The Literary Guide to the Bible:
Perkins, Pheme
DIVERSITY & FERMENT
THE LITERARY GUIDE TO THE BIBLE
Edited by Robert Alter & Frank Kermode Harvard/Belknap, $29.95, 675 pp.
Pheme Perkins
For the past twenty years a quiet revolution has been going...
...Consequently, it is often difficult to maintain a sense of how one author compares with another...
...DIVERSITY & FERMENT THE LITERARY GUIDE TO THE BIBLE Edited by Robert Alter & Frank Kermode Harvard/Belknap, $29.95, 675 pp...
...One might have liked to see general essays on both prophecy and apocalyptic as well as more thorough discussion of the apocalyptic part of Daniel, which is part of that work that is determinative for the New Testament tradition...
...Most provide their own translations, since it is impossible to demonstrate the complex literary relationships between passages in the Bible without doing so...
...The contribution of Canaanite literature to understanding the mythic associations of biblical stories and images as well as the construction of much biblical poetry is particularly fascinating...
...However, the reader must invest a considerable effort in the process...
...His approach to unlocking the ritual and mythic structures in the Bible has already influenced several younger American scholars (see E. S. Malbon, Narrative Space and Mythic Meaning in Mark, Harper & Row, 1986...
...General essays on English translations and the formation of the biblical canon provide the reader with an understanding of how the text which he or she thinks of as "the Bible" came into existence...
...Another general essay explains how midrash and allegory functioned as modes of interpreting the Bible for the first generations of readers...
...Otherwise this guide will find itself on the bookshelf alongside the Bible, which one also intends to read "someday...
...However, a fine essay on the history of interpretation of Revelation makes an important contribution to understanding the complex relationships between meaning and patterns of interpretation...
...New Testament writings are compared to the literary genres of Greco-Roman antiquity...
...However, several of the individual articles (e.g...
...Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Song of Songs, Esther) incorporate the results of feminist analysis of those books...
...But on the positive side, one gains a sense of the real diversity and ferment in this approach to the Bible...
...History, archaeology, and philology may serve to reconstruct histories of Israel and of earliest Christianity, but they are no longer sufficient to understand the Bible...
...As its editors claim, this book will teach educated people how to read the Bible in a sophisticated way...
...Nor does the chapter on the Pauline Epistles treat the Pastorals or Colossians and Ephesians...
...Teachers without training in biblical criticism who attempt to use this book as a classroom text may find themselves running for Bible dictionaries and commentaries...
...This book is not about the "KJV as literature.'' All of the authors pay careful attention to the Hebrew and Greek texts as they go about their work...
...Though the introduction claims that the book will be largely based on the King James Version, that is rarely the case...
...Just as this book is not a "literary guide'' that speaks with a single voice or point of view, it is also not an introduction to the basic structure or content of the books discussed...
...The distinguished anthropologist, Edmund Leach, adds a fascinating essay unraveling the symbolism associated with Jesus' choosing fishermen disciples on the edge of the wilderness...
...Most of the essays on the Hebrew Bible require detailed reading of the text...
...The editors have excluded ideological approaches to the literary analysis of the Bible (e.g...
...The Twelve Minor Prophets and the Pauline Epistles are each allotted a single chapter...
...The editors did not look for a unified understanding of what literary analysis of the Bible involves, nor did they establish a topical format to be followed in the essays on individual books...
...Any such collection will be uneven...
...Exegetes have been turning to methods of analysis grounded in literary criticism to unlock the power of biblical narrative, poetry, and even its law...
...Many of the New Testament articles are five to ten years behind and for the most part fail to incorporate the contributions being made by younger American scholars...
...Readers unfamiliar with a particular book had best read it through once or twice before wading into the discussion of that book presented here...
...Pheme Perkins For the past twenty years a quiet revolution has been going on among biblical scholars...
...Marxism, deconstructionism, and feminism...
...On the whole, the work on the Hebrew Bible is closer to the "cutting edge" of scholarly literary analysis today than that on the New Testament...
...The Johanriine Epistles and Catholic Epistles are tucked in at the end of chapters and hence receive no serious treatment at all...
...Since poetry is such a large part of the Hebrew Scriptures, Robert Alter has contributed a second essay summarizing his work on Hebrew poetry...
...Although apocalyptic rhetoric and symbolism enjoys a great deal of interest in literary and exegetical circles today, it is not well treated in this collection...
...The other general essays address somewhat more specialized problems...
...o read "someday...
...On the whole the treatment of the Pauline letters focuses on their"pastoral rhetoric.'' Issues about the narrative or mythic structures presupposed by the apostle are left aside...
...The editors, two of the leading figures in this movement, have drawn together an international group of scholars to write essays on the individual books of the Bible as well as a series of general essays...
Vol. 115 • February 1988 • No. 4
