Poverty, Law, and Divine Justice in Persian and Hellenistic Judah by Johannes Unsok Ro

Abstract

Reviewed by: Poverty, Law, and Divine Justice in Persian and Hellenistic Judah by Johannes Unsok Ro Michael S. Moore johannes unsok ro, Poverty, Law, and Divine Justice in Persian and Hellenistic Judah (AIL 32; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018). Pp. xv + 300. $53.95. Carefully structured and well written, this volume contains (except for the chapter on "Jeremiah") a revised collection of Ro's previously published articles and book chapters on (a) the relationship between the shaping of the canon and literacy in the Hebrew community; (b) the attitude toward "strangers" in the Torah's law codes; (c) the development of the theological concept of divine punitive justice; (d) the concept of the "piety of the poor" (Armenfrömmigkeit), widely claimed to characterize portions of the Psalter; and (e) the notion of "poverty" in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the author's words, the intention of this book is not "to develop a single thesis, but to highlight some major issues in Persian- and Hellenistic-era Palestine" (p. 1). Chapter 1, "Challenges and Responses of the Second Temple Period," introduces the collection with a pithy, thoughtful critique of the sociological models put forward by Roland Boer (The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel [Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015]) and Gerhard Lenski (Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966]). R. finds Boer's work attractive because it appears to refrain from examining ancient economies through anachronistic lenses segregating economics from religion. Yet, when Boer keeps segregating homo religiosus from homo economicus, R. interprets this to reflect an unwillingness/inability to extricate himself from the simplistic dichotomies of Karl Marx. Lenski's work is more helpful because, like Max Weber, Lenski promotes a much more nuanced understanding of how economic distribution systems actually work in the real world. Lenski's notion of "status inconsistency," for example, goes a long way toward helping R. explain the uneven relational dynamics often [End Page 355] characterizing postexilic Hebrew groups struggling to work together in the fragile Second Temple economy. This application of Lenski's notion of "status inconsistency" to a specific time and place is one of the book's most helpful insights. Chapter 2, "Literacy and the Socioeconomic Context of the Judean Postexilic Communities" (originally published in ZAW 120 [2008] 597-611), takes issue with the popular thesis of Rainer Albertz (Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit [GAT 8.1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992] 543-75) that impoverished Hebrew shepherds, farmers, and laborers must be the "authors" responsible for writing the psalms and prophetic passages critiquing the wealthy. Relying on Lenski's understanding of advanced agrarian societies, R. summarily rejects any attempt to hold illiterate people responsible for writing anything, much less the carefully constructed texts in Mal 2:17; 3:5, 13-21; Isa 29:17-24; 56:9–57:21; Psalms 9–10, 12, 14, 35, 40, 69, 70, 75, 82, 109, and 140. Chapter 3, "The Portrayal of Judean Communities in Persian-Era Palestine: Through the Lens of the Covenant Code" (originally published in Sem 56 [2014] 249-89), unfortunately presumes, with many others, that everything of significance in the Torah—every character, every event, every description, every warning—must originate from the minds of postexilic returnees. The belief underlying this approach (and it is a "belief") is that diachronic analysis is inapplicable to this material because none of it is historically "verifiable," not to mention "reliable" or (gasp!) "inspired." All laws in the Torah about the גר ("stranger"), for example, should therefore be understood as reflecting "an urgent problem for the Judean communities in Persian-era Palestine because of the massive number of returnees from the Babylonian Exile" (p. 42). This presumptuous methodology frequently structures studies like this one—studies that refuse, for whatever reason, to read Hebrew legal material from any perspective other than that which might be called, for lack of a better term, "rigid postexilism." Thus, it is no coincidence that this volume does not even mention the possibility of learning about Hebrew law from intertextual analysis alongside Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and/or Hittite law. Chapter 4, "The Postexilic Construction of the Prophetic Figure of Jeremiah," begins by considering whether...