An Apocryphal God: Beyond Divine Maturity by Mark McEntire

Abstract

Reviewed by: An Apocryphal God: Beyond Divine Maturity by Mark McEntire Bradley C. Gregory mark mcentire, An Apocryphal God: Beyond Divine Maturity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015). Pp. xi + 283. Paper $39. Building on McEntire’s previous book, Portraits of a Mature God: Choices in Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), this book extends the same approach into the Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, concentrating on the last three centuries b.c.e. The title of the book functions as a clever double entendre: the literature commonly designated “Apocrypha” constitutes a substantial portion of the study, and the meaning of “apocrypha” as “hidden” is an allusion to the conclusion of his earlier book, in which the character of God had become increasingly “hidden” or obscure by the end of the Tanak. The goal of this book is to assess how the Jewish literature of the late Second Temple period responded to the problem of God’s perceived detachment from the world. M. takes a narrative-theological approach in which he explores what these texts reveal about the various authors’ understanding of God within their cultural milieu. Rather than proceeding chronologically through this period, M. groups the literature by commonalities of approach, genre, subject matter, or viewpoints. This has the advantage of creating an interesting dialogical relationship between the works in how they grapple with understanding God’s relationship with the world, though M. is careful to emphasize that the works themselves were not necessarily written in direct response to one another. Thus, the particular arrangement of his treatment of this literature should be understood as primarily heuristic. The disadvantage of this approach, however, is that works are treated out of chronological order, making diachronic developments a little more difficult to follow, and sometimes particular books (e.g., Daniel) are split into different chapters. For each text, M. provides an introduction covering standard issues such as authorship and provenance before guiding the reader through the contents of the work. Along the way he makes observations about how the text presents God or God’s role or, even more interestingly, what assumptions about God the work takes for granted. After introducing the scope and methodology of the book, three chapters (“God of the Defeated and Scattered,” Parts I, II, and III) are devoted to the question of how various authors grappled with the experiences of subjugation in the Second Temple period. In [End Page 120] chap. 2, M. examines how the portrait of God was reconfigured in Jubilees, 1 Enoch 1–36 (the Book of the Watchers), and 1 Esdras as their authors retold Israel’s past. M. finds that the God of these works is more removed from the world than in the corresponding stories in the Tanak and that, to compensate for this gulf, supernatural beings play a more prominent role. In chap. 3, M. demonstrates how stories found in Judith, Tobit, Daniel 1–6, the Greek additions to Daniel, the Greek additions to Esther, and 3 Maccabees depict God as assisting pious Jews in various ways as they showed ingenuity and resourcefulness. In chap. 4, M. explores the books of Sirach, Baruch, and Wisdom of Solomon and finds that, in comparison with the sapiential books of the Tanak, these books place a greater emphasis on God’s actions in Israel’s history. The move toward integration of wisdom with the rest of Israelite religion facilitates the successful living of the wise in the shifting sociopolitical environments of the Second Temple period. In chap. 5, “God of Revolt,” M. examines how 1 and 2 Maccabees view God’s role in the Maccabean revolt and the eventual triumph of the Hasmoneans. While both works portray God as providing assistance in the clash with the Seleucids, they have striking differences as well. God’s assistance is more subtle and implicit in 1 Maccabees, while in 2 Maccabees it is more overt, even if appearing inconsistently. In chap. 6, “God of Dreams and Visions,” M. treats the depiction of God in the apocalyptic works of 1 Enoch 72–105 (the Astronomical Book, the Dream Visions, and the Epistle of Enoch), Daniel 7–14 (Greek), and Jubilees 1 and 23. The spatial and temporal...