls her a "prophetess"
(nebVa) and d e s c r i b e s her as " j u d g i n g " Israel.
Nevertheless, Deborah is generally grouped with those
deliverers of IsraelOthniel, Ehud, Gideon, Jephthah,
Samson and the other heroes of Judgeswho won
great military victories over the enemy. This conclusion is not surprising, for the Bible first names Deborah
at precisely the point in the narrative where a careful
reader would expect a military deliverer to be named.

7. "And the land had rest forty years."

Remarkably, D e b o r a h ' s story lacks a formal
announcement of the raising up of a deliverer (point
5, above). In its place, Deborah is mentioned for the
first time.
On the surface, Deborah appears to have acted like
a deliverer. She accompanied Barak when he marshaled
his troops (Judges 4:10); she apparently marched out
onto the battlefield with them (Judges 4:10b,14); and,
like the deliverer Ehud in Judges 3, she announced in
advance that Yahweh had delivered the enemy into
Israel's hands. Deborah cried: "Up, for this is the day
in which Yahweh has given Sisera into your hands"
(Judges 4:14), which resembles Ehud's call: "Follow

The Book of Judges records the appearance of a

series of deliverers. Beginning with Othniel in Judges 3,
each judge is introduced with the same formulaicsequence:
1. an announcement of the Israelites' wrongdoing
(for example, the story of the first judge, Othniel,
begins: "The Israelites did evil in the sight of Yahweh,"
Judges 3:7);
2. a statement of Yahweh's response ("Therefore
the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and
he sold them into the hand of [the enemy) King Cushanrishathaim of Aram-naharaim," Judges 3:8);

"INTO THE HANDS OF A WOMAN will the Lord deliver

Sisera," predicts Deborah in her rebuke of Barak. In a
surprise twist, however, Sisera escapes the army of
Deborah and Barak and flees to the tent of Jael, whom
Sisera believes to be an ally of his king, Jabin. Jael calmh/
executes the judgment with a tent pin, later showing
Barak the grisly result. Bartholmacus Spranger, the
Danish artist who painted this scene, shrouds Jael's
deed in darkness; the biblical text, however, proclaims:
"On that day God subdued King Jabin of Canaan before
the Israelites" (Judges 4:23).

3. a notice of how long Israel was subservient to

the enemy ("and the Israelites served Cushanrishathaim eight years," Judges 3:8);
4. a reference to Israel's "crying out" (sa'aq) to Yahweh
("The Israelites cried out to Yahweh," Judges 3:9);
5. an a n n o u n c e m e n t of Yahweh's "raising up"
3(>

BIBLE R E V I E W * |UNE 2001

after m e , for Yahweh has given your e n e m i e s the

Moabites into your hands" (Judges 3:28). The verbal
echo invites the reader to look upon Deborah as a female
version of Ehud.

THE FLAWED STRONGMAN SAMSON, more than

the virtuous Deborah, is typical of the legendary
military leaders described in the pages of the Book of
Judges. Though heroic in battle, Samson is a wayward,
immoral character who participates in his own undoing
by consorting with the treacherous Delilah. RussianAmerican artist Alek Rapoport depicts in this painting
Samson's spectacular revenge in the Philistine temple,
where he is brought to entertain the masses. "Let me
die with the Philistines!" cries the fallen hero, and
with his bare hands pulls down the pillars, bringing
the temple "crashing down on the lords and on all the
people in it" (Judges 16:30).

Deborah's own actions seem to point to a role as

deliverer. In response to Barak's hesitation, she suggested: "I will go with you, but the honor that comes
from the adventure on which we are embarking shall
not be yours; for Yahweh will sell Sisera into the hands
of a woman" (Judges 4 : 9 ) . Did Deborah anticipate
that she would c o m e home with the glory of victory? The author encourages us to think so, since
Deborah is the only female character mentioned in
the narrative so far. (Only later do we meet Jael, who
will kill Sisera.)

who plundered them" (Judges 2:16; compare v. 1 8 ) .

Embedded in the account of the conquest of Jabin
is a long, obscure poem knowTi as the Song of Deborah
(Judges 5:2-31), identified by some scholars as one of
the oldest parts of the Bible, dating to about the 12th
century B.C.* Here, too, Deborah seems to be presented
as a deliverer. According to the poem, Deborah's
4

Furthermore, Deborah is explicitly described as

"judging" Israel (Judges 4 : 5 ) . By referring to Deborah
as one rendering j u d g m e n t (sopetd),
the author
invites the reader to see her as one in the series of
"judges" whose role the author explicitly describes
in 3:16: "Then Yahweh raised up judges (sdpetJm),
who delivered (hosia') them from the hands of those

*See L a w r e n c e E. Stager, " T h e Song oi Deborah: W h y S o m e

Tribes Answered the Call and Others Did Not," Biblical An /ideology
Review, J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 1 9 8 9 .

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BIBLE REVIEW JUNE 2001

DEBORAH

appearance in Israel coincided with the return of

security in the countryside (Judges 5:6-8). Although
the verses that follow are extremely difficult to interpret, they create the impression that Deborah was
involved in marshaling the troops:

never explicidy referred to as a "savior" (mosxa') (compare the descriptions of the other judges in Judges
2:16, 3 : 9 , 1 5 ) ; nor does the text ever state that she
"saved" (hosia')
the Israelites "from the h a n d
(mikkap/miyyad)
of their enemies" (compare Judges
2:16, 6:14, 8:22, 12:2, 13:5) or that she brought salvation to them (compare Judges 15:18). Indeed, the
verb ys\ "to save," is never applied to Deborah.

In the days of Jael, caravans ceased

and travelers kept to the byways.
The peasantry prospered in Israel,
they grew fat on plunder,
because you arose, Deborah,
arose as a mother in Israel.
When new gods were chosen,
then war was in the gates.
Was shield or spear to be seen
among forty thousand in Israel?
My heart goes out to the commanders of Israel
who offered themselves willingly among
the people.

A closer reading of Judges 4 raises several additional questions about Deborah's role as compared
with those who are explicitly identified as deliverers:
Why did Deborah need Barak to accomplish the
deliverance? None of the other judges shared their
leadership.
Why does Barak's name appear in later lists of deliverers, but never Deborah's (1 Samuel 12:9-11; Hebrews
11:32)?
Why did Deborah announce to Barak, "This is the
day in which Yahweh has given Sisera into your hands,"
rather than "my hands" (Judges 4:14)?

Judges 5:6-9 (NRSV)

Furthermore, why did Deborah say "Yahweh will

sell Sisera into the hands of a woman," instead of "into
my hands"?

When named alongside Barak later in the poem,

Deborah is given priority, and she is explicidy associated with the troops (Judges 5:15), apparently supporting the view that credit for the victory was primarily hers.

W h y does the author observe that "she went up

with Barak" (Judges 4:10), but avoid placing Deborah
at the head of the troops?

At first, the evidence from both the poem and the

prose account of Israel's triumph seems convincing:
The biblical author saw Deborah as a deliverer. But
upon closer reading, the presentation of Deborah as
a savior of her people is more apparent than real. Our
first clue is that unlike the other judges, Deborah is

The Other

Why is Deborah entirely absent from the description of the actual battle (Judges 4:15-17)?
Why does the poet use the title "mother in Israel,"
rather than "savior of Israel" (Judges 5:7)?
Why does the narrator fail to introduce Deborah
as one raised up (qum) by Yahweh (compare Judges

"Judges"

Unlike Deborah, the other biblical characters identified as judges save Israel through their direct involvement in batde:
Othniel, a young kinsman of Caleb, prevailed over Cushan-rishathaim of Aram
in batde, bringing 40 years of peace to
Israel (Judges 3:7-11).

remained intact. Reassured by God,

Gideon subdued the Midianites, and
"the land was tranquil for forty years"
(Judges 6-8:28).

Ehud, a sharp-witted, left-handed Benjaminite, slew the Moabite king Eglon, who
had joined forces with the Ammonites
and Amalekites against Israel. He then
annihilated Eglon's troops, bringing 80
years of peace to Israel (Judges 3:12-30).

J e p h l h a h , the son of a prostitute, was

thrown out of his home in Gilead by his
half-brothers and became a fierce countryside bandit. But when the Ammonites
attacked his hometown, the local elders
called him back as their leader. After routing the Ammonites, Jephthah ruled over
Israel for six years (Judges 10:6-12:7).

Gideon led the fight against the

Midianites, who ravaged Israel's lands
every year at harvest time. Before he
took up the fight, however, this somewhat reluctant savior requested a special sign from above: He asked that God
first moisten a wool fleece while keeping the ground around it dry and then
moisten the ground while the fleece

Samson, having been betrayed by

Delilah and fettered and blinded by the
Philistines, used brute force to bring
down the temple in which his captors
were celebrating his arrest. He died
along with the 3,000 Philistines gathered
at the temple (Judges 13-16).
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BIBLE

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2001

Interspersed with these famous characters are several other leaders, but their
roles are less clearly defined in the Book
of Judges. Known today as the minor
judges, they include S h a m g a r , who slew
600 Philistines with an ox goad (Judges
3:31); Tola, who led Israel for 23 years
(Judges 10:1-2); his immediate successor,
J a i r , who had 30 towns in Gilead and 30
sons who rode on 30 donkeys, and who
ruled for 22 years (Judges 10:3-5); Ibzan
of Bethlehem, who had 30 sons and 30
daughters and led Israel for 7 years after
Jephthah (Judges 12:8-10); Elon, who
judged Israel for 10 years (Judges
12:11); and Abdon, who had 40 sons,
30 grandsons and 70 donkeys and who
led Israel for 8 years before he died and
was buried in the territory of Ephraim
(Judges 12:13-15).

DEBORAH

A DIGNIFIED DEBORAH (left) remonstrates with

Barak, whose gesticulations reveal his reluctance to
lead an army into battle unless she accompanies him.
Between them, Deborah's eclipsed husband Lappidoth
placidly looks on. Barak points toward the ensuing
bloody h a t i i n which Sisera's soldiers are so
thoroughly routed that "not even one was left" (Judges
4:16). This delicately counterbalanced illumination is
part of the richly illustrated Queen Mary Psalter,
produced in 14th-century Lngland and named after its
16th-century owner, Queen Mary of Tudor.

called upon to deliver Israel deteriorated, especially

that of Gideon, Jephthah and Samson. These were not
noble men; they were not heroes; they were antiheroes.^
Deborah was different. She alone was in the service of Yahweh before her battle against the Canaanites.
She alone is cast in an unequivocally positive light.
Could it be that, by inviting the reader to consider
Deborah among the savior judges, the narrator has
led us up the proverbial garden path? This woman
may appear on the surface to be a delivererbut is this
a longstanding misreading?

2:18, 3:9-15), and why does the poet avoid the root
qum, "to rise," which is used to describe the arrival of
the other judges, when he speaks of Deborah's rise
to power (Judges 5:7)?

If Deborah was not a deliverer, what was her role?

The straightforward assertion that "Deborah was
judging (sopetd) Israel" (Judges 4:4-5) might lead us
to believe that her primary role was judicial. But the
traditional interpretation of sopetd (from the Hebrew
root spt) is probably not correct in this context.

Why is there no reference to Deborah's inspiration

and empowerment by Yahweh's spirit (ruah yhwh),
as witnessed in the life of Othniel (Judges 3:10), Gideon
(Judges 6:34), Jephthah (Judges 11:29) and Samson
(Judges 14:19, 15:14)?

In the Bible, spt often bears the general meaning

"govern."* (This reading is found in a number of texts
outside of Judges, such as 2 Kings 15:5; Isaiah 4 0 : 2 3 ;
Amos 2:3; Psalms 2:10, 94:2, 148:11, as well as in the
use of the cognates in Ugaritic and Akkadian.) In each
case, the context determines the meaning of the term.
In the case of Deborah, the context offers nothing to

Something more separates Deborah from the rest

of the deliverer judges: her character. Not only was
she the sole woman in this man's world, with the
exception of Othniel she was also the only "judge"
with a stainless personal reputation. Far from being
solutions to the spiritual decay and moral Canaanization of Israelite thought and ethic, the other judges
tended to contribute to the problem. Admittedly, the
narrative says nothing negative about the first judge,
Othniel, but the description is cursory and paradigmatic. The second judge, Ehud, is also not criticized
overtly, but his brutal and treacherous tactics leave
the reader wondering whether he is truly a hero or a
villain. After Deborah, the quality of the individuals

continues on page 49
* F o r a fine study of the " j u d g e s " w h o d o not "judge," see Ellis
Easterly, "A Case of Mistaken Identity: The Judges in J u d g e s Don't
J u d g e , " BR, April 1 9 9 7 However, Easterly m a k e s the s a m e mistake m o s t d o w h e n he says "only o n e judgeDeborahin onlyo n e reference, j u d g e s in a legal sense."

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K I V I I W *

IllNF

2001

/ s a l m s 9 and 10 have always been somewhat of a puzzle. The first question is whether they are actually two
parts of one long psalm or whether they are two separate psalms. What suggests that they were originally really
one piece is that together they form an acrostic poem built
with the Hebrew alphabet from aleph (a), the first letter (in
Psalm 9:2), to tav ((), the last letter (at Psalm 10:18). That
is, in each psalm subsequent verses (sometimes two, three
or four lines apart) begin with a successive letter of the
Hebrew alphabet. The initial letters in Psalm 9 cover the
first half of the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet, and those in
Psalm 10 cover the second half of the alphabet, beginning
with lamed (I). Whether, as in a Renaissance sonnet, such
acrostics were written as an aid to memory or simply as a
framework for the poem, the acrostic format was commonly
used in ancient Hebrew poetry.
In the Septuagint, the earliest translation of the Hebrew
Bible (into Greek), Psalms 9 and 10 of the Hebrew psalter
are, indeed, presented as one piece. In the Hebrew Bible,
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BIBI.l- U I V I I W * |UNl 2001

Psalms 9 and 10
and the Order
of the Alphabet
JOHN

STRUGNELL

AND

HANAN

ESHEL

IT'S

ELEMENTARY

Psalm 9 has a separate title"a psalm of David"along

with some enigmatic directions, while Psalm 10 has
no titulus (to use the technical term). This too suggests
that in both the Septuagint and the Hebrew (Masoretic)
text the two psalms were really one long poem.

1 3

1 5

There are a few omissions, doublets and transpositions of letters in the acrostic* composed of Psalms
9-10, but these simply suggest that our text may be
corrupt and old. For example, in Psalm 9 there is no
stanza beginning with the letter dalet (d); dalet has
simply been omitted. And in Psalm 10, several letters
are transposed from their usual alphabetical order.

1 1

Psalm 10 begins with a direct address:

1 6

Why, O Lord, do you stand aloof,

Heedless in times of trouble?
The wicked in his arrogance hounds the lowly [...]
[The wicked man's] ways prosper at all times;

1 7

Your judgments are far beyond him;

He snorts at all his foes [...]
7

1 2

I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart;

I will tell all your wonders [...]
When my enemies retreat,
They stumble to their doom at your presence.
For you uphold my right and claim,
Enthroned as righteous judge.
You blast the nations;
You destroy the wicked;
You blot out their name forever [...]
The Lord abides forever;
He has set up his throne for judgment;
It is he who judges the world with
righteousness [...]
Those who know your name trust you,
For you do not abandon those who turn to
you, O Lord [...]
The nations sink in the pit they have made;
Their own foot is caught in the net they have
hidden.
The Lord has made himself known as He works
judgment;
The wicked man is snared by his own devices [...]

For all this to make good sense as a single psalm,

the order of its two parts should be reversed, so that
Psalm 10 (lamed to tav) would precede Psalm 9 (aleph
to kaf), as set forth above. But is this not contradicted
by the fact that the two psalms together form a complete
alphabetic acrostic, proceeding from aleph to kaf and

His mouth is full of oaths, deceit and fraud;

Mischief and evil are under his tongue.
He lurks in outlying places;
From a covert he slays the innocent [...]
Lift your hand, O God.
Do not forget the lowly.

*For more on acrostics in the Bible, see Harvey Minkoff, "As Simple
as ABC," BR, April 1997.

r o e s

O break the power of the wicked and evil man,

So that when you look for his wickedness
You will find it no more.**
In Psalm 9, this petition has been answered:

But if the two poems were once really one, there

is another more fundamental problem. The pieces
seem to stand back to back, reversed thematically.
From the standpoint of literary flow and the regular
forms of the Book of Psalms, Psalm 9 should follow 10.
Psalm 10 is a psalm of complaint. It movingly recites
past oppression with a wish for future deliverance; it
is a prayer for divine intervention against the wicked.
In contrast, Psalm 9 is a psalm of deliverance and
thanksgiving; it praises God the deliverer.

Why should the wicked man scorn God,

Thinking you do not call to account? [...]

**Translations are from the Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy

Scriptures (Philadelphia/New York Jewish Publication Society, 1 9 8 5 ) .

F i r s t ?

Hebrew
Character

Letter

English

Letter

English

Names

Equivalents

Names

Equivalents

lamed

'1

0
V

aleph

beth

gimel

T""
n

dalet

g
d

heh

vav

r
0

ah

zayin

het

ch

tet

yod

y
k, ch

kaf

42
BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2 0 0 1

IT'S

ELEMENTARY

I WM

70

an Ik w w

YMVM

Y\

ft

c.

Am

171

t>
^1
*1

few

ARE PSALMS 9 AND 10 BACKWARDS? Written as partial acrostics, the two psalms follow the order of the Hebrew alphabet as we
know it today (see chart, opposite): Psalm 9 begins with an aleph (highlighted in the right column of this page from the 11th-century
Leningrad Codex, the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible) and ends with a line that starts with kaf (near the top of the
left column, within a paragraph in the codex's prose form of the text). Psalm 10 goes from lamed (also highlighted, in the left column)
to tax (lower left). The two psalms, however, seem to be reversed thematically. John Strugnell and Hanan Eshel, authors of the
accompanying article, suggest that Psalm 10, which complains of the wicked and asks for God's assistance, originally might have
preceded Psalm 9, a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. But the acrostic embedded in the two psalms seems to preclude such an order.
Or does it? Strugnell and Eshel suggest that in ancient times the order of the alphabet may not have been firmly fixed and that what
we think of as the second half of the alphabet may occasionally have come first As support for their position, they cite the Latin word
elementum, which may derive from the first letters of the alternative alphabetI, m, n.
43
BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2001

IT'S

ELEMENTARY

NOW I KNOW MY L, M, N's ... A students work may

solve an alphabetical quandary. This ostracon (inscribed
potsherd) from Qumran, on the northwest shore of the
Dead Sea and near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were
discovered, contains an alphabet whose two halves
reverse the usual order: The first full line (line 2) begins
with lamed, while the following line begins with aleph.
Other languages provide similar examples. Authors
Strugnell and Eshel use such evidence to bolster their
claim that Psalms 9 and 10 were originally reversed.
n (nun), finishing this line with the last letters
of the first division (lamed to tav) of this earlyalphabet. Next follows a line with the aleph to
feci/ division, and at the end the conclusion of
that division.
Coogan cites several other examples from
such diverse languages as Greek, Latin and
Etruscan (to which we may add Aramaic in an instance
from Elephantine) in which the alphabet was apparently divided into two parts. He concludes: "There was
a practice of writing the alphabet in two parts, the second part of which began with the letters, 1, m and n
the second half of the alphabet being called elancntum.
The entire alphabet then could be called the elementa"
Weir the two parts of the alphabet ever reversed? In
an earlier scholarly presentation of the ideas in this article, we had to admit that we had no example of such a
reversal, although we speculated that they must have
existed. Since that earlier publication, however, Esther
Eshel has re-examined and commented on Coogan's
Qumran ostracon. Her conclusions are similar to his:
We have on this ostracon the two parts of the alphabet
with the half beginning w ith lamed (.line 2) written
before the half beginning with aleph (line 3 ) .

[anted to iav? In short, the procrustean bed of the

alphabetical acrostic seems to disallow the otherwise
desirable reversal of the order of the two psalms.
But the order of the letters of the alphabet that we use
today was not the only one used in ancient times. Although
often forgotten or ignored, traces of differing "alphabets"
have been found at a number of ancient sites, including
Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
In several cases, the alphabet is clearly bisected into
two halves, one from aleph tofeci/and the other from
lamed to tav. Was the order of these two halves ever
reversed? Did the lamed to tav section ever precede the
aleph to feci/section? If so, then perhaps Psalm 10 could
well have originally preceded Psalm 9.

Thus, we now have stronger evidence that at an

early time the alphabet could be written in Hebrew
with the lamed to tav half first, not just with the aleph
to kaj half first. It could well be that when the acrostic
poem consisting of Psalms 10 and 9 was composed,
its author used an alphabet in which the lamed to tav
half came first. In the course of transmission, as often
occurs, a scribe would have replaced the rare form of
the alphabet with the more common one. The present misplaced order of Psalms 9 and 10 should therefore now be reversed, thereby restoring another acceptable order for the alphabet, and especially another
coherent thematic structure to the two psalms.
(33

In a perceptive article published more than 25 years

ago, Michael Coogan noted that in Latin sources, the
word elementa is sometimes used to refer to the letters
of the alphabet. This is an alternative to the designation abecedarium
used in later Latin. (Abecedary
from the letters a, b, c, dis in fact a latinized or English
word that refers to the series of letters arranged in their
alphabetical order.) Why were the letters of the alphabet also referred to as elemental Most dictionaries, as
Coogan points out, state that the etymology of elementum (singular) is uncertain. Coogan, following others,
suggests that this word is derived from the first three
letters of what we normally regard as the second half
of the alphabet (I, m, n), just as "abecedary" is formed
from the first four letters of what we regard as the first
half of the Latin alphabet (or as Greek alphabeton is
formed from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet).
1

Michael Coogan, "Alphabets and Elements," Bulletin of the American

Schools of Oriental Research 216 (1974), p. 61.
For previous discussion, see Roland P. de Vaux, "Fouilles au Khirbet
Qumran: Rapport preliminaire sur la dcuxicme campagne." Revue biblique
61 (1954), p. 229, plate Xa.
See Hanan Eshel and John Strugnell, "Alphabetical Acrostics in PreTannaitic Hebrew," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 62:3 (2000), p. 441.
F o r a detailed re-edition of the Q u m r a n ostracon, see Esther Eshel,
"KhQOstracon 3," in Discoveries in (lie Judaean Desert, vol. 36, Qumran
Cave 4.XXVJ, by Philip S. Alexander el al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000),
pp. 509-512.
1

Coogan draws our attention to what appears to be

a student's exercise on an ostracon (an inscribed potsherd), from Qumran, that indicates that the alphabet
was taught in two halves. The student seems to have
started with a line beginning I (lamed), m (mem) and

PQ

44
BIBLE R E V I E W * |UNF 2 0 0 1

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www.biblereview.org

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BIBLE BOOKS
BR

The Bible as a Product

A n A m e r i c a n Bible:

A History of the Good Book

in the United States, 1777-1880
Paul Gutjahr
(Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2001) 256 pp., $19.95
(paperback)
REVIEWED BY ANN TAVES

Something unexpected happened to the Bible

in America during the century after the Revolutionary War: Despite the
proliferation of massive numbers and multiple editions of Bibles in the newly
independent nation, the Bible's place in American culture declined. Why? Paul
Gutjahr, who teachers English and American studies at Indiana University,
proposes that the Bible ceased being the nation's most-read text in those years
because of changes in the American publishing industry.
Concentrating on the five p's (production,
packaging, purity, pedagogy and popularity), Gutjahr charts an engaging course
through the cultural and material history of
America's first hundred years. The journey
begins with the American Bible Society's
effort to put the Good Book in every
American household by flooding the reading public with low-cost Bibles. Rival publishers then produced more specialized and
expensive Bibles with elaborate bindings,
illustrations, maps and commentaries. In the
process, Gutjahr argues, the once sacrosanct
Bible lost its "changeless aura" and became
just another commodity in the marketplace.
As Americans became a more diverse
people, new controversies erupted. Denominational disputes arose about the merits or
purity of the various biblical editions and
translations andsignificantlyhow they
should be used in schools. Catholics,
Protestants and Jews read different Bibles
with different books arranged in different
orders. One key question was whether

non-Protestant students had to listen to readings from a Protestant Bible in the public
schools. The author suggests that this controversy in particular set the stage for the removal
ol the Bible from public schools, eventually
"depriving the nation of a textual anchor for
shared cultural memory and communication."
As the publishing industry grew, a widening search for market share subjected the
Bible to unprecedented competition for readers. Now the Bible competed not only with
secular books but with fictionalized accounts
of the life of Jesus and other biblical themes.
Gutjahr suggests that these new biblical
products actually diluted readers' knowledge of the Bible by crowding out their contact with the real text.
Much in An American Bible is new.
Gutjahr painstakingly reconstructs and
impressively documents 19th-century Bible
sales and distribution. Measured only in
numbers, he concedes, "the Bible remained
the country's most-produced and mostdistributed text even in the closing decades
4(
MM F R E V I E W * |UNE 2 0 0 1

of the nineteenth century." But the numbers belie a striking cultural shift, he says,
in which the Bible lost its "undisputed command as America's chief written text" and
in which its vital influence in American culture declined.
But influence is a trick)' thing for historians to assess. Gutjahr's understanding of
the Bible as an influential text seems rooted
in a longing for a more homogeneous society, such as that of the New England
Puritans, for whom (in his view) the Bible
was the primary point of reference. I am
not convinced, however, that there ever was
one Bible that functioned as "a textual
anchor for shared cultural memory." For
even when there were fewer translations
and editions of the Bible, individuals and
communities of readers still created different "Bibles" by way of the varying biblical
books, passages or theological motifs in
which they sought meaning. How the Bible
was read was at least as important as how
it was produced and packaged.
The diversification of the print marketplace certainly offered new texts that displaced and then replaced the Bible in public schools. But Gutjahr does not much
consider how, in the first century of
American life, such major developments as
the separation of church and state, the successive waves of immigration, the emergence
of new religious movements (Disciples,
Adventists, Mormons, etc.) and the conversion to Christianity of non-Europeans
such as Africans and Native Americans had
a hand in the cultural shift he is trying to
explain. At least as important as the diversification of the publishing industry was
the diversification of readers and of their
traditions of reading.
Gutjahr's focus is misplaced. He accords
too much weight to the Bible as material

D i g Deeper!
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IBLE

BOOKS

BOOKS IN BRIEF

RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS OF THE BIBLE

These new textbooks and reference works will be of value not only to biblical studies students but to anyone interested

The Oxford Guide to People

and Places of the Bible

faith-based study of the Bible, which is

devotional and personal, differs from
the critical approach of academic bibliEd. by Bruce M. Metzger
cal scholarship, which evaluates the
and Michael D. Coogan
text as a historical document and not
( O x f o r d : O x f o r d Univ. P r e s s , 2 0 0 1 ) 3 8 4 p p . ,
as sacred or authoritative canon. That
$ 3 0 . 0 0 (paperback)
distinction is not always instandy
To o r d e r , c o n t a c t the p r e s s at 2 1 2 - 7 2 6 - 6 0 0 0
apparent to students who enter a unior www.oup.com.
versity or seminary biblical studies

program after years of Sunday

This compact referhe O X F O R D G I M O F
school study.
ence book features
IM O P I i: & IM AC I s
After a concise review of the
straightforward,
lucid, informative
accounts of the key
characters in the
Old and New
Testaments, what
they did, who they
knew and the
places they frequented. Replete
with maps, it is a
fine resource for

ef* BIBLE

beginning students or for those who

simply want to be able to quickly
learn about biblical characters encountered in nonbiblical contexts, such as
in works of art and literature.

What They Don't Tell You:

A Survivor's Guide
to Biblical Studies
Michael Joseph

Brown

( L o u i s v i l l e , KY: W e s t m i n s t e r J o h n K n o x
Press, 2 0 0 0 ) 1 5 7 pp., $ 1 0 . 9 5

(paperback)

To o r d e r , c o n t a c t the p r e s s at 8 0 0 - 2 2 7 - 2 8 7 2 .

This fun and

easy-to-read book
contains a wealth
of interesting
and important
information for
anyone who is
thinking of
studying the
Bible, whether
inside or outside
the academy. It
explains, for
example, how

methods of modern critical biblical

analysis, the author offers 2 8 Rules
of Thumb for engaging in critical
Bible study, such as: "Most biblical
scholars can't agree on lunch, much
less the precise meaning of a text."
The explanation following each
(somewhat flippant) rule is delivered with a light touch, yet always
conveys a serious message that is
wise, true and to the point.

that are not

widely
underB I B L E
stood today. For
BACKGROUND example, an
COMMENTARY
entry on the
selection of
M , m U o w fntff i h I'M k
uM
i Saul as king in
1 Samuel 10:1
says this of the
I
practice of
John H.Walton
Victor H. Matthews &
anointing: "In
Mark W. Chavalas
Egypt the
pharaoh was not anointed, but he
anointed his officials and his vassals.
His anointing of them established
their subordinate relationship to him
and indicated his protection of them.
This model would fit the idea of Saul
being anointed as a vassal to God."

Unfolding the
Deuteronomistic History
Antony F. Campbell and Mark

O'Brien

The IVP Bible Background

Commentary: Old Testament

(Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2 0 0 0 )

John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews

and Mark W. Chavalas

or

( D o w n e r s G r o v e , IL: InterVarsity P r e s s , 2 0 0 0 )
8 3 2 pp., $ 2 9 . 9 9

(hardback)

To o r d e r , c o n t a c t the p r e s s at 6 3 0 - 7 3 4 - 4 3 2 1
or www.ivpress.com.

How does a student of the Old

Testament bridge the historical, linguistic and cultural chasm separating the modern world from the
civilizations of the ancient Near
East? As the authors of this excellent, comprehensive reference
work note, those who don't grasp
the worldview of the people who
produced the Old Testament are
often propelled by modern cultural biases toward erroneous
conclusions.
Organized by chapter and verse
of the Old Testament, this volume is
grounded in ancient Near Eastern culture, history, geography and archaeology, illuminating ideas and practices

48
BIBLE R F V I E W * IUNE 2001

5 0 5 pp., $ 3 7 . 0 0

(paperback)

To o r d e r , c o n t a c t t h e p r e s s at 8 0 0 - 3 2 8 - 4 6 4 8
wwu.augsburgfortress.org.

This textbook closely follows the ideas

of German biblical scholar Martin
Noth (1902-1968), who proposed that
a Deuteronomistic History stretched
from the Book of Deuteronomy
through 2 Kings. In their examination
of this section of the Bible, which tells
of the formation and demise of the
kingdom of
Israel, the
Infolding the
authors cast a
L^euteronomist
wide net, covernistoru
ing the rich and
complex mix of
law, narrative
and theology
within the various hooks. Some
readers may
find it difficult
to navigate the tightly packed pages,
which present a confusing array of
typefaces in combination with a

BIBLE

n the Bible.
complicated system of footnotes.
Those who weather the visual obstacles stand to gain much from the
multidimensional commentary on
the language, origins and meaning
of the text.

The Social Visions

of the Hebrew Bible

BOOKS

artifact and not enough to the communities

of readers who read it in diverse ways. A
lack of attention to the interplay between
the sociology of reading and the material
production of texts leads Gutjahr to overstate the case for the declining influence of
the Bible in America's first century.

Postmodern Biblical
Interpretation
f r o m

CHALICE PRESS

Ann Taves is professor of the history of Christianity and American religion at the Claremont
School oj Theology and professor of religion at
the Claremont Graduate University.

Deborah
continued from page 40
suggest that Deborah is holding court under
the palm tree: She is never portrayed as
presiding over a case or settling a specific
dispute among the citizens of Israel. The
verb sopeta suggests she was indeed rendering official decisions, but it would be
surprising if the author showed any interest in the settlement of a petty civil dispute
at this point in the narrative.
What kind of decisions did the Israelites
expect from Deborah? The traditional reading of Judges 4:5 suggests that the Israelites
came to her for judgment. But it is doubtful that the term used here, lammispat (also
from the root spt), denotes a legal decision.
The verse identifies those who come to
Deborah for "judgment" as bene yisrd'el (literally, "sons of Israel"), a reference to the
nation as a whole. Yet the ancient scribes
responsible for transmitting the vowels in
the Hebrew text rendered the passage as
lammispdt, "for the judgment," which suggests that a particular issue is at stake, not a
series of cases or a routine fulfillment of professional duties. The context makes it clear
what that issue is: the oppression of Israel
at the hands of Jabin and the Canaanites.
In the Bible, the noun mispdt, "judgment,"
is often used in conjunction with the verb
sa'aq, "to cry out"especially in life-threatening situations. In the Book of Job (19:7),
Job calls out to God:
7

J. David Pleins
(Louisville, KY: W e s t m i n s t e r J o h n K n o x
Press, 2 0 0 1 ) 5 9 2 pp., $ 3 9 . 9 5 (paperback)
To order, c o n t a c t the p r e s s at 8 0 0 - 2 2 7 - 2 8 7 2 .

Reading the Bible is not enough, the

author says, to discern fully the
diverse crosscurrents of thought that
make up its social vision. Students of
the Hebrew
Bible will
S O C I A L
learn much
V I S I O N S
from this
book's conception of the
text as a conversation,
indeed at
times a "conflicted diversity" of viewpoints, about
the nature of community and the
obligations of its members toward
each other. "It is these conflicts,"
Pleins claims, "that drive the production of the biblical text."
Moving smoothly from the
Pentateuch through the major and
minor Prophets and wisdom literature (Psalms, Proverbs, J o b , etc.),
Pleins's sophisticated and persuasive vision of the Hebrew Bible
affirms as a strength its divergent
ethical perspectives. He suggests
that modern religious communities
are best served not by imposing
idealized notions of communal
harmony on Israel's past but by
accepting ancient Israel's "disjointed
tableau" as a positive and dynamic
model that endured many struggles.

Look! I cry out {sa'aq)... "Violence!"

But I am not answered {'and).
I shout aloud,
But there is no response (judgment)
('en miipat).
In Judges, such cries for deliverance are
always directed by the sons of Israel to
Yahweh, never to a human authority (Judges
3:9,15, 4 : 3 , 6:6, 10:10). (In the story of
Jephthah [Judges 10:14], God acknowledged
that human beings must only address their
appeals to divinities. When the errant "sons
of Israel" cried out to God, he retorted
sarcastically, "Go and cry out [sd'aq] to the
gods whom you have chosen! Let them save
49
BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2 0 0 1

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[hosici'l you from your distress!") Accordingly,

in Judges 4, when the Israelites "cried out"
about the cruel oppression of the Canaanites
and sought out Deborah for her "judgment,"
they were asking her not to solve their legal
disputes, but to give them the divine answer
to their cries. She functioned as a representative of Yahweh. She was a prophetess.
Of course, that is the very first thing the
author of Judges tells us about Deborah:
"Deborah, a prophetess (nebi'a), wife of
Lappidoth, was rendering decisions for
Israel" (Judges 4:4). The role of a prophet
in Israel is clearly defined in the Bible (see,
for example, Exodus 4:15-16 and 7:1-2, in
which Aaron is named the spokesperson
and "prophet" of Moses). A prophet spoke
to the people on behalf of the deity. By applying the term to Deborah, the author places
her in the succession of Moses (see
Deuteronomy 18:15-22). Incidentally, she
is not the only woman to bear this title:
Miriam (Exodus 15:20), the unnamed wife
of Isaiah (Isaiah 8:3), Huldah (2 Kings
22:14), Noadiah (Nehemiah 6:14) and Anna
(Luke 2:36) are all called prophets.
It was Deborah's prophetic status and
not her judicial office that drew the Israelites
to her at her palm tree between Ramah and
Bethel. They came to her to "cry out" to
Yahweh and to hear "the judgment," that is,
Yahweh's answer to the national crisis created by the Canaanite oppression.
This oracular use of the term "judgment"
(mispdt) is firmly attested elsewhere in
the Old Testament. The best-known example involves the Urim and Thummim, the
stone (or stones) carried in a special pocket
of the high priest's garment called the hosen
hammispdt, "the pouch of the judgment"
(Exodus 28:30). In Numbers 27:2LJoshua
turns to the Urim and Thummim to find
out how to conduct affairs of state after he
takes over from Moses. As the late Hebrew
Bible scholar Umberto Cassuto concluded,
these special stones "served as a means of
inquiring of God, that is to say, of obtaining from the Deity, with the help of the
priest, an answer concerning matters beyond
human ken."
On several occasions in the Book of
Judges, the Israelites make inquiry before
Yahweh (sd'al bayhwh) concerning how best
to conduct their affairs. In Judges 1:1, the
issue is leadership in the battle against the
Canaanites and the conquest of tribal territory; in chapter 20, "the sons of Israel" went
up three times to Bethel, in the region of
Ephraim, to have Phinehas the priest inquire
of God how they should conduct war against
the Benjaminites (Judges 2 0 : 1 8 , 2 3 , 2 7 ) .
In Judges 4, instead of going to the priest,
the sons of Israel went up to Deborah in
the hill country of Ephraim, as if they were
10

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ascending to the high place to inquire of

the deity. Stationed beneath her palm tree
just outside Bethel, Deborah presented an
alternative to the priesthood in town.
That the Israelites came to her for an oracular judgment instead of the local priest
may reflect the failure of the established
priestly institution in maintaining contact
with God, a spiritual tragedy that is given
explicit expression in the early chapters of
1 Samuel. The narrator observes in 1 Samuel
3:1 that "a word from Yahweh was rare in
those days; visions were infrequent." In fact,
when Yahweh finally spoke, he deliberately
bypassed the priest, who did not recognize
the voice of God (1 Samuel 3:4-18). The
Israelites learned that if they desired a determination from Yahweh, they should go to
the prophet Samuel, not the priest Eli
(1 Samuel 3:19-21). The account of Deborah
in Judges 4 suggests that the demise of the
priesthood and their impotence in receiving communication from God antedated
the ministry of Samuel. The people went to
Deborah because she represented their only
hope of receiving a response from Yahweh.
Through her Yahweh permitted himself to
be inquired of, even during the dark days
of the judges.
Now thai we have identified Deborah . i s
a prophet, let us examine more closely how
she filled this role. The story of Deborah is
included in an account that scholars identify as a "call narrative" (or, in this case, a
"protested call narrative"). A similar pattern is seen in Judges 5, in which God calls
the reluctant deliverer Gideon. But in our
story it is Deborah, as Yahweh's representative, who does the calling. Call narratives
typically begin with a personal encounter
between the person called (in this case,
Barak) and Yahweh or his messenger (here,
Deborah). Though no details of this initial
meeting are given, it is hardly accidental
that Deborah enters the picture at precisely
the same point as did the angel of Yahweh
in the account of Gideon (Judges 6:11).
Next, the person called is assigned a specific task. Deborah first charged Barak to
deploy 10,000 troops; then she promised
Barak Yahweh's personal involvement in the
upcoming battle (Judges 4:6b-7). Although
the account makes no reference to Deborah
receiving any orders from Yahweh, the form
of her commissioning speech to Barak
reflects a clear awareness of her prophetic
status. What Deborah said, as an authorized
representative of Yahweh, was by definition
what Yahweh said. She even gave God's message in the first person: "I [referring to
Yahweh] will draw out Sisera, the general of
Jabin's army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon
will) his i hariots and his iroups. I will give
him [Sisera] into your hand" (Judges 4:7).
12

13

DEBORAH

In a protested call narrative, the person

called next expresses resistance. Moses, with
his complaints of ineloquence and slowness
of tongue in Exodus 4:10, is the archetype
of one who resists the call of God. In Judges,
Gideon responded to God's summons to
deliver the nation from the Midianitcs with
apologies regarding his insignificance in
Israel (Judges 6 : 1 5 ) and with repeated
demands for signs showing that Yahweh
actually meant what he said. Barak's protestation to Deborah was less overt, "If you go
with me. I will go; but if you will not go w ith
me, 1 will not go" (Judges 4:8). On the surface, Barak's reluctance makes him appear
cowardly, as if he won't enter the fray unless
Deborah holds his hand. But his objection
may actually reflect his recognition of
Deborah's status. When Barak begged her
to accompany him, he was in effect pleading for the presence of Yahweh.
Finally, the person called is reassured by
promises of the presence of Yahweh and/or
authenticating signs. Both elements are found
here. First, Deborah promised the hesitant
Barak, "I will surely go with you." It is no
coincidence that this reassuring word
appears at the same point where other call
narratives promise God's presence (see
Exodus 3:12; Judges 6:16; 1 Samuel 10:7;
Jeremiah 1:8). Deborah functioned as the
alter ego of Yahweh. Second, Deborah offered
Barak an authenticating, if deflating, sign of
God's presence. Yahweh would deliver Sisera
into the hands of a woman, she predicted.
Barak could count on this as confirmation
of Yahweh's involvement in the event.
Barak marched off to battle, with Deborah,
the symbol of Yahweh's presence, at his side.
The call and commission have been completed. It is evident from the account of the
ensuing battle that in the mind of the narrator Deborah played no real military' role.
First, the author notes that it was Barak's
arrival on Mt. Tabor that caused Sisera to
marshal his forces against Israel. Sisera
seemed unaware of Deborah's presence.
Second, he reports that Barak was the one
who came down the mountain with 10,000
troops following him. Deborah is out of the
picture. Third, he describes the ensuing batUe as involving the forces of Barak and the
armies of Sisera. There is no reference to
any military activity on Deborah's part.
But does this mean that Deborah was not
involved? On the contrary, according to
Judges 4:14: At the critical moment, speaking for God, she gave the signal to attack
and declared that Yahweh had delivered
Sisera's troops into his hands. After all, she
informed Barak, Yahweh had gone out to
the battlefield before them.
Deborah's exclusively prophetic role in
the narrative was never compromised.

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Throughout, she functioned solely as a

spokeswoman and representative of Yahweh.
She communicated the commands of the
divine warrior Yahweh to Barakbut nothing more.
In the end, Israel was saved. But to whom
does the credit belong? Who rescued the
nation? Was it Deborah? Barak? Jael? If the
reader's interest remains on the human
level, he or she will walk away from this
drama puzzled. But the author wishes the
reader to know that this story is not simply a performance being acted out on a
stage by characters who have the freedom
to write their own script and determine
their own moves. The answer to our question becomes clear only when attention is
directed away from the human participants
in this drama to the real hero, Yahweh. The
epilogic comment says it all: "'So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan
before the sons of Israel" (Judges 4:23). It
is the saving activity of Yahweh, the divine
warrior, that the Song of Deborah celebrates
in chapter 5.
In fact, this theological dimension has
shaped the account from the beginning. The
crisis came about because the Israelites violated the will of God (Judges 4:1). Yahweh
expressed his displeasure by introducing
the Canaanites as agents of punishment.
When the people cried out, God answered
by raising up Barak. However, unlike earlier episodes, no formal statement to this
effect is made. Instead the narrator has
opened a window into God's mysterious
workings in calling a deliverer.
The silence of the priesthood in the Book
of Judges is deafening. But the narrator
informs us that the spiritual decline of the
people and the priesthood did not mean
that Yahweh had abandoned his people
totally. He still had his representative. She
sat, not at Bethel or at Shiloh, where the ark
was, but outside the town, receiving the
pleas of the Israelites on Yahweh's behalf.
Deborah's commissioning of Barak represented the divine mispdt. In fact, as his representative she went the second mile. She
accompanied Barak into battle, as a recognized spokesperson for the commander in
chief, as his prophet.
That was her role, no more and no less.
To borrow from the first-century AD. author
Pseudo-Philo: In Deborah the grace of God
was awakened; through her the works of
the Lord were praised.
123
14

'George Foole Moore, A Critical and Exegetical

Commentary on Judges, International Critical Commentary
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1895). pp. 112-115.
F o r a bibliography, see Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth,
New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman &
Holman. 1999), pp. 185-186.
2

T h i s is an abbreviated and modified version of an

earlier, more detailed study: Block, "Deborah Among
5

Walls of Jerusalem by Amram Ebgi.

14" x 19 Lithograph

52
Klhll R I V I I W II Nl .10111

the Judges: The Perspective of the Hebrew Historian,"

in Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament
Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context, ed. Alan R.
Millard, James K. Hoffmeier and David W. Baker (Winona
Lake, IN: Eiscnbrauns, 1994), pp. 229-253.
Deleling v. 5 as secondary, Moore found the weight
of this evidence so convincing that he argued for translating hi'sope(d et yisra 'el as "she delivered Israel" (Judges,
p. 114).
4

'This is an expression used by Marc Brettler ("The

Book of Judges: Literature as Politics," Journal of Biblical
Literature 108 [1989], p. 4 0 7 ) .
For Ugaritic, see F. Charles Fensham, "The Ugaritic
Root spi,"Journal ofNoithwest Semitic Languages (JNSL)
12 (1984), pp. 63-69; Henri Cazelles, "Mtp( aUgarit,"
Orientalia 53 ( 1 9 8 4 ) , pp. 177-182. For Akkadian, see
T.J. Mafico," I he Term sapitum in Akkadian Documents."
JNSL 13 (1987), pp. 69-87.
6

For a detailed comparison of Samuel and Deborah,

see Block, "Deborah Among the Judges." pp. 237-238.
7

S e e Block,"'lsrael'-'Sonsoflsraer: A Study in Hebrew

Eponymic Usage," Studies in Religion 13 ( 1 9 8 4 ) , pp.
301-326.
8

James S. Ackerman ("Prophecy and Warfare in Early

Israel: A Study of the Deborah-Barak Story," Bulletin of
the American Schools of Oriental Research 2 2 0 [ 1975], p.
11, following Robert G. Boling, Judges/Introduction,
lianslationandi ommcnuuy (Garden< n\. M Doubleday,
1975], pp. 81,95) has argued convincingly that the action
described in v. 5 represents an exposition on v. 3a, "the
Israelites cried out (sd'aq) to Yahweh."
9

U m b e r t o Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of

Exodus (Jemsalcm: Magnes, 1967), p. 380. For a detailed
study of the Urim and Thummim, see Cornelius Van
Dam. The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in
Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997).
10

' In the last instance, the narrator adds an explanatory

note concerning the reason why they went to Bethel: The
Ark ol the (Covenant was there in those days, and Phinchas,
the son of Eleazar, Aaron's son, "stood before it."
1

1 2

See esp. Ackerman, "Prophecy and Warfare," pp. 5-13.

For a more detailed discussion and a bibliography

on this subject, see Block. "Deborah Among the judges."
pp. 247-249.
1 3

T h e generally more sermonic tone of Pseudo-Philo's

version of the Song of Deborah (32:1-18. esp. v. 14) and
a concluding farewell address (33:1-6) lend support to
this "prophetic" interpretation of Deborah's roie. For a
translation of these texts, see Daniel J. Harrington in
James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament
Pscudepigrapha, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1985), vol. 2, pp. 345-348.
14

Readers

Reply

continued from page 5

David's tactics ominously echo those of
Joseph, who instructs his steward to plant
the royal goblet in Benjamin's sack, which
might have led to Benjamin's enslavement. Joseph, unlike David, does not
intend to carry out fully his cruel game.
By linking the narrative describing
Joseph's feigned and unsuccessful
attempt to enslave Benjamin with David's
unfeigned and successful attempt to kill
Uriah, the author of Genesis contrasts the
compassion of the ancestor of Jeroboam,
the Ephraimite descendant of Joseph who
was first king of the northern kingdom of
Israel after the division of the united
monarchy ruled by David and Solomon,
with the cynical heartlessness of David.
Such an oblique criticism of David in
combination with a favorable view of the

READERS

Josephite ruler of the northern kingdom

shows a bias towards the northern kingdom. Such a story would hardly have
been written before the division of the
monarchy.
Gershon Hepner
Los Angeles, California

Gary Rendsburg responds:

To some extent, Mr. Hepner's method and
mine are consonant with one another. We
both look to events from the monarchic
period to serve as the background for the
stories in Genesis. The difference is that I
see the tenth century B.C.E. as the background for Genesis, while Mr. Hepner sees
a later period for its setting. He believes that
the positive portrayal of Joseph in Genesis
"shows a bias towards the norihem kingdom." Such a bias, I must assume, would
come from the pen of a northern author.
But the linguistic evidence does not reflect
this. My studies in regional dialects of
ancient Hebrew reveal a dichotomy between
Israelite, or northern, Hebrew, and
Judahite, or southern, Hebrew. The Joseph
story lacks a concentration of Israelite
Hebrew lexical and grammatical elements;
rather, it is written in standard biblical
Hebrew (= Judahite Hebrew) and therefore
must be considered a Judahite composition.
It is hard to imagine a Judahite author presenting Joseph in such a positive light after
the split in the kingdom.
I would argue that the positive portrayal
of Joseph in a story composed in Judahite
Hebrew demonstrates that the story also
must date to the tenth century B.C.E. Note
that Judah is portrayed in a noble fashion
within the Joseph story, in particular in his
long speech in Genesis 44:18-34 (17 versesthe longest in the book of Genesis), which
moves Joseph to tears and leads him to
reveal himself to his brothers.

Was Bathsheba Behind It?

Thank you for the February 2001 BR.
Both Gary Rendsburg and Shlomith
Yaron ("Sperm Stealing," February 2001)
demonstrate that some stories in the
Torah point, in different ways, towards
King David. Central to both Rendsburg's
and Yaron's arguments is the story of
Judah and Tamar. Yaron discusses the
sympathetic portrayals of four women, in
three separate incidents, who initiate the
reproductive act and bear sons. Three of
the resulting sons are ancestors of David.
Yaron left Bathsheba out of her discussion, but a case can be made that Bathsheba was also a woman who initiated
the reproductive act and bore a son. If
this is the case, then Yaron's stories do

REPLY

not point towards David, but rather

towards his and Bathsheba's son,
Solomon.
Rendsburg argues that the Torah was
written at the time of David and may
have been commissioned by his court.
For Rendsburg, Judah and Tamar are
stand-ins for David and Bathsheba. The
theme of the Judah and Tamar story is
not especially flattering towards Judah/
David. Who might have written this section of Genesis and why? Tamar was a
woman who dressed like a whore and
acted like a whore but was not really a
whore. She was a woman accused of
adultery and condemned to death by
Judah, but in the end Judah admitted that
she was more righteous than he. Who
had the most to gain from this version of
media spin? At the time of David, who
was it that dressed (or rather undressed)
like a whore and, like Tamar, became
pregnant while apart from her husband?
None other than Bathsheba. Genesis 38
could be Bathsheba's response to the
accusation of being an adulterous whore.
David Errick
Tenafly, New Jersey

Gary Rendsburg responds:

It is noteworthy that 2 Samuel 11-12 never
points the finger at Bathsheba. She serves in
the story as an agent, an individual necessary
for the plot, but not as a full-fledged character. Note that we are given very little, if any,
information about Bathsheba's emotions
and that only David is accused of adultery.
She is given only two words (in the Hebrew)
to speak, "I am pregnant" (2 Samuel 11.5);
and she is not called by her name from the
time she is introduced until the entire affair
is over. All of this means that the author of
2 Samuel 11-12 was not concerned with
Bathsheba but rather sought to focus the
reader's attention on David.
Now in real life Bathsheba may have been
viewed negatively by people in the city of
Jerusalemwe have no way of knowing-hut
the biblical account gives no indication whatsoever that she was accused of being "an
adulterous whore" (Mr. Errick's words).
In general 1 am opposed to the effort to
attribute a particular composition in the
Bible to a specific character, named or
unnamed, in the Bible. With the exception of
the literary prophets, for whom we have
names, the biblical books are anonymous.
Scholars in recent times have attempted to
ascribe the book of Deuteronomy to
Jeremiah, the so-called Yahwist source to a
royal lady in the court of Rehoboam, and so
on. But such efforts can never be proved and
should, 1 believe, be avoided.
53
BIBLE R E V I E W * |UNE 2 0 0 1

AVERCIUS INSCRIPTION
A Mere Braggart?
Bishop Avercius's tombstone inscription
fascinated me because of the variety of
ways it can be understood, but it also left
me curious ("Earliest Christian Inscription," February 2001). I wonder how much
the bishop's grandiosity, which clearly
affected the style and content of his selfaggrandizing epitaph, needs to be taken
into account. He describes himself as a "citizen of a favored city" who wants his body
placed in a "prominent place." One thinks
of Ozymandias, who fantasized that his
monumental works could outlast death
and guarantee his memory forever.
Many people, in demanding that their
importance be noted, have a tendency to
overstate their accomplishments. Surely,
as a bishop, Avercius must have accomplished many important things, yet he
wanted to be remembered for his trip to
Rome. Odd. Old Avercius is wonderfully
humanmy thanks to Laurence Kant for
telling us about him.
Bertram H. Rothschild
Aurora, Colorado

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BIBLE RFVIEW |UNE 2 0 0 1

GENESIS

AS

Genesis as Rashomon
continued from page 33
author's assessment of both God and
humanity. The variations between the first
two biblical chapters do not disclose two
authors but distinguish two characters,
God and man, and reveal the characteristic attributes of eachGod's might, optimism and magnanimity; man's pessimism,
misogyny and greed.
As Kurosawa's Rashomon reminds us, it is
not necessary to stipulate separate authors
in order to explain deviations, contradictions
or repetitions within a narrative. An author
can speak in many voices, vary vocabulary,
tell essentially the same story from conflicting points of view and keep his audience
engaged for millennia.
To the film experts who credit Kurosawa
with inventing a new narrative approach

RASHOMON

that demonstrates the relativity of perspective, I can only say, "What has been is what
will be, and what has been done is what
will be done, and there is no new thing
under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
E3
'Tadao Sato, "Rashomon," in Donald Richie, ed., Focus
on Rashomon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972),
p. 96.
Richie, in the introduction to Focus on Rashomon, p. 1.
I do not agree with traditional interpreters of the
Creation accounts, although they also defend the single authorship of Genesis. Traditionalists, who believe
the Bible is the inspired word of God, interpret die second Creation story as an expansion and clarification of
the first. They assert that Genesis 1 provides the general outline of the Creation and Genesis 2 supplies the
specifics. This interpretation, however, does not explain
the inconsistencies between the two accounts. For example, man is clearly the last creature made in the first
account, but in the second he is formed before the other
animals. Nor does the traditional explanation elucidate
the change in style from the majestic, balanced cadences
of Genesis 1 to the pedestrian, even choppy, asymmetrical structure of Genesis 2.
3

Authors

If y o u c o u l d o n l y s t u d y
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The original "Gospel of Matthew,"
increasingly thought by scholars to have
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found. The next best thing is The
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and then translated back into hyperliteral English. The result strips away
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historical figure from Nazareth squarely
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Scrolls and first century. The 650-page
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Ronald F. Hock ("The Favored One," p. 12) is

professor of religion at the University of Southern
California. He is a specialist on the social and
intellectual world of the New Testament. His
translation of the Infancy Gospels of James and
Thomas was published by Polebridge Press in
1995. David R. Cardidge, who selected the pictures and wrote the captions for the article, is
Beeson Professor Emeritus of Religion at Maryville
College, in Maryville, Tennessee. His book Art
HOCK
and the. Christian Apocrypha is forthcoming from Routledge.

www.schuellerhouse.com

CARTLIDGE

Independent scholar Pamela Tamarkin Reis ("Genesis as Rashomon,"

p. 26) has been published in die Journal for the Study of the Old Testament,
Vetus Testamentum and the Journal of the Ancient Near East Society.
Her subjects have included Saul and the witch of Endor, Joseph and
his brothers, and the wife-sister motif.
Daniel I. Block ("Why Deborah's Different,"
p. 34) is associate dean in the department of
religion at the Southern Baptist Theological
RglS
Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and an
ordained Baptist minister. Block is the author
of commentaries on Judges, Ruth and Ezekiel. He also served as general reviewer of the first five books of the Old Testament for the New
Living Translation of the Bible.
"It's Elementary" (p. 41)
BLOCK
marks the first collaboration in BR for coauthors John Strugnell and Hanan
Eshel. Strugnell has been a professor of Christian
origins at Harvard Divinity School for nearly 35
years. He began his studies of Qumran manuscripts
in the 1950s and continues to work on them to
this day. Eshel, the head of the Archaeological
Institute at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan,
STRUGNELL
ESHEL
Israel, and an excavator at Qumran, contributed
an article on Jewish ritual baths to the July/August 2000 Biblical Archaeology Review.
55
BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2 0 0 1

Ask Bible
questions and
give answers.
E
U

A n e w free

resource from

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2
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for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not One shepherd and
does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coining and leaves the
sheep and runs awayand the wolf snatches them and scatters them ... I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my
own know me."
John 10:11-14

esus gently cradles one lamb in his hand while a second rests
on his shoulder in an ivory statuette crafted in about 1600
in Goa, the port city on India's southwest coast. Beneath Jesus'
crossed feet stand Mary (left) and St. John; between them,
a gargoyle spouts water, an allusion to baptism. At bottom,
a reclining Mary Magdalene reads scripture in a mountain cave,
to which, according to early Christian legend, she retired after
the crucifixion.
Shepherding is one of mankind's oldest occupations, and many
of the Bible's characters, including Abraham, Moses and David,
engaged in it. In Ezekiel 34:11-16, God describes himself as a shepherd. Jesus and his followers used the image of the shepherd to
describe his mission, most dramatically in the passage cited above
from John 10, in which Jesus announces his willingness to die for
his flock. The shepherd image was carried over to the leaders of
the early church, who were instructed to "tend the flock of God"
(1 Peter 5:2).
Since 1962 Goa has been a part of India, but for four centuries it
was the economic and administrative capital of Portuguese Asia.
The mix of cultures in Goa led to an evolution of artistic styles that
merged European late Renaissance and local Hindu influences.
Christ the Good Shepherd,
c. 1600, Ivory, 9" by 3"

Goa, India
56
BIBLE REVIEW |UNE 2001

Get serious
It is without question t h e m o s t faithful of all literal, word-for-word Bible translations, and now also
the m o s t readable. If you're ready for serious word-for-word study, n o o t h e r English Bible compares.
T h e Updated NASB. Now at book-stores in many text, reference, study and specialty editions.

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Visit your local retailer or call 8 0 0 - 7 2 7 - 3 4 8 0 to order, www.zondervanbibles.com

Foundation Publications www.NASBible.com

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