The Original Torah: The Political Intent of the Bible's Writers (review)

Abstract

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 292 Reviews texts with their parallels in Deuteronomy to try and discern the relative literary priority. However, in this discussion he fails to take account of the details of possible different levels of the Tetrateuchal text. for example within Numbers 13-14 when comparing it with the parallel in Deut 1:1946 . He simply takes the present Tetrateuchal text, and thus does not do justice to this comparative task. In addition, in concluding that it is impossible on the basis of the text to work out literary priority since there are no literary critical criteria to help decide this. he fails to take into account such criteria as. for example. the mtionale for change between one text and its parallel particularly in light of the stories as a whole. Consequently, his conclusion that the decision of priority is purely dependent on the model of formation with which the scholar starts, and therefore he will simply presuppose Van Seter's conclusions that the Tetrateuch is later than the Deuteronomistic History and therefore postexilic to support his thesis, lacks solidity. Overall, this book opens up a new perspective on the Tetrateuch, especially with regard to how it might have functioned in the Persian period. However, the lack of close attention to detailed literary critical analysis and the argumentation of scholars mther than simply their conclusions at some important points detmcts from the credibility of his position that goes beyond discussing the possible functioning of the Tetrateuchal materials in the post-exilic period to situating their production also at that time. Suzanne Boorer Murdoch University Murdoch, Australia boorer@socs.murdoch.edu.au THE ORIGINAL TORAH: THE POLITICAL INTENT OF THE BIBLE'S WRITERS. By S. David Sperling. Reappraisals in Jewish Social and Intellectual History. pp. xiv + 184. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Cloth, $42.50. This book fits well into the series in which it appears. It is the eleventh volume in the New York University Series "Reappmisals in Jewish Social and Intellectual History," edited by Robert Seltzer. for whose "personal direction " the author is particularly grateful. Furthermore, the Acknowledgments inform us. the book was written to answer the question of his daughter, who at the age of eight asked, "Since no one could have known what really happened, why were these stories made up?" A postscript Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 293 Reviews "About the Author" informs us that S. David Sperling was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary and received his Ph.D. at Columbia. My training is identical, except that I was ordained in 1957 and received my doctorate in 1964. For us, the intellectual giants were Yehezkel Kaufmann, Ephraim A. Speiser, and William Foxwell Albright. One of the then bestsellers was Werner Keller's The Bible as History, translated from the German. But for Sperling, "the archaeology of the past three decades demonstrates that the Torah's fundamental claims appear to be unhistorical " (p. 7). There was no Sojourn. no Exodus. no Desert Wandering. and no Conquest. In fact. the author asserts, "Nowhere in the Torah, nor in the rest of the Hebrew Bible, is there a claim that the events related actually happened" (p. 14). As Wellhausen already maintained, "Pentateuchal narratives had value only for the period in which they were composed" (p. 17). Sperling maintains that the way to get at that period is to regard the Torah as historical and political allegory. Acknowledging his debt to ancient and medieval Christian and Jewish theological and philosophical allegoresis , he applies historical allegoresis to date the Eden story to the ninth to eighth centuries B.C.E. when Assyrian and Israelite monarchs were planting royal gardens and before rapacious, large landowners were driving small farmers off the soil, as attested by Amos and Isaiah. This method is further applied to a situation (servitude), an institution (covenant), and six personalities (Abraham, Jacob, Joseph. Aaron. Moses. and Jeroboam). The new authorities are Niels P. Lemche, Thomas L. Thompson. Morton Smith, Israel Finkelstein. George Mendenhall. and Norman Gottwald. The Terah-Ur tale was designed to demonstrate that the repatriates under Cyrus were enacting a divine plan put in place after the Flood. The Exodus traditions originated in...