Hidden Polemics In Biblical Narrative

In current usage polemics is broadly defined as the practice of rhetorical persuasion or as the rhetorical presentation of an argument in dispute. The phenomenon of polemics is found throughout the whole corpus of biblical literature. In most instances the polemics is direct, but sometimes indirect, and occasionally it appears to be deliberately covert. This book is primarily concerned with exploring the phenomenon of covert polemics. Dealing first with considerations of method, definition and characterization, the study moves on to the analysis of a number of narrative texts and the uncovering of their covert polemical content. Polemics of this type is a feature of biblical writing on a range of central issues, and can be instructively isolated in texts relating to cultic locations (Beth El, Jerusalem), questions of leadership (the houses of Saul and David), community boundaries (the Samaritans) and other problems of legitimation.

Based on a series of lectures given in Israel, Amit introduces the reader to the subtle ways of the biblical narrators. Covering issues of character, plot development, catchword association, narration, and dialog, she brings the biblical text to life, helping the reader enter the stories from new vantage points.

This work is a study in the attribution, aesthetics and representations of Yahweh’s speeches in the Hebrew Bible. It describes the literary elegance and beauty of the speeches of Yahweh in the Abrahamic narratives. Employing a synchronic reading of the Abrahamic cycle, it underscores the presence of various literary devices in the divine speeches (12:1-9, 13:1-18, 15:1-21, 17:1-27, 18:1-33, and 22: 1-19). Specifically, it engages the high concentration, literary effects and use of metaphors/metaphoric language, similes, alliterations, wordplays, euphemisms, hyperboles, repetitions, allusions and other distinctive literary features in the speeches of Yahweh which are deliberately denied, and glaringly absent in the speeches of the other main characters of the Abrahamic narratives (e.g. Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar). Similarly, it demonstrates the importance of these elevated speeches in the narrative world of Abrahamic epic. Most importantly, it also highlights the ideological significance of these decorated speeches of Yahweh to the original audience of the narrator who presumably identified with their excessive optimism and rhetoric. Consequently, this book is a pioneering work in the contemporary study of stylistics, characterizations and functions of attributed speeches in the Hebrew narratives.

Subversive Scribes and the Solomonic Narrative considers 1 Kgs 1-11 through the optics of propaganda and subversion with primary attention given to subversive readings of portions of the Solomonic narrative. Seibert explores the social context in which scribal subversion was not only possible but perhaps even necessary and examines texts that covertly undermine the legitimacy or the legacy of Solomon. The book is divided into two parts. In the first, Seibert develops definitions of propaganda and subversion and notes other studies which have understood certain biblical texts to function in these ways. Primary consideration is given to developing a theory of subversive scribal activity in this section of the book. An important distinction is made between "submissive scribes," individuals who wrote what they were told, and "subversive scribes," individuals who did otherwise. Since many scribes were writing for the very people who paid them, those wanting to engage in subversive literary activity had to do so carefully, and to a certain extent covertly, lest they be detected and exposed. Yet their critique could not be so obscure that none could detect it. There needed to be enough clues to allow like-minded scribes to read the text and appreciate the critique, but not so many that opponents could charge such scribes with sedition. In the second part of the book, Seibert applies this theory of scribal subversion to various passages in 1 Kgs 1-11. An extended discussion is given to 1 Kgs 1-2 with the remainder of the Solomonic narrative being treated more episodically. The focus is on passages which look suspiciously like the work of a subversive scribe and/or which have subversive potential. It is argued that scribes could-and sometimes did-intentionally encode a critique of the king/kingship in the text and that one of the most effective ways they accomplished this was by cloaking scribal subversion in the guise of propaganda.

Studies in Theology and Religion,11 Polemics, as “the art or practice of disputation or controversy”, is a living issue in matters of religion, and is a major object of research for scholars in religious studies and theology. The second international conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR), held at Leiden in April 2000, was devoted to the subject of Religious Polemics in Context, aiming at a further exploration of the notion of religious polemics, together with the unfolding of a wide variety of case-studies from various religious traditions. The volume contains most of the papers read at the conference, and offers contributions on general issues (e.g., by M. Dascal), as well as on particular topics in the fields of history of religion (e.g., Islam), ancient Israel and early Christianity, the history of Christianity, and the social sciences of religion. An annotated bibliography is added to this collection, which may stimulate a further study of the topic.

Biblical scholarship today is divided between two mutually exclusive concepts of the emergence of monotheism: an early-monotheistic Yahwism paradigm and a native-pantheon paradigm. This study identifies five main stages on Israel's journey towards monotheism. Rather than deciding whether Yahweh was originally a god of the Baal-type or of the El-type, this work shuns origins and focuses instead on the first period for which there are abundant sources, the Omride era. Non-biblical sources depict a significantly different situation from the Baalism the Elijah cycle ascribes to King Achab. The novelty of the present study is to take this paradox seriously and identify the Omride dynasty as the first stage in the rise of Yahweh as the main god of Israel. Why Jerusalem later painted the Omrides as anti-Yahweh idolaters is then explained as the need to distance itself from the near-by sanctuary of Bethel by assuming the Omride heritage without admitting its northern Israelite origins. The contribution of the Priestly document and of Deutero-Isaiah during the Persian era comprise the next phase, before the strict Yahwism achieved in Daniel 7 completes the emergence of biblical Yahwism as a truly monotheistic religion.

This volume is devoted to the receptions of and reflections on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as told in Genesis 18 and 19. Two articles discuss intertextual reactions to the Sodom narrative within the Hebrew Bible. Five contributions examine readings and rewritings of the Sodom narrative in early Jewish, Christian and Islamic writings: Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament (Revelation 11), Targumim and early Koran commentaries. Two articles focus on separate themes, the punishment of the Dead Sea and the prohibition on looking back. Finally, two articles that focus on Peter Damian and Proust's Sodome et Gomorrhe I describe the later reception of the sin of Sodom as homosexuality. A bibliography of recent works completes the volume.

There has been much discussion of narrative aspects of the Bible in recent years, but the ends of biblical narratives – how the ends contribute to closure for their stories and how the ending strategies affect the whole narrative – have not been studied comprehensively. This study shows how the writers and editors of short narratives in Genesis gave their stories a sense of closure (or in a few cases, the sense of non-closure). Multiple and sometimes unexpected, forms of closure are identified; together these form a set of closural conventions. This contribution to narrative poetics of the Hebrew Bible in the light of source criticism will also be valuable to those who are interested in narrative and in concepts of closure.