A Letter That Has Not Been Read: Dreams in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

A Letter That Has Not Been Read: Dreams in Hebrew Bible, by Shaul Bar. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 257. $39.95. In this work Shaul Bar examines numerous biblical dreams in terms of their classifications, etymologies, literary functions, and connections to extrabiblical dream material. This wide-ranging monograph, which often lacks a sharp focus, also investigates ambivalent attitudes of prophetic and wisdom writings toward dreams, talmudic interpretations of biblical dreams, phenomenon of dream interpretation in ancient Near East, various aspects of biblical visions, and, in appendix, a few aspects of ancient dream incubation. On whole, Bar's text is a helpful introduction for those interested in biblical dreams in that he addresses numerous issues and clearly summarizes previous scholarship in field, yet it adds little that is new. The introduction raises an intriguing thesis that the dream represents a more refined and sophisticated state in development of religion than that reflected in a direct encounter with (p. 3). Although this idea is said initially to be the basis of present work, Bar does not return to this conjecture in rest of text. Instead, subsequent chapters address an array of topics variously related to biblical dreams, with each chapter functioning more as an independent essay than as part of a systematic argument. Bar initially sets out to investigate whether Leo Oppenheim's three-part pattern for dreams in ancient Near East, consisting of setting, dream, and response, holds for biblical dreams as well. In ch. 1 he surveys biblical prophetic dreams (Oppenheim's message dreams), or dreams in which a deity or representative of a deity appears to a dreamer and imparts a clear message. In ch. 2 he turns to biblical symbolic dreams, dreams in which message is encoded in mysterious visual symbols that must subsequently be interpreted. After surveying numerous dreams, Bar finds that Oppenheim's paradigm is indeed replicated in both types of biblical dreams. However, although correct in his conclusions, Bar fails to mention that previous works have already extensively demonstrated validity of Oppenheim's pattern for biblical dreams, particularly R. Gnuse's The Dream Theophany of Samuel: Its Structure in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Dreams and its Theological Significance (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984) and Dreams and Dream Reports in Writings of Josephus: A TraditioHistorical Analysis (Leiden: Brill, 1996), as well as this reviewer's dissertation, Standing at Heads of Dreamers: A Study of Dreams in Antiquity (University of Iowa, 2000). In fact, Oppenheim himself made this argument in brief in The Interpretation of Dreams in Ancient Near East: With a Translation of an Assyrian Dream-Book (Transactions of American Philosophical Society, vol. 46, pt. 3; Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1956), which casts into doubt entire raison d'etre of first two chapters. His examination does include several fascinating and capable explorations of etymology of key terms related to dreams and visions, which is perhaps greatest asset of this work (pp. 10-12, 79-92, 144-45). Unfortunately, in most other portions of text, methodology is less than clear. For instance, Bar appears to engage in historical criticism of biblical dreams by surveying ancient Near Eastern perceptions of dreams, only to introduce alongside these several anachronistic interpretations from Qumran, Talmud, and later rabbis (e. …