Sex, Wives, and Warriors

Reading Old Testament Narrative with Its Ancient Audience

Philip Francis Esler

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781608998296
  9781498213066
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621892489
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Why and how should we read Old Testament narrative? This book provides fresh answers to these questions. First, it models possible readers of the Bible--religious and nonreligious, professional and nonprofessional--and the reasons that might attract them to it. Second, with the aid of Mediterranean anthropology, it sets out an approach that helps us to interpret a selection of narratives with a cultural understanding close to that of an ancient Israelite. Powerful stories, such as those of Tamar and Judah in Genesis 38, Hannah in 1 Samuel 1-2, Saul and David in 1 Samuel, David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 10-12, and Judith, burst into new light when understood in closer relation to their original audience. Interpreted in this way, these narratives allow us to refresh the memory that links us with pivotal stories in Jewish and Christian identities, they disclose more ample possibilities for being human, they foster our capacity for intercultural understanding, and they provide aesthetic pleasure from their embodying plots of great imaginative power.

1

Reading Old Testament Narrative

The Phenomenon of Narrative in the Old Testament

Many of the world’s best-known stories are found in the Old Testament: the stories of Adam and Eve, the worldwide flood and the salvation of Noah and his family, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, David and Goliath, David and Bathsheba, Absalom and Ahithophel, Jonah, Daniel in the lions’ den, Judith and Holofernes, and many more. Indeed, to think of the Old Testament is, unavoidably, to think of narrative. Of the thirty-nine books in the Hebrew Bible, thirteen are entirely narrative in form, constituting about one-third of its total length.1 Several more, such as Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, have extensive narrative passages, while narrative features in many other books, such as some of the Psalms, many of the Prophets, and Job. This additional material means about half the total text is narrative.2 Of the eight extra works that are included in the form of the Old Testament recognized by Roman Catholics (as translated by Jerome into Latin in the fifth century CE), four of them are narratives, approximately 45 percent of their total length.3 When the individual authors of Old Testament works and those who compiled them into collections that became canonical wanted to speak of God’s ways with the universe and with his chosen people, Israel, they did so largely through narrative.

The stories of the Old Testament also have an immense cultural significance, since they have inspired the production of paintings and sculptures; poems, fiction, and drama; musical compositions; and, since the very early twentieth century, numerous films. While we can thus distinguish between the religious and cultural arenas in which Old Testament narratives have been immensely influential, we must also recognize how religious and cultural impetuses to their appropriation are often closely interconnected. For example, regular exposure to Old Testament narratives that are read in churches and synagogues helps to generate and maintain an audience for films on biblical themes.

This book is written both in the conviction that these biblical narratives have an abiding value and deserve the closest attention—across a very broad range of readers—and with the aim of encouraging and assisting close engagement with them. It is encouraging to see that Don C. Benjamin’s recent textbook, The Old Testament Story, provides an introduction for students that focuses on the way the Bible works through story, so the book moves away from introductions in the past (like Bernard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament), which Benjamin submits had too much history and too little criticism of the biblical texts.4

In this volume the expression “Old Testament” rather than the “Hebrew Bible” is used of the corpus in view to emphasize that the somewhat larger collection of texts recognized as canonical (or at least deuterocanonical) in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communities (which both include the book of Judith, for example) fall within our purview. While there is no perfect way of referring to this corpus, I particularly seek the indulgence of Jewish readers for including what they call the Tanakh under the rubric “Old Testament.”

The first section of this chapter addresses the question of why we should read Old Testament narratives, by first modeling four groups of potential or actual readers and by then offering a range of reasons attuned to the interests and needs of the very different readers these groups encompass. The second section offers a particular answer to the question of how we should read these narratives—in particular by seeking to understand the meanings they would have conveyed to their original audiences in ancient Israel. This entails adopting a position in contrast to (and sometimes in critique of) other approaches currently in vogue in the scholarly marketplace that are not concerned with reading for original meaning and that at times positively disparage that exercise. In chapter 2 I set out the broad lineaments of that context for application in the examination of specific narratives that occupy chapters 3 to 10.

Why Read Old Testament Narrative?

Modeling Readers of the Old Testament

The assertions just made for the significance of Old Testament narratives and for the claim they make on us for attention are large ones and require some justification. The essential starting point is the recognition of the huge variety of actual and potential readers. There is no single answer to the questions, why are people interested, or why should they be interested, in reading Old Testament narratives? There are likely to be as many different answers to the questions as there are respondents. Probably even these questions should be expanded to include those who listen to Old Testament passages being read aloud (at church or synagogue services, for example). Nevertheless, it is possible to identify the broad categories of audience and then to consider the varying types of significance that the narratives in question do or should have for them. We can begin to articulate the meaningfulness of Old Testament narratives for various audiences by forming a simple model arranged around two axes. The vertical axis differentiates readers or hearers who encounter Old Testament narratives by reason of religious belief from those who approach them for nonreligious reasons (of whatever kind). The horizontal axis differentiates nonprofessional readers from those who read for professional reasons. These two axes then generate a model of four quadrants, which I have lettered A to D to correspond to the order in which they are each considered.

I will now consider the four broad groups identified in turn.

Far and away the largest group in numerical terms is A. The practicing Christian and Jewish lay people who are directly exposed to Old Testament narratives, either by hearing passages read at church or synagogue (possibly as they follow lectionary passages from service sheet, Bible or missal), or by reading them privately, must be numbered in their hundreds of millions. A primary aim of this book is to legitimate, that is, to explain and justify, particular ways of reading Old Testament narrative to this, the largest group. For those who regularly encounter the Old Testament passages read at services during the liturgical year, there is an inevitable connection between the biblical narratives and the life and identity of their faith communities that will require particular attention below.

The second-largest group numerically is B. Here we are dealing with millions of people falling into two subgroups. First are those who, having practiced Christianity or Judaism in the past, do so no longer yet are still attracted to these narratives, largely from a sense of nostalgia for their past affiliation and its continuing bearing on their life and identity. Second are those in the community who have never had an institutional link with Christianity or Judaism but are genuinely curious about the nature of Old Testament narratives for their story value or for their impact on art and culture, or who are searching for assistance in their own life journeys. This book also aims to assist readers like these to discover in biblical narratives a greater resource than they had imagined for satisfying the interests with which they come to those texts.

The third-largest group numerically is group C. Here we are dealing with the large number of persons, probably to be numbered in the hundreds of thousands, who are practicing Christians or Jews, but who also have a professional role in relation to the Old Testament writings: either as biblical interpreters in universities (such as the present writer) or as undergraduate or postgraduate students in biblical studies; or in their own religious communities as priests, ministers and rabbis; or those who are inspired by Old Testament stories to create works of art or musical compositions...

Table of contents

• Sex, Wives, and Warriors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1: Reading Old Testament Narrative
• 2: The Original Context of Old Testament Narrative
• Part 1—Wives
• Part 2—Warriors
• Part 3—Sex
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Scripture Index