Friendship in the Hebrew Bible by Saul M. Olyan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Friendship in the Hebrew Bible by Saul M. Olyan Michael R. Simone saul m. olyan, Friendship in the Hebrew Bible (AYBRL; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Pp. xiii + 191. $50. The topic of friendship in the Hebrew Bible is easily overlooked. Stories from many cultures speak of unrelated individuals who share relationships of trust, support, reciprocity, and adventure. The Hebrew Bible, however, has few relationships comparable to the friendships of Achilles and Patroclus or Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Strong relationships do appear in the Hebrew Bible, but they are primarily among family members, like Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, or between masters and disciples like Elijah and Elisha. As a result, friendship has generated comparatively little research. [End Page 321] This book reveals the surprising number of references to and accounts of friendship throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Olyan begins with an investigation of the terms and phrases used to describe friendship and the context in which those terms are used. This initial analysis reveals that friends are people who are not closely related but who display "behavioral parity" toward each other (p. 36). Even when friends in the Hebrew Bible do not share the same social status, as in the case of David and Jonathan, they expect each other to reciprocate the good they do for each other (p. 73). Friends often share a warm emotional bond; they are nonrelatives who "cling" to each other (pp. 30-31). In short, a friend's loyalty can be trusted. A friend pays back good for good. Friends stand near even during times of trouble, and in exceptional cases one can be even more intimate with a friend than with a relative. Olyan, the Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, is especially well poised to investigate this topic. A student of Frank Moore Cross, O. has written several books on the social milieu of the Hebrew Bible, including studies of social inequality and hierarchy, disability, mourning rites, and violence. He is the primary editor of Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion: Essays in Retrospect and Prospect (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), a collection of essays on biblical society that engage the work of social theorists like Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault. Olyan's dual expertise in biblical studies and social theory allows him to offer both material and theoretical insights. The notes to the introductory chapter (pp. 117-34) provide a wide array of studies of friendship both in theory and in its ancient Near Eastern context. O. makes use of extensive secondary literature from outside the English-speaking world. Ancient sources include texts from Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, and the Greco-Roman world. Among these, O. relies most on Ahiqar, Hammurabi, Sefire, Aristotle, and Cicero, although references to the Hebrew Bible greatly outnumber these cognate sources. Recognizing that he is breaking new ground, O. approaches his topic carefully. The introduction concentrates on the words and phrases that describe friends and friendship. O. catalogues their use, their context, and their range of meaning. In the first chapter, he uses these insights to compare friends and family members, while in the second chapter he investigates failed relationships between friends. In the third chapter, he covers friendship in narrative, focusing on Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Job and his comforters, Jephthah's daughter and her companions, and Amnon and Jonadab. In the final chapter, O. reviews descriptions of friendship from Ben Sira, seeking in this second-century b.c.e. text the innovations and continuities of Hellenistic Judaism. In each case, "friendship" is a relationship of behavioral parity and reciprocity. This reciprocity is expected even in relationships between individuals of unequal social status, like David and Jonathan. This is a remarkable study on several levels. Foremost is its readability. O. maintains tight control over a wide-ranging topic. He uses the introductory chapter to generate a series of research questions that he then follows systematically in subsequent chapters. The careful analysis of terms in the introduction is especially helpful to the questions that follow. For example, O.'s study of terms reveals the paradigmatic nature of family relationships. Friends...