RBL 05/2014 Athalya Brenner and Gale A. Yee, eds. Joshua and Judges. Contexts. Ginny Brewer-Boydston Baylor University Waco, Texas

Transcription

1 RBL 05/2014 Athalya Brenner and Gale A. Yee, eds. Joshua and Judges Contexts Minneapolis: Fortress, Pp. xxii Cloth. $ ISBN Ginny Brewer-Boydston Baylor University Waco, Texas Joshua and Judges, edited by Athalya Brenner and Gale A. Yee, is the fourth installment of the Hebrew Bible portion of the Contexts series. This series approaches reading the biblical text contextually, decentering biblical scholarship from its predominantly Western (masculine) viewpoint. This point of view is not denigrated, as it is a social location rather than the social location of choice for biblical scholarship. Joshua and Judges is a collection of fifteen essays that explores ancient Israel s claim to divine chosenness and subsequent conquest of the land of Canaan. As a whole, these individual chapters challenge ancient Israel s collective memory and approach the narratives that retell those memories from the view of the Other, the native inhabitants of the land. The collection is divided into two parts. What Do We Do, What Can We Do, about Joshua and Judges? focuses on the biblical books, more so upon Joshua, and methods as a whole, investigating and letting stand the tension of the divine chosenness and the violent conquest of those who held original, valid claim to the land. The second part, Case Studies in Judges, focuses upon particular stories and ideological readings of those passages. In the first essay, The God of Joshua: An Ambivalent Field of Negotiation, Walter Brueggemann discusses three probes in seeking understanding of passages that depict a

2 violent God who destroys the Other as well as consideration for responsible interpretation that is still faithful to the text. The first probe recognizes that the capture of the land is a function of chosenness. The second probe addresses how chosenness leads to the destruction of the Other. The third probe acknowledges little to no dissenting voices counteracting the violent seizure and destruction of Canaan. Brueggemann argues that traditional criticism can offer that voice of dissent so as to recognize the violence of the text and negation of the Other and yet be a critique to it rather than attempting to ameliorate the chosenness of the land and Israel. In Joshua Judges and Postcolonial Criticism, Trent C. Butler acknowledges that he is an outsider among postcolonial critics, as he traditionally has not experienced being an Other. Butler than employs questions representative of postcolonial criticism in regard to Joshua and Judges and concludes that a postcolonial reader cannot automatically assume Israel is the colonizer and non-israelites are the colonized. The identification of Other will fluctuate depending on the circumstance, even at times traversing both polarities; it is a static category, for the same group may well fit different categories at different places in the literature, and at different times and context (32). Yonina Dor and Naomi De-Malach offer a survey of Israeli views of Joshua as a historical document and a survey of Israeli state education textbooks, which include selections of readings from Joshua, in their essay Teaching Bible Stories Critically: They Did Not Spare a Soul The Book of Joshua in an Israeli Secular Education Environment. They find that these textbooks eliminate some controversial passages, urge the students to identify with the Israelites, and provide historical detail but ignore the moral questions. If moral questions are raised, the textbook authors delve into apology of the text rather than letting the moral issues stand. Dor and De-Malach offer an alternative way of teaching Joshua: generous critique (52). They suggest allowing these texts to spur openness in discussing the passages, allowing students to wrestle with the ethics of the text, and encouraging critical reflection from multiple viewpoints within the text. Cheryl Kirk-Duggan reflects on American and world history that parallels the violence of the conquest of Canaan in Inside, Outside, or in Between: Feminist/Womanist Hermeneutical Challenges for Joshua and Judges. Given the underlying causes of systemic violence, Kirk-Duggan encourages reading Joshua and Judges from a womanist perspective in the hope of transforming this violence and empowerment for all rather than black women alone. Emphasizing the female characters, both those who rise to leadership over men and those against whom great violence is done, allows for transcending literal readings or readings from the Israelite perspective, which in turn reveals new insights into connections around systems, power, and culture (87).

3 Employing reception analysis in The Finns Holy War against the Soviet Union: The Use of War Rhetoric in Finnish History during the Second World War, Kari Latvus explores the Finnish newspaper Kotimaa and the Finnish journal Teologinen Aikakauskirja in 1941 at the beginning of Finland s Continuation War against the Soviet Union. What Latvus finds is parallel thematic clusters of divine chosenness and promise of land as described in Joshua and Judges. The chosen media present a view of Finland as God s instrument, protection of Finland as God s will, and the need for individual repentance and piety. Latvus ends with compelling questions regarding Finland s and future usage of biblical concepts for holy war and crusade. L. Daniel Hawk s Indigenous Helpers and Invader Homelands explores the folklore of the Indian Maid that inspired a statue at Fort Ball in Tiffin, Ohio, and her parallel, Rahab, in Joshua. The two women served as indigenous helpers who aided foreign invaders in their conquest and occupation of the land. The indigenous helper is the pivot upon which the land turns away from the indigenous nations and toward the immigrant people (121). Rahab the Canaanite welcomes the Israelite spies and assumes their religious and political worldview. After the destruction of Jericho, symbolizing the conquering of the Other and the cleansing of the land, she assimilates with the Israelites in a land that has been re-created in (Israel s) own image (121). Athalya Brenner s Women Frame the Book of Judges How and Why? introduces the second section of case studies in Judges. Brenner seeks to answer the question of why women, specifically daughters, frame the book of Judges and appear at critical junctions, such as the center. Brenner first presents a survey of the principal characteristics of these women and then an additional survey of scholarship s multiplicity of answers to the question of framing. Her conclusion refutes the belief that Judg are later additions, as these chapters complete the structure of the entire book with their focus on the daughters who appear in them. Ora Brison s Jael, eshet heber the Kenite: A Diviner? offers a unique reading of Judg 4 5 that counters the traditional view of Sisera seeking shelter with Jael. Instead, she argues that Sisera is seeking an audience with a (female) cultic intermediary/diviner in order to learn about his future fate (141). Sisera s patronizing of Jael shares characteristics with Saul s patronizing of the medium of En-dor. The encounter between Sisera the military commander and Jael the medium is not maternal or sexual (consensual or forced), but these maternal and sexual overtones are best explained as cultic practices associated with divination. Ryan P. Bonfiglio explains the inconsistencies between the two narratives of Judg 4 5 with regard to Sisera s and Jael s encounter through prose and then poetry in Choosing

4 Sides in Judges 4 5: Rethinking Representations of Jael. In Judg 4 Jael, clearly an outsider living on Israelite land, must choose between her Kenite ties or Israelite ideology when Sisera enters her tent; she becomes Israel s deliverer when she chooses to kill him rather than uphold the Kenite-Canaanite peace. In Judg 5 the text presents Yahweh as Israel s deliverer, and Jael kills Sisera in self-defense in the face of rape rather than choosing one side over another. Employing postcolonial mimetic and model minorities theories, Bonfiglio demonstrates how in Judg 4 Jael is a model minority who is faithful to Israel and serves their interests as an Israelite heroine but in Judg 5 is a model of agency and resistance for women both ancient and modern who likewise face sexual violence, a heroine among women (171). As a Chinese American female, Gale A. Yee explores the parallels between Jael (Judg 4 5) and the legend of Mulan, both of whom are female warriors entering the male world of warfare, in The Woman Warrior Revisited, Jael, Fa Mulan, and American Orientalism. Both women cross gender boundaries and contribute to gender destabilization. Their reception history is often contradictory in terms of their representations from the text and legend. Through a closer look at the Disney film Mulan, Yee prods the reader to consider gender and racial formation based on such representations of boundary-crossing women. In This Season You ll be Wearing God: On the Manning of Gideon and the Undressing of the Israelites (Judges 6:1 8:32), Meir Bar Mymon describes the masculinization process of the Israeli army and parallels it with God s masculinization of Gideon and ancient Israel. Israelite masculinity suffers and, thus, God s masculinity is reduced in the opening of Judg 6. Yahweh recruit(s) the weak Gideon and transform(s) him into a Man, thus changing the matrix into a new equation: strong leader = strong nation = one strong God (195). Through the masculinization of Gideon, Yahweh is masculinized, so much so that Gideon puts on God s spirit and the deity and Gideon co-exist in the figure of Gideon the soldier. Once the campaign is won, Gideon refuses to continue in the way God has masculinized him and takes off Yahweh by creating an ephod and retiring to civilian life. Through Gideon s rejection, he shapes another model of Man, one who refuses to participate in ancient Israel s warfare. Pamela J. Milne s From the Margins to the Margins: Jephthah s Daughter and Her Father asks the question of whether feminist biblical scholarship is extending outside of its own community into the nonacademic arena of the average biblical reader. She developed a project that interviews these nonspecialists about their own interpretation of Judg 11 and concludes that her interview subjects had no direct knowledge of feminist biblical studies nor did the readers apply a feminist critique of the passage, although there

5 were some promising responses in the issues of the text the interviewees found problematic. Royce M. Victor revisits Delilah and reads her story though a Philistine perspective in Delilah A Forgotten Hero (Judges 16:4 21): A Cross-Cultural Narrative Reading. Victor describes Delilah as a Philistine hero who endangers her life to save her people and their land and possibly the whole of Canaan, as Samson is a threat to society. Her heroic exploits have either been forgotten or co-opted by ancient Israelite memory, and she is transformed from a great heroine into a seductive, foreign betrayer. Victor then compares Delilah to a nearly forgotten, unnamed heroine in the Indian epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata. In Narrative Loss, the (Important) Role of Women, and Community in Judges 19, Brad Embry ponders a view of the church without the violent text of Judg 19. The unified, conquering Israel of Joshua disintegrates and wars with one another in the extended family of Israel in Judges. While Judg 19 is an example of that deterioration, it is also a typology of society in which the concubine represents the fate of Israel. More so, the violent, murderous fate of the concubine spurs Israel to evaluate its disintegration. For the community of faith, the reading and incorporation of this passage in the life of faith reawakens the community and spurs reflection on its own potential and capacity for evil (269) and upon the choosing of a canon within a canon and why. Janelle Stanley approaches Judg 19 through a psychological lens and labels it a text of trauma in Judges 19: Text of Trauma. The passage displays three typical symptoms of trauma dissociation (lack of personal names and of the description of the rape), repetition compulsion (repetition of speech by the old man and of particular features of Gen 19), and fragmentation (dismemberment of the concubine). More important, this text of trauma performs the healing function of constructing the narrative [so that] the trauma memory [is] recovered, told, and retold (288). Identification as a text of trauma allows trauma victims to identify with it and begin their own healing process by reconstructing their narrative. Joshua and Judges clearly demonstrates the difficulties for both scholars and instructors in interpreting Joshua and Judges. While the first essay may leave the reader with the feeling that interpretation of the two books leaves academia with nothing but tension, the remaining essays serve as an answer to the probes Brueggemann laid out. This volume is not apologetic of the conquest stories of Joshua and Judges, does not attempt to ameliorate these passages, and does not attempt to answer the historical issues of the conquest. For those academics who acknowledge interpretational difficulties, Joshua and Judges offers more than just a shrug of the shoulders in response to the violent texts. The

6 book offers readings, methods, conclusions, and teaching strategies to those who do not know what to do beyond letting the tension stand. Indicative of the Contexts series, this collection offers an abundance of diversity with regard to the social location of its authors. There is a multiplicity of ethnicities, nationalities (although the vast majority are American or have close ties to the US), junior scholars, and senior scholars. Exactly half of the authors are male, and half are female. Such volumes as this tend to favor female academics, but Joshua and Judges recognizes an Othering of men when ideological criticism is perceived as a female discipline. Indeed, feminist biblical studies are featured the most. The list of authors, however, includes the perspectives of white Anglo-Saxon men in recognition that such readings do have validity, although they are not the only valid readings or contexts with which to approach the text. Mymon even offers a study in masculinity and Judges. Although it may seem as if this book is for anyone but white males, the essays serve as excellent studies for all readers, minorities and majorities alike, with regard to how individual social location colors and changes a reading. The diversity and method is somewhat of a drawback. Each author identifies her or his social location before delving into the essay, an excellent avenue for showing how social location and interpretation interacts. However, this identification feels as if authors must show their qualifications for being a contextual critic, or, for those who have little experience as an Other, they must justify why their works are included in this volume. These particular non-others also lean toward being apologetic for employing contextual criticism, as if they are overstepping their bounds or right to add their viewpoints. Speaking of the Other, those authors who heavily identify with the Other or attempt such identification gravitate toward particular topics and passages, which is a drawback for this volume. Judges 4 5 (particularly the character of Jael) and 19 are heavily featured. The volume favors Judges as whole the second portion of the book is titled Case Studies in Judges. Case studies in both Joshua and Judges would have helped keep the volume evenly distributed across the two books. Another issue with diversity and method is that these essays on the whole employ large amounts of I language despite a focus on the Other. While there are a multiplicity of benefits of authors offering their social locations, some of these interpretations can become very individualistic. At times, an author appears to be saying This is how I read this text, rather than offering an additional perspective. Due to this individualistic method of interpretation, the volume does not always offer application that one can extract and duplicate unless that particular person shares the same social location. This method also lends itself toward problems with argument or twisting of the interpretation to produce the desired outcome. The advantage of such individualistic readings and even

7 the twisting of readings is that the reader must still think beyond her or his social location and be aware of the influence of others social locations upon texts and the validity of such readings. What would have been helpful to note in the preface or introduction is the danger of ideological methods and reader-response criticism rather than stressing the benefits alone.